I supported a pre-emptive Threads defederation, because I expect them to Embrace-Extend-Extinguish the fediverse for the sake of profit.

For the BBC, I don’t feel as overtly opposed. They don’t really have the user base to overextend us with, even if they tried to get their audience on mastodon lol. They haven’t seemed blatantly profit driven in the past. And they’re starting their own instance, using fediverse tech.

Does anyone think this is the BBC’s Embrace step? It’s not sparking any alarm bells for me, but can I get a sanity check?

Oooh, I’m excited to try this out! But later, 'cause I’m just on mobile, and kbin doesn’t have a save function yet lol.

Wow, I’m pretty impressed with BC for this.

Having font support really legitimizes a language. It’s basically impossible to make digital content if you can’t type in your language, so this is really unlocking a lot for the readers and writers of all those languages!

Magazine ->Community

Strong agreement.

Link -> Article

Maybe Link -> Website even, 'cause it’s not always an actual news article.

Thread -> Post

Agree, mainly because I think most of us would say “I’m going to post this on kbin” but I haven’t found a verb I like for …starting? a new ‘thread’ lol. “I’m going to thread this on kbin”??

And also for branding issues lol, vs that big company.

Post (In microblog) -> Blog

Room for improvement here, but good start I think.

Commented -> Discussed

I think Comments is fine. Discussion is fine. I actually think this is where “threads” could have been used lol, but let’s not.

Badges -> Labels
Labels is good. Badges isn’t quite right. Stamp? Banner? Flag?

The fediverse should be more resistant to this (I hope). The people in charge of instances are pretty comparable to super moderators since they both can control a lot of internet real estate. The fediverse’s response to bad instance owners is to just switch to an instance that’s run in a way that you like better. Or even better, make a new instance that’s less bad!

If there’s an instance with a problem super moderator, then the same solution should work right? Go elsewhere, or make a new magazine. If there’s a single problem user dominating all communities in multiple instances, well. Time to start “@free.folk” or whatever lmao.

If I think my comment is more relevant than all the others I see, I even boost myself lmao. No shame hahah.

When I’m contributing to the conversation, I upvote myself. When I’m no longer contributing to the original discussion (like I’m talking with someone and we get somewhat off topic), I don’t upvote myself anymore.

It’s more about what order a new person should see stuff!

I’m not endorsing their behaviour, but I can imagine myself doing something similar to Pips. I’m just hoping to show an alternative perspective here, maybe it’ll make the spam more tolerable for you lol.

I follow basically all the warhammer hobby magazines/communities I come across. They’re all still growing, some a little quicker, but honestly there isn’t a single clear winner. Since they basically all would benefit from more content and activity, shouldn’t I post to several admittedly very overlapping groups?

There’s only so much content I can contribute as a single user. I either make an OC post when I’ve painted something up, or I’ll link like the one or two noteworthy news articles for this week lmao. I can’t create bespoke content for each instance.

I do want them all of them to succeed, or any one of them to succeed. They’re all starving for content most days. But right now, the fediverse just doesn’t have the critical mass yet. So how should we grow it?

Eventually, a clear winner will emerge, and I’ll probably prune my subscriptions list. But we’re in the spring of the fediverse, it’s just too early to tell which sprouts will flower best.

I love your question! I think these words are examples of a trochee!

In English poetic metre and modern linguistics, a trochee (/ˈtroʊkiː/) is a metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed one.

It’s usually easy to recognize a word that’s a trochee because it’ll sound like kids TV show title: Teenage Mutant Ninja Power Ranger Mega Turtles lol.

In this case, it’s trochaic dimeter because there’s two trochees. “LET’S-go RAN-gers!” You may have heard of iambic pentameter, somehow that one always seems popular to people. Well an iamb is just the reverse of a trochee, and pentameter means you’d put five of them on each line.

Now that you know what trochees are, you’re gonna see 'em everywhere. Or maybe that’s just me lol.

Edit: For extra fun, what do you think is going on with the clapping afterwards? I feel like we’re doing something with this at the end, but it’s late and I should go to sleep hahah. Good luck!

I feel like it would be nice to pull at least some content when the first person opens the box lol. Maybe the last 10-100 posts, or from the past 30-90 days, or whatever.

Maybe do this kind of smaller sync every time another user subscribes to it until it’s fully synced up, 'cause that means we all really want the content lol.

Kbin could do that independently right? Or would ActivityPub need to change to allow that?

Hmm interesting. I do think it’s just as important that we double-defederate unfortunately. Meta/Threads has to be treated as if it’s contagious.

If we stay federated with an instance that has accepted the Embrace, what do we do when the Extend happens? Is that when we defederate? Will we even recognize it?

EEE only works because it’s difficult to see it happening to you. Instances that ally with Meta/Threads will actually present the same threat of EEE, or even a greater threat, because the Extend step may appear to come from non-Meta instances.

Imagine ActivityPub upgrades developed by a Meta/Threads-ally, let’s say improved inter-instance moderator tools. That sounds good right?

It’s basically all the exact same arguments again, but with a middle man.

• Meta/Threads have different foundational priorities (namely, profit) and real incentives to monopolize.
• Meta-ally instances have real and implied incentives to accommodate
  Meta/Threads.
• And we have incentives to accommodate the instances that we federate with, so of course kbin would use the well-developed new mod tools right?
• Seems crazy not to, even if it was developed by a Meta-ally. Right?
• Great! Repeat for thousands of tiny changes, that’s called Extend.

That’s how accepting EEE works, each little step looks great but big picture we’re unknowingly in trouble. We’ll have to treat any Meta/Threads-ally as if it is Meta/Threads. (Hell, some of them probably will be lol, the fediverse is just asking for astroturfing lol.)

We can trust instances that don’t have economic incentives. But any instance that shows they can be swayed by money, or that shows they’ll accommodate instances driven by profit, well they’re showing that they’d consider eating us to become the next reddit.

Wait so when am I supposed to boost? Upvotes sort now, so I should usually upvote and boost when I think something should be at the top?

Huh, okay! I’m mostly nodding along in agreement here.

I was never much of a social media user, however, I think one thing that reddit did right was the awards. Unfortunately, the moderators likely didn’t see any of that income (something to keep in mind considering the budding state of alt social platforms). Point being, I think something like that is much more rewarding than an upvote, while a conversation outweighs both.

Interesting, that’s unexpected! I’m surprised because I see huge piles of reddit awards as pretty comparable to huge blocks of discord emoji reactions, and you said you don’t want the emojis lol. Do you just like that actual money was committed, or what’s going on here?

I think we should very cautiously approach how we handle money and transactions affect anything around here, so… strong hesitation lol.

I’d argue that it isn’t healthy at all. But this circles back to the clout chasing argument. I think healthy discussion is going to give a user more than an arrow can ever give, while also promoting critical thinking and the development of more substantial connections among users and the community.

Huh. Okay, well. My initial reaction is confusion, but I’m willing to review my beliefs lol.

So of course, healthy discussion is incredibly valuable and positive. But what if I don’t really have anything meaningful to say?

For example, imagine I see a thread where someone has refinished their bench (probably in a woodworking or DIY kind of magazine). Let’s say I arrive late to the thread too, so plenty of people have already asked all the interesting questions like techniques, what products were used, origins of the bench etc. So usually this is where I’d just upvote lol.

I don’t want to pass by with no interaction, so… I guess I’ll pick random small talk so they know I like it? “Neat! Can’t wait to see your next project!” or something?

So instead of 25 high quality comments and 60 upvotes, that thread likely ends with 50 comments of which half really just say “Nice!” (+ an unknown amount of upvotes). I suppose it’s nicer to hear the specific words of encouragement, but it is certainly much more effort and likely a poorer noise:signal in the comments lol.

@charles Well so I’m fully guilty of this lol: On discord, when I see two dozen hype reactions, I click all that apply lmao.

I don’t think we should sort by emojis lol.

Discouraging Clout Chasing Behaviors:
Promoting Content Quality and Relevance:

I see your goal here, but how would this actually work? Like what buttons does the user see?

Are we all still collectively deciding what counts as valuable contributions? If so, this sounds veryyy similar to what we already have using either upvotes or boosts lol.

• “Agreement” sounds like an upvote. I like this content.
• “Mark as quality” sounds like a boost. More people should see this.

So what metric(s) do you actually want implemented?

alternative ways to measure influence and impact (insightful comments, fostering discussions, valuable contributions).

If those are the buttons you think we should have, I don’t think the internet can be objective enough to make these reliably more useful than an upvote.

If I see buttons saying “Insightful / Fosters Discussion / Valuable”, I’m mostly going to just hit any or all of them when I like the content. And I’ll click none of them when I dislike content, 'cause duh that’s not insightful or valuable!

So what should we actually do to achieve these noble goals?

Engagement, interactions, relevance, and authenticity

Ehh, sorting by interactions can encourage excess commenting or spamming near content you want promoted. More interactions doesn’t necessarily mean higher quality. I’m commenting several times on this post, but it could have been one commentary for the exact same content. Should this thread’s quality be treated differently based on my format?

Unfortunately, engagement is highest around controversial topics, which again doesn’t necessarily indicate the highest quality content.

I’m pretty sure sorting by relevance is how YouTube & TikTok try to serve you content, but I don’t think we should aspire to black box algorithms.

Agh, I swear I’m not trying to just shoot down all your ideas. I’m trusting based on your writing that you’re open to collective constructive criticism. You’re obviously thinking here, thinking more than most people do lol.

It’s just that this is a very complex issue, that will need very nuanced solutions. Humans have spent a heck of a lot of time, money and effort trying to figure about it, and we still seem to get it wrong a lot haha.

Removing Emoji-Based Reactions:

Easy agreement lol. I’m not really a fan of those emojis reaction blocks you get on discord. They’re cute, but people seem to just bandwagon on the fun ones lol.

Hmm, I think I understand your goals here, but I don’t fully understand their implementation. I’m gonna reply in sections because you deserve nuanced response!

Hiding Voting Metrics:

Okay, so I participated in a similar discussion about removing downvotes recently.

Right off the bat, one of the key concerns here is that the technology we’re using makes all voting public as a baseline. You can opt to close your own eyes (hide them for yourself or for your instance), but other people or instances will still see the votes because ActivityPub transfers information as “users acting upon other content.”

So unfortunately this may be a hard feature to shift without fediverse-wide agreement (or fediverse splintering).

Anyways, I have some concerns about the actual goal here, because we can’t actually prevent all fear of judgement or backlash. Anytime you say anything, someone can disagree with you by text comment, which can be very strong disagreement while staying within normal moderation limits.

But! I can see that mitigating the effects of voting may reduce the punishments for participating outside narrow echo-chambers, and that seems important. Even if I don’t think this is the correct solution, it is a worthwhile discussion!

I propose making downvotes have no effect on reputation. It’s okay to know people disagree with you. We just reduce the extent a downvote harms users. I’m even willing to make upvotes have no effect on reputation either, to address some of your later concerns.

This would let people casually agree/disagree with comments as we all seem to like doing. Rather than committing to a full comment when I don’t have a meaningful contribution, a little upvote feels like the correct way to say “Nice!” vs no response and letting the author think they aren’t being seen. But benign voting would be for just that specific content with no further ramifications lol.

I do find vote counts have benefits for me, letting me feel the pulse of community response, and I’m idealistic about finding a healthy medium!

Hmmm, so on kbin.social we already have that actually! Or we have something close to it.

We have upvotes, downvotes, boosts and reports. Upvotes don’t contribute to your reputation right now (apparently that’s a bug though, but maybe it’s a feature haha). Boosts are supposed to be like a retweet, but I think they’re taken into account for sort order too.

So we can already boost meaningful content, and report irrelevant content! Nice! And then for personal takes, we could continue using up/downvotes.

Unfortunately downvotes currently affect reputation, and they’re publicly listed, so there’s definitely conflict around people unhappy about their negative reputations. I’ve been fairly liberal with my boosts to try to balance that out lol.

@HamSwagwich Oh, yeah, that’s why I’m suggesting we just make it benign. Like cosmetic only. We can see the downvote count, but it doesn’t affect reputation or sorting.

“There’s a bunch of people in the back grumbling about this comment lol.” It’s anonymous but ignorable. Actual sorting is by upvotes, actual content moderation is by reports.

@HamSwagwich I think that’s where I’m at too. Replace downvote with report button. If it’s really irrelevant or otherwise breaking the rules let’s remove it properly. If it isn’t, well. It isn’t, so let it stay without punishment.

Edit: Oooh, okay wait. Maybe let downvotes stay but make it benign. We’re okay with casual upvotes for agreement. We should be okay with casual downvotes for disagreement. Its does let people see that their comment has been seen as is unpopular, compared with just unnoticed. I’m okay with that style of downvote being private.

@FaceDeer Beehaw removed the downvote button? That’s interesting. Did they say why?

I’d guess their argument would be that that the downvote’s main purpose is supposed to be to mark irrelevant content, but that’s just as easily handled by a report?

That’s actually a compelling argument to me. A spammer with a negative reputation almost certainly doesn’t care. I’d rather have mods look at someone with too many reports and just ban them and be done with it.

People with acceptable but unpopular opinions (“peanut butter and mayo is the best sandwich”) can just have a low non-negative reputation, no need to treat that like a bannable offense lol.