(What makes this an unpopular opinion is that I’m basically advocating for jettisoning an entire Fediverse platform rather than just riding out the rough patch.)
I admin a Lemmy instance, and the amount of spam we get from Kbin and have to deal with is absolutely insane. Every morning I have to spend at least 15 minutes cleaning it up: responding to reports, banning accounts, purging posts, and pruning the images. And it’s more of that all through the day, just in smaller bites.
Many times I’ve toyed with the idea of de-federating Kbin instances completely, but I don’t want to cut off interactions with their legit users. The legit users are not the problem and are very much welcome.
Side note: If you’re reading this and thinking “What Kbin spam?”, then you should reach out to your instance admin(s) and give them a big ‘thank you’. The spam from Kbin is not just a “me” problem.
The underlying issue is that Kbin mod actions do not federate to Lemmy. At all. The mods of their magazines can (and probably are) doing a great job cleaning up spam, but once that spam goes out, it’s a one-way trip to Lemmy and completely up to the instance admins to deal with. For comparison, on Lemmy, the community mods can remove the spam which will then issue a removal action on instances that received it via federation.
I’ve tried various ways to unsubscribe and remove Kbin communities on my instance, but the “unsubscribe” doesn’t seem to be honored by Kbin, either. So I’m stuck receiving content that’s 90%+ spam and having to deal with it every day with no end in sight (barring de-federating Kbin completely). The only thing that sort-of works is hiding the Kbin magazines on my end, but that just hides the spam, too, and I’m still stuck storing it on my system.
So yeah, life for Lemmy admins would be easier if Kbin users would make the switch and I could just de-fed from Kbin without losing the good people.
I’m back in the game now. The issue with spam will be addressed next week.
Glad to hear that! 🎉
Great to hear! Hope things in your life are headed in a good direction, and thank you for the work you do. 🙇♂️
If it makes you feel any better, I started on kbin and more recently moved… Mostly for the more polished mobile apps, but yeah, thank you for dealing with all that
Ironically the I started on kbin and use it on desktop for the opposite reason - the lemmy web instance is just worse in every way. Getting a desktop app for a web site just seems bass-ackwards but maybe that’s a plan. I appreciate the post for framing it just so either way.
It’s kind of sucked to get called out (not on this post, which again, was written very well) but on other comments in other posts where it’s like “ewww kbin users” and I’m like “wtf, I’m just sitting here”. We’ll get there though, it’s all good.
There’s a bunch of alternative web front ends for Lemmy listed here: https://github.com/dbeley/awesome-lemmy
They’re much better than the default one.
Ernest has been working on a major update, but it appears to be delayed.
Thank you for not simply defederating. Understood that something has to change with the spam problem and it’s been over a month of it being bad. Thanks again for managing the spam.
For people unaware, as Ernest is busy with personal matters, a group of people forked Kbin into https://github.com/MbinOrg/mbin.
The main difference is that they are reviewing PRs together instead of relying on one person.
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For what it’s worth, Ernest has returned and is back to work (he’s posted once or twice in the last day or two, starting a daily update for everyone). I think he said today should see an update pushed out (iirc the one which will allow transfer of magazine ownership), so things are finally moving again.
Edit: https://kbin.social/m/kbinDevlog/t/609581/kbin-RTR-7-Summary-of-the-week-preview-of-the-kbin-social found it.
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Told ya it was coming soon lol! https://kbin.social/m/kbinDevlog/t/615294/kbin-RTR-9-Protection-against-spam-and-several-optimization-improvements
99% of the time I’ve seen the spam over here it seems to be from !random so I unfollowed/blocked them a while back so I get what ya mean. This update I would imagine should help at least in some situations, so fingers crossed it won’t be long for more updates to fix the rest!
Have they solved this specific issue yet? Because I don’t see it mentioned in either the PRs nor the issues.
The amount of spam is horrendous. Once we get the instance blocking feature, I’ll be blocking Kbin immediately.
I use the connect app, and you can already do that. I blocked them a while ago because their posts always have a bunch of nonsense and tags and shit I don’t want (hence the reason I’m here, not there).
Yes, if you read the post you’ll see that it’s an issue with Kbin not federating properly.
The underlying issue is that Kbin mod actions do not federate to Lemmy
So this is technically problem that can be fixed by code. No reason users need to change behaviour.
The problem is that there’s currently no “light at the end of the tunnel” for when the Kbin devs will address this. I’m not the only Lemmy instance who’s on the cusp of de-federating Kbin entirely, and many already have. The good/non-spam Kbin users are the ones who will be collateral damage. Those are the ones who have kept me from pulling the plug on Kbin already.
It’s not a great situation, and I don’t want to have to cut off those users, but I can’t deal with the constant spam much longer.
The good/non-spam Kbin users are the ones who will be collateral damage.
You never have any respect for the bad/non-spam Kbin users like me, Admiral Patrick.
Ha. I should have used a comma: “good, non-spam kbin users”.
But also, you’re not clogging my feed with scam links to black market Oxycontin or linking to escort services that, if not outright scams, are likely fronts for human trafficking organizations.
So, grading on that scale, you are definitely one of the good ones.
Apparently the problem of moderation not being properly federated out is discussed in this issue, but I see no PR for it. The last comment also suggests that it’s not just a missing feature, but that it “should” be working but for some reason isn’t. I’m sure if someone is interested in setting up a few kbin & lemmy test instances and reproduce this that would vastly simplify finding a solution.
on kbin’s issue tracker: https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues/570
What I find interesting that everyone just seems to argue that moderation actions should be federated out when the author claims that that’s already how it “should” be (i.e. that’s already the intent but it’s not working). I never wrote code for either software and haven’t even run my own instance or I’d try to reproduce the issue, because I suspect it isn’t hard to pinpoint the problem if the fundamental code is already there.
If 19 brings instance blocking, perhaps 20 will bring platform blocking and we can just erase it all from our view.
Would it be possible for some user smarter than myself to just submit a PR to introduce mod action federation? I can’t imagine it’s that different from something like score or content?
He’s going through a divorce. PRs aren’t getting committed.
Oh damn, that’s unfortunate. A fork?
I think you’re underestimating how much work a proper fork of a (at least semi-popular) OSS product is. You need multiple devs with active time commitment to even have a chance of doing better than the original.
IMO no, the solution isn’t to create a fork, but to find more “core-developers” to join in kbin to increase the bus factor. That’s not easy either (and needs cooperation by the current dev(s)), but it’s significantly easier than bootstrapping a whole fork.
I am almost certainly underestimating everything when I’m talking about dev stuff. Was a genuine question :) Was just wondering what the alternatives would be if he’s not accepting any PRs and doesn’t have time to find more “core-developers”. Would the project just die? I quite like kbin’s microblog Integration.
I don’t know the details of this specific project, but assuming that it’s really like many other projects basically a one-person-show at the moment there’s IMO several possible scenarios:
- moderation federation doesn’t get fixed quickly enough, kbin instances get mass-defederated and the project effectively dies (some kbin instances and fans will stick around, but they will be a minority and effectively be little defederated islands)
- the main dev finds good co-devs and enough time to on-board them in a sane way despite his lack of time at the moment and they can develop and merge a fix for the defederation issue in time to avoid mass-defederation
- #1 happens but someone (apparently mbin, as linked elsewhere) forks the project and takes over as a successor and most kbin instances eventually switch over to mbin.
All of these scenarios have happened to various projects at various times for various reasons, so it’s really hard to tell which one it is.
Of course there’s also the chance that despite not having much time and not finding/adding co-devs the main dev finds just enough time to fix this issue and the project continues to limp along. That would basically just postpone the other three options IMO, since this is unlikely to remain the only major issue. Problems tend to happen with software.
Edit: oh, and I forgot that it can also be a mixture of both of those: a fork exists, but the original project also continues and both just live on next to each other with slightly different goals/communities behind them. That’s not even necessarily a bad thing.
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I mean if the fork fixes it and the original doesn’t and enough of lemmy defederates with the remaining kbin servers, then they will have to reconsider switching or falling into irrelevancy.
pull requests can be merged by any repo member
They’d be crazy to do so.
Possible, yes, definitely. But the PR would need to be to Kbin’s codebase. AFAIK, it’s Kbin that’s not sending the removal rather than Lemmy not being able to interpret what it receives.
If Lemmy introduces the twitter-clone aspect where each community has a microblog then lemmy will be a replacement. Until then, I actually prefer kbin.
I would just defederate and tell those users if they want to see your instance then they’d better clean up their own first.
Would you invite someone over to your house who makes a mess every time? Eventually you’re going to get sick of cleaning up their messes and tell them to stop coming to your house.
Kbin mods probably do clean up their own.
But their cleaning doesn’t federate (ie a mod deleting a post won’t issue a federation deletion request)That sounds like a software problem, not a moderation problem.
It is. I prefer kbin to lemmy but there’s no denying it’s kinda shaky, feature-wise. Also ernest the maintainer (the, as far as I know) has gotten absolutely slammed with the workload and other factors, apparently.
I’m against lemmy for the fact that introducing new users is a pain in the ass. Tell em to type lemmy into google and you get stuff about a musician. Tell them about kbin and they get stuff about the fediverse. Lemmy is just a really bad name.
I remember a time when searching reddit on Google would barely produce any relevant results, and no one I knew was familiar with the platform.
It takes time. Lemmy is still very new. Search engines have begun combing lemmy. Name recognition doesn’t happen overnight.
Alternatively, you should switch to KBin.
As a kbin user myself I don’t think that’s a good solution to the issue. If one vehicle on the road is splashing all the others with manure then the solution isn’t just for everyone to get into that one vehicle …
Well, it solves the problem. I agree the solution is ridiculous. But that’s my point - it is as ridiculous as the “unpopular opinion” of the original post.
Hell no
