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Potentially unpopular opinion: It may be time to close registrations (temporarily).

3 years ago by Cavalarrr to c/kbinMeta

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Hey kbinMeta.

Given the news that beehaw.org are defederating from two of the largest Lemmy instances due to issues with moderation, I thought it may be worth @ernest considering closing registrations here, for a while at least.
I've seen that a handful of other kbin instances have been spun up, however, kbin.social currently dwarfs their user numbers. kbin.social is currently sat at over 28,000 registered users, with the next highest, fedia.io sitting at around 3,000 users. I may be incorrect on this, but as far as I'm currently aware, @ernest is the only admin, I believe he may have mentioned that he's taken a couple of additional trusted users on board, but at this time, I can't find receipts to back that up, however, I am aware of the immense pressure that @ernest is in to keep things not only running smoothly, but also moving forward.

The workload overwhelmed me, and I couldn't read all your messages.

This is in relation to account deletion requests alone, and understandably, this explosion in popularity and userbase was not only unexpected for @ernest, but possibly also for the platform itself:

Kbin was designed with small instances in mind.

Apparently fedia.io have already disabled open resgistrations due to usercount, (although that may be unverified, as this post from the fedia.io admin doesn't suggest that, but still food for thought.). [This is not the case, they just aren't federating, as confirmed by Jerry, thanks! I think Jerry's comment is still very relevant to the topic at hand, however.]

Now, I've already seen a handful of comments denigrating beehaw.org from some of the defederated site users, as well as users local to kbin.social whose accounts were made after the defederation. This is more than likely to result in kbin.social also being defederated from beehaw.org, if not others. I completely understand that this is the nature of the fediverse, and that no one instance is going to be completely open with every other instance, however, I think it's worth considering that we "have our own house in order", namely in the shape of more site-wide moderation, instead of keeping the floodgates open for every reddit refugee or otherwise.

I'm well aware that many may disagree with this, but I think it's something to consider.

Edit: Edited title of post. I just want to clarify, I don't mean close registrations for good, just while things calm down a little bit / ernest has chance to get a solid moderation / admin team in place.

Otome-chan 20 points 3 years ago

it's up to ernest ofc but imo closing signups kinda feels "un-kbin". fearing defederation from beehaw is just silly. they will do what they will do, and imo it's pointless to try and center kbin's actions on those of an entirely different site and instance.

if the influx of people is making it hard to do admin stuff, then I guess it might be necessary, but simply to "spread users around" I don't really support. If people want to come to kbin.social, let them come to kbin.social.

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Cavalarrr 6 points 3 years ago

I may have missed the mark on my point in the main post to be fair; It's not about fearing defederation from beehaw.org, it's more about ensuring we don't get overran by people with ill-intentions before the dust has settled, and whilst the site doesn't have the manpower in place to keep things like that under control.
Currently there's nothing stopping someone from the communities beehaw has defederated with from signing up here and going on a fullblown hate campaign because they disagree with the ideals of the beehaw admins. Everywhere they go, those local instances are then looking at "ih8beehaw@kbin.social", and if nothing is done to prevent that, then it colours the rest of kbin.social users in a bad light. The more bad users you get, the more likely you are to experience widespread defederation, and lose out on a lot of what should make the concept of the fediverse great.

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KoreanPerson 6 points 3 years ago

If those bad actors in sh.itjust.works and lemmy.world are willing to make an account at a new instance just to send hateful messages on beehaw communities, then it wouldn't matter if kbin.social closes new registrations because they can just go to any other instance that has open registration to send those messages to beehaw communities.

if the issue is popular instances having higher numbers of bad actors, then thats an issue for beehaw/other safe spaces. Rather than an issue for kbin (at least right now). Either way, Kbin is not advertised nor planned to be a safe space (from my understanding of ernest's posts). if there are bad actors then they can voice their hate/opinions and get downvoted/reduced. I don't think anyone on kbin.social cares if there's a minority of bad actors that might "color the site in a bad light". Especially since those bad actors aren't here as of right now.

The solution is for safe spaces like beehaw to continue defederating from popular instances to keep their space "safe". This will continue to happen whether kbin.social closes registration or not.

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Otome-chan 5 points 3 years ago

that's understandable, though I think the fear is unwarranted. lemmy users want to stay on lemmy. they don't want to come to kbin (even to troll). and I think the few that might end up here will just be drowned out by good faith kbinauts. I think it's already the case that we are getting a good image and reputation in the fediverse.

naturally open signups means that all types will come here. but as I said, that's kinda what makes kbin kbin. we're also federated with "problematic instances" like lemmygrad. if someone has an issue with kbin being open to everyone, then they will naturally block us no matter what we do.

beehaw is just that: I think they'll end up defederating from many instances, not just the two they did yesterday. because what they want is fundamentally opposite to the idea of federation.

lemmyworld and sh.itjust.works users are content with the beehaw block because in their eyes, beehaw sucks. why would they want to participate in those communities? lemmyworld isn't closing their signups just to try and get on beehaw's good side again; despite their current reputation in the fediverse.

I think the bigger issue for kbin isn't necessarily whether or not other instances "like us", but rather whether or not we as an instance can maintain the "kbin culture" of civil discourse, neutrality, helpfulness, etc. I think that spirit and culture is far more important than whether or not a few bad apples start getting other instances wanting to defederate.

ultimately, I'm not worried about it. kbin isn't exactly a large instance (we got the "literally who" treatment from beehaw lol). so I don't think one or two people will really be an issue even if there's a full "beehaw hater" who comes on here to troll them. because one user can simply be blocked by beehaw. defederation resulted because they felt there was too much coming from lemmyworld and sh.itjust.works. And that's not due to a few bad apples, but a culture clash as a whole.

Idk if you've interacted with those sh.itjust.works guys, but it's obvious to me why beehaw blocked them. Their culture is just completely at odds with beehaw. Whereas kbin culture I believe is not. If a large amount of "beehaw haters" start flooding kbin and changing the culture to be one of toxicity and vitriol, then I do think we'd start having a problem. Otherwise I don't see it as an issue.

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Cavalarrr 2 points 3 years ago

lemmy users want to stay on lemmy. they don't want to come to kbin (even to troll). and I think the few that might end up here will just be drowned out by good faith kbinauts.

Given the much higher number of Lemmy instances, you may well be 100% correct on that, that is, even trolls may just decide to 'stick with what they know' and continue to use a Lemmy based instance.

if someone has an issue with kbin being open to everyone, then they will naturally block us no matter what we do.

Also correct, however, I understand that if a post is local to kbin.social, and had comments from lemmy.world users, in addition to kbin.social users, and a beehaw.org use came to the post, they wouldn't see any of the comments from the defederated users. That is to say, so long as one instance doesn't federate with another, they will never see posts from that instance, regardless of where they are.

I'm not saying that won't still prevent people defederating with kbin.social purely because we're open / federate with another community they specifically defederated from, but there's less reason to if kbin.social maintains a quality userbase.

I think that spirit and culture is far more important than whether or not a few bad apples start getting other instances wanting to defederate.

If a large amount of "beehaw haters" start flooding kbin and changing the culture to be one of toxicity and vitriol, then I do think we'd start having a problem.

Another agreement from me here, however, the point of this post is to start a discussion around whether or not we can prevent being overwhelmed with bad apples too early on in the platforms lifespan (although I appreciate we've already addressed this above).

As has been said, at this point, it's entirely up to @ernest, but I think it's worth looking at potentially taking a couple more people on to assist with the moderation side of things.

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Otome-chan 3 points 3 years ago

even trolls may just decide to 'stick with what they know' and continue to use a Lemmy based instance.

Yup. there's a ton of lemmy instances that aren't blocked by beehaw, so it's likely any trolls would just use those in the first place.

however, I understand that if a post is local to kbin.social, and had comments from lemmy.world users, in addition to kbin.social users, and a beehaw.org use came to the post, they wouldn't see any of the comments from the defederated users. That is to say, so long as one instance doesn't federate with another, they will never see posts from that instance, regardless of where they are.

Think of defederation as "blocking" an instance. if lemmyworld users and beehaw users come to a kbin magazine, lemmyworld users will see everything as proper because they didn't block anyone. beehaw users will see an altered version that hides/removes lemmyworld posts. Lemmyworld users can interact with us like normal, while beehaw users can interact with us, but they won't see anything that lemmyworld users are doing on here. Lemmyworld is blocked from beehaw so they won't get updates from beehaw. Meaning beehaw communities won't sync for them, and beehaw users won't see lemmyworld users/communities. But lemmyworld users will see beehaw posts on kbin magazines.

I'm not saying that won't still prevent people defederating with kbin.social purely because we're open / federate with another community they specifically defederated from, but there's less reason to if kbin.social maintains a quality userbase.

Keep in mind that kbin is federated with some popularly blocked instances, like lemmygrad. we federate with everyone afaik. the swiss neutrality of the fediverse tbh.

Another agreement from me here, however, the point of this post is to start a discussion around whether or not we can prevent being overwhelmed with bad apples too early on in the platforms lifespan

Right I think this is the bigger issue (and less so the drama bout other instances). In terms of lemmyworld users coming here and causing problems.... I don't think it's an issue. kbinauts largely don't have an issue with lemmyworld (we're not crying to block them). and lemmyworld people can interact with our stuff just fine.

however, a larger influx of users from elsewhere (such as what happened with reddit) can potentially change culture. but I think things are still early enough that kbinauts can decide how we want the culture to be here. and I think the consensus seems to be: neutrality, civility, polite discourse, and trying to achieve mutual understandings. I'd say we're doing a good job in that regard :)

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captain_americano 1 point 3 years ago

Hi, here on a Lemmy account! This post showed in my All feed, so it looks like k.bin and Lemmy are starting to federate more (which I think is great).

I think at this point, even were k.bin signups to be closed, defederation is going to be one of the few ways to avoid bad actors spilling from somewhere. I hope that doesn't happen, but if cultures from Lemmy and k.bin end up different, maybe a way to silo what you see to only your service can be found.

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iNeedScissors67 18 points 3 years ago

So far the userbase for kbin has been widely respectful and friendly. If that changes via trolls making multiple accounts to stir shit up, I'd advocate for restricted signup processes. Right now, probably not necessary, but I can certainly see a future where it is.

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Cavalarrr 3 points 3 years ago

My thinking re: closing registrations for a time, is that if currently the only person that can action warranted sitewide bans (e.g. users actively using hate-speech in multiple posts in multiple magazines) is ernest, then there may be a point where there's simply too much to keep on top of, given everything else he has going on.
These concerns may well be completely unwarranted, and I'm well aware that even if kbin.social were to be defederated from a number of instances, that once "the situation" was under control, they could be re-federeated if agreed with the other instances. It would just be a shame to hamper our own community by being relatively powerless against a potential influx of bad faith users whilst ernest is busy being awesome and actively improving kbin as a whole.

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jerry 6 points 3 years ago

@Cavalarrr @ernest I did what all the cool kids are doing and disabled federation on fedia.io. The problem isn't really the local users as much as all the content being federated in.

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Cavalarrr 4 points 3 years ago

Thanks for clarifying! Was the choice to defederate mainly down to a flood of content from other instances drowning out the fedia.io community, or the nature of content coming in, for example?

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effingjoe 5 points 3 years ago

I'm surprised he didn't close registrations when he had to invoke cloudflare.

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Otome-chan 9 points 3 years ago

I think it'd be nice if ernest could write up a little bit about his moderation and platform philosophy. it'd really help clarify where things are headed and what decisions might be made. though the dude is super busy rn. it's insane how many hours that guy is putting in.

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QHC 12 points 3 years ago

From what I have seen so far, I am confident he wants to and will eventually do this, he is just completely overwhelmed right now.

I would encourage you to read his recent "apology" post to get a sense of how he is approaching his role as admin. So far, he appears to be saying and doing all the right things from my perspective.

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Otome-chan 2 points 3 years ago

Yup. I've had some interactions with him already and I read his apology post. Judging by how kbin is, the about pages, and his apology post, I have a feeling he's "one of us" in the sense of being a tech-first, "free speech but no legal issues please", and transparent admin. Everything I've seen from the guy makes me think kbin is in good hands.

His apology post is a bit silly because IMO there's really nothing wrong (forking and reusing code is remarkably normal in software dev) but it seems the original code devs were upset about lack of credit/licensing? and so he posted transparently and is working to make things right. at least that's my understanding (I didn't dig into the drama there).

I have a feeling this "openness" is part of the ethos of ernest, as well as kbin as a whole. So I think the vibe we're all getting here is accurate: essentially the classic ethos of Aaron Swartz (co-founder of reddit, creator of markdown and rss), or similar to Internet Archive's ethos (tech-first, info, sharing knowledge).

In this sense I have a feeling that:

  • kbin will try to avoid closed signups as much as possible and keep things open (unless there's a severe problem)

  • kbin will try to federate as much as possible with every instance

  • kbin will encourage platform neutrality allowing various ideas, discourse, beliefs, and views to be posted

  • kbin will try to stay on the legal side of things, removing illegal content if/when the need arises.

I guess we'll see when he does get around to writing the ethos/manifesto post. But yes, the guy is clearly overworked and overwhelmed right now, so there's definitely no rush. Dude's doing a fantastic job so far.

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digitallyfree 4 points 3 years ago

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Cavalarrr 3 points 3 years ago

That's actually federated users. The official count of kbin.social users can be found here.

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digitallyfree 2 points 3 years ago

I think you're right, as that's what ActivityPub/nodeinfo is showing.

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lohrun 2 points 3 years ago

There are other kbin instances that have been popping up, you can see here: https://kbin.fediverse.observer/list

I just opened user registration on my instance earlier today to help lessen the load on kbin.social and the other instances.

I actually had asked in the kbin matrix chat earlier if I should even open user registration in the first place because I don’t want to be defederated with. Defederation truly feels like the nuclear option especially while we are trying to grow this part of the fediverse

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