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Ernest Appreciation Post
(kbin.social)
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this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
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Magazine dedicated to discussions about the kbin itself. Provide feedback, ask questions, suggest improvements, and engage in conversations related to the platform organization, policies, features, and community dynamics. ---- * Roadmap 2023 * m/kbinDevlog * m/kbinDesign
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is ernest the spez of kbin? I just mean does he have the power to shut me down if he wanted and delete my stuff
wondering because of what's going on with reddit
On this instance technically yes. But that's the beauty of the fediverse. Don't like the moderation of an instance? Move to another! Ernest only has control over instances he runs,and same goes for everyone else.
In a sense. Ernest has control over kbin.social, meaning he could delete any content posted directly to kbin.social, delete accounts on kbin.social, and so on, if he wanted to. The other instance admins have that same power on their own instances. He doesn't have any control over content on other /kbin instances or on Lemmy instances that federate with kbin.social, and because /kbin itself is free software he can't fully control that either. Even if Ernest turns evil you would always be able to make a new account somewhere else, subscribe to the same non-kbin.social communities that you did before, and carry on where you left off.
That being said. He is also lead developer of kbin. So currently he is also the admin of the Codeberg repo ;).
You can judge for yourself
https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/68541/kbin-server-update-or-how-the-server-didn-t-blow-up
Imo, he's a cinnamon roll.
What is a cinnamon roll
Just looked it up. A cinnamon roll refers to someone who is sweet, innocent and deserves better.
A cinnamon roll is an amazing sweet pastry that is soft and gooey and can be eaten with or without a vanilla glaze on top.
The glaze is required
Negative, because spez is a dick and ernest is a cool dude. Having said that, Ernest is the person who build kbin (the software) and also kbin.social (this instance of the kbin software), amongst other things.
He is the kbin admin, who has such powers yes, but he‘s not running a company of underlings or making money off this so it would be in bad taste to compare him to a CEO like spez.
If you are concerned about him, you can make an account on another instance where you trust the admin more or if you don‘t trust anyone at all you can also spin up your own instance on a Raspberry Pi or something.
An important point to make is that even if you make an account elsewhere, you can still access the content and communities here and on other Kbin/Lemmy instances.
Thus far he's proven to be a great guy, but in case he lives long enough to become a villain, yes - he owns this instance, and if he's ever taken over by some space parasite, he has the ability to shut down this instance and delete everything uploaded to it; but the beauty of the fediverse is, if you don't trust an admin of this instance, you can join a different one, and still talk to people here; if you don't trust any admin, you can spin up your own instance, and it will still be able to communicate with all the others; and if you don't trust anyone, even yourself... well, fediverse will not solve that problem.
yes. ernest is the admin and host of kbin.social. however, if ernest abuses his power then people can easily spin up new instances of kbin (and have already done so) and you can simply use that instead. Or you can host your own instance. and all of the content is shared across them.
People keep saying that, but I can't find any good guides on how to do so.
that's because kbin is hardly a month old and still a wip. unfortunately that means to get something up is gonna be more technical.
There's someone on the issue tracker writing a guide. Let me dig up a link.
EDIT: It went into the main repository two weeks ago. Here's the PR for that initial commit:
https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/pulls/409
It looks like the author of the guide -- who is not Ernest -- is maintaining a branch where they're writing said guide and that the last commits on that branch are only 11 hours old as of this writing and haven't yet been merged into the main kbin repo. Here's their WIP guide, about as fresh as you're gonna get admin docs for kbin:
https://codeberg.org/lilfade/kbin-core/src/branch/admin-guide/docs
The main repository's admin docs are here:
https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/src/branch/develop/docs
@Aesthesiaphilia
Welp, that's way too advanced for me. And, I suspect, for most people. I'm going to stop suggesting "spin up a new instance" as a solution to fediverse problems.
Like, I'm sure you're about to say something like, "It's actually really easy! Just sjuehejsishebjfkoapwlheu jsjudhwnakalziziuw ksksoducyenwon znxjisiwnsbshoo nsjwisiakla. But also make sure you wjowownwnejdicinfnskso mwkslosidubnekskppppmamajsij jdjduhxbdnskoskwnmjcbdbw or else it will explode." Because that's what I'm going to hear. We don't know what "bare metal" or "docker" means, or what a "VPS" is.
I don't think that that really collides with @Otome-chan's point, which is how much power Ernest has. She's saying that Ernest can't really do what spez is doing with Reddit. Spez controls Reddit in a way that Ernest cannot control kbin, or more-broadly, the Fediverse. Spez could simply deny access to Reddit to third party clients.
There are people who are going to be writing guides and packaging the software. There are a number of kbin instances that Ernest does not personally control, not to mention compatible software. The bar will continue to lower, but it is already low enough that if Ernest cannot "turn off" kbin if there are sufficient people who want to use it.
The overwhelming majority of people in the world cannot deploy or maintain an email server either, if you asked them to do so off-the-cuff. But there are many people running email servers around the world, and many people who can and would do so, were the need to arise. No one company "owns" email and can simply deny access to it because of that.
The point is that kbin and lemmy and such operate as email servers have, or Usenet servers, or IRC. The source code to servers is publicly-available and could be forked, if the need arises. Many different organizations run their own servers. And no one person can deny access to the system.
Right. so while the majority of users may struggle due to the technical nature, the reality is that currently there appears to be 75 different kbin instances. meaning if this (1) instance has problems, you can simply move to one of the other 74 instances and keep using kbin as normal. Even if ernest decided to 100% shut down kbin.social, those other instances still exist and he can't touch them.
Also, @Aesthesiaphilia, it looks like some provider just announced that they're providing managed kbin instances (like, they set it up, handle updates and such) starting at $10/month.
https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/131142/We-are-launching-KBIN-fully-managed-service
My guess is that there will be other providers.
That isn't necessary to achieve what Otome-chan is going for, but will probably bring down the bar for people who want to have full control over their site but don't want to deal with the technical side or want to only deal with a limited amount of it.
I agree, I was going on a bit of a tangent because people keep saying things like "you can just host your own instance".
It’s a work in progress about self-hosting an instance of a really new and fast-moving piece of software. I’ve no doubt things will get simpler.
Fair question to ask, in the current context. I think you've had good answers from others, hopefully that puts your mind at rest.