Like many others, when the reddit APIcalypse happened, I moved to the fediverse. Like many, I wasn’t sure what it really consisted of, how it worked, or what instance to move to. Eventually I decided to sign up with kbin.social. Ernest was welcoming, the instance was friendly with a nice mix of topics, the community was great, having access to both threadiverse and microblogs was great, and I loved it.

And then Ernest started having health issues and the instance became unstable. Eventually I moved to fedia/mbin, which I enjoy a lot, but I just haven’t quite felt that same sense of belonging - I don’t know, maybe the new job just kept me away a bit too much, or I’m getting old, or just been through too many changes. But I’ve kept kbin on my launch page, and sometimes I find myself a bit wistful for it.

I poked at the internet, and the kbin.social domain expires in a few days, on 10 September, which I suppose will be a formal end to the project. In memory of kbin, I’d like thank Ernest: wherever you are, I hope you are well and enjoying your life. Thank you for the concepts behind and your work on kbin; I love the bridging of the microblogs and threadiverse. And thank you for making the transition to the fediverse less confusing to this old redditor. I wish you the best in life, and thank you again.

  • YoiksAndAway@lemmy.zipEnglish
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    3 months ago

    Same here. I started off on kbin.social after the APIcalypse, then to a small mbin instance (moist.catsweat), then created alts on lemmy.zip and piefed.zip. I think the .zip instances have a lot of the kbin.social community vibe. I think that eventually piefed.zip will be my main instance. I hope Ernest is well, wherever he is.

    • tofu@lemmy.nocturnal.gardenEnglish
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      3 months ago

      Yeah I think I’ve seen some recent commits on his GitHub profile as well. He seems to be “back”, just not on kbin.

      I hosted my own kbin instance for a while as it seemed interesting, but admittedly I never really got into it. Still a cool approach, just not for me.

  • Kierunkowy74@piefed.socialEnglish
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    3 months ago

    It was a great website. You could feel the fun of exploring everything together with hundreds of new users, from Lemmy communities to Mastodon toots with great threading of discussions. From custom magazine CSS to Collections (remade by PieFed as Feeds). A new, emergent website culture and the promise of later progress (we were meant later to have e.g. flairs (as Badges), and federation with Mobilizon).

    You are seeing /kbin software as a Reddit alternative, but it could be more than that. I am aware of attempts of making, based on /kbin, a newsletter/blog platform (instead of Substack?) or a local social media website, as an alternative to Facebook local groups.

    Mbin should still be able to view any post from subscribed blogs (be it from WriteFreely, WordPress, openwrite or Ghost), as a full article and the view of it should be very clean.

  • Tylerdurdon@lemmy.worldEnglish
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    3 months ago

    That was a kind message. I never visited (wish I could have) but can appreciate good spaces on the Internet when you find them. Hope you all find new, bright spots.

  • zonnewin@feddit.nlEnglish
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    3 months ago

    It was a good place that gave us hope after the Reddit APIcalypse. The problem quickly became apparent tho that he couldn’t do it all by himself and didn’t manage to get a team around him to continue the work. The bus factor caught up with kbin and initiated its demise.

  • HarkMahlberg@kbin.earth
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    3 months ago

    Nothing lasts forever, especially on the Internet, but I’m happy to say I enjoyed kbin.social for as long as I used it.

    Thanks Ernest! Good luck on your recovery and next projects!