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Currently, on the main instance, people have created 40191 accounts (+214 marked as deleted). I don't know how many are active because I don't monitor it, but once again, I greet all of you here :) In recent days, the traffic on the website has been overwhelming. It's definitely too much for the basic docker-compose setup, primarily designed for development use. I was aware of the possible consequences of the situation happening on Reddit, but I assumed that most people would migrate to one of the Lemmy instances, which already has an established position. I hoped that a few stray enthusiasts would find their way to kbin ;)

The first step was to upscale the VPS to a higher version (66.91EUR). It quickly turned out that it wasn't enough. I had to enable CF protection just to keep the website responsive, but the response times were still very slow. At this stage, the instance was practically unusable. The next step was a full migration to a dedicated server (100EUR, the current hardware). It can be done relatively quickly, so it resulted in a 5-minute technical break. Despite the much higher parameters, it didn't get any better. It became clear that the problem didn't lie there. I'm really frustrated when it comes to server administration. That was the moment when I started looking for help. Or rather, it found me.

A couple days ago I wrote about how kbin qualified for the Fast Forward program. To be honest, I did it out of pure curiosity and completely forgot because a lot was happening during that time. During the biggest fire incident, Hannah ( @haubles ) reached out with a proposal to help. I outlined the situation (in short: the server is dying, I don't even know what I need, help! ;). She quickly connected us with Vlad ( @vvuksan ) and Renaud ( @renchap ). I was probably too tired because I don't know if the whole operation lasted 60 minutes or 6 hours, but after a series of precise questions and getting an understanding of the situation, the guys themselves adjusted the entire job. I love working with experts, and it's not often that you come across individuals so well-versed in the fediverse. Thanks to Hannah's kindness, we will be staying there a bit longer. Currently, fastly.com handles the caching layer and processes images. Hence those cool moving thumbnails ;)

Things were going well at that point. I could disable Cloudflare protection. Probably thanks to that, many of you are here today, and we got to know each other a bit better :) However, even then, when I tried to enable federation, the server would stop working.

Around the same time, Piotr ( @piotrsikora ), whom I already knew from the Polish fediverse, contacted me. He is the administrator of the Polish Mastodon instance pol.social, operates within the ftdl.pl foundation, and specializes in administering applications with a very similar tech stack. I made the decision to grant him server access. It only took him a few moments, and he came back to me with a few tips that allowed us to enable federation. In the following days, there was more of it, and we managed to reach the current level. I think it's not too bad.

Nevertheless, managing the instance has taken up about 60% or more of my time so far, which prevents me from fully focusing on current tasks. That's why I would like to collaborate with Piotr and hand over full care of the server to him. Piotr will also take care of the security side. Now I have to take this much more seriously. We still need to work out the terms of cooperation, but I want you to know the direction I intend to pursue.

We also need to migrate to a new environment because one server will sooner or later become insufficient. This time, I want to be prepared for it. This may be associated with transient issues with the website in the coming days.

The next two updates will still be about project funding (I still can't believe what happened) and moderation. The following ones will be more technical, with descriptions of changes and what contributors are doing on Codeberg. I would like to be here more often, but not as an admin, just as myself.

Thank you all for this.

P.S. In private messages, I also received numerous offers of help that I didn't even have a chance to read and respond to. You are the best!

KES is the Kbin Enhancement Suite, a userscript/extension for (k/m)bin that provides a variety of customizable tools for users.

The last minor version included an initial attempt at a spam filter. This was chiefly done to address the low-hanging fruit of spam and scrub the most persistent pharma ads, etc. The approach was similar to that used by Ublock Origin or Steven Black's hosts file, in that it was a monolithic list of filter rules.

This was alright as a stopgap measure, but to the surprise of no one, the types of spam that continued to appear were innumerable in variety.

In an effort to have some filtering rather than none, the feature also went against the KES dictum about giving users choice to tweak their own settings: it was an all-or-nothing filter.

This update introduces v2 of spam filtering. The old logic has been retired, but may make a comeback at some point. A new sidebar page titled "Spam" has been added, and this will be a central place for anti-spam features.

The first of these efforts is a new filter that exposes the following options:

• Hide posts from very new accounts

Users commented that there is no "gating" mechanism with registration, causing bogus accounts to be constantly recreated as a form of ban evasion. If you find that very new accounts have a high tendency to be spam, you can tick this setting to remove posts from very new users from the feed.

This does not block the user outright, merely hiding the post. This effectively gives some "break-in" time for the user to prove themselves. After a certain threshold, the user will fall outside of the "new account" window; if they continue to engage in spam-like behavior at that time, they should be caught by the other ban filters below.

• Hide posts with abnormally low relative rank

Users with aggregate posting activity that does not necessarily resemble spam at first glance, but which periodically post spam/off-topic/controversial threads in the wrong communities, have a high likelihood of being astroturfers. This option hides such posts from the feed if the relative vote weight is egregiously outside the norm. Like the above, it does not block them outright.

• Block users with spam-like activity

This feature blocks users outright if they engage in spam, mass posting, and other robotic behavior. It is less permissive than v1 of the spam filters, which failed to catch a lot of spam that was not explicitly blacklisted in the filter list. This new approach is more generic and does not need constant updating of the spam filters.

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By default, all three options are enabled. I find this combination gives the best results so far. Note that infinite scrolling should be enabled for best results, and it may take a little while when navigating to a magazine for the results to be filtered.

Give it a try and see if this negates the spam issue or improves your experience. What other filter options would you like to see added?

The remainder of the changelog follows:

Add-ons ----------

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Filter advertisements (@shazbot)

Location: Spam > Filter advertisements

Updated filtering logic to v2, as described in the preamble of this post.

Collapse pinned posts (@shazbot)

Location: Threads > Collapse pinned posts

This simple feature groups together pinned posts on the magazine index and collapses them by default. Click the toggle area at the top of the magazine index to expand pinned posts. This is especially useful on magazines with many pinned posts that are not regularly archived, such as /m/kbinmeta.

API ----------

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Added the helper function isThread() to the API. This returns true if the current window location is a thread inside of a magazine. This can be used to abort if the feature is intended to only apply on the thread index. In the future, a more expanded function will be provided that returns the type of page from a list of enums.

Hi all. I have decided to shut down the unofficial kbin guide magazine (https://kbin.social/m/unofficial\_kbin\_guide) as well as shut down the unofficial docs page: https://unofficial-kbin-guide.surge.sh/.

I will leave things up until the end of the month, then I will shut them down completely. Thanks!

Hi all. I have decided to shut down the unofficial kbin guide magazine (https://kbin.social/m/unofficial\_kbin\_guide) as well as shut down the unofficial docs page: https://unofficial-kbin-guide.surge.sh/.

I will leave things up until the end of the month, then I will shut them down completely. Thanks!

Trying to look for random profiles from https://nijimiss.moe/explore on https://kbin.social/search, and Kbin Social throws an error 50x every time.

From what could gather, Nijimiss is a federated platform, so maybe there's an issue with the integration with it, if there's any?

Or perhaps one of the two defederated from the other? If that's the case, then I couldn't find anything about it.

Also dunno if it's relevant, but both without a VPN, being in Brazil, and with a VPN set to Japan, I can access the Nijimiss site, but apparently can't access when the VPN is set to European countries, having tried Norway, Spain, Portugal, Poland and lastly Albania to test if it wasn't an issue with EU countries specifically, no dice in any from Europe.

The blurb below is excerpted verbatim from the release notes. For the full release notes, see here.

Repository: KES

Many of you are aware of the "canned meat" problem on kbin.social, with some magazines being inundanted with garbage posts.

The latest version of KES ships with an experimental new feature you can enable that attemps to filter these posts and block the users who posted them based on certain heuristics.

This feature is experimental, but I see a lot of users voicing frustration at the problem, so now seems like a good time to start collecting feedback. You can start using this feature immediately and it should not have any adverse effects, but its coverage is still being expanded.

You can find it under General > Filter advertisements. For best results, it should be used in conjunction with infinite scrolling enabled in the kbin sidebar, so that new content is loaded in as posts are removed.

As you navigate through a magazine, KES will remove offending posts from the index and then permanently block the user of the post. This feature is also preventive, as variations of posts made under different usernames will continue to be flagged. The goal is to avoid the tedious process of "whack-a-mole" and cull these posts without manual intervention.

Initially, KES will be removing posts from the index, but as it builds your blocklist up for you, such posts will stop appearing in the thread index altogether, and you should see the overall signal to noise ratio improving. Outside of your blocklist, subsequent posts that meet certain criteria will continue to be culled regardless or when or where they appear.

I am currently using /m/science and /m/opensource as a control. If you navigate to those magazines and compare the results before and after enabling this feature, the difference should be clear. After enabling the feature and scrolling all the way back to 2023, there should be few if any unsolicited ads on the page.

Hopefully this improves readability and encourages participation in communities that otherwise seemed impenetrable at first glance. In fact, once you scrub the garbage posts, you'll be surprised to find that there are legitimate posts being made fairly frequently in these seemingly "dead" communities--the posts were just buried in the heap.

However, canned meat comes in a lot of different flavors, and each magazine has slightly different permutations. The coverage in this initial version is not exhaustive, but it attempts to be thorough. This should greatly cut down on the most annoying ads. If there are specific (most likely unmoderated) magazines you are still having a problem with, please leave a comment listing the magazine. You don't need to point to specific posts or users; the magazine name is enough here for me to analyze what kinds of posts are appearing.

Some additional notes:

• For the time being, this feature does not report the post to the magazine's moderator (usually nonexistent). By kbin's design, a post can only be reported at most by a single user, so this seemed like a reduplication of efforts to me. But auto-report can be added if necessary.
• This feature works on any instance, but is chiefly designed for kbin.social and is probably unnecessary elsewhere.
• I have not taken a look at microblogs yet, so I don't know if this problem is happening there, too (please let me know). For now, this works on the thread index of magazines.
• For best results (if you want to quickly bootstrap your blocklist), I suggest enabling the feature and scrolling through an affected magazine for awhile with infinite scroll on to build up the blocklist as new posts load in, then refreshing the page if necessary.
• The "random threads" sidebar is fundamentally flawed because it shows content even if you've already blocked it. So I recommend enabling General > Hide sidebar elements > Random threads in conjunction with this feature.

Banning spam accounts on kbin.social is a cumbersome affair.

E.g., today @bayaz tried to ban several spam accounts. But that just did not quite work:

Instead of straight forward banning the accounts responsible for spam, those accs got unbanned.

How come?

If magazine owners ban a spam acc which prior went unreported, the ban button triggers an unban command.

To effectively ban accounts, they must be reported first. Approving the report will trigger a ban. I.e. magazine owners must report the account identified as spam to themselves to enforce a ban.

Therefore, pre-emptive banning of spam accounts does not work on kbin.social.

This is a serious problem which needs to be addressed asap.

@piotrsikora @ernest FYI: lemmy.world is blocking us

https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/955988/Temporarily-blocking-activities-from-kbin-social

I made a comment there yesterday trying to get your attention on this, but not sure if the @ on that post actually went through properly or not, so I'm trying again.

\#kbinMeta

KES is the Kbin Enhancement Suite.

This is just an update to note that the tool has undergone a total quality audit to ensure that all of its add-ons support both kbin and mbin instances and behave in an expected fashion regardless of which instance type you are using.

If you had previously tried KES on an mbin-type instance and encountered anomalous behavior, you should now find that it has full compatibility.

The full release notes can be found here

Feeling thwarted by the 404, I suddenly remembered there are plenty of curated feeds over in Collections for us to browse. Have updated one of mine to reflect newer communities.

No, it's not hot. It's fucking ridiculous.

\#kbin #kbinMeta

Thanks for putting in something awesome, @ernest! Not sure if you want feedback, but functionality is as full as I know it to be. Maybe better. It is really fast right now! Hope you are on the mend.

kbin.social##article.entry:has-text([.WATCH.]) kbin.social##article.entry:has-text(fullmovie) kbin.social##article.entry:has-text(filmyzilla) kbin.social##article.entry:has-text(Buy) kbin.social##article.entry:has-text(Make Money) kbin.social##article.entry:has-text(1-888-873-0241)

Let me know if there is any more I should add.

There are at least several types of holes in the federation: \* Unfederated profile - support suggestion here https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/issues/1333 \* unfederated replies to the post at a given time \* unfederated entries at the time How to handle this? Answers I often see ...

I recently made a major update to my Improved Channel Select Menu userscript, which adds your subscribed magazines and liked collections to the channel select button in the header.

Here are the changes:

• The script now works with turbo mode!
• The menu now automatically refreshes when you subscribe or unsubscribe from a magazine. This can be changed in settings.
• An oversight was correct that caused the script to break on kbin.earth. Now, it should work there, and it now even applies there by default.

In addition to that, I also made a version for Mbin instances. So if you're on kbin.run, fedia.io, etc., you can use this if you prefer it over Mbin's native sub menu.

\*Note: To get it to run on your Mbin instance, you'll probably need to add the following line of code in: // @match *://instance.name/* Add this where the other // @match lines are, and replace instance.name with the name of your instance.

Hope this helps a few people (especially since kbin.social's quite slow rn)!

Download Kbin version here

Download Mbin version here

I don't have a lot to say this time, but here's the biggest Interstellar update we've had so far. This update includes almost full support for Lemmy (notification viewing, direct messages, and post creation don't work yet though), there's a new user/magazine mentions feature, user profile pages now let you view a user's comments and follows, and even more listed below. Additionally, Interstellar is now out on Google Play to the public. Here's the full list of new features and fixes that were included in this update:

New

• General Lemmy support, including account login, feed view, voting, commenting, viewing communities, viewing user profiles, searching, and more. The main features not included in this release are viewing notifications, viewing/interacting with direct messages, and creating new posts. Thanks @jwr1 and @olorin99.
• Support for editing your user profile, including the about and uploading a new profile avatar and banner; thanks @olorin99.
• Huge improvements to the user screen, including being able to view a user's threads, microblogs, comments, replies, follows, and followers; thanks @olorin99.
• A new user/magazine mention feature; if a user/magazine mention is detected in markdown, it tries to fetch the corresponding avatar and name and allows you to click to view the user/magazine page if available.
• Support for blocking users, magazines, and domains.
• Support for reporting posts and comments.
• Show a copy button on the open link dialog.
• Show an option for posts and comments to open them in a browser.
• Add local filter to magazines explore.

Fixes

• Add post/comment deletion confirmation.
• Fix account list sorting to go by host, then the local name.
• Fix the coloring for the subscribe button so it's easier to tell when you're subscribed or not.
• Hide the error snack bar for several common errors, including render layout issues and image loading issues.
• Fix empty search error from the search screen.

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GitHub: github.com/jwr1/interstellar Magazine: https://kbin.earth/m/interstellar Matrix: #kbin-interstellar:matrix.org Google Play: play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=one.jwr.interstellar

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Just as a side note, those who have the app previously installed will need to re-signin into their accounts and might need to clear their app data if the app doesn't start up, as a few changes have been made with the way accounts are stored.

"EXIT" -- Export Across Instances Tool

This is a simple and self-contained tool that helps automate the process of exporting your magazine subscriptions from one instance to another, provided you have accounts on both.

Could also be used to copy subscriptions from one named account to another named account on the same instance, or to back them up for later.

Instructions and tool available here

Code runs locally in your browser only.

@ernest, we love you man, and we're grateful for the service you provide. But this site has needs that can't be met by one person: community mod approval, emergency status communication, spam management, and account management are just a few that immediately come to mind.

I know it has been rough lately, and I sincerely empathize. Internet hug You have a community of loyal people willing to help shoulder the burden if you let them, so please...if you truly want this place to be successful, let us help you. Hope you are okay, man.

Since the beginning of the year, there's been a bit of a pattern over on @kbinDevlog:

• Ernest posts, saying he'll get back to regular devlogs in 1-4 days;
• Absolutely nothing happens for the next 2 weeks or so;
• Ernest posts again, saying he'll get back to regular devlogs in 1-4 days;
• etc.

Now, it's understandable for your plans to change in response to unforeseen events popping up or foreseen events taking longer than expected. From what I can tell, the delays have been due to formalities and medical issues, and I absolutely believe that Ernest should prioritize his physical health over Kbin.

That being said, if you can't go back to the usual pattern of development within the time frame you promised, then it's best for people to know sooner so they aren't left wondering what's happening. If you said 2 days but you need to delay, I'd like to know soon after those 2 days as opposed to getting silence for 2 weeks.

This time around, the culprit of the silence may be complications in a hospital procedure he recently underwent as per his most recent devlog. However, that doesn't explain the periods of nothing before then, so I'm still left wondering why quick updates have been so infrequent over a 2-month period.

Additionally, there are some major problems being caused by Ernest's absence:

• Big magazines that Ernest moderates, like @tech, are riddled with spam.
• Abandoned magazine moderation have been unanswered, so people can't pitch in to deal with spam even if they wanted to.
• Nothing has happened on the Codeberg for over 2 months (except for one translation-related change which wasn't done by Ernest), so we're in the dark as to what progress is actually being made.
• Kbin is still, well, in an undeveloped state, meaning issues like poor microblog federation have persisted for months.

So, @ernest, if you're in a position to answer, what's going on rn, and could you have someone moderate the instance or work on the project in situations like this where you're absent? I hope this doesn't come across as unnecessary whining, but I think this pattern is becoming a genuine problem.

kbin.social is being overrun with spammers. Can we disable registrations on this instance so they can't keep creating new accounts? Every day I log on, I have to spend the first 20-30 minutes, reporting and blocking a bunch of new accounts.

Here are some that were just created today: https://kbin.social/u/dfgdfgfdfgfdh https://kbin.social/u/nyfejevy https://kbin.social/u/vepotal774 https://kbin.social/u/ayman01 https://kbin.social/u/MariaesNichols https://kbin.social/u/nidhiroute https://kbin.social/u/dcesdff https://kbin.social/u/mauntehilss https://kbin.social/u/nidhirout https://kbin.social/u/noraharris0