With an new beginning come NEW USERNAMES

operator@kbin.social to Fediverse@kbin.social – 57 points –

Did you ever wanna have a username but it was taken? Us early adopters to the fediverse can now freely choose nice, untaken usernames!

Let that sink in. We have the luxury and freedom to nearly choose any username we want. without having to add unnecessary underscores or numbers.

Thats nice.

86

Since it's all based on federated servers I doubt taken usernames will ever become the same problem as on centralized platforms. After all, you can simply register a username taken on one server on another. You could even host your own server and have unlimited new usernames etc.

I'm gonna set up an instance just for my multiple personalities. What could go wrong?

I just wish I would have given myself a capital J. Oh well.

Looks better that way, more friendly :)

It's better with a capital J, take my word for it

I would never have been able to be just Gabe on reddit. It's nice.

This was the name I was trying to sign up for reddit with years ago, but there was a 9yr+ old unused account squatting on it, forcing me to 1337 mine up. It is nice.

Early adopter of a particular instance? Sure.
Someone can still grab the same name and post from another instance.

I didn't even think, I just used the same as my reddit one.

Which is fine, I have 99 on everything else, being just gk would be weird.

i got to be mishamouse instead of mishamau5, so i don’t have to look like i’m stuck in my dubstep/leetspeak phase anymore.

That has admittedly been my petty joy in jumping ship. Sparkly new, like untrodden snow.

This is my preferred username. My reddit name is similar, but not the same, because this was taken there.

it's so nice getting to just be ivy
it's my name and it's so gosh darn nice seeing and hearing it used

Nice to meet you ivy. Don't you want to separate your real identity from your online one? Curious on your thoughts

Sounds like Ivy gets deadnamed irl, so it makes sense they'd want to use their actual name on here. Hello, Ivy!

My username is usually available everywhere and I'm content with it, but I'm happy for you guys

i am just happy to be able to be one of the lucky ones getting a common word. Jealous of @00

And im a bit jealous of @0x. The grass is always greener on the other side.

I got my ideal name lol.

But I don't think it matters - a unique username is only special when we're on a singular centralized server where usernames have to be unique. When a good chunk of the content is being viewed back and forth across many different server instances, everybody is seeing a lot of everyone else's names with "username@instance-domain", which kind of is the "unnecessary underscores or numbers" because the host server is what makes our usernames unique.

If anything, our usernames mean even less than they did before, and that's OK!

I can't tell you how happy I was that this name hadn't been taken, I've had it in the back of my mind for years for a bit of a giggle and I'm so happy with it.

I like just getting to try on a new identity. Didn't need to go for a short/common word name. I wanted something different than what I was using before. This fits.

Nice! Yes, a fresh beginning i nice. No ties or links to other online identities

Here's the downside, your username will be remade on another instance exactly as it is here. Unless you make your username everywhere. So it's kinda like having bob@gmail.com but someone else has bob@hotmail.com. I think there are probably some super autistic people that might grab their nicks on every big server currently lol

lol probably. but i found my main community here i can still interact with all the others. So why even care ^^

A potential downside is that anything you did on Reddit might be tied to anything you do here. Given enough posts you can eventually dox a person

If you follow protocol, don't reuse your identity and don't link anything back to your old account, it is really, really hard to do so. Someone must really want to dox you in order to do this (writing style, topics of interested, ...).

Assuming we're ignoring IP, email addresses and other identifying factors.

Talking about this, anyone knows of a proper opsec magazine?

Ah, reminds me of being an early adopter on Livejournal. I Have a pretty popular name on there and even recently, every once in a while, someone tries to get access to it/hack it. I no longer use it, and migrated all my entries to dreamwidth, but I'm never giving it up.

Yup, Aio is a really difficult name to get on older social media places. So getting it here really made me happy!

I'm glad to have gotten my username on most services. Wish I could get it on Xbox Live though.

Hi,

Transitioning user from reddit here. I think I am having more difficulty picking up on this fediverse thing than I should be. I am on karab.in kbin instance, but not able to see anything outside of kbin. It is actually tough to see anything on kbin even to set up my feed. Any time i search the bar at the top I get a 500 server error. Right now I am only able to look at the trending magazines and when I sort that by active it only gives me ones with 1 or 2 subs and no content. It is making it really tough to migrate from reddit. Am I missing a step? Is there an issue with the search feature currently? I know this probably isn't the right place to post this, but I can't even search for the right place.

Search is currently wonky. You can wait a few day for it to be fixed, or you can go to https://karab.in/magazines and use the search bar there. Anything without and @ is hosted in your own instance, and the ones with the @ sign will have the instance they're from after the middle @. For example, this thread should show as @ fediverse @ kbin.social, because you're actually replying to a post on kbin.social :)

Kbin and other instances are pretty much overwhelmed with the rapid rise in users. Kbin is still in beta, mobile app in development but @ernest is doing an amazing job here at kbin.social. Give the whole space a little time and things will improve.

I found myself with the same issues, just use it for a bit, lurk in magazines and you'll get the gist.

Thanks,

I can definitely be patient and I understand how complicated this can be to set up. Just being new, I’m not sure what is broke from the surge in user base or what I just am not picking up on. But I’m looking forward to seeing it improve.

Hey @uprise42 - check out the following resources

https://kbin.social/m/kbinfaqs@kilioa.org/t/20459/A-small-FAQ-to-hopefully-help-new-users-to-kbin

https://www.reddit.com/r/KbinMigration/comments/145bwof/the\_redditors\_guide\_to\_how\_kbin\_works\_your/

This was very helpful. I think my big issue is not having a working search feature which I just have to wait for. A lot of my favored subs from Reddit have moved to Lemmy but those servers seem tough to join with waitlists and such so I was recommended kbin instead. I am fairly confident I will be able to add them once the federated search is working again and be all set.

you don't need to sign up to an instance in order to subscribe to communities. in the "magazines" search type @lemmy.ml for example and it'll show you communities from over there. And you can use your kbin.social account to interact with post from other instances through this sitel.

Edit: Except for private communities of course

Really glad to see he's got it working again. I happened across two lemmy communities last night that were both fairly active, but nothing was coming up for either one no matter how I typed it.

Now my only problem is waiting for new posts :)

You can search under magazines to find new communities the dev is also working on improving the federation

I actually tried to get my first name but it was already taken on kbin when I joined lol. I ended up using my twitter handle instead (without any numbers and such).

I have this same 5 character name most places. Except for Twitter and Instagram. The jerks.

So, no, not really.

I'm not very creative, I cycled reddit accounts every few years and just had '(word)reddit(year)' or some other permutation of that format. I guess this name is a little bit better

I’m the king of the Valar, so that’s pretty cool 😄

The sdc-prefix doesn't mean anything to me anymore but after all these years, I feel naked without it.