Why is Kbin seemingly growing considerably slower than Lemmy?

I'm a bit confused at the explosive growth of Lemmy and the slower growth of Kbin. Do the stats reflect the reality or is there a problem with the data being fed back to the various stat hubs?

I know the difference is partly because Lemmy was a larger platform, and is better known but the growth of Kbin seems suprisingly flat while the community seems to be getting more and more active?

0xtero,
0xtero avatar

Seems pretty even to me:
https://fedidb.org/current-events/threadiverse

(Should not look at created accounts, those are spammers)

DarkThoughts,

It's actually the opposite. Kbin has been growing faster than Lemmy.

GunnarRunnar,

And that's surprising, given it's s newer, less-established platform. But it's not like Lemmy was a household name before this.

MxM111,
MxM111 avatar

I can give only my impression why I have chosen kbin. Better looking, more clear interface.

dandb,
dandb avatar

Yeah there's something about the way kbin works that just resonates with me more than Lemmy.

mihnt,
mihnt avatar

Kbin is better on PC, Lemmy is better on mobile. At least for me. Only downside I've found is I can't upvote comments on Lemmy while on mobile.

MxM111,
MxM111 avatar

Even on mobile I like the look of kbin more, but functionality is better for lemmy. I think it will change in future, kbin is just too young. In any case for mobile I have to see an app in a long term.

hailsatan,

What mobile app do you use for kbin?

MxM111,
MxM111 avatar

There are none yet. I was talking about "this will change in the future" part.

GunnarRunnar,

Those are actually really valid reasons and presumably why I'm liking kbin as well. Design and feel are really big factors for user adaption, thanks for sharing your experience.

Kichae, (edited )

It's also surprising because there are just fewer prominent kbin-based websites. Lemmy has lemmy.ml, lemmy.one, lemmy.world, and sh.itjust.works. And Beehaw, I guess, but they specifically throttle their growth.

kbin has kbin.social, and then a bunch of instances that are just way, way lower profile.

I mean, it's so surprising that we should probably question it a little bit.

Awwab,
Awwab avatar

Kbins documentation for hosting is a bit of a mess and leaves a lot to be desired where Lemmy is much more turnkey for someone looking to setup an instance.

kestrel7,
kestrel7 avatar

Anecdotally, from looking at Mastodon, it seems like people there are hyping kbin (and fedia.io) more than lemmy... that could just be the people I happen to be following, though.

toxic,

Well, you can use Mastadon with a kbin username so there’s that. I don’t think you can with Lemmy.

0x1C3B00DA,
0x1C3B00DA avatar

You cannot use mastodon from kbin or lemmy. I think you might be referencing the fact that from kbin you can create Note posts, which appear on mastodon, pleroma, calckey, etc as a normal (tweet-like) post.

That's not why mastodon users are hyping kbin over lemmy. There are rumors going around that the lemmy developers are bad people and a lot of mastodon users now consider lemmy blacklisted because of that

Seraph089,

There seems to be a lot of pass-through and mutual membership, so it isn't really that surprising. People who didn't have experience in the Fediverse before Rexxit came to Lemmy because it's what everybody was talking about, then branched out from there to explore the options.

PositiveNoise,
PositiveNoise avatar

Those graphs are quite informative, and yeah, it seems more like similar growth for both sites based on that info.

toxic,

Honestly, looking at active users over the last 24 hours I’d say kbin is growing faster than lemmy.

BirdLawyerPerson,

Even setting aside user stats, kbin.social threads still manage to rise pretty high when sorted by Active/Hot from lemmy instances viewing all threads/channels/magazines. I created accounts on several instances, and we'll see which one wins out on how I actually want to use these sites/services, but for the most part there's a ton of overlap between what regular users are seeing from each service.

Mars2k21,
Mars2k21 avatar

Probably because of the endorsement of Lemmy by subreddits, which has been far greater than the endorsement of Kbin. Lemmy's also just been around far longer than Kbin. Those server issues that Kbin encountered during the whole explosion of users also likely slowed down growth a bit. Even with Lemmy's bot problem I think these have made it grow faster anyway.

cjerrington,
cjerrington avatar

I also think some of the growth of Lemmy is the ability to get the project to a functioning stance. The start of Kbin still seems a little rocky, but getting better.

Ender2k,
Ender2k avatar

I created my Lemmy account first, because it was easier to remember for me than kbin...

McBinary,
McBinary avatar

Same, but I've abandoned that account completely in lieu of kbin.

jesus_fish,

I have been trying to login to Lemmy for the past 2 days and just get a spinning wheel

Mintyytea,

It iis easier to sign up for kbin I think because kbin lets you sign up with google or facebook. I did gmail google sign up because I like being lazy.

Kbin is slightly more confusing (they named everything a little weird), so if you do make a kbin.social account lmk or ask many questions about how to do stuff. It’s easy once I knew stuff like magazine = subreddit

Yamspunk,

I have the same problem on mobile (both through browser and Memmy), but not on my desktop. Really annoying. Been using Reddit since 2009. Feels really odd to switch things up, but lemmy.world, kbin and squabbles seems like potentially good alternatives. I wonder which one will end up being "the one".

oct2pus,
oct2pus avatar

Most people heard about Lemmy on reddit, and heard about kbin on lemmy, possibly after they already made an account.

Im not going to not interact with Lemmy because of its developers but it was enough I decided id rather not be tied exclusively to their tankie ass politics.

Yamspunk,

What is it about Lemmy's developers?

iAmTheTot,
iAmTheTot avatar

Tankies.

BraveSirZaphod,
BraveSirZaphod avatar

Questionable opinions about such diverse topics as:

  1. Is the Uygher genocide in China a thing?
  2. Is North Korea bad?
  3. Was the Russian invasion of Ukraine actually a noble attempt to liberate its people from Nazis?
ryan,

There's a really interesting discussion to be had here about open source software and whether the political opinions of developers mean the platform itself is poisoned. Like, I'm in the same boat as you regarding using Lemmy vs kbin - I set up a kbin instance because I'd rather support and contribute to a developer who doesn't openly have what I consider to be problematic opinions. But at the same time, I don't think I could fault someone for viewing the options completely pragmatically, choosing Lemmy for certain features or whatnot, and creating their own instance which doesn't support those political views.

Like, if Lemmy ends up being the far and away better solution for the Threadiverse at some point in the future, does someone decide to fork it and continue to develop it separately, and would that be better, or is that still a problem because the foundation they're working with is still poisoned?

I don't have any answers here, just musing on it.

LollerCorleone,
LollerCorleone avatar

Lemmy has been around for much longer than kbin. So it obviously has more number of users in total. A better figure to compare is the monthly active users. According to FediDB, kbin actually has more monthly active users than Lemmy.

DarkThoughts,

Kbin is growing faster than Lemmy. Lemmy just saw a huge amount of spambot registrations recently.

Naminreb,

This is the answer.

ginerel,
ginerel avatar

I know the difference is partly because Lemmy was a larger platform, and is better known but the growth of Kbin seems suprisingly flat while the community seems to be getting more and more active?

Precisely that. Moreover, Kbin is more fresh than Lemmy (Lemmy seems to have been around for a while longer), and Kbin still lists itself on the website as an early beta.

OTOH, there were already more Lemmy servers to begin with, while there were no third party servers at all iirc when the Reddit migration started.

Orez66,

I have signed up for both in the past 24 hours. I think there are pros and cons to both and honestly I like both about equally

Catz,

Same for me. I haven't decided jet which one I'll prefer longterm.

ppb1701,
ppb1701 avatar

@BananaTrifleViolin. I'm fine with it. I tried lemmy first and was met by a ton of issues from the influx. Kbin thus far has seemed more stable and honestly I like the layout a bit better.

smallerdemon,
smallerdemon avatar

Same on the layout.

NetHandle,

Me too, I tried to make a lemmy account and it wouldn't work at first, and then when it did work it wouldn't let me log in. I can't imagine how much more of a pain in the ass it would be if it was one of the instances that required an essay to apply for membership.

I tried kbin and it worked first try, no problems at all. I figured I would run into the same problem I had trying to join lemmy but didn't have a problem at all.

I can't imagine how many more people would be signing up to the federation if it just worked first try.

TheTokingTurtle,
TheTokingTurtle avatar

This is my experience as well. Tried lemmy and the login icon just kept spinning in circles. I even tried asking discords for help.

Tried kbin and it just works, no issues, smooth.

gornar,
@gornar@lemmy.world avatar

When I went to sign up for the fediverse, I tried kbin first, but signups were broken, so I just chose the next thing on a list of recommendations I found (outside of any reddit posts)

dreadedsemi,

I tried to subscribe but it says pending.

Quill7513,

For me it's the ecosystem. Lemmy is more mature with its API and app ecosystem.

TerabyteRex,

i think its opposite

retronautickz,

1- Kbin is newer and less known and more unstable

2- The top five growing Lemmy instances are full of bot/spam accounts

LoafyLemon,
LoafyLemon avatar

Lemmy has a bot problem, they gained over a million users with zero activity in like a week due to the lack of account verification.

abinanthankv,

@BananaTrifleViolin Because of bots

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