It got mentioned a lot on /r/RedditAlternatiives and since its API is already up and running, there are a whole bunch of apps for it. With mobile apps being the thing that started the whole Reddit disaster, it makes sense that Lemmy would grow quicker than kbin which doesn't have mobile apps yet.
Do we know if Kbin counts active users the same way that Lemmy does? Lemmy only counts users have made comments or posts recently as being active, people who only vote are ignored.
That math just doesn’t work out. Lemmy.world has ~25% of its total user base commenting and posting, which is really high compared to established social media platforms. Kbin has 62,195 total users and 61,632 active users. There’s just no way that kbin has 99% of its user base commenting and posting.
For me, it was the top google result for “Reddit Alternative”. There was a github post explaining the basics of Lemmy and essentially said if I wasn’t sure where to sign up, just head over to lemmy.world.
Now that I’m here I can safely say the interface feels like an improved old.reddit.com and am quite pleased.
I went to lemmy first, noticed federation wasnt working, then went to kbin, and federation still isnt working. So far I havent seen any entrance to the fediverse that can actually see the fediverse.
Well, user experience is going to depend. Kbin.social recently cut federation temporarily with some instances as a way to work through our backlog. I kind of thought that was up and running again, especially since lemmy.world was listed and I can definitely see that, but I question if this is why beehaw refuses to load and I haven't seen anything from them in a week.
Sh.itjust.works is also listed there, but I have this hunch that they may also fall prey to the same bug in lemmy's default reference nginx config that initially stopped kbin users from accessing the android community when they moved. This and Sopuli.xyz (not listed) are both inaccessible, and it's upsetting watching it wear on because I'm interested in communities in both that either won't federate anything I do or that I can't even find in order to sub. This bug is what bothers me the most, that it's in lemmy's default settings is unacceptable, and it makes kbin appear to have much larger issues with federation than it actually does.
Lemmy.ml apparently removed the block only to put it back, which I was not aware of, increasing the likelihood of bullshittery to 90%. I have to actively filter which communities I can actually participate in instead of only appearing to, and they can just defederate out loud if they're that bothered. It's not like they haven't taken criticism before, I'm sure they'll live.
sure, you can see all the most popular posts and communities. But say you wanted to check out a smaller community, say, the splatoon one here on lemmy.world. You wont see all of the posts there from kbin. How about animemes from lemmy.ml? The latest post you can see from kbin is a week old, yet it's getting posts everyday. Personally I wanna see some posts from rule34 on lemmynsfw, but again no.
And this is a problem not unique to kbin, I have not found any entrance to the fediverse that doesnt have this problem.
yeah, you can see some amount of posts from other instances on the fediverse. But not all of them, especially not smaller communities that really need the visibility.
I’m on both (repeatedly, multiple servers and accounts) but even with Memmy I find myself gravitating towards Kbin and once Artemis is out I’ll probably stay there. Beehaw has the best interaction on its local communities, but Kbin is just a better feed for me mostly. No brand or server loyalty for me, I will continue using all until one seems to address all my wants.
Hmmm I guess this is the beauty if the fediverse, we can always jump to another ship within the federation. I just wish they’d find ways to connect one username for everything.
Yeah... it is a little overwhelming when just dipping your toes. In the initial push to get off of reddit I ended up with a lot of accounts... Beehaw, sh.itjust.works, fedia.io, kbin.social, readit.buzz, infosec.exchange, infosec.town, defcon.social, tildes, squabbles, etc. At some point you just have to use something.
If I had to guess what I'll be doing in the future, I'd say it will resemble reddit where I had multiple accounts for different purposes but not different platforms, just different content filters and topics. Eventually there will be at least one app that works with both Lemmy and Kbin accounts and make it all more or less seemless and arbitrary.
Right now I'm primarily using Kbin and Beehaw, I don't know which account will eventually be more important to me. I'm also using Ice Cubes for Mastodon with a couple different Mastodon accounts. What would push me all-in on a kbin instance would be if I federation between Lemmy instances and mastodon instances reached a level of functioning that didn't feel like I was missing anything. I'd rather not have a million different apps and accounts just to see different versions of the same shit.
I haven't heard about Artemis - is that an app in development for Kbin? That would be pretty cool if so (although the PWA has done a pretty solid job so far)
Yeah, Artemis is an app for Kbin that is in a very limited beta right now (I'm not in it) - *edit got the link wrong the first time **and the second time. Artemis
Has Lemmy passed kbin? Last I heard they were growing pretty evenly if you compare the biggest individual instances at least. Maybe creating your own instances is simpler with Lemmy?
Not sure as to the actual statistics. But for me, lemmy feels more active than kbin. Though that in itself is subjective. I do like the interface of kbin for sure. But lemmy feels more active so I’m conflicted. Will explore more communities to see if this view holds true though.
I finally just blocked that community, since it was so spammy. That and 196. Nothing against either community. I just didn't want other stuff becoming buried under them. Now I'm seeing a lot more variety in overall posts.
FWIW I went KBin before Lenny. Since it’s federated I didn’t see a reason to change. I’m also still new to all of this and haven’t had the time to really dig in and understand the difference.
I’m also on Tildes- the whole invite process probably stymied their growth as people couldn’t sign up while the iron was hot, but it appears that was intended over there.
Also trying Squabbles. I like the default layout the best but like the content on the others better.
I have an account on lemmy.world and considered joining other instances because they are often thrown out as the 'best' Reddit alternatives, but the interface gives me an odd sense of visual fatigue, if that makes sense. It just feels like navigating a labyrinth of links. Kbin on the other hand is far more up front in its presentation.
It's just friendlier to navigate and easy on the eyes. Perhaps I'm just very fussy though, because I let the newer Reddit layout grow on me despite previously swearing by the old CSS-friendly design.
When I was browsing options, Tildes didn't even allow sign-ups. I tried multiple days and eventually said fuck it and checked other options, settling on kbin.
Tildes was always invite only. Granted it is (or was at the time, maybe they slowed down with the influx) really easy to get your hands on one by just asking on r/tildes (or email).
Hell, the site being readable by the general public is a relatively recent introduction compared to it's history.
I heard a lot about both Kbin and Lemmy over on Reddit, and at the time, Kbin seemed to be getting more positive mentions, at least where I was looking.
I tried out Kbin first, and it felt confusing and there were a lot of little annoyances. Then a few days later, I signed up on Lemmy, and I liked the experience a lot better. Then a bunch of 3rd party apps started coming out for Lemmy. There was just no reason for me to log on through Kbin anymore, especially since the small handful of communities that I liked on there could also be accessed from Lemmy.
Out of curiosity, I made an account on kbin and it feels more feature rich, albeit a bit sluggish. Might give it another try soon. It feels like it could be a fediverse alternative for Facebook more so rather than reddit.
I’m really put off by the “warning warning this content isn’t from this instance” attitude of Kbin. I’ve also had a heck of a time getting some content to federate. I’m having a much better experience on Lemmy, so I’ll put up with the UI quirks - I use the memmy app most of the time anyway.
FWIW I've had as many issues with federation between Lemmy instances as with Lemmy-to-kbin. So I'm my view the accurate warning is the main difference.
shrug I’m just speaking of my experience. I’ve been able to access the communities I’m interested in on multiple lemmy instances, but I’ve had zero luck on Kbin. Frankly, the “connect to remote community” UX for both lemmy and Kbin is complete crap, and is likely the #1 turnoff for new users. I’m very disappointed that neither have chosen to fix it.
On closer look, I think Kbin feels more like an alternative to facebook or tumblr than to reddit, although it has its own “communities” as well. Though once federation matures, I guess it won’t matter too much.
I see little difference beyond the ability to microblog on Kbin. I think it was unnecessary to rename communities, and causes confusion. I still keep an eye on my kbin.social and fedia.io logins, but I just can’t access content I can find from multiple lemmy instances. I was also swayed away from Kbin by an admin who was running it but ultimately gave up on it and switched to lemmy because Kbin is unstable. (I’ll update this comment with a link if I can find it)
You’re right. The microblog on Kbin is very tempting. But it’s sluggish right now, at least for me. So I’ll probably still make lemmy my home base and keep an eye on kbin. I definitely see its potential as an alternative facebook or tumblr or even twitter if it can’t compete as a reddit alternative.
It’s still in the fediverse but like you, I’ll be keeping my eye on my kbin.social account, as well. :)
I’m curious about what aspect of Kbin is similar to Facebook / Tumblr? I can’t tell the difference between a post and a thread, but both seem to be posted in magazines (communities).
You can also follow people which is more twitter territory but facebook allows that too. It has a private messaging feature too. I guess those along with the microblogging features can make it a viable competitor to facebook if given the chance to mature. All it needs perhaps is a dedicated friends list and magazines can be repurposed to groups. Maybe pages and it would be a full fb experience.
I think for me, the killer feature for a Facebook alternative is being able to limit the audience - there is some stuff I want to share with friends and family that I don’t want to be globally public.
Ahh that’s the FB feature that I’ve been taking for granted. I guess I’m so used to always posting “public” in my facebook that I don’t think about it. My more private photos are on instagram and that’s on private, too. I mostly use facebook for professional uses. Well that and I am deligent with my friend list.
My experience with Kbin is that it seems more limited on Federated posts and that the smaller Kbin instance (I use Readit.buzz) seems to be lacking some of the posts and thumbnails that I see on Kbin.social. It seems like Lemmy works better on the smaller instances (not Lemmy.world) than Kbin does (not kbin.social).
I have not really used the Kbin microblog—I am using Mastodon for that.
I get the point, but the presentation is a “It is very important that you do not miss this warning”. The message (and attitude) is less “We have technical details to work out” and more anti-federation.
@cerevant@Frostwolf Content from remote instances is sometimes going to act a little bit weird in the Fediverse.
Would you rather be warned about it, or notice it yourself? Kbin seems to be the most pedantic fediverse app, with its insistence that users be aware of the implications of the use.
That isn’t a feature, it is a bug. With the exception of during recent slowdowns, it almost never happens on Lemmy. If you want to post a warning, at least give the ability to dismiss it - I don’t need to have an oddly colored banner at the top of every community.
I avoided Lemmy because tankies developers. But lemmy.world is run by different people, and the interface is honestly so much better than kbin… so I’m staying here now
Tildes is just too small. The obvious explanation for growth is all of the Fledditors (Rexit? I like Lemmygrants, but that really only covers people who came to Lemmy) looking for an alternative. People wanted a drop-in replacement for what they already had. Tildes didn’t even have enough of a seed in their biggest subs, let alone their (very few) niche groups. Same for Raddle, Squabbles, etc. The only subs that made a significant migration to those are the ones that packed up, locked the doors, and left a forwarding address to anyone left - Similar to what r/piracy did, except that went to Lemmy (complete with instructions to ignore the federation questions)
As for Kbin, I think the bigger factor is coverage. As soon as anyone started mentioning people leaving for greener pastures, Lemmy was always the first thing mentioned. Kbin was always a second-place alternative, along with a few others. Since Kbin has the same confusion about federation as Lemmy, it didn’t pick up a lot of people that bailed on the first choice.
Not that it matters much anymore, since Kbin is well-federated with Lemmy
Kbin is pretty new, no apps, and faced a lot of issues during the wave of incoming redditors. Some lemmy instances did, too, but there were more of them so there were alternatives when one crashed. If we compare kbin.social to a big instance like lemmy.world, it’s not doing too bad.
Tildes is invite-only so I don’t think they wanted to grow that quickly in the first place.
I guess you’re right. Even some lemmy instances had to close registration. Ahhh so kbin is newer. I guess that explains a lot too.
Also took a quick look at tildes and it’s text only, as far as I know. So if they change their mind about registrations, not a lot of people will join anyway.
There’s also the issue that during the first big influx, Kbin turned off federation while the dev tried to fix things up. It was off for days, so any fledgling magazines there couldn’t take advantage of Lemmy traffic, we couldn’t sub to them and made our own communities instead, and by the time they turned federation back on a lot of Lemmy communities were already pretty established as “the main one”.
Don’t quote me on this, but I’ve read lemmy is a few years old already while kbin is just a few months old (3-4 mos?). Add the number of instances (i only know of 3 kbin instances) and you can see why it didn’t take off the way lemmy did.
I agree. Purely text-based sites need a certain kind of audience/users. I love a good discussion/debate, but I need my memes, too. Lol.
In fairness, despite its age, kbin feels like it has more features. I guess the simplicity of lemmy has its draws too, plus its already growing community.
Lol as a visual person, I couldn’t agree more. Images make everything pop. I came from the dial up era and the boom of forums and chat rooms. But even I appreciate good memes and images sprinkled here and there.
The Kbin creator had initially joined to help Lemmy, but decided to create his own thing when he couldn’t take their political alignments anymore. The Lemmy devs used to be vocal Uyghur genocide deniers and pro-North-Korea, and would answer questions on Reddit’s r/AskATankie (a tankie is someone who supports communist dictatorships), but now that Lemmy is successful, they’ve kind of grown hush-hush on it, without really addressing it.
So, he went to create Kbin, but since he’s not a software engineer, he chose foundations that won’t really scale too well. Kbin is written in PHP, which is an interpreted and mono-threaded technology, it’s great at some stuff, but not high-scale services (source: that’s what I do for a living). Lemmy was written in Rust, which is compiled and multi-threaded. It doesn’t mean Lemmy won’t meet tricky scale bottlenecks, but it will give it a much larger toolset to get through whole classes of them.
And of course, Kbin being much younger, it doesn’t currently have a bunch of critical stuff that Lemmy already has. For instance: an API, which has been allowing other people to build great native clients for it.
Without an API, all clients would need to rely on scraping, which is slower and more resource intense - almost orders of magnitude. Until Kbin develops an API, it will always be less used.
This is interesting. Thank you for the info. Quick question, though: does this mean kbin will inevitably face scaling issues when it gets too big? And there’s no way to prevent that?
My best answer is: if they get to sufficient scale, both Lemmy and Kbin will face scaling issues to get through, but Lemmy is based on something that will make it much easier for humans to get through a lot of those bottlenecks.
I hope what this answer conveys is that the technology choice is a major factor, but not the only factor. If the Lemmy dev team doesn’t know how to scale a service, and don’t enlist the help of people who do, the underlying technology won’t make much of a difference. But it does give them a very strong upside.
Another Lemmy user was saying that the Kbin move to use PHP was like someone saying: “oh, I like the airplane you just built by yourself with the intention to fly above the clouds, I’m going to do the same thing, let me prepare my cardboard”, and there’s a lot of truth to it. 😉
That analogy really drives the point home. Basically, lemmy already has a built-in advantage due to the tech they went with. But like any program/machine, it’s only as good as the people behind it. Thank you for the answer.
You are correct about Tildes. They are very intentionally cultivating a different atmosphere and don’t want Reddit’s huddled masses. There is a subset of reddit users who fit there but it’s not the shitposting crowd.
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