Because they're both part of the Fediverse, Lemmy and Kbin do federate with each other. You can follow Lemmy "communities" in Kbin, and Kbin "magazines" in Lemmy, and I believe other Fediverse groups (like Frendica groups) also federate.
I've been leaning into this from Kbin, as a way of dipping into communities on Beehaw and other Lemmy instances while keeping my distance from Lemmy's devs.
I have one concern. As we're seeing with Reddit, it's a huge effort to move internet communities. If Lemmy-the-app becomes untenable even for more reasonably admin'd instances, then the most obvious solution won't be to fork Lemmy (a huge undertaking) but rather to move to an app that's maintained by more reasonable people. That's probably going to involve a messy migration, some data loss, some loss of community, and some dead links.
I'll keep using Kbin as a way of tapping into existing communities, but when it comes to building new ones I'd much rather see it done on kbin.social or other Fediverse instances where there's no long-term dependency on Lemmy's devs.
The linked article summarizes the problems in the paragraph starting "I've been aware of Lemmy for a long time". For an alternative view: the Fedi.Tips account on Mastodon – typically a cheerleader for all apps of the FediVerse – shared some more pointed words about them in this thread and reiterated the warning just yesterday after noticing the Lemmy team's successful recruitment campaign on Reddit.
I was one of the people they recruited, and ran into problems myself only after signing up at lemmy.ml and being surprised by the amount of CCP propaganda posted there. At first I thought it was strange that I was being downvoted for pointing it out, and that the devs (also admins of that instance) ignored/downvoted me when I flagged the issue for their attention. After researching a bit, I found that Lemmy's basically developed and maintained by two people, both of whom seem to be westerners fetishizing Mao Zedong Thought – literally to the point of writing lengthy apologetics for the CCP's human rights abuses including the Uyghur genocide.
They're clearly skilled engineers, but I can't trust or support them, and relying on instance of Lemmy means I'd have to do both.
Thanks, this is a really helpful roundup of links – a lot to consider.
This comment is especially interesting. It makes me think kbin should stop translating "upvotes" and "downvotes" into Fediverse concepts, and should instead embrace the Fediverse concepts and present them directly: instead of upvote and downvote buttons we could have 🚀 (boost) and ⭐️ (favorite) buttons, perhaps with a combined score for sorting. It would mean abandoning downvotes, but it sounds like downvotes are a problem anyway.
That would give us a reputation system that makes it clear what you're doing when you boost a post or comment, but also one that won't be jarring to users of other apps and instances.
I only had occasional luck with this even on Reddit. Some smaller subs for hobby stuff had genuinely good advice, but a lot of times it'd just be people repeating the same brands and products with a shallow recommendation. And there was a lot of astroturfing. Over the years I've learned to ask elsewhere:
For major appliances, the best approach I've found is to find a local business – a well reputed one that's been around for years, and does service as well as sales – and simply ask the salespeople what they recommend. If the shop's willing to warranty it, it's probably good enough.
For gadgets I tend to start looking at recognizable review sites that are easy to skim (RTINGS is especially useful, but Ars, The Verge etc. all have decent reviews) and then expand out to YouTube for the products I'm most interested in. Sometimes it's a good idea to look up the company itself for anything that might change your mind about them (Western Digital's unlabeled change to SMR drives is a recent example).
Shoes and clothes are the hardest thing to get good advice on. The most useful advice I've received has been very general stuff about what to look for in fit and quality. I've also found that high ethical standards from a clothing company tends to go hand in hand with quality and longevity.
Cars are an area where Reddit was still helpful. YouTube can be helpful here, but not so much typical car review channels: the most helpful YouTube videos are often from people who've owned a particular model for a year or so and can speak with experience about its quirks.
Finally, and most of all, I've learned to check the instinct to look up reviews. It's worth spending some time to research stuff between you and the ground, or that you'll use daily, but I've wasted too many hours comparing details that really don't matter. Make sure it's something you legitimately care about before you reach for other people's opinions.
It applies to both for now. I opened a thread about this yesterday and as Kichae said, it's something the dev is experimenting with and is open to discussing. They also helpfully shared a roundup of links to past discussions on this topic.
For now I've created a separate Fediverse account for my Kbin activity (this one!) which seems to be what most people are doing on Lemmy anyway, but I agree it'll be nice to change Kbin's behavior so it's a less jarring experience for followers on other Fediverse apps.
This is difficult to hear but may be good feedback to share with kbin.social's admins and kbin's devs in the kbinMeta magazine. I don't want to see lemmy.ml defederated at this point, but it's a risky one to have on the front page. It's kind of nuanced:
Lemmy's devs have been running a successful campaign to recruit Redditors to use their app, and many Redditors have chosen lemmy.ml (the instance run by its developers) by default. A few of us have been trying to sound a warning about this, but it's muted amid the outrage at Reddit.
Lemmy's developers are often described as "tankies" but the word seems to be acting as a euphemism, as though it's just an eccentric subculture. The fact is Lemmy's devs are stooges for the CCP. They actively welcome its propaganda on their instance, and they've compiled apologetics for the CCP's human rights abuses including the Uyghur genocide.
At the same time, lemmy.ml is the primary instance for Lemmy, and an important support resource for instances that run on it. On top of that it's now home to a lot of Redditors trying to build their own communities there. For those reasons I don't think it should be defederated, but I think kbin.social might need a way to prevent the instance – or at least some specific communities – from reaching the front page.
For myself, I've blocked its china and technology communities, as well as a few specific users that I've seen post propaganda pieces there. I'm satisfied with that solution to address my own use, but your own experience makes me realize it still reflects on kbin.social to have that stuff reach our front page.
I'm really interested to see how this goes: both comparisons setting up and maintaining the two apps, as well as your experience with any eventual transition/consolidation. This kind of trailblazing is so cool.
I like the mini but this table highlights its major disadvantage. I still find its battery ample for a typical day, there's just not a lot of headroom for degradation.
"Good vibes only" seems to be embedded in the culture of web development today. Influential devs' Twitter accounts have strong Instagram vibes: constantly promoting and congratulating each other, never sharing substantive criticisms. Hustle hustle.
People with deep, valid criticisms of popular frameworks like React seem to be ostracized as cranks.
I've seen a few sites welcome the news with glee, as though Reddit's leadership is going to be strongly affected. That's childish and myopic. This is bad news for everyone.
Whether or not Reddit pays, we should assume the data will make its way into the hands of people who (further) weaponize it against Reddit's users, e.g. people who've posted risque photos of themselves or shared compromising details through throwaway accounts can be doxxed or matched to their normal accounts via their IP or other common details. PMs and other private account details might contain mailing addresses and other private or compromising information, too. (Edit: as Phoeniqz points out in replies, the article author assumes this is not the case based on Reddit's and BlackCat's statements about the leak.)
If Reddit knew about the breach earlier and didn't do their due diligence to alert users, then that's further condemnation of their leadership and priorities, but it doesn't undo the damage this might cause users.
If Reddit were to pay BlackCat, then it would further enrich, reward, and encourage them. If, as is more likely, it doesn't, then the blowback it receives (especially from any high profile consequences of the leak) might encourage other companies to pay up in future.
Hat tip to @symfonystationwho posted this to /m/fediverse! (Hindsight maybe this should've been a x-post? Not sure what the x-post experience is like in kbin today, though. It may need work.)
My pick for this category is another collab: at this point it's practically become a meme among music blogs, but https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWc4wMyL1oI, specifically for what happens once Prince takes the stage at ~3:30 and turns it into something unforgettable. (That guitar is not weeping gently!)
If someone walks away from the event thinking they might buy a product like this from Apple someday, that's a win for Apple – even if they're not sold on the current device.
This is what I'm most curious to see on Monday. So far VR hasn't really excited me, and the idea of a new headset with a price barrier the size of its rumored bill of materials only makes me less enthusiastic about it as a consumer product.
If it's a product intended for creators or developers – not just as a development kit but with actual productive use cases – then Apple might have my attention for a future generation. But if, as rumors suggest, this is primarily intended for gaming, I don't see a future where I'm interested in any generation of it. In 18 years of following Apple, that's a first for me.
Reddit refugee myself. I've not seen anyone mention Kbin there yet (it was someone on a lemmy instance that suggested it to me) so I'm not sure it'll experience the same influx.
Like the other replier and GP, my Linux and Mac desktops run for months at a time without a restart. I only restart when there's a software update that demands it. I don't have much experience with modern Windows, but I expect that's the norm from a modern OS.
If you're running into runaway resource issues like this then you may want to spend a few minutes hunting them down and maybe replace the programs responsible. Daily restarts shouldn't be necessary.