this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
53 points (100.0% liked)

Fediverse

3 readers
1 users here now

This magazine is dedicated to discussions on the federated social networking ecosystem, which includes decentralized and open-source social media platforms. Whether you are a user, developer, or simply interested in the concept of decentralized social media, this is the place for you. Here you can share your knowledge, ask questions, and engage in discussions on topics such as the benefits and challenges of decentralized social media, new and existing federated platforms, and more. From the latest developments and trends to ethical considerations and the future of federated social media, this category covers a wide range of topics related to the Fediverse.

founded 2 years ago
 

Love Reddit but tired of what's happening to it? We check out Lemmy and Kbin, two open-source fediverse alternatives that are growing fast.

top 22 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Spaghetti_Hitchens@kbin.social 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I absolutely adore kbin. It gets better every day!

[–] illi@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] 00@kbin.social 13 points 1 year ago (3 children)

~~Artemis should enter open beta in a few days~~.

Correction: It is in public beta!

[–] livus@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Omg cool!!!

[–] illi@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago
[–] smallaubergine@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Very cool! I installed it but it looks like custom instances are disabled for a bit. I don't feel like setting up an account on the Artemis instance so I'll wait. Exciting to see progress though

[–] theinspectorst@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's been available to install as a progressive web app for some time. Other apps are coming.

[–] DarkThoughts@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

That's just a frameless browser window. Not exactly the same.

[–] Stopkilling0@kbin.social 22 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Every article or thread I read comparing kbin vs lemmy, kbin always comes out on top and yet lemmy has way more users and I just can't figure out why.

[–] Hypx@kbin.social 10 points 1 year ago

Kbin is about 3 months old whereas Lemmy is about 3 years old. Kbin simply wasn't ready for growth, and still has a few major feature shortfalls. Lack of API access is a big one.

[–] Eggyhead@artemis.camp 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Head start, probably. Kbin was still in relative early development when the migration hit and couldn’t perform well in those first few days.

[–] livus@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah, the reddit refugees who ended up on kbin are the select few who could withstand multiple 404s and barages of Cloudflare.

I say this with affection and gratitude. It was worth it, and I love it here.

[–] Nepenthe@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

And those who were stubborn enough to keep looking at all options despite what could easily feel overwhelming to a non-tech user.

I am not very tech-inclined, so trying to understand the fediverse as a whole felt like very deep water, and lemmy really didn't do any job at all at explaining what it was I was committing to by choosing an instance when I didn't even know what instances were and had trouble finding out.

Since Lemmy was and is by far the most mentioned alternative and I found it too anxiety-inducing, it's mostly stubborn desperation that brought me to kbin. Which says nothing to how much I'm genuinely enjoying it here, to be clear, I was just relieved to have a simple option at that point.

Being made anxious by a new platform isn't great and I would guess that most people who didn't like the experience they had with Lemmy didn't bother clicking other links that would take them to the same fediverse. They're likely to assume they won't enjoy that one either, and resign themselves elsewhere.

So kbin naturally got fewer users just by word of mouth, and then the necessary brief isolation didn't help either when people were still getting comfortable and testing out different accounts. I don't particularly mind it other than those rare times I'm accidentally excluded, either by a question addressed only to Lemmy or their recent version of r/place disappointingly being incompatible with kbin.

@Stopkilling0

[–] livus@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Good point. Kbin feels more intuitive to me.

[–] Madison_rogue@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I was initially put off by the UI of Lemmy that I encountered when I first went to the Lemmy site. I was a little confused as to which instance to join. That's when I stumbled upon kbin.social and that's where I landed my new account. Overall I am most comfortable here.

Since joining, I've encountered Lemmy posts that take me to their instances proper, and the formatting looked different, more like here just with a different colored background. Overall, Lemmy instances seem okay, I just like it here better.

Maybe it's the overall familiarity with the instance, calling main topic pages "magazines," the microblogging option, etc. Lemmy's resemblance is a little closer to Reddit, so that might account for why people decided to go there instead of a kbin instance.

[–] Excrubulent@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago

I wonder if it's as simple as the name - lemmy is easy to remember and say, and kbin isn't.

It's because kbin has a lot of local content and users.

[–] McBinary@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Because they have like 15 mobile apps.

[–] Sinnerman@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A fair-minded article. This sounded off though:

a big attraction of Reddit—that its main page is a kind of greatest hits of an enormous community.

No, r/all was the lowest common denominator, full of karmafarming, ragebait, and reposts. Every time I looked at r/all I regretted it, so I mostly stuck to subreddits.

[–] DarkThoughts@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It wasn't too bad when you started to filter out some specific subreddits. But I feel since they applied a lot more content moderation to /r/all, causing a lot of potentially interesting things to not even show up there, it's been kind of garbage for a while now. Something similar can be said about kbins "all" page at the moment too though. I rather wish they'd give the users the tools to tailor their feeds according to their own preferences instead of interfering themselves. "All" should be all, excluding whatever my personal filters & settings get rid of.

[–] Nepenthe@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Something similar can be said about kbins "all" page at the moment too though. I rather wish they'd give the users the tools to tailor their feeds according to their own preferences instead of interfering themselves. "All" should be all, excluding whatever my personal filters & settings get rid of.

Is it....not that? Am I misunderstanding or mistaken. My experience has been a very "All" experience, I thought, only playing an endless whack-a-mole with porn, sports, and whatever really good sub is sadly dominating the rest of the feed.

What would you mean by tailoring?

[–] DarkThoughts@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

There's maybe 1% porn. If you browse Lemmy on new vs kbin on new you'd see the difference.