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.
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. :)
Is it sluggish on other kbin instances? I think a lot of the problems with federation right now is the sheer load of users on the instances with the most popular communities and that’s causing timeouts and errors in federation. While many many instances are just one user.
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.
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.
I think the reminder is just what it says. It’s unlikely you will ever have all the historical content from a remote instance’s community. So that message is just telling you that. It’s the same on lemmy when connecting to a remote community.
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.
@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
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.
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. :)
Is it sluggish on other kbin instances? I think a lot of the problems with federation right now is the sheer load of users on the instances with the most popular communities and that’s causing timeouts and errors in federation. While many many instances are just one user.
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.
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.
The warning is just a general reminder that kbin is in beta and remote communities won’t always work 100% perfectly
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.
I think the reminder is just what it says. It’s unlikely you will ever have all the historical content from a remote instance’s community. So that message is just telling you that. It’s the same on lemmy when connecting to a remote community.
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.
@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.
@cerevant Like I said, pedantic.
They could do a much better job of raising awareness without annoying users.
Same. Signed up with both and Lemmy clicked, kbin didn’t. So here I am
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