I see a very small minority of people using Kbin, but I don’t understand why.

Is this just a coincidence and did some people choose Kbin over Lemmy or is there a good reason to use Kbin?

  • tuto@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Apart from what has already been said (politics, basic UI) there are a couple more things worth mentioning:

    • Kbin’s interface is muuuch more customizable than lemmy’s: browsing form a web browser (desktop or mobile) let’s you modify your viewing experience as much as any mobile app for lemmy (but lemmly itself doesn’t). From infinite scrolling vs pages to font sizes and such.
    • kbin allows for (mastodon-like) boosting of posts, which is like a super-upvote that lemmy just doesn’t have.
    • on kbin you can subscribe to mastodon users aka federate with mastodon. Something that lemmy also can’t.

    Other than that only personal taste matters in the end, and both federate with eachother, so enjoy it from wherever you are.

    • Kissaki@feddit.de
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      1 year ago

      I was confused what boosting is. Docs said it’s basically a repost/share.

      So I think super like is misleading. Even if your super liking is the reason you share it, they’re two different things.

      (I may not necessarily want to share/share-promote hat I super-like. What I share is curation too.)

      • harmonea@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        So I think super like is misleading

        It’s literally not. Over here, on top of the “repost to your profile under your boosts section” functionality it’s intended to have, it also counts as 2x rep for the poster. It really, truly is also a “super-like.”

          • harmonea@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            The presence or absence of that single word doesn’t change the fact that nothing OP said was wrong eh ;P

            • Kissaki@feddit.de
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              1 year ago

              Nobody claimed what they said was wrong. The thesis is that it may be misleading (through omission of the second half of what it does).

              • harmonea@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                See, the problem here is that you’re treating an off-the-cuff casual explanation as a “thesis.” Please don’t bring this absurd habit over here, where people have to feel compelled to cover absolutely every interpretation and hedge every outlier for fear of getting nitpicked to hell and back. Literally no one enjoyed that environment.

                • CthuluVoIP@lemmy.world
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                  1 year ago

                  I think it’s reasonable to argue, “a super like that also shares the post is functionally different from just a super like.” It doesn’t seem nit-picky when discussing the reasons why someone might choose one service over another to want to be precise about the mechanics of one of those services, no?

                • Kissaki@feddit.de
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                  1 year ago

                  I pointed out it does more. You replied claiming “It’s literally not.” which is simply factually wrong.

                  Are you saying nobody should point that out? On this discussion platform?

                  You could have just left it there. If you have that much of a problem with the word thesis maybe you’re the one who shouldn’t take things so literally. If you have a problem with how this went, maybe you should not make false statements or let it go earlier.

                  I don’t think there’s a need to cover everything at all.

      • Naminreb@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        This is a big one. There were some contributions from either instances or bots on my feed I didn’t like that I just blocked, and my feed is fine now. No need to ask for defederation of the whole community when you can do it yourself.

  • I use NixOS btw @lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It’s like lemmy + mastodon - you can microbilor and boost posts and comments. But after using it for a while, I switched back to lemmy because:

    • it has no API AFAICT the API is read-only, so there aren’t any apps (the dev is making one but I don’t think it’s finished and can’t compile it)
    • it has some performance issues
    • it doesn’t work sometimes
    • the UI looks worse
    • there are way less instances of it
    • it’s written in php instead of rust
  • legion@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    The UI! It’s so much better than the other Lemmy instances. Also I can curse without getting banned lmao

  • livus@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Why I joined

    • had a more intuitive interface

    • had a better aesthetic

    • had a much cooler name

    • the dev seemed like a cool guy

    • before federation it felt exciting like being on the ground floor of something

    Why I stayed

    • has heaps of cool features and functions that are easy to use

    • I like the Mastodon interface too

    • turns out the dev definitely is awesome and everything is very open

    • it has a really chill community

    • I still just like it more than the various Lemmys

      • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Yes you can follow users on kbin, which you can’t do on lemmy, and this applies to both users on mastodon/mblogs and lemmy/kbin.

        However, from what I can gather, kbin is still community/magazine focused. For instance, I don’t think you can get a feed of just the posts of those that you follow, as you would on mastodon. You can select the subscribed channel and then look microblogs, which can get you close, but is really a view of all the posts from the people you follow and that have the hashtags for all of the magazines you follow (I think). THe important bit here being that kbin puts posts form mastodon/mblogs into magazines based on hashtags, where each magazine can defined what hashtags it will “scoop up”. And so “subscribed microblogs” includes all of those posts tagged with hashtags scooped up by the communities/magazines you follow.

        I have no idea what kbin’s road map is for this, but for me personally, who has a mastodon account on an instance I’m rather happy with, as well as this lemmy account, it doesn’t offer something that would prompt me to migrate as a user.

        One thing I’m probably missing here is whether one can more easily post to both communities/magazines and one’s mastodon followers from kbin. I don’t know enough about whether that is so and why and how far lemmy would be from achieving the same, but at this point in the fediverse’s development, it’s a not insignificant factor, as, IMO, so many are on mastodon and other microblog platforms that bridging that gap is vital to creating a sustainable and healthy ecosystem of platforms on the fediverse.

        • TeaHands@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Fwiw you can post to both Lemmy communities and Mastodon at the same time, that does work pretty well, but it has to be from your Mastodon account and you tag the Lemmy community as a user. (First line of the Mastodon toot becomes the post title on Lemmy, fyi if you’re going to try it, and you can tag the community at the end it doesn’t need to be the first thing in your toot)

          Not actually sure if that works the same way for Kbin magazines, I’m subscribed to plenty of them but most of them are kind of inactive so never had chance to test it. If anyone’s done the science and can report back, that would be interesting to know!

    • OceanSoap@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Can you explain more about the politics bit? What specifically is different regarding how political discussions are handled over there?

  • A_Chilean_Cyborg@feddit.cl
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    1 year ago

    Kbin has a way better UI, but it needs better servers and having apps for Lemmy like liftoff makes me wait to get something similar before switching back to kbin.

  • DharkStare@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I have a kbin account which I switch to everytime lemmy.world goes down and the only real advantages I see are the better UI and the integrated microblog thing. It’s basically Lemmy and Mastodon wrapped up in a single piece of software.

  • EROLoLICON@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I think kbin is more promising than lemmy. The admin seems a good guy, kind and levelheaded. Since a month ago, before the blackout, he build kbin by himself and since then someone even volunteered to help him polishing the site.
    The site looks polished but still in beta and they’re actively ironing out hundreds bugs and feature request by us users.
    Ultimately also the users are nice people. Many of us have donated money and right now the admin have enough money for nearly a year. Source: https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/177112/kbin-project-management-costs-financing-future-plans

  • mrbubblesort@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Kbin’s UI is just better. I realize both can be customized, but I’d prefer not to mess around with any of that yet. Plus I know people on mastadon, so that sealed it for me.

    • Freeman@lemmy.pub
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      1 year ago

      Customizations brought vulns on Lemmy with the custom emojis introducing XSS vulns and a few takeovers in the recent weeks.

      • Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
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        1 year ago

        but that’s not the fault of the UI, that’s the fault of the server and/or operator for allowing something like that to be even theoretically possible in the first place.

        This is why you place UIs on separate domains from the servers, and always treat user input like it’s radioactive AND toxic.

        • Freeman@lemmy.pub
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          1 year ago

          The custom emoji’s was a developed feature of Lemmy pushed out in their UI code. Even the project mainters instance was affected. Its why 0.18.2 was released.

          https://join-lemmy.org/news/2023-07-11_-_Lemmy_Release_v0.18.2

          Thats not on server/infra operators. It was a vuln in the core UI code. Some operators DID patch it themselves (i think Beehaw is one), others were less affected (ie: My instance is closed and i dont use custom emjis anyhow), but those are features introduced by the maintainers and some of the bigger instances would get requests for them anyhow. So it was a problem.

  • Chozo@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Kbin also has Mastodon integration (though it’s still being worked on and isn’t in its final form yet), which I think is handy because I’m hoping that Kbin doesn’t defederate from Meta, so that I can also still have an account to keep in touch with people I care about who are going to be using Threads without having to manage another account elsewhere.

    I also prefer the layout to Kbin better. While the stock Lemmy layout is nice (it does a fantastic job of emulating the old.reddit layout), I like the fact that Kbin shows a little bit more text about each post. It also keeps more data public (like your votes and reputation scores), which I actually prefer being out in the open, as it helps weed out people who may be giving bad faith arguments in various discussions.

    • Justin@lemmy.jlh.name
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      1 year ago

      That has nothing to do with Lemmy as a piece of software. Outside contributers are already contributing more than dessalines and nutomic.

      • Sethayy@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        But still to those super concerned, kbin would be a viable alternative. Most importantly just let people choose for themselves, shit aint Reddit, were federated now