What's the benefit of using Kbin over Lemmy?
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?
I prefer Lemmy's UI. Good to have choices though.
Has anybody made a kbin script/userstyle that has the same information density as old.reddit? One of the things that drives me nuts about most of the fediverse is that every damn site seems to love this wide spread out low information density mobile web awfulness.
You can subscribe to people on Mastodon from Kbin, though, right? You can't do that from Lemmy.
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.
You can subscribe to people on Mastodon from Kbin
Yeah, you can.
Also, if you look in the "microblog" section of a kbin magazine, it collects Mastodon posts that use whatever hashtags the mag mods have set for that magazine and you can interact directly with the Mastodon users.
Eg. on @worldwithoutus the microblog section has these Arctic sea ice reports in it from Mastodon, because #Arctic is one of the magazine tags. It's really neat.
Kbin has a boost "retweet" function whilst lacking a "save post" function Kbin naturally shows user karma whilst here, it is counted but not shown (some clients display it)
Is there good android apps fir kbin?
The REST API is still in development. Once that gets released I'm sure app devs will spring up and build something fancy. I think Artemis is already working on an integration but that's with html scraping.
There's been a heap of work on the mobile UI/UX and I'm constantly pushing to get more mobile centric features into prod.
From a brief look at their public API, it only seems to users to GET stuff, and not POST stuff yet, so that would limit the possibility of apps.
Can you explain more about the politics bit? What specifically is different regarding how political discussions are handled over there?
People say that the devs are extreme left, though I haven't seen anything extreme first hand, simply being communist is a very valid opinion but I guess there's more to it. Besides politics, the project is very nice and promising, and I've had very useful feedback from the devs while trying to make a pull request for a new feature.
Kbin does a better job of putting new posts in front of you even before you have subscribed to anything, so I think it is easier to find interesting things to read. Kbin is newer than Lemmy, so Lemmy had the advantage in familiarity for people. More people had heard of it when Reddit's API drama blew up and that gave Lemmy a distinct advantage when people picked a new platform. Kbin also has some annoyances like not being able to collapse comments and vote buttons being at the top instead of the bottom of posts and comments. If someone has written a lengthy comment, I want to read through the whole thing before I decide how to vote and I don't want to scroll back up to get to a vote button. To reply to a post you also have to scroll through the comment section. In some cases it's good to see if someone else has already said what you are going to say, but in other cases if someone is looking for personal stories, you don't necessarily need to read everyone else's story before submitting your own.
Personally I have this kbin account and a lemmy account as well. My Lemmy server seems to go down more often and the default sort always shows the same days old pinned posts from my server admin that I can't seem to hide after reading. On Reddit, I didn't have to switch sort to see newer stuff so Lemmy comes across as pretty stale sometimes even though there is a fair amount of posting going on.
On lemmy the default is Active, which basically boosts any post that still has some recent chatter going on but is otherwise "stale". In the settings though you can change the default sort. I've gone with Hot, which is I think the default sort on kbin too.
Can you change the default sort on kbin? I could work how to.
Hey! Thanks for explaining. How can I use/Download Kbin?
Just go to kbin.social, this is the largest instance. There are other, smaller instances, too. Just like Lemmy.
A working link: https://alexandrite.app
Also https://vger.app/ for mobile.
If you're on lemmy.world, they've put vger natively on the instance at m.lemmy.world.
I would prefer staying on Kbin but until voyager implements Kbin accounts I'll have to stay on this one. Voyager is just OP.
Thanks for the pointer. This really looks much more pleasant than vanilla Lemmy, I'll have to keep an eye on that.
Why I joined
Why I stayed
I tried both, lurked a while and Kbin just seemed a bit more user friendly for me. Nothing deeper for me, just a matter of taste really.
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.
Subjective. I don't like the UI on Kbin more than the Lemmy one.
Customizations brought vulns on Lemmy with the custom emojis introducing XSS vulns and a few takeovers in the recent weeks.
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
Seriously this - @ernest has done a fucking incredible job. This software is flat-out amazing from a publisher's or author's perspective. It really encourages quality submissions as well, and the community is extremely positive.
Since a month ago, before the blackout, he build kbin by himself
Per that link you gave, ernest started building kbin in January 2021, launched the first instance in September 2021 and started to work on kbin full-time in the end of 2023 (EDIT: 2022, of course; always refreshingly embarrassing to make mistakes when correcting others). Not directly mentioned in that link, but hinted by the graph there, the kbin.social instance launched in April, now close to three months 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.
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.
It was the first one I tried 🤷♂️
Good a reason as any tbh.
The UI! It's so much better than the other Lemmy instances. Also I can curse without getting banned lmao
Uhhhhh. Not sure which fucking Lemmy instance banned you, but sounds like a real bum out.
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:
I like the UI better, like that it interacts with things like Mastadon, and, what was honestly the biggest thing, doesn't have a dumb auto-refresh I can't disable (which Lemmy did (at least for a while)).
They both have a lot of growing up to do. Not being able to collapse threads in kbin is driving me crazy; especially for long threads with many nested levels, I can't tell what is even top-level.
Lemmy got rid of the auto refresh you’re referring to. No more live updates.
That's good news. I'm fine with it as an optional setting, but I hated trying to read something and poof
Look up kbin enhancement suit KES. They have android, iOS and Mac that I know of. Simple to add and they’re implementing a lot of features
This. Is. AWESOME! So many so cool features!
I hate that I have to rely on some other add-in, but this makes things so much easier. Thank you!
There's two different PRs with collapsible threads in codeberg. Fingers crossed one or the other get merged soon.
https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/pulls/167
https://codeberg.org/Kbin/kbin-core/pulls/704
Nice! I knew about 167 but not 704. Here's hoping!
There are several userscripts for collapsible threads, I've used them since like day 2 after the Reddit shutdown!
I use this one: https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/468923-kbin-improved-collapsible-comments
Works both on desktop and Android (Firefox + Tampermonkey).
This. Is. AWESOME! So many so cool features!
The auto refresh was what brought me here. The layout kept me.
I have both and prefer kbin from a UI side on desktop, but the lack of android app means I dont use it on mobile yet.
The Artemis app is in beta and it's looking pretty promising. Definitely still some bugs, but the UI is dead simple and easy to customize. Switching to a subbed only view works well too. The official mag is m/artemisapp
I was just about to ask if there were any good Android apps for Kbin... I remember creating an account on the website a while ago but because I mostly browse on my phone I ended up on Lemmy in the end. I'd like to give Kbin a fair shot once a working Android app is released though.
That's fair. There's been a lot of PRs and issues focusing on mobile (like adding collapsible comments) but being a community project it all takes time to get it approved and pushed.
I'm keen on getting through as many mobile / UX centric improvements to mobile since that's primarily how I use kbin.
I’ve been using kbin as a mobile pwa on iOS without issue. It’s been getting better a little bit every week.
Agree 100%. I don’t feel I need an app with the pwa on iOS.
This may just be my device but I have to kill the PWA if I stop using it for around 10+ minutes, else I just get a black screen. Not the biggest problem but a bit annoying because I lose whatever thread I may have been reading.
I finally got my changes out to the Android PWA and I'm super happy with how it's working now. Beforehand it had an ugly icon and no shortcut / action icons. Now it's fairly good looking.
There's a change coming to the "themes" section which I'm happy for. Love getting through these updates
There is Artemis. You can apply to enter the beta on their community
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.
If kbin.social does defederate from meta, you can migrate to another kbin server that hasn't. That's one of the nice things about the fediverse!
Look up kbin enhancement suit KES. They have android, iOS and Mac that I know of. Simple to add and they’re implementing a lot of features
Yep keen on the layout overall
I like that there's both an update, downvote and boost feature. Recently the sorting / weighting mechanism was changed where boost = 2 upvotes so it's nice to upvote something + give it a boost so it sorts higher.
There's a lot of customization user wise also, I've been exceptionally busy working with the other contributors to make the mobile UI/UX a priority. There's been a heap of dev work going around so keen to see when that all gets into prod.
I've got a feeling that with another solid month or two of updates, tweaks and features that kbin will be really solid.
I mainly just wanted to try Kbin after having already tried Lemmy before.
Literally was that Kbin started with the letter K, and thus matched with my going DE, KDE. So really just a matter of taste I guess. I always recommend people to use what they like.
On top of elements already mentioned by others, an initial draw for me was the tenor of exchanges I was seeing on kbin. Of course the instances all interflow and I won't claim that Lemmy instances are not the same. But that was my initial experience. I like having a home base where there's some effort made to be communal and give thought out answers.
I was introduced to kbin first, and after giving both kbin and lemmy a shot, I decided on kbin as my primary. I prefer the layout mostly. Yes I know you can customize lemmy to get it to a similar look and feel, but kbin feels great straight out the box. The Mastodon integration is interesting, and its nice to keep up with what's going on there at the same time on one site. Also as federation users, we are encouraged to join smaller instances to lighten the load of ml and world, and kbin seems to be a good compromise of joining a smaller instance that isn't too empty. Also, with the recent hacks happening with the bigger lemmy instances, I feel like I made the right call sticking around here.
I set up both, and kbin was up while I couldn't get on world for 36 hours. Granted it turns out I had to just quit the app to get it loading but I didn't know that for a couple days and kbin worked fine
That has nothing to do with Lemmy as a piece of software. Outside contributers are already contributing more than dessalines and nutomic.
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
Apart from what has already been said (politics, basic UI) there are a couple more things worth mentioning:
Other than that only personal taste matters in the end, and both federate with eachother, so enjoy it from wherever you are.
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.)
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."
Also the ability for users to block instances and domain like mastodon has, which is pretty cool.
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’m still searching everywhere for the ability to block entire instances in kbin (on mobile). Can you please elaborate on how it is done? I only see magazine pages with the block option.
There's also several contributors who are actively working on improving the settings and adding in new features. I've been proposing a few changes for the mobile UI, letting you change up the mobile layout but all of that things take time (and add complexity) so it's slow moving