What is Kbin?

10_0@lemmy.ml to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 9 points –

Only heard of it recently is it another federated platform like Lemmy or pixelfed?

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Can you elaborate?

I read that Kbin defederated with Lemmy because it couldn't initially handle the influx of new users migrating from Reddit, but that it has federated again.

So is it a Lemmy instance, like Beehaw?

I know that Kbin doesn't use communities ("/c/") but uses magazines ("/m/") so I thought it was different.

I also read that there was some new way to post to Lemmy from Mastadon, but I thought those were different, like Reddit and Twitter. But they both rely on something called "ActivityPub"?

So is Kbin similar to Lemmy (by being Reddit-like), but distinct like Mastadon (which is Twitter-like)?

I didn't have a Twitter account, but was a heavy Reddit user. I don't have a Mastadon account, but I'm liking Lemmy. However I have some FOMO about Kbin because I don't understand how it all works together.

Kbin and Lemmy are separate pieces of software, yes, but they work in similar ways. The fediverse has a few examples of different software projects that have some overlap in their function and presentation, like Mastodon and Calckey, for instance.

Unlike Lemmy, Kbin has a native microblog feed in addition to the threaded posts like what you see on Lemmy.

Kbin magazines are equivalent to Lemmy communities in just about every way except their name.

ActivityPub is an information-sharing protocol: basically a well-defined set of rules that multiple pieces of software can adopt if they want to share information with each other programmatically.

Any platform that is built on ActivityPub can theoretically communicate with any other platform built on ActivityPub, although they don't necessarily have to do that in all cases if they don't want to.

As a lemmy user, you should (assuming everything is working correctly) be able to follow any magazine on Kbin exactly as if it was a community on Lemmy, so no need for FOMO. Also, there's no reason why you can't have one account on a Lemmy instance and another on a Kbin instance at the same time.

As a lemmy user, you should (assuming everything is working correctly) be able to follow any magazine on Kbin exactly as if it was a community on Lemmy, so no need for FOMO.

This is what I was hoping to hear. Thanks.

I have been exploring Kbin a little bit and can answer some questions.

ActivityPub is a protocol for sharing content. That content can be of multiple types like posts, threads, blogs, videos, microblogs, etc (I forgot the exact names of those types so the names might be off). On Lemmy we have communities, which are comparable to subreddits, that are hubs for ActivityPub content of the thread type. Mastodon is build for microblogs, which are similar to tweets.

Kbin is indeed similar to Lemmy, as it also runs on ActivityPub content, but apart from having communities (which they call magazines), you can also post and read microblogs there.

So if you like Lemmy but you're also on Mastodon or are interested in that, maybe Kbin is more suitable for you.