What's the benefit of using Kbin over Lemmy?

UnanimousStargazer@feddit.nl to Asklemmy@lemmy.ml – 241 points –

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?

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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.

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.)

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."

Key word also

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

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).

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.

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.

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?

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.

You can block users/bots on Lemmy too

But not instances or servers, that's a much needed feature to de-porn my feed.

it's on the to-do list!

Yep, although it's almost been a year since the request so I don't know how high it's priority wise.

Since the question was why people use Kbin that is a big one for now, at least for me although I have an account there I just prefer lemmy since Kbin seems to be too much on its infancy and also the fact that because it doesn't have an open API as of now, there are (almost) no apps developed.

Given the massive uptake in the last month I'm hoping a lot of old issues are now being looked at!

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.

If you click on the menu next to the Kbin logo, at the top there’s a clog and a triangle. The triangle is the federation one.

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

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.

But Hot is broken in Lemmy, it shows old stuff like it's hot. The system is broken, but I think there is a PR on the way.

I've heard that the "hot surfacing old posts" bug is more prevalent on instances that haven't restarted for a while. It still shouldn't happen, but I don't think it's universal.

Hmmm ... it seems fine to me. I'd heard it was broken before though.

In what way is it broken?

Like the parent said, it surfaces old (as in years old) posts as "hot". Not sure if that's the case still, but I have definitely noticed it before.

Ah ... right ... yea I've seen that happen occasionally ... I had actually presumed that something had been changed with that post, perhaps by an admin or something cleaning stuff up, and that triggered a new timestamp for the post.

Maybe still a bug. I'll keep track now of when it happens as it might help sort it out.

But still, that's rarely the case for me. Just went down a fair way in my feed now and there wasn't a single occurrence of it. Could it be particular communities causing it, maybe from instances on older software?

Otherwise though, Hot seems to do what I'd want. Combine with a bit of New or Top for an appropriate time window and I'm all good.

For comments, Hot/New/Top all do what I'd want too.

It's still a bug. My server is at 0.18.2 and I regularly see old posts if I sort by Hot.

Links to Communities or Instances?

FWIW, just checked mine and no problems (and I'm subscribed to plenty of communities).

This is the bottom half of the first page of my subscribed feed and I restarted my lemmy instance yesterday to make a config change.

OK, I couldn't help myself, and checked GItHub. Seems the issue may have been fixed hours ago. Don't know when the new version will ship though.

Seems the issue may been to do with the process that updates the ranks of posts not being able to catch up to older posts, and so they show up with out of date ranks/scores. That process has been optimised, apparently, and should have no problem keeping up with all of the posts.

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/3617

Yep, that looks bad (obviously). I just went to the science community, sorted by Hot, and yea similar things appear towards the bottom of the feed.

Seems like the sort of thing that would be a minor and fixable bug. I don't have time to chase down github issues right now, but I'll try checking older communities to spot these occurrences. Naively I'd guess something like dates or vote-scored being truncated badly or something.

Thanks!!

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

but the fundamental vulnerability is not in the UI, by that logic you could just run your own UI and get into servers without issue, the vulnerability is always in either the server software or in the specific deployment.

The vulnerability was in the ui.

again, that makes no sense whatsoever, by that logic anyone can just merrily wreak havoc by using a client specially made to have vulnerabilities.

It was a csrf issue. The vulnerability isn’t on the attackers side, it’s on the user’s side. I’m telling you this as the owner of the instance. I’m sorry, but you are wrong here.

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.

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.

Yeah you're right. I meant until a montth ago, before the blackout.
Thank you for letting me notice it. For me corrections are always welcome.

It didn't occur to me that you wanted to say "until", my response would have been much shorter otherwise ;).

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'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

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.

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.

There is Artemis. You can apply to enter the beta on their community

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.

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’ve been using kbin as a mobile pwa on iOS without issue. It’s been getting better a little bit every week.

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

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 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

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

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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.

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.

I mainly just wanted to try Kbin after having already tried Lemmy before.

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

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.

The Lemmy devs are tankies who support the CCP and deny human rights violations

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