I’m out of the loop.
lemmy is the more mature platform, whilst kbin is newer and more feature rich.
What it amounts to is that kbin can do things that lemmy can’t do, but the things that they both do, lemmy tends to do better. And as kbin is effectively in alpha at the moment, it doesn’t have much documentation, making installation and configuration a challenge.
The biggest point of difference in features is that kbin is aware of other fediverse content in a way lemmy isn’t. kbin and lemmy both talk to each other really well, but kbin also natively supports other types of fediverse groups (gup.pe, friendica and chirp). kbin also lets you see non threadiverse content, by attaching hashtags to groups. So if you set up say a cycling group on kbin, you can also make the group watch the #cycling tag, any any mastodon or other micoblogging content will appear on a special tab in your cycling group.
So if you set up say a cycling group on kbin, you can also make the group watch the #cycling tag, any any mastodon or other micoblogging content will appear on a special tab in your cycling group.
Now that is a powerful feature. Great way to fill a feed with content too.
I think that will have me switch eventually, but it sucks its php.
I’m hoping they add that feature to Lemmy soon enough and switching won’t be necessary.
Well I also wish the current lemmy fork wasn’t a genocide denying tankie so let’s see how that plays out. That makes me not want to code contribute to his fork.
Thanks, your post makes sense. Will Lemmy have the opportunity to adapt to do what kbin does that it can’t, or is that a ground up change?
The hashtag watch feature would be trivial to implement. Properly implementing groups compatibility would be a bit more work though. I think it’s mostly going to be a matter of competing priorities more than anything else
(Not shooting the messenger, just as info for other readers.)
Using hashtags for this seems like an idea with some severe limitations because it can only see the posts it has happened to come across otherwise. (Unlike the other group formats.)Yep, but that’s true of keyword search on all fediverse platforms, and unlike lemmy, you can follow micro blog fedi accounts from kbin, so you can federate non group content in more readily
Yes, keyword search works poorly on fedi is what I’m saying 💁🏻♀️
Using that as a basis for group talk can end up being super unreliable in some situations.No more than anywhere else on the fediverse
Yes, it works poorly everywhere on the fediverse, is exactly what I’m saying.
Hashtags on Fedi can be good for organizing stuff within a single account or instance, or it can be used for other things like trigger specific bots, but they can not (as you know) work like an IRC channel like they did on Twitter.
That’s why I’m not happy about kbin elevating that misfeature and legitimizing its misuse as if it were as robust as the other federated group protocols are. It’s not the end of the world or the worst feature on the planet, I’m not that worked up about it, it’s just not good, is all.
(Again, not blaming you for that ofc, you only reported on it, and that was awesome, thanks.)
It’s not a “misfeature” though. The inherent nature of decentralisation is that there is no single “true” view of the network. You can only ever see part of it, and you ultimately have to curate that view so that it fits your needs. This is part of that.
Correct, and that’s exactly why it does not work for group things.
If fedi is like email, and it is similar in many ways, a Lemmy community is like a mailing list. People can send to the list and the threads on the list from different servers. And there can be separate communities about the same topics just as there can be separate mailing lists about the same topics.
But hashtags in email wouldn’t work as a replacement for mailing lists. Hashtags in email can still have some use, within a mailing list or in a specific conversation, but it’s something very different from a mailing list.
On kbin, if people think that “Oh, here is where the posts about cycling will show up” but the magazine is just based around a hashtag, there’s no way for people to participate deliberately. It’s misleading.
Using hashtags as if it were tumblr or twitter is anti-decentralization and drives people into using the biggest instances only. Groups a la gup.pe and Lemmy and Friendica is a solution to that. It’s only a partially decentralized solution, since each group itself is centrally hosted (exactly like mailing lists were), but it’s at least a solution, whereas misusing hashtags that way isn’t.
ELI5? McDonald’s and Burger King. One has a Big Mac, the other a Whopper. One has red and yellow, the other red and blue. Either way, you’re getting a burger.
Oh, they’re also right next to each other so you can wave to the people in Burger King from McDonald’s and vice versa. Now everyone is enjoying burgers together.
What if I want a taco?
That would be Mastodon.
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Tacos = toots
yeah, that tracks.
We’ll tell you to get out! We don’t do that folding thing here. Bun, meat, bun… ONLY.
*Don’t ask how we’d eat a hot dog.
Lemmy and kbin are two different forum software that can be installed and run on servers. Because both use the ActivityPub protocol, the content between them can be shared. So, a Lemmy user will be able to see content from a server running kbin, using Lemmy.
But how can I see kbin content from lemmy, I couldnt find an option yet. Also from kbin I cannot find lemmy communities
There isn’t an option, you can’t even tell but you already have the kbin content.
You can’t disable it.
The reason that’s happening right now is because kbin is enacting ddos protection using cloudflare so they aren’t federating properly, this is a temporary problem.
Is this only some kbin instances thing or all kbin instances thing? I’m fairly sure that fedia.io (/kbin instance) does not use cloudflare. But that would definitely explain why I’m struggling to search some instances that might use it.
As far as i’m aware it’s only the main kbin instance.
but (as far as i can tell) kbin is way more centralized than lemmy, so it has a large effect
kbin being more centralized is just an unfortunate accident of timing. I was only first publicly released two months ago, and from what I understand there’s still not much help available for starting up a new instance of your own, and the lone developer over there has been busy trying not to let the kbin.social server catch fire.
It’s not at all, they’re just having tech issues right now.
ah. do you know where i can find a list of all the kbin instances?
Hi from a kbin instance!
meep meep
whoa
This is due to Kbin using Cloudflare anti DDoS, which disallows Lemmy instances reaching it
That seems to go against the goal of federation.
It’s a matter of keeping kbin up at all at the moment. The rapid growth in users following Reddit’s ongoing suicide has overloaded the instance. It’s a temporary measure that Ernest will turn off when additional resources can be obtained. He is not a fan of losing federation either.
Indeed, but my guess is that Kbin’s admins don’t really know. Also that’s what I’ve read, it may very well not be that :p
It’s a temporary measure because of their explosive growth and being DDOS’d
They’re getting better network resources and will resolve this.
To see Lemmy content on kbin, just add the full address of the Lemmy instance to the end of the kbin URL. For example, https://kbin.social/m/[email protected] lets you see content from @[email protected] on https://kbin.social.
The other way round should also work (ie. to see kbin content on Lemmy), but for some reason it’s not working on major Lemmy instances for me, even though they are federated to kbin.social and other kbin instances.
Someone said the cloudflare protection is breaking that ability
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Same here. I can actually see the Kbin communities when I search, but it is showing no content. Not sure what it looks like from the Kbin side.
As another poster said, CloudFlare protection is breaking sync with Kbin at the moment.
I set up an account in kbin last week and objectively prefer it, but it’s become kind of unusable over the last couple of days.
It looks good :-)
The cloudfare wall is a bit annoying but the UX is great. I didn’t try any Lemmy instance though…
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How do I find kbin communities and how do I add them to my Lemmy instance?
Is there a tutorial anywhere?
Lemmy instances seem to have trouble seeing content from kbin instances for some reason.
The main kbin instance, kbin.social is getting slammed and cloudflare is breaking their sync in both directions, so currently you can’t see their content on any other Lemmy or kbin instance afaik, and you can’t see Lemmy content on there. Hopefully that gets fixed soon but it’ll probably take a while. The other kbin instance are tiny and don’t have much content but I think should be visible here
It is the difference between nginx and apache: two pieces of software that do basically the same thing. With the exception of some naming conventions and UI differences, they are the same and both participate in the community in the same way.
Kbin is also written in PHP where as Lemmy in Rust, nuff said
Is that why KBin never works for me, but multiple Lemmy instances do? Lol
Probably not the reason. Rust is just more systems level and performant than interpreted PHP
Lol. Love this place. I make a joke, but get an actual explanation in return. Thanks!
Cuz we nerds
Also Lemmy has been kicking around as a hobby project for a couple years. kbin.social, the flagship kbin instance, was first opened in April. They haven’t even made tools for starting new instances easily yet, and went from a few hundred users to tens of thousands of users basically overnight. It’s a miracle that kbin.social is even still running at all.
Okay, so think of every website that is part of the “Fediverse” (aka uses “ActivityPub”) as just being different ways to display the exact same data. Sometimes their data works really well between two of them and sometimes it’s a bit more awkward. Lemmy and Kbin are both trying to imitate the “forum-style” UI that Reddit uses, so they integrate really well with each other. Same data, slightly different UI. Mastodon, on the other hand is imitating Twitter. So trying to read Mastodon in Lemmy is like trying to read a Twitter feed as Reddit threads. It’s messier. Kbin seems to be trying to find a way to better display Mastodon-style threads within their UI. Otherwise, I think the big picture way to understand the difference is just that it’s a matter of UI and which one you prefer more.
Kbin’s built in php which makes it less attractive to contribute to imo
Gross
What is lemmy built in?
The backend is Rust, the official frontend is inferno i think.
The Lemmy server is written in Rust, the frontend is Typescript.
rust
Effectively just two different methods to access the Fediverse. They each have different thought processes on how to do that, and both are at different stages in their development with kbin being the newest of the two.
I’m watching kbin’s development as I really like its intended ability to interface directly with say Mastodon, but as its stands it’s not quite their yet imo.
Both kbin and lemmy utilize parts of the activitypub protocol - a generic way for different social media sites to talk to one another - to make a reddit-like functionality. This means that regardless of whether you are on a server which uses lemmy or kbin, they can access and use each other. The only real difference for users is going to be the UI and that kbin has also used activitypub to give its users some dedicated mircoblogging capabilities (think mastodon). My advice is: if you are only interested in a reddit-like experience then use the one with the UI and community you perfer, but if you want an all-in-one account (and are okay with the added complexity that comes with) kbin is closer to what you want.
Great question. As I’m new to these things too, I forwarded it to ChatGPT 3.5. In summary:
Lemmy is designed for creating and participating in online communities, while Kbin is designed for organizing and sharing knowledge.
Lemmy is more focused on discussions and social interaction, while Kbin is geared towards structured content creation and collaboration.
They seem to have more in common than they differ, especially for users who only read posts, visit links, write comments.
I also heard they are meant to be able to access each other’s content, although that’s currently not working.
Please correct what is wrong, happy to learn.
Yeah that’s totally wrong. Please don’t post chatGPT summaries as a way to fill gaps in your knowledge.
I am not really certain ChatGPT’s analysis here is correct
@Spzi KBin wasn’t even a thing when Chat GPT’s training cut-off date happened.
Federation is having some difficulties currently, mostly due to things overloading or the solutions to the overloading. It’ll get better as there are more instances.
I also heard they are meant to be able to access each other’s content, although that’s currently not working.
I don’t know about Lemmy being able to see Kbin’s content, but I’m posting this from a Kbin instance right now. Most of the posts I see are in face on Lemmy instances.
I prefer lemmy but you can use kbin if you prefer it. Its the same information at the end of the day since they can pull the same stuff
