For me:
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Privacy reasons. When a comment is “deleted” on Lemmy, the comment is actually only hidden to all except instance administrators. The comment remains on the post and continues to display the poster’s username. kbin is also not a beacon of privacy, but it at least removes deleted comments from threads. This is also why I try to interact more on kbin magazines than Lemmy communities.
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kbin has a sweet community search tool that not only searches kbin magazines, but also Lemmy communities and even Mastodon groups. This means you can easily find communities all across the #Fediverse for any of your interests.
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kbin has a much nicer/more modern UI. It’s got some quirks, but it’s easier to read and navigate than Lemmy by default.
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Customization options! Lemmy has themes, which is cool, but kbin has themes and lots of fun toggles to change your experience.
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Last but certainly not least, Lemmy devs have a pretty shit stance on human rights. (See here: https://mstdn.social/@feditips/106835057054633379). There are communities like #Beehaw, which are super friendly and non-problematic instances separate from the Lemmy devs, but it’s worth noting that instances like Lemmy’s flagship instance and Lemmygrad are run by folks with some grossly misguided views.
More info on Lemmy devs being tankies who deny human rights violations: https://kbin.social/m/lemmyworld@lemmy.world/t/47012/-/comment/196579
This is what did it for me. After 3 days of finally getting the hang of Lemmy and figuring shit out I learned about the devs and their beliefs.
I don’t want to support humans like that and so I was very grateful to swap to kbin and continue to deepen my learnings of the Fediverse.
Is it all /several of the devs? Or that one guy who said he was a dev?
All of the main devs
what is a tankie?
Bootlickers, of the communist variety. Not very nuanced people. The type of people who deny the atrocities of Soviet era countries, and some are even dumb enough to support North Korea and the current regimes of China and Russia. Some are from troll farms sponsored by those countries.
An apologist for communist dictatorships, who turn a blind eye to - or even justify - their human rights violations.
I didn’t realise there was a word for it! Thanks!
Could you please clarify: are you tailking about a particular Lemmy instance, or the entire Lemmy software product?
the entire Lemmy software product
Thank you. That is cause for abandoning Lemmy entirely, for reasons of principle.
Although, ironicall, I don’t really see it will make much difference as long as Lemmy is still widely federated.Yeah, just feels weird using a service made by people with those views.
I find it extraordinarily difficult to identify with boycotting a product for its creator’s beliefs, considering the majority of consumer products are directly produced through unethical practices. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism, after all. It’s about as ridiculous as boycotting Mars because they de-sexified their M&M mascott.
It’s just an untenable standard, and from what I can see there’s nothing intrinsic about the way lemmy functions that can be tied to those beliefs/impacts your own ability to distance from them. I think this is just noise.
When I have a choice between a platform developed by tankies and one that’s not… I’m gonna choose the one that’s not.
I keep trying to upvote this and keep getting an error. So consider this an upvote and agreement.
But doesn’t kbin federate with lemmy? Are you OK with that relationship? Seems a little arbitrary to me. If you have an open-source standard for a distributed network, you’re not going to avoid associating with someone with unsavory views. The point is that you can control who you federate with anyway.
It’s a hill to die on, I guess.
How far does “interacted with” go for you?
as in, does clicking already count as interaction or would you need to comment or vote?
if it’s just viewing the content, then this might be done using a simple userScript as Kbin already remembers which threads you’ve viewed on the homepage.
for me any of the up/downvote, click in to view, or boost counts.
I’m a scroller, but, like, if i see a joke in https://lemmy.world/c/dadjokes then i can chuckle and give it an upvote but i dont have to click in and load the thread fully. But the next time i load the page id lke to not have to scroll past that same thread to see new stuff.
If i downvote something id like to not see it again on the next load. If i open a thread and read the comment posts, i dont need to see that thread again on tne next load.
That sort of thing.
It does have some downsides in that finding threads i /sort-of/ remember and want to check again is harder, but i’m used to that.
Although, by nature of the federation, anything add and then deleted may already be replicated to other instances.
Some of whom could instead show/retain a copy of it.
Basically assume that everything will be available and associated with you forever. Even more so than usual.
Just made me realize that this causes a problem with GDPR. Will that cause issues in the future for the Fediverse?
That’s an interesting thought
Maybe? It would depend on the duties imposed on a third party re the GDPR. If your host instance removes your data and a different instance doesn’t, do they have a duty to do so? Do you have to make the request of each instance with a copy?
Is the Wayback machine (https://archive.org/web/) required to remove content it’s archived to be compliant with GDPR?
Unknown, but they at least believe that they’re covered by an exception:
“As a library, the Internet Archive has, in the words of the GDPR, a “legitimate interest” in building collections, providing permanent public access, and maintaining archival integrity.”
Whether they’ve had that tested in court I do not know.
Could be. Sounds like it to me.
Personally I haven’t settled in on anything yet. I have accounts on several different KBin instances, a couple Lemmy instances, and Beehaw (which I guess is also a Lemmy instance)
Currently for me it’s between Beehaw and Kbin. I like I can use either account to interact with either so at the end of the day it really doesn’t matter. Kbin looks MUCH nicer on the phone, but I like Beehaw’s moderation, broad-topic communities, etc. Alone, Beehaw would be too restrictive. Combined with Kbin and a couple Lemmy communities, eventually it’s going to just be a matter of using your favorite username@whatever and deciding which front-end you prefer. Beehaw is a little better for people that want to avoid porn and stuff though.
If one platform begins developing much faster than the other, switch! Have a few accounts subscribed to all your favorite communities so they’re all locked and loaded and ready to use.
kbin has a sweet community search tool that not only searches kbin magazines, but also Lemmy communities and even Mastodon groups. This means you can easily find communities all across the #Fediverse for any of your interests.
This convinced me to switch to kbin from lemmy. Looks like it has a better “sort-by-hot” functionality too far as I can tell.
The nice thing is, I can always switch back, no cost to me
Just FYI, while I do not disagree with you, the sort-by-hot ordering is bugged in the current lemmy version, which causes threads not to “cool off”. It will be fixed with the next update (fix is already done, just not shipped yet).
So it’s true, then, that lemmy doesn’t have a community search tool? I still feel like I have to be misunderstanding somehow. It has to have a search function. How else is it supposed to federate to anything? I know people successfully search for kbin mags over there. How else would it even find its own communities? It can’t just be a big ass list, it would be too long to be usable.
Regarding 5., I mean, you pointed out your way around that yourself. Create your account elsewhere. Lemmy is FOSS. If the devs do act shitty, one can fork their stuff and everyone can put it on their instances anyway.
While I don’t want to defend them, because I did not investigate it further, I do have to say that I didn’t see anything weird on their profiles. Moreover, I totally get that they don’t really want to moderate their instances more than they absolutely have to. As in “if it’s not illegal, I don’t care.”
It creates a shitton of work and moral dilemmas, plus you have do deal with bad shit every single day.
Is there something wrong with choosing to avoid someone’s software because the developers are tankies, in your opinion?
I agree with you here.
As a “product” I like how Lemmy works and would like to continue using it. That doesn’t mean I support or defend the devs. A “hate the artist, not the art” situation I’m still wrestling with, personally.
I would hope, in the event this whole debacle starts to impact the development and features of Lemmy, that my home instance will move to a fork. If not, I can delete the account and move to kbin.
I strongly disagree with reason 3 as finding the list of magazines that I’m subscribed to is hidden in settings, while on Reddit it’s easy to access on the top bar. My home feed is doesn’t default to the magazines I’m subscribed to, I have to manually set it on a bar that doesn’t even seem like a sort button.
Surely kbin’s federation with Lemmy means thus simply isn’t the case?
I’m adding your comment to @BestOf and/or https://kbin.social/m/BestOf! Thanks for explaining the benefits of kbin!
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For me it simply came down to the fact that I prefer the layout, and it’s also nice knowing I can block whole domains (looking at you, furry spammers). It also integrates with Mastodon if that’s your thing (it’s not my thing), and I have high hopes for the ability of Ernest (the founder and only dev, to my knowledge) to usher it in a good and healthy direction. I can see all content from Lemmy and interact with it though, so it really just comes down to personal preference.
Same here. I like the look, usability and layout of Kbin better. I do wish there were more users here at kbin.social, though, as the federated feed is more lively on the large Lemmy instances.
I do wish there were more users here at kbin.social, though, as the federated feed is more lively on the large Lemmy instances.
kbin.social has more MAU (Monthly Active Users) now, than all Lemmy combined! That is of course effect of the spike this month and shall fade only on July, but did you already see activity on kbin.social alone fading?
If I understand how the fediverse works (an open question :-)), the amount of activity on the home page/“all” feed/federated feed of an instance is dependent on how many magazines/communities the members are subscribed to. I’ve noticed that the “All” feed of the most established Lemmy instances have more posts than here at kbin.social. I would anticipate that situation improving over time as the community here grows and people increase the number of subscriptions they have. I would expect more (and more active) local magazines over time here, as well.
I suspect that may have something to do with kbin.social’s federation not working during it’s initial growth period. Lots of users joined up but could only subscribe to local communities. The more we embrace federated content the smaller the differences between each platform/instance.
Kbin.social is the largest single instance in the Threadiverse.
i’m a furry and out of the loop here, what’s going on with “furry spammers”? i saw this mentioned twice now which can’t be a coincidence
There was a new domain and they were posting everywhere, my /new and /active were literally half full of furry stuff.
cough What’s that domain, so I can, uh, block it, too?
Thanks! You’re a real one, I wouldn’t want to, you know, accidentally happen across some degenerate content!
How do you actually filter/block specific magazines from all?
Is kbin supported with a mobile app. I’ve been on Jerboa for Lemmy and it’s been pretty ok for beta.
There’s one on the way to a beta (Artemis) but I just used the Firefox feature to place a webapp on my phone so I click that and it immediately opens in Firefox.
The kbin mobile website works fine in Safari on the iPhone, too. Looks just like the website adapted for a smaller screen and has all the same functionality. With the exception of notifications, it’s fine. And it’s early days, people will develop apps for the platform.
Will apps made for Lemmy (like Sync for Lemmy that was just announced) work with Kbin? Or is it a different API entirely?
I did the same with Chrome. I’m looking forward to Artemis, but I like the webapp just fine.
It’s in progress. Scroll down to the bottom of this page:
TIL I can block domains!
How do you block a domain? It is like blocking a magazine (if that is possible).
If you type https://kbin.social/d/insert domain here then (on kbin) scroll down you should see the same buttons that you see for users and magazines including a block button.
Usually I’ll just change the m in the url to d then delete upto the domain name.
Thank you! 🙏
Yeah I tried both Lemmy and Kbin when the reddit protest started and just really like the kbin UI/experience a lot more. It also comes up pretty nice on mobile too without an app.
Same. Without getting too “techie,” I just like the feel of Kbin better.
Good God. On beehaw I had to block every furry community separately. Talk about annoying.
Oh God. About 6 years ago I was in Pittsburgh for work. I did get to see a Bruins/Penguins playoff game so that was nice, but I was at a Bridge conference (for people who design and build bridges, not the card game). Several hotel employees and taxi drivers warned me that a furry conference was coming the day our bridge conference ended. That was the first time I heard the term “furries”. Then they descended upon the city while I was still there. To this day it’s still the most intense culture shock I’ve ever had.
Ugh, I’m so sorry you had to experience that horrific playoff series.
Until I reached the fediverse I had no idea just how many furry-enthusiasts were out there. The heart wants what the heart wants, I guess.
There is this post by fedi.tips that explicitly warns against using Lemmy because of developer concerns: https://mstdn.social/@feditips/110476830253102884
The lemmy devs tried denying it in an update, and then someone brought the receipts. I really do not want to support those devs.
They seem to be worried that the Lemmy developers’ politics will influence how they design the software - for example, making moderation tools that favour certain powerful users. But rather than abandon Lemmy entirely, why not fork the code?
Lemmy is developed by tankies who deny and censor talk about human rights violations.
https://kbin.social/m/lemmyworld@lemmy.world/t/47012/-/comment/196579
Literally the only reason I chose kbin over lemmy.
Same. I remember I viewed Lemmy first. I saw the sticky post saying to use different instances, so created an account on beehaw. Well, tried to. They only manually approved accounts, so I soon realized that wasn’t going to cut it, as I wanted to use the site immediately (I think it took a week to get the email saying the account got created).
When I went back to look up suggestions for instances, I saw people suggesting to use kbin for this tanky reason, and thought, “well, that seems like a win win”.
Kbin let me create an account and start posting right away. It hasn’t so far shown any red flags. And in fact Ernest has shown nothing but green flags so far. One particular case that stood out was when he was informed that he didn’t properly give attribution to some code he used (and was required by that code’s license) and he immediately posted admitting his mistake and apologizing. I admire people being able to admit when they were wrong.
I don’t personally feel like the UI or features of kbin are any better than Lemmy (though not really any worse either – both seem to have some different issues). I think I’m somewhat still waiting to see how the feature development of the two might go. One worry I admittedly have is that of how many active devs each will have. I don’t think any major software can last long on a solo dev. And getting community contributions is vital for scaling.
Do you know kbin developers political views?
No
hopes to keep it that way
Lemmy devs are tankies.
The main difference is the UI. A lot of people like the interface of Kbin over Lemmy, but really there’s nothing from stopping you choosing one or the other. I’m replying to you now from Lemmy.
- I like the UI more
- Not developed by tankies
- Catchier name IMO (reminds me of GabeN, while Lemmy makes me think of Lemmings, which isn’t the best)
- Microblogs are neat
I’m new to Lemmy and kbin, so these points may be more a me-thing than a Lemmy/kbin-thing, but from what I can see:
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Accessing Lemmy content from kbin is pretty seamless, but it’s difficult to access kbin from Lemmy.
- Ex) It’s easy to access gaming@beehaw.org from kbin by going to https://kbin.social/m/gaming@beehaw.org, but I couldn’t find a way to access https://kbin.social/m/Amsterdam from beehaw
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kbin’s integration with Mastodon/microblogging fediverses is neat.
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kbin seems to have more magazines catering to more of my specific interests and hobbies, while Lemmy’s communities are more generic.
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This is specific to the instance I am on (beehaw.org), but I can’t access the Lemmy instance when I’m using ProtonVPN.
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I just read through the Mastodon thread on how the Lemmy developers are not consistent with their own policies of human rights. While that doesn’t automatically mean that Lemmy is bad, I feel more comfortable using software by developers who are not known to be “tankies”.
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Lemmy developers support the CCP and Russia,
Kbin dev doesn’t.Kbin’s software is much more impressive to me, despite being a lot newer it’s far more robust. Having dual functionality for both threads and microblogs is really cool for the Fediverse.
And yeah, the tankie thing.
Is there a good Android app for Kbin?
There’s one in development, you should be able to find out more at @ArtemisApp
A friend told me to try Kbin when the owner of Reddit turned out to be so terrible.
I like it here.
- Better UI
- the initial lemmy instance I had was error-filled
- Microblogging built in
Wider layout, actually black text (compared to Lemmingish grey), and clearly distinguished boxes with comments. Plus several “skins”, including solarized light and dark. Less eye strain.
I just signed up a few days ago and didn’t realize there were different themes until this thread. Lol. Now I’ve got larger text, a solarized light theme, and rounded corners! Very exciting!
Because I’m dumb.
Not that “signing up for kbin was a dumb move”; more that I was too dumb to understand the front page full of technical bullshit on the Lemmy landing site.
I started to skim it and went “Wow, ok, this is complicated, I guess I’ll have to figure it out later; I only have about thirty minutes right now.”
Then I clicked on a link to kbin, and there was content, and a login button, and a sign up button, and a quick registration page, and bang! I’m on kbin commenting on cat pictures. The only adjustment I had to make to my browsing habits was using my middle mouse button to click links instead of my left button (to open them in a new tab, which I had set Reddit to do by default).
Beehaw was the same way, so I signed up there, too, but their web UI doesn’t work great for me. Sorting by “local” and “active” only shows me stuff from yesterday through last week, but sorting by anything else floods my feed with a dozen new topics every five seconds that automatically scroll everything down. I don’t even have enough time to read a longish thread title before it’s rudely shoved off the bottom of my screen in favor of six posts from some random citrus-appreciation instance, or something. So I’m going to check back there in a month or two, because I like the on screen layout better.
Mainly better UI, less questionable dev, and better support with mastodon if I chose to browse mastodon.
