This is not an attempt to convert Lemmy users, nor is it a slight on Lemmy. I’m sure there are plenty of reasons why Lemmy works better for some, and I love the fact that we not only have multiple choices, but multiple choices that allow us to interact with each other regardless! It’s amazing. Lemmy is great, no shade.

With that said…

Why YSK: I see a lot of users posting frequent questions about Lemmy that are currently answered by kbin.

For example:

  • The ability to block a whole domain, or subscribe to one
  • The ability to subscribe to individual users
  • A built-in search tool to find communities all over fedi (kbin, Lemmy, Mastodon groups, etc.) with an indication of how active they are
  • Mitigation for the “tracking pixel” issue

I find that almost every day, I see Lemmy users asking about features and I think, “well, kbin does that.” I think it would be worthwhile for more users to check into both platforms and decide which might be best for them.

  • wilberfan@lemmy.worldEnglish
    52·
    2 years ago

    It’s obviously not a competition, but this kind of reminds me of back in the day when you had to choose between Betamax or VHS. One seemed superior (kBin)–but “everyone” was adopting VHS (Lemmy).

    • NewNewAccount@lemmy.world
      49·
      2 years ago

      Isn’t one of the primary benefits of the Fediverse and ActivityPub that you have the freedom to select the better alternative and still benefit from the activity on the “lesser” instances?

    • Kichae@kbin.social
      33·
      2 years ago

      Ehhh. kbin’s quite feature-incomplete in its own right, it’s just a different set of features that are incomplete. I don’t think there’s anything about kbin that’s actually superior to lemmy, just… different. Meanwhile, Betamax had inarguably better video, and inarguably worse capacity.

      • HipPriest@kbin.social
        2·
        2 years ago

        Which features are missing from Kbin that are on Lemmy?

        I lurked on both for about a week before going with Kbin so don’t really have experience of using Lemmy apps etc

        • Kichae@kbin.social
          19·
          2 years ago

          Off the top of my head:

          • API’s a big one. Mobile app development for kbin is deeply hampered because of that.

          • The ability to quickly filter your timeline by Local/Global, which is a big deal for regional or themed instances.

          • A (more) easily accessible subscribed community/magazine list (slower/smaller communities are kind of totally smothered in kbin).

          • PeerTube federation.

          Meanwhile, the domain block touted by the OP is buried and kind of a pain to get to, and the search claim is… overstated (kbin search still only reaches other sites that the given kbin instance is subscribed to).

          kbin has a nicer UI, IMO, and it’s fine. It’s perfectly fine. Lemmy is also perfectly fine. Neither is excellent, and that’s ok. Neither has reached version 1.0, either, and both are being developed by small teams (for some flexible definition of “team”).

          • Aki@lemmy.world
            6·
            2 years ago

            I personally think Lemmy will have better UI as time goes on. It’s already coming slowly altogether as time goes on.

    • Neato@kbin.social
      4·
      2 years ago

      Kinda. If you could watch VHS on a Betamax player and vice versa. The betamax player may have more features or do things a little differently but you can see the same stop on both players.

    • derf82@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 years ago

      The advantage VHS had was tape length. Betamax standard tapes were 60 minutes. VHS was twice that. Whole movies could fit on VHS. Also, VHS VCRs were far cheaper that Betamax players.

    • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      If by “everyone” you mean “porn,” then yeah, I guess. VHS won for the same reason that DVD won and now streaming won:

      Porn access is cheaper because of it.

  • slayer of cakes@lemmy.world
    14·
    2 years ago

    Lemmy.world was my first choice, and I’m glad I stuck through it. I’m 4 weeks in and I’ve seen this community grow and iron out the kinks. The hell if I’m ever going back to reddit.

    • CMLVI@kbin.social
      3·
      2 years ago

      Not currently, I think, but multiple are in beta and sending out invites. I use kbin as a rich web app and it works well about 85% of the time. Biggest issues are random log-outs, using the back button sometimes loses place in the never-ending scroll list, and there isn’t a good way to see your subscribed magazines (you have to go to your profile and scroll to the subscriptions section to select it).

      But I’m really liking Kbin so far. I’d rather not be on the instance that is hosting everything; just seems easier for it to get too big and fail quickly, and I’d like to stay in one location if possible. Kbin seems big enough to last but small enough that it isn’t growing insanely quick. Another option is Fedia.io, which is a kbin fork. Very similar imo, just a little different.

      • AnonymousLlama@kbin.social
        1·
        2 years ago

        There’s a PR out that’ll show your subscriptions at the top of the sidebar in a simple list. I think that’s a decent start but I’d like to add left to right swipe handlers to just have it as a fly-out menu on mobile.

        The back button is definitely something we need to work on, especially if your been posting serveral comments in a thread, I expect the back button to take me to the place I was at before I clicked into the article, not show me previous comments etc. Lots of this just needs tweaking

      • rideranton@kbin.social
        1·
        2 years ago

        Fedia is just another kbin instance, not really a fork. It is tracking the development branch a bit closer than kbin.social, but it’s still the same repo

          • whosdadog@sh.itjust.works
            1·
            2 years ago

            A fork would be a duplicated custom copy of the software that can have its own changes or improvements added and is usually maintained by a different person/group than the original. When a new update of the original is released, the maintainer of the fork can bring those changes into their custom fork.

            Instances are (mostly identical) copies of the same fork. They’ll have custom names and different logos, but the software that’s running them is all version 0.18 of the same fork. They may install updates at different speeds ie v0.19 is released, some instances will update immediately, some may take a week, but eventually they’ll all be updated to v0.19.

  • Jase@lemmy.world
    9·
    2 years ago

    I have literally blocked communities I don’t like, so I am not sure why you’re making it out like that isn’t a Lemmy feature…

    • TheKingBee@lemmy.world
      4·
      2 years ago

      You can’t black instances though, instead of blocking 100 communities you can just block one instance…

  • Boozilla@lemmy.world
    5·
    2 years ago

    kbin is attractive to me…except an email address is required to register. I know that’s a common thing on a lot of sites, but it’s not info I want to provide, and setting up a burner email is kind of a nuisance.

    • Boozilla@lemmy.world
      1·
      2 years ago

      OK following up on my own comment here. I decided to use a masked email and am giving kbin a try. (I forgot I had a seldom-used email provider that makes masked emails easy).

    • T156@lemmy.world
      4·
      2 years ago

      No, Kbin hasn’t released their own, or an API yet. I believe the developer is working to stop it crashing after the recent migrations, so has been mostly focused on that instead of the app.

  • SomeoneElse@lemmy.world
    5·
    2 years ago

    As soon as Artemis opens their beta testing for the iOS app (or someone else develops one) I’m in. But I hate using web apps.

    • HipPriest@kbin.social
      2·
      2 years ago

      I’ve got no problem with web apps and I’m happy with how Kbin works as one… BUT I am looking forward to Artemis just to see what they do with it 🙂

  • forrcaho@lemmy.world
    4·
    2 years ago

    I have accounts on both, and I like the look of kbin better, so I’ve tried to use it more. However, the functionality you mention has been undiscoverable to me: I have no idea how to get a list of non-local magazines, and I’ve looked around for that quite a bit. On lemmy, it’s as easy as clicking “All” when searching communities.

    Is there any document that would help me find those features on kbin? Or, for that matter, a similar sort of documentation for lemmy?

    • atocci@kbin.social
      2·
      2 years ago

      In the magazine tab on Kbin, it functions similarly to Lemmy. You can search for a community/magazine there, local or federated. If something doesn’t show up because it’s not federated yet, you can use the @ tag with the @ domain name. You can also use it as a list of all communities currently federating with your kbin instance by not typing anything into the search bar, selecting “local and federated” in the dropdown, and clicking search.

  • diamonddozen@kbin.social
    3·
    2 years ago

    Maybe it’s a grass is always greener thing but I’ve been having issues with kbin that apparently other instances don’t have. Furigana is supported on some Lemmy instances, I’ve had issues embedding links from Twitter/TikTok/Instagram/etc, I frequently interact with threads (preview content or upvote) and get redirected to an error page, goes on.

    I did sign up with kbin for a reason though and I’m overall mostly satisfied. Having a good FAQ with how all the features of kbin work, what’s on the roadmap, etc would be my biggest change.

  • jimmy90@lemmy.world
    3·
    2 years ago

    I think these are all features that are being worked on, along with better administration and moderation tools. The Lemmy devs are very busy 😀

  • teydam@kbin.social
    3·
    2 years ago

    I’ve been using kbin mostly on my computer, and its interesting to see the lemmy.world feeds pop in. still learning all the function of kbin. on my phone I just use wefwef.app as there seems to be a lot more of the low brow content I am looking for when pooping like funny memes.

    • soloner@lemmy.world
      2·
      2 years ago

      Does wefwef (voyager) support kbin? It sounds like that’s what you are implying, just want to make sure I’m not misunderstanding.

      If so, I may make a kbin account and see how that works. Mostly I am looking for a familiar “post/subscribe into categorical communities” solution with no extra fluff. That’s why I like Lemmy, but I haven’t looked into kbin at all, in truth.