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.
You are correct about all of those things, but KBin doesn’t have any currently released mobile apps and I like to have a mobile app. Ultimately KBin will probably have mobile apps soon and some of those features above will probably eventually be added to Lemmy, so it’s just a case of what’s the most important to us now.
I’ve made a shortcut in Firefox to add the kbin mobile site to my home screen and it is essentially indistinguishable from a mobile app like this.
While PWA sites are nice I’ve never personally used one that felt as good or as consistent as a native application.
As much as my web dev heart would love to say they were haha.
Agreed but if a lot of effort is put into the mobile web it can get very very close. Now Lemmy ui will have a rust/tailwind version, things are going to get very interesting 😀
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You can’t black instances though, instead of blocking 100 communities you can just block one instance…
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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?
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.
I saw in the comments here there are no apps yet for Kbin. So are Kbin users just using the website on their devices for now?
I’m enjoying Connect for Lemmy and awaiting Sync for Lemmy to be released. Can or will those work for me if I made a Kbin account and will I gain these Kbin perks you speak of?
kbin is newer, and there are apps on the way. Artemis should be available soon, and I know there are at least one or two more being worked on. But yeah, none available rn so people are using the PWA.
I would consider kbin more if the naming for things wasnt so bad. “Magazines” as a name is in my opinion is terrible.
I also like that lemmy uses rust
I know this is a bad take, but my hate for PHP is why I’m in Lemmy.
Same. As a Rust lover and PHP hater, the choice was easy.
As a recent Rust convert, I chose Lemmy because I expect it to be the better platform in the long run, and maybe one day I’ll be able to help fix bugs myself. I also just like to support a Rust project and have no love for PHP. In fact, with all the good tools out there these days, it strikes me as odd to begin a project of this scale in PHP.
Do they have an API yet?
From what I hear, it’s being tested/reviewed currently, but it’s basically ready and will be available soon.
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.
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).
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?
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.
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
Off the top of my head:
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API’s a big one. Mobile app development for kbin is deeply hampered because of that.
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The ability to quickly filter your timeline by Local/Global, which is a big deal for regional or themed instances.
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A (more) easily accessible subscribed community/magazine list (slower/smaller communities are kind of totally smothered in kbin).
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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”).
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Are those features client or protocol specific? My Lemmy client, connect, let’s me block instances and has search for posts, communities, users, comments, etc.
yes connect has all of these features. It’s my main app on mobile and wefwef for pc (i refuse to call it voyager, because it’s a generic name)
Are there any mobile apps for kbin?
There is an app on Testflight and Play Store at the moment.
But you won’t be able to login yet, besides the test Kbin api server.
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.
I’ve been working on the API, and it is pretty much feature complete (barring feedback) and should be entering review very soon.
Amazing, thank you!
Kbin how does Lemmy taste
“tracking pixel” issue
Sorry, what’s that?
Embedding in a comment a invisible image that, when loaded, can tell the poster few information about the reader such ip address
I knew that it’s a thing in the emails, but what this has to do with Lemmy, and why kbin should solve this issue? That’s what I’m not understanding
Lemmy allows markdown in comments and it automatically displays images without filtering for “safe” host websites.
It is potentially dangerous for doxxing, but I am not sure how easy it is to exploit it in a useful malicious scenario. But I am not a secops expert.
It was introduced recently and will be fixed soon I understand
Begin, the Fediverse Wars has.
You were supposed to bring balance to the Fediverse! Not leave it in darkness.
Can someone tell me why the back button doesn’t work in Kbin and why my phone starts to heat like there is not tomorrow?
The back button doesn’t work?
Yes, if I click on a post on my phone and I want to go back the android back button doesn’t work.
What browser are you using? I haven’t experienced this one myself on either Firefox or Edge.
Sounds like a bug in your browser, or maybe the Android system.
I can’t wait for an app for Kbin.
What do you mean by the built in search tool to find communities all over Fedi? From what I can tell the search bar only searches communities that are already federated with kbin, so you’d still need to use something like lemmyverse.net/communities for small communities anyways.
And also if you want to have access to a community that hasn’t been federated already, I think you need to use a different search bar. On Lemmy you can use the same for both.
For me Lemmy is better. The web UI is simpler and easier to understand for me, and I have no use for the microblogging features. And more importantly there are Lemmy apps but no kbin ones. I’m glad there are options for everyone, and hopefully they both get the features that they’re missing but the other has!
Yeah the current challenge with searching is if no one has subscribed to a magazine or user on another instance, you have to search the exact name@domain to get it to show up. Ideally Kbin instances would implement a user bot that subscribes to all the users and communities it can scrape from all federated instances until this search limitation is fixed.
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