this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2023
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Looks like KBin has an edge over Lemmy now in terms of monthly active users.

It's obviously a pretty silly thing, and is not in any way indicative of which project is "better" or more "long-term viable" or anything — instances of both federate with one another, and with the rest of fedi, so it's all one happy family.

That said, it's notable. KBin is a relative newcomer to the "Reddit-like fedi instance" game, and also does not have the tankie baggage.

Anyway, the more, the merrier!

KBin: https://the-federation.info/platform/184

Lemmy: https://the-federation.info/platform/73

Discussion on fedi: https://mstdn.social/@rysiek/110527049024028986

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[–] z2k_@lemmy.nz 41 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Just note that kbin.social currently has Cloudflare DDoS protection enabled which is breaking federation. Until this is removed, the communities are seperate.

[–] Helio@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 year ago

Good to know, I was wondering why I couldn't see any kbin stuff here

I've got my lemmy instance proxied through cloudflare. It can work if you make it work. It does take a page rule to get around some of the bot detection nonsense.

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[–] uthredii@beehaw.org 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I am on both and kbin seems less active.

Perhaps the numbers are counted different?

lemmy might be counting people who have posted this month and kbin might be counting anyone who has visited the site.

Big respect to all the devs for handling this growth so well.

[–] rysiek@szmer.info 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

lemmy might be counting people who have posted this month and kbin might be counting anyone who has cisited the site.

The data is from The-Federation.info, and the idea is that the metric is about users whose accounts were active over the last month. I think "active" in both cases means "has logged in recently".

Big respect to all the devs for handling this growth so well.

Absolutely. Sending all the hugs and good vibes, the Big Wave has not even started yet, I think.

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[–] mustyOrange@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago

yea, kbin is definitely less active

[–] pinkpatrol@anarch.is 24 points 1 year ago

I think it mainly comes down to the project landing page being more friendly and the UI being more polished.

The landing page of join-lemmy.org doesn't show what the website looks like. The only screenshots are of code and github. That section is geared towards potential instance administrators, not potential users.

[–] bad_alloc@feddit.de 22 points 1 year ago (3 children)

This is great. It suddenly feels like the internet of 2003 again, with small communities popping up, competition and less of a corporate chokehold. Only this time they have a shared login and crosstalk, which was sorely lacking back then. If we are lucky this event might establish a stable, new part of the internet, which is separate from the consolidated platforms. The Fediverse doesn't have to replace sites like reddit, just be a next step for people fed up with the corporate net (corponet?).

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[–] wit@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That mstdn.social and the whole "lemmy = tankie" (whatever the fuck that means) is doing a disservice to the whole unreddit movement. I have seen plenty of discussion on reddit now of people not leaving because of these posts..

[–] rysiek@szmer.info 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

I did not say "lemmy = tankie", I said Lemmy has certain tankie baggage, and that is in fact true. The developers are pretty clearly tankies, they also run a strictly tankie instance (Lemmygrad; many Lemmy instances do not federate with it).

Pretending this is not the case is not going to help in the long run. It might slow down the "unreddit" movement now, but I'd wager a bet it will make it more long-term viable and resilient, if people understand that choice of instance is important (there are quite a few great Lemmy instances that I would recommend wholeheartidly, like BeeHaw), and that there are alternative, independent implementations on Threadiverse (like Kbin).

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[–] unix_joe@lemmy.sdf.org 20 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I don't really care. I'm on Lemmy but fuck it, as long as it gets people off Reddit, competition can be a good thing in this space.

Metallica and Megadeth are historically successful bands, but Metallica would have never made it if Mustaine stayed.

[–] rysiek@szmer.info 9 points 1 year ago

competition can be a good thing in this space.

Absolutely, that's why I am celebrating Kbin existing and being used.

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[–] nii236@lemmy.jtmn.dev 19 points 1 year ago (10 children)

Sorry guys, kbin is built on PHP.

[–] venuswasaflytrap@lemmy.ca 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If history has taught me anything - I would say that means that kbin will persist forever.

[–] nii236@lemmy.jtmn.dev 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I mean, almost half of all the websites on the internet is built on WordPress, so maybe you're onto something here...

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[–] Hexorg@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Let’s not hate on tools. Php has its uses and has been proven to be useful in commercial applications. So has Rust. They are different but the choice of programming language means nothing for the core project.

[–] nii236@lemmy.jtmn.dev 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I, too, can use a banana to hammer in a nail

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[–] croobat@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Great news to me I'm not "pro-lemmy", I am "anti-reddit".

[–] rysiek@szmer.info 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Same! I use a Lemmy instance myself. I'm just happy to see there is diversity in terms of software projects in the Threadiverse.

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[–] daan@lemmy.vanoverloop.xyz 18 points 1 year ago

The cloudflare protection of their main instance is breaking federation right now, which is a bit annoying. I hope this will be resolved soon.

[–] Sleeping@iusearchlinux.fyi 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

Just took a look at the stats on The-Federation.info and looks like Lemmy is doing just fine.

Lemmy Stats: 162 Nodes 90,053 Users 277,427 Posts 610,007 Comments

Kbin Stats: 7 Nodes 5,960 Users 3,992 Posts 4,844 Comments

[–] worfamerryman@beehaw.org 11 points 1 year ago

I just noticed the same thing. I do not see a stat that shows kbin is overtaking lemmy.

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[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Any ideas what are the pros and cons of each option?

[–] rysiek@szmer.info 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lemmy is written in Rust, has been around for a while, and there are a bunch of established communities on established Lemmy instances already.

KBin is sadly PHP, relative newcomer, arguably better interface, and no baggage.

That's all I got myself. Hope others will chip in.

[–] leetnewb@beehaw.org 12 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Why is php a bad thing in this case? It seems like exactly the kind of application that php is well suited for. Plus there's the maturity of php's major frameworks. While I'm not saying Rust is necessarily bad for building web applications, it's web frameworks must be less mature and battle tested. Plus, it seems like a lower bar to get community dev contributions for a php project than rust.

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[–] farizer@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 1 year ago

I tried kbin but it currently slow as hell at least for me. It definitely is more inviting with its design though.

[–] Nikokin@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Can I use kbin to read Lemmy content?

[–] rysiek@szmer.info 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes. Check out the biggest currently active instance of Kbin, https://fedia.io/ — plenty of stuff from Lemmy instances.

[–] HiT3k@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

What I don't understand is why there are SO many missing comments when reading threads in one instance from another instance. For example, the top "Hot" post on Fedia right now is a post about community fragmentation on Lemmy. When viewed from Fedia, it has 8 comments, but when view within the source Lemmy instance, it has 40.

This is an issue I've seen in every instance on both Lemmy and KBin and it's a huge issue. One of the main reasons I joined Beehaw. In fact, Beehaw shows more comments than even the NATIVE Lemmy instance, at 57!

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[–] jason@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Despite the tankie stuff I prefer the interface of Lemmy, though I have accounts on both. Love that they federate. Things are happening.

[–] zipdog@beehaw.org 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Agreed Lemmy is a lot cleaner IMO. I'd be all-in if it weren't for the political baggage, even with federation we're empowering these guys and giving them a bigger platform. l'm still uneasy about that.

[–] wiredfire@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I’m pretty uneasy about the association, but the attitude of Beehaw is the antithesis of it so I guess it balances out..?

I did play with Kbin first but the interface felt kinda broken to me, buttons not reacting and the like..

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"Tankie baggage?"

[–] deephurting@beehaw.org 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A couple times a day when I go to kbin they Cloudflare me...kinda irritating. beehaw or Squabbles are down with a VPN dropping by, apparently. Or whatever's at work here.

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[–] bubu@feddit.de 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

If I were to switch from Lemmy to KBin (or vice versa), would I have to start over (e.g. create a new account there and lose all my comments etc.)? Or would it be possible to “migrate”?

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[–] manitcor@lemmy.intai.tech 6 points 1 year ago (12 children)

just looked for the first time, I really do prefer kbin's UI to Lemmy's right now at least the default web client. Is there value in running both or just one?

I notice I can see mastadon posts on lemmy as well but how do I find stuff on Kbin or Mastadon from lemmy?

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[–] Veraticus@lib.lgbt 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Hmm, interesting. I just spent some time getting a Lemmy instance set up -- maybe I should've gone for kbin instead?

[–] rysiek@szmer.info 21 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I don't think you need to worry about it. It's up to a given community whether or not that baggage affects it or not, I think. Building communities that are very explicitly not tankie is a great way of helping overcome that baggage for the whole project.

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[–] lunarshot@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago

i think you can engage and interact across both so it may not matter as much.

[–] Defaced@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Can someone explain the "tankie" baggage? I've seen it thrown around quite a bit but no one seems to explain it in detail.

[–] brunox@feddit.cl 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

(Some) Lemmy devs seem to have political ideologies that are within the "tankie" settings. That's mostly it. Some people express they feel uncomfortable about it. Such devs hold an instance separate from the flagship instance (lemmygrad.ml), which in my opinion is not bad at all, I think it's better they keep them to themselves giving an option to other instances to block it. They're not trying to shove tankies ideas down anyones throats or anything.

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[–] HawkMan@beehaw.org 5 points 1 year ago

Are you comparing kbin to all of the lemmy fediverse?

Because kbin is part of the fediverse and has as far as I understand been bigger then the biggest lemmy instances for a while by a good margin?

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