What’s the difference between Kbin and Lemmy?
What’s the difference between Kbin and Lemmy?
They’re both built on ActivityPub and look very similar, but Kbin is talked about like an alternative to Lemmy instead of an instance of it. Is it a fork? Why is it better or worse?
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Kbin and lemmy are two different sites. Lemmy is a reddit-style site. Kbin has lemmy-style threads but also mastodon-style microblogs.
They both can interact with each other since they're both a part of the fediverse. Personally, I like kbin.
But was Kbin built from the ground up as it’s own project or is it a fork of something else? And where does Squabbles fit into all of this?
Kbin started as a fork of Lemmy AFAIK
Maybe in the dim and distant but not now. It's written in a completely different language for a start 🤣
This is not true. Lemmys backend is written in rust, kbin in php.
Argue with the man himself
I'll just say that before starting from scratch, I tried to create kbin as a fork of Lemmy.
https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/10509/Thank-you-so-much-for-your-support#entry-comment-45119
It's kinda silly and holds no real merit, but I like the name Kbin more than Lemmy. Lemmy reminds me of Lemmings and the idea of creatures running off a cliff. Kbin is shorter, doesn't really mean anything, and feels cooler/more technical. Just my 2c though.
Just wish we could see federated content on Kbin. Right now it feels like its own lonely instance while the Lemmy instances are thriving from multiple other instances federating their content.
I was here before the federation broke and was able to interact with the rest of the fediverse. Please, be patient, it will come back :)
That's great to hear! :) Looking forward to it!
Personally, I think the fediverse just confuses new users and is a big barrier to entry. Id love to see Kbin or a Lemmy instance just be it’s own centralized thing with no federation. But I’ve only had a few days of experience with this so perhaps I will change my tune eventually.
I agree. I think Kbin and Lemmy can learn a few things from how Mastodon operates right now... Very easy to sign up (though there's still the weird barrier to entry of figuring out which instance to sign up for), and then you're exposed to the entire federated Mastodon content pretty transparently.
By contrast, on Lemmy, you have to select "All" to see all communities across servers. And Kbin doesn't currently see federated content at all, so...
And then, ultimately, you're stuck with a new problem that the Fediverse is creating : if I want to subscribe, say, to a gaming community/magazine, which one do I pick? Every instance has its own communities on popular topics.