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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[–] bad_alloc@feddit.de 35 points 2 years 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 32 points 2 years 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 25 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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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[–] BlackCoffee@beehaw.org 12 points 2 years ago

I can understand where mstdn.social is coming from and it is an "uneasy" situation. But the fact is that you have a choice here in which with whom you communicate.

The irony though of Reddit discussing to stay on Reddit and actually comply with the Autocratic leadership it has.

[–] nii236@lemmy.jtmn.dev 25 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (16 children)

Sorry guys, kbin is built on PHP.

So even if it did succeed, it won't be for long.

[–] ipkpjersi@lemmy.one 22 points 2 years ago (6 children)

I know this is a joke, but not only is KBin built on PHP, but so are Facebook, PornHub, and Wikipedia.

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[–] venuswasaflytrap@lemmy.ca 11 points 2 years ago (3 children)

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

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[–] Gecko@feddit.de 10 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yeah, I generally prefer kbin's UI over lemmy's but given the backend is in PHP I have concerns that it might not be able to scale effectively with its growth.

Not saying that PHP is a complete showstopper but there are valid concerns in terms of maintainability...

[–] reric88@beehaw.org 12 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Can you explain this in simple terms for simple minds like mine? And I only ask for other people like me who may wonder but not ask

[–] derived_allegory@beehaw.org 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (5 children)

There is a "rumor"/"running joke" in the programming community that PHP application is hard to maintain.

Primarily, because it is originally designed to whip up a website in a quick and dirty way, hence the original name "personal homepage".

Where as rust (which is what Lemmy is built upon) is a much more modern language with more safe guard in place to help scaling the application.

Obviously, like many people pointed out there are many larger project is built by PHP. However, many larger companies have the resources build significant extension to PHP to make it more usable, like Facebook's hhvm and hack language are both tools that revolve around PHP. This is a luxury not enjoyed by smaller projects like kbin, Lemmy, even mastodon.

My personal opinion is that PHP is not a great language, but language is just a tool; programmers are also a huge contributing factor in creating maintainable program. For example, python is probably one of the less principled language out there (for example, it's variable scoping is very confusing); yet if the programmer programs in a manner to avoid these disadvantages, they can still build fast and maintainable project with it.

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[–] mobyduck648@beehaw.org 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Modern PHP is supposed to be a decent language these days rather than a collection of footguns so I wouldn’t write it off out of hand. It wouldn’t be my first choice of language but it still runs huge swathes of the web. What it will mean is it’ll be harder for Kbin to attract developers on a voluntary basis I think, if I’m giving my time for free I’d much rather spent it writing Rust than PHP even if PHP is decent these days.

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[–] daan@lemmy.vanoverloop.xyz 25 points 2 years 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.

[–] unix_joe@lemmy.sdf.org 25 points 2 years 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 11 points 2 years 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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[–] croobat@lemmy.world 24 points 2 years ago (1 children)

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

[–] rysiek@szmer.info 9 points 2 years 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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[–] ubergeek77@lemmy.ubergeek77.chat 23 points 2 years ago (1 children)
[–] communist@beehaw.org 19 points 2 years ago (5 children)
[–] ubergeek77@lemmy.ubergeek77.chat 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

I keep hearing similar things, but not a single person has linked to a comment or anything the devs have actually said.

Where can I read about this? I want to see what they said.

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[–] z2k_@lemmy.nz 23 points 2 years 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.

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[–] Sleeping@iusearchlinux.fyi 20 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (8 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 2 years ago

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

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[–] PeaPanties@lemmy.ml 19 points 2 years ago (14 children)

The lack of app for KBin kills it for me.

I have a account with KBin and I may use it as well if there's an app

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[–] uthredii@beehaw.org 17 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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 8 points 2 years 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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[–] pinkpatrol@anarch.is 16 points 2 years 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.

[–] Towerism@beehaw.org 14 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Personally, I'm loyal to Beehaw. I like the culture that it is trying to grow. But I like how I can subscribe to things outside of beehaw as long the instance has federation enabled.

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[–] Defaced@lemmy.world 12 points 2 years 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 12 points 2 years ago (3 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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[–] jason@sh.itjust.works 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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 11 points 2 years ago (6 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.

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[–] priapus@lemmy.one 10 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

Nice to see the fediverse growing no matter where it is. As long as we can all communicate it doesn't matter what instance or software we're on.

Sidenote: is kbin a fork of lemmy? Or a different codebase entirely?

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[–] farizer@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 2 years 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 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Can I use kbin to read Lemmy content?

[–] rysiek@szmer.info 10 points 2 years ago (3 children)

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

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[–] trachemys@iusearchlinux.fyi 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

in the short term we have a few upcoming critical mod tool launches we need to nail

Umm, you really should have launched this before shutting down the current tools mods use.

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