Fediverse

I run fedia.io. I also run Infosec.pub. Which is lemmy so I know a lot about both. Lemmy is much more robust, but I personally find the interface for Mbin much nicer and the development of it seems to be headed in a direction I like better than that of lemmy. At least for now.

Simply by choosing a lesser used fedi software you're helping keep the fediverse from being dictated by a single software's whims. So that's a big plus there. Federation issues with kbin/mbin/azorius/other lesser used instance software will inevitably happen as people only test against the largest player in the field (in the ""threadiverse"" that's Lemmy, in the microblogging fedi that's Mastodon). So simply by not picking the largest you're, even if in a small way, helping not only mbin but all the lesser used fedi software as a whole.

Your own local communities being "dead" mainly boils down to communities themselves having a network effect around them where the largest one keeps growing larger as everyone focuses on it. And the largest communities are usually on lemmy.world (or occasionally other Lemmy instances). There isn't that much you can do there.

In my experience, it's always the smaller software that innovate. The same is true in the microblogging fedi (emoji reactions, quote posts, markdown, nomadic identity, reply permissions) just as it's true in the ""threadiverse"" (combining communities together, the ability to follow people, polls apparently (?)).

So really, don't worry about the size of your own instance's communities. As long as you trust your instance's staff to keep you safe there's no real reason not to get on a smaller instance, or on different software. Especially on here, where "discoverability" is not as much of an issue as it is in the microblogging fedi.

the interface to all the exact same content, as you point out, is better.

why would i use an incredibly shitty interface that almost requires the use of an app, when i can access 100% of lemmy from mbin?

this whole 'lemmy-centric' view you have of the fediverse is archaic. you need to think bigger.

the whole point of the fediverse is access to all the content from your interface of choice... and youre asking 'why choose the better interface?'

At risk of answering a question with a question... Is there a drawback to using mbin? Are there certain ways that it makes interacting with Lemmy awkward or difficult, or is it essentially just another interface? There are lots of frontends for the threadiverse - Lemmy UI is just one.

I know that mbin has additional features on the backend, but is there something you are missing out on?

It's much easier to follow people from e.g. mastodon from here than I remember it being on lemmy.

I have been on and off lemmy lately, kbin has been shutdown?!!!

TIL Kbin died.

The mbin devs don‘t seem to be lolicon apologists and transphobes.

Apropos of nothing, I'd like to see a mod done to the fediverse... Each user keeps their own info pod, and fedi sites can use that to populate profiles.

Migration is the largest hurdle in the fedi for users, instances change/shut down/federate with Meta without warning, etc.

Would be great to have one's info on one's own drives, go to other mastodon site that didn't e.g. manipulate its users into being on Meta and just plug in.

Images could also be stored this way, so copyright and provenance is straightforward. When user moves, so does all that.

Then a lemmy, (x)bin, piefed instance becomes just a place to park and not a captive zoo.

I think that the fediverse should offer a compelling improvement over commercial SM,: For me self-custody and easy migration are the things.

This is less a reason to use Lemmy or MBin over the other specifically: One of the great features of the fediverse is that the content is not siloed off behind one interface. Usage and development can happen on both and any number of other interfaces and all of them will have access to the same content (barring federation issues, but that should become less of an issue as ActivityPub and various interfaces mature).

As for there being enough people to populate interface specific communities/magazines/whatever, you can't take a snapshot of today and project that into the future statically. The fediverse population is still relatively low compared to commercial social networking sites, but there is enough of a core userbase for new people to accrete onto over the course of time. There is a potential future where the user base flips, or doesn't but both Lemmy and MBin have large userbases, or another interface that doesn't even exist yet takes off and becomes larger than both. But it doesn't really matter because all that's happening in those cases is people are being offered different ways of accessing the same content that better match their preference.

Bringing it back to the original point, that the content is not siloed means development on various interfaces can happen concurrently to make things not necessarily better than each other, but more suited to different tastes. You aren't locked into whatever Reddit, or Twitter, or whatever decides the interface should look like.