this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2023
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/kbin-related stuff. Unofficial, not moderated by devs (yet). Official ones: /m/kbinMeta /m/kbinDesign **All official /kbin magazines in one collection**

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I'm a bit confused at the explosive growth of Lemmy and the slower growth of Kbin. Do the stats reflect the reality or is there a problem with the data being fed back to the various stat hubs?

I know the difference is partly because Lemmy was a larger platform, and is better known but the growth of Kbin seems suprisingly flat while the community seems to be getting more and more active?

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[–] [email protected] 96 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Seems pretty even to me:
https://fedidb.org/current-events/threadiverse

(Should not look at created accounts, those are spammers)

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's actually the opposite. Kbin has been growing faster than Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (7 children)

And that's surprising, given it's s newer, less-established platform. But it's not like Lemmy was a household name before this.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I can give only my impression why I have chosen kbin. Better looking, more clear interface.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah there's something about the way kbin works that just resonates with me more than Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Kbin is better on PC, Lemmy is better on mobile. At least for me. Only downside I've found is I can't upvote comments on Lemmy while on mobile.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Those graphs are quite informative, and yeah, it seems more like similar growth for both sites based on that info.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Honestly, looking at active users over the last 24 hours I’d say kbin is growing faster than lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Even setting aside user stats, kbin.social threads still manage to rise pretty high when sorted by Active/Hot from lemmy instances viewing all threads/channels/magazines. I created accounts on several instances, and we'll see which one wins out on how I actually want to use these sites/services, but for the most part there's a ton of overlap between what regular users are seeing from each service.

[–] [email protected] 90 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Probably because of the endorsement of Lemmy by subreddits, which has been far greater than the endorsement of Kbin. Lemmy's also just been around far longer than Kbin. Those server issues that Kbin encountered during the whole explosion of users also likely slowed down growth a bit. Even with Lemmy's bot problem I think these have made it grow faster anyway.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I have been trying to login to Lemmy for the past 2 days and just get a spinning wheel

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago (2 children)

@BananaTrifleViolin. I'm fine with it. I tried lemmy first and was met by a ton of issues from the influx. Kbin thus far has seemed more stable and honestly I like the layout a bit better.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Same on the layout.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Me too, I tried to make a lemmy account and it wouldn't work at first, and then when it did work it wouldn't let me log in. I can't imagine how much more of a pain in the ass it would be if it was one of the instances that required an essay to apply for membership.

I tried kbin and it worked first try, no problems at all. I figured I would run into the same problem I had trying to join lemmy but didn't have a problem at all.

I can't imagine how many more people would be signing up to the federation if it just worked first try.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

This is my experience as well. Tried lemmy and the login icon just kept spinning in circles. I even tried asking discords for help.

Tried kbin and it just works, no issues, smooth.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I admit that I had buyer's remorse for a bit after immediately jumping to Kbin and finding out later that Lemmy existed. Lemmy's UI just looks friendlier and more colorful. But I'm sticking with Kbin-- no reason not to, really, since all (or most) of the content cross-pollenates!

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago

I like the simplicity and lack of color at Kbin! So, they're definitely different selling points.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (3 children)

welcome to the fedi.
multiple accounts are not only normal but also encouraged.

please feel free to create a lemmy account and a mastodon account and a pixelfed account and a peertube account.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

Interesting. I got the opposite impression, that Kbin is friendlier and has a nicer UI (for the most part). I ended up moving from lemmy.world because of it.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Kbin is growing faster than Lemmy. Lemmy just saw a huge amount of spambot registrations recently.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

This is the answer.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago

Lotta bots on Lemmy. The stats I saw looked like 200k users in the last few weeks. I'd willing to gamble most are bots. Maybe some for ads, maybe some to claim names then sell 'em later.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Most people heard about Lemmy on reddit, and heard about kbin on lemmy, possibly after they already made an account.

Im not going to not interact with Lemmy because of its developers but it was enough I decided id rather not be tied exclusively to their tankie ass politics.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What is it about Lemmy's developers?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago

Questionable opinions about such diverse topics as:

  1. Is the Uygher genocide in China a thing?
  2. Is North Korea bad?
  3. Was the Russian invasion of Ukraine actually a noble attempt to liberate its people from Nazis?
[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

That seems like the bottom line. I suppose a case could be made for concern that the instance you choose is going to remain for the long term. And that it's not run by people with beliefs egregiously different than yours. Other than that, being on a main instance or not shouldn't matter too much.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

I think a lot of people moved from Reddit to Kbin in the early days of the black out and at that point Kbin was isolated from Lemmy. So when people saw less content they jumped to Lemmy. Which just made that already big community grow. Then people told other people they went to Lemmy instead of Kbin.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Some of that may well be real, but one issue that is a factor is that it appears that someone is having bots auto-creating accounts at lemmy instances with open-sign-up, which is believed to be responsible for a considerable portion of the new accounts (basically, many of the accounts don't appear to be active, and apparently the instance admins are banning a number of them). The lemmy.dbzer0.com instance admin has something up on GitHub to try to monitor the situation:

https://github.com/db0/lemmy-overseer

I'll add that that does highlight the fact that the Reddit team has put a lot of time over the years into countering bad actors, spammers and the like, and some of those are probably going to try to hit lemmy/kbin.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Lemmy is having a lot of bot issues. I think once they get that sorted we can get a better comparison.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Most people like me came to lemmy when they first left reddit and it was just there. my first instance was lemmy.ml and they where having issues so i went to lemmy.world and it was amazing. i kept hearing about kbin but they where having issues also. eventually kbin was stable and now i'm here for the long haul. lemmy has basic features like subs and you can subscribe and create post etc.. kbin has Threads = Reddit Post, Microblogging = Twitter and Magazines = Subreddits all in one service. Make an account and see for yourself. you can have a lemmy account kbin dosen't matter!

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

All I know is i’m using an ipad and everytime I try to log into lemmy i’m stuck at the login screen with a spinning icon. Tried kbin and it just works, no hassle.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have signed up for both in the past 24 hours. I think there are pros and cons to both and honestly I like both about equally

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Same for me. I haven't decided jet which one I'll prefer longterm.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have been using Lemmy initially, but have switched over to trying Kbin. I am still unsure which I will use mainly.

I think Kbin has a much cleaner UI, but I think I like the process of commenting on Lemmy much better. Many little things, like having a "top" sort option to see the top comment, and comment box under the story as opposed to at the bottom of the page. Also, you can minimize comment trees in Lemmy, which is a necessity.

Lemmy's one big issue right now is its main page sorting is broken and needs desperately to be fixed.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

yeah i started my fediverse journey on lemmy, but i wasnt a big fan of the interface. The mobile apps in testflight didn't scratch that itch for me either. But the kbin website w/ kbin enhancement script has made me an ideal experience on both desktop and mobile so I believe I will be staying with kbin.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The magazine from the federated server may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

that's a big part of it. people want something that just works, and they don't want to leave the site to see the latest submissions/comments.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

i've noticed that sometimes these magazines are actually fairly recent and you don't have to leave the site—the server may be incomplete but also may not be. i've subscribed to a few from beehaw that say this and seem recent enough that i can use them.

but for sure this is not the case for all of them and it is a top issue that's gotta be addressed if we want more users to hop on without skepticism

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

Some Lemmy instances don't have any sort of validation on user signup, but Kbin absolutely has user signup validation, which limits how fast we can grow(and is a great thing IMO).

Also, with the way federation works its almost a benefit since then kbin(and any other smaller server) can maintain a tighter community with the ability to cut out servers with negative experiences(read: too spammy/too many bots/too hateful)

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (4 children)

kbin wasn't federated yet when we jumped. as far as i'm aware i made my kbin account like 6 hours after federation, because i did that as soon as i heard that there was a different UI

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Lemmy has been around for much longer than kbin. So it obviously has more number of users in total. A better figure to compare is the monthly active users. According to FediDB, kbin actually has more monthly active users than Lemmy.

[–] Quill7513 5 points 1 year ago

For me it's the ecosystem. Lemmy is more mature with its API and app ecosystem.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Lemmy was just ready first. Kbin at the time wasn't linked to the other instances yet, and was very slow, and had a lot of cloudflare issues.

It really doesn't matter long-term because Kbin can interact with Lemmy anyway.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Just a minor correction, kbin unfederated during the great migration due to user explosion. Kbin also activated cloud flare to keep bots from marching in. Kbin went back to being federated after @ernest felt safe doing so. Some Lemmy instances unfederated too.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Adding to all the previously added reasons, there's also no native mobile app yet for Kbin, and that seems related to having no API released yet.

That is hopefully going to change soon since at least 2 apps are being worked on by the community - This unnamed one with the goal of being like Apollo, and Artemis which seems to be looking for beta testers - besides the hopefully soon-to-be-released Official Kbin mobile app by the Kbin team.

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