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

  • z2k_@lemmy.nz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    59
    ·
    1 year ago

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

  • wit@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    46
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.infoOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      25
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      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).

      • wit@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        ·
        1 year ago

        Can you provide a source to your claim that lemmygrad is ran by Nutomic or Dessalines?

        • rysiek@szmer.infoOP
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          14
          ·
          1 year ago

          It used to be deployed on the same IP address. I don’t have the receipts. Take it or leave it.

          • Mummelpuffin@beehaw.org
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            15
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            What I don’t get is, I don’t see how that’s a reason to be concerned about Lemmy when the whole point is that there’s no central control over instances, which literally anyone can spin up, and instances can communicate / ban each other as they please. It’s impossible for the politics of the creators to have any real effect on the software, by design. I feel like people aren’t grasping how this all works. If you’re concerned about their politics, just don’t use instances that align with those politics, even spin up your own if you’re really worried about it.

            • rysiek@szmer.infoOP
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              5
              ·
              1 year ago

              I do indeed use a Lemmy instance that is not aligned with tankie politics. That being said, I am also acutely aware that technology is political and developers of a given piece of software make decisions based on their personal politics, sometimes even without knowing it. So it is important, I feel, to be aware of that.

            • Sockenklaus@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              1 year ago

              Technically speaking, you are completely right. The problem is that the negative association rubs off on the project regardless of the factual context. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter whether the political views of the developers influence the political direction of the software. The association that sticks is: Lemmy is the one with the Stalinist developer.

              • hydrospanner@vlemmy.net
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                1 year ago

                Exactly.

                It’s analogous to the way that Reddit knowingly allowing some subs to exist repelled some users.

                Most were able to get past it and simply not subscribe to subs they found objectionable, but I’m sure many people just stayed away once they learned that certain subs existed and were very much known about by Reddit admins.

                One key difference here is the way that your instance is able to enforce rules and to some extent influence and filter your user experience, and that’s worth consideration too.

                I’m also curious if and how an instance like lemmy.ml can, for example, delete comments, ban users, take down content in cases of cross-instance interaction. Could the admins of lemmy.ml, for example, ban a user from another instance from Lemmy completely? From their local communities? Could they remove that person’s comments? Can they prevent their own users from seeing content they don’t like on other instances? Can they moderate content from their users that is posted to communities on other instances?

                • fubo@lemmy.world
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  3
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  It’s analogous to the way that Reddit knowingly allowing some subs to exist repelled some users.

                  Let’s be absolutely clear about that:

                  For years (2008-2011), Reddit hosted forums for pedophiles to share “legal” pictures of young girls for other pedophiles’ erotic entertainment; e.g. upskirt photos showing children’s underwear.

                  For years, Reddit hosted forums for misogynistic men to encourage one another to perpetrate violence against women; for racists to promote and plan violence against black people; etc.

    • BlackCoffee@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      1 year 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.

  • uthredii@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    35
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    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.infoOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      19
      ·
      1 year ago

      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.

  • bad_alloc@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    34
    ·
    1 year ago

    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?).

    • jmp242@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      This is actually more like a return to the 90s of Usenet and mailing lists imho.

      • ApathyMoose@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        Maybe its just Nostalgia, but ill take that. Where you actually go to a place that has something to do with what your looking for, rather then a giant, centralized site where random people pop in, talk crap, and pop out.

      • Someology@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Yeah, I’ve been thinking all day that’s it is like Usenet 2.0 in a way. Back when Usenet actually had enthusiast conversation happening on it.

  • PeaPanties@lemmy.mlB
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    33
    ·
    1 year ago

    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

    • spamfajitas@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      1 year ago

      On Android, you can add it to your home screen and it functions kind of like an app… it could definitely benefit from a native app, though.

      • LUHG@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        Nobody is going to fly with mobile browser these days. It’s App or die in this regard.

        The biggest social media sites have apps. It’s suicide. Heck, the reason these sites are having the mass infux is because Reddits app sucks. If it was amazing nobody would of really cared and the spez drama wouldn’t have happened.

        Just my 2c.

      • QuarterSwede@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        1 year ago

        God, what I would give for Apollo to rip the Reddit API guts out and refit with Lemmy’s. He open sourced it so I’m sure someone will.

          • CoffeeBot@lemmy.ca
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Server backend stuff was to contradict the Reddit CEOs claims about Apollo being inefficient on the API.

        • jonne@infosec.pub
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Would be hilarious if all the third party reddit clients updated at the same time to connect to a completely new board.

    • spoonful@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      1 year ago

      Checkout Hermit on Android. It’s an app that turns web applications into standalone apps with a bunch of great features like adblocking, scripting, frameless mode etc. I use it for Beehaw as well.

  • unix_joe@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    31
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.infoOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      1 year ago

      competition can be a good thing in this space.

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

    • maynarkh@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      1 year ago

      As I understand both make the greater platform bigger, more Kbin users means more Lemmy content as well.

      Imagine competition being mutually beneficial!

  • pinkpatrol@anarch.is
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    30
    ·
    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.

    • rysiek@szmer.infoOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      1 year ago

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

        • rysiek@szmer.infoOP
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          I wish I came up wit it myself! Sadly no, noticed it in a few threads over the last few days.

          Humans are amazing.

          • maynarkh@feddit.nl
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            I hope I just witnessed the beginning of something we’ll casually use in a few years.

  • nii236@lemmy.jtmn.dev
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    27
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Sorry guys, kbin is built on PHP.

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

    • ipkpjersi@lemmy.one
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      18
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

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

      • bouncing@partizle.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        I’m sure there’s some php still around at Facebook, but I doubt any new php projects have been started in 10+ years at any of those organizations.

        • ipkpjersi@lemmy.one
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          1 year ago

          You’d be surprised. Modern PHP with Laravel can actually be quite nice to work with.

          • bouncing@partizle.com
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            1 year ago

            I’m sure it is, and I hear good things about Laravel, but you’re still working under some really bad decisions made in the past. That’s always the problem with great frameworks on bad languages: the frameworks are great, but you can’t escape the past.

            I’d point you to r/lolphp, but well, you know. Instead, I'll just leave this here.

      • nii236@lemmy.jtmn.dev
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        1 year ago

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

        • venuswasaflytrap@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          I think people get way too caught up on technical optimisation issues with a language.

          The reason a language, programming or otherwise, catches on is ultimately based on how many people use the language. So the lower the barrier to entry, they more people who will use it. PHP has a pretty low barrier to entry to creating a website (however simple/bad) and it has a lot of cultural momentum. I don’t see PHP going away anytime soon.

          • mobyduck648@beehaw.org
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            Yeah ‘built in $language’ literally only matters from the point of view of attracting volunteer devs, end users couldn’t care less as long as the platform works. Lemmy and Kbin could be written in Malbolge for all they cared as long as it loads properly and doesn’t annoy them.

            While I wouldn’t start a new PHP project myself as it’s yet another language to juggle and not one I’m particularly interested in it’s a perfectly legitimate choice even in 2023.

    • mobyduck648@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      1 year 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.

    • Gecko@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      1 year ago

      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
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        1 year ago

        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
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          10
          ·
          edit-2
          1 year ago

          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; programmer is 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.

          • reric88🧩@beehaw.org
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 year ago

            Cool, thanks! I only have experience with JavaScript and Python, and I personally prefer JS because Python has been confusing to me. But, I have heard Python is more efficient and easier in the long-term.

            After ‘mastering’ JS to a sufficient ability I will put my efforts towards Python. I am stumped as to why I feel JS is easier than Python when I have also heard the opposite; that python is easier than JS

            • Square Singer@feddit.de
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              1 year ago

              Ahm, no ;)

              Both JS and Python are neither efficient nor easier in the long-term. They are both languages that were primarily built to make quick-and-dirty small and simple programs/scripts.

              Both are really slow and inefficient (though Python is much slower than JS nowadays). Both are dynamic languages which opens then up for all sorts of dirty hacks and are pretty negative for maintainability.

              Because of that, both languages have unofficial typing support (Typescript and Mypy) to make programs in these languages somewhat maintainable.

              If you are looking for performance, the first tier is natively compiling languages like C/C++/Rust/Go. The second tier are languages that compile to bytecode and run on heavily optimized runtime environments like anything running on the JVM or C# or therelike. And the worst tier are super dynamic languages like JS or Python.

              • Blake [he/him]@feddit.uk
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                3
                ·
                edit-2
                1 year ago

                In terms of what’s easiest, it really depends on what you’re doing to be honest. Like, if you’re a data scientist, you want to learn Python. If you’re a web developer, you want to learn JavaScript - I believe that Wasm is the future of the web, but we’re going to have traditional HTML/JavaScript for decades to come.

              • reric88🧩@beehaw.org
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                Oh, I didn’t know this, I appreciate the insight. I have been working with typescript a bit, but sidestepped back to JS for a small project because of familiarity. My next project may be typescript just to get a feel for it.

                I have heard a lot of buzz about rust, but I haven’t looked it up because I don’t want to overwhelm myself with new things. But it does seem very popular. And I doubt there’s anyone, even people unfamiliar with code, who hasn’t heard of the C family!

                I’m not giving up JS, since it is so popular for web development, but it does make me sad that it’s so inefficient for other tasks in comparison to the other languages. Butz it also makes me kind of excited to get into some of the meatier stuff

    • Hexorg@beehaw.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      1 year ago

      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
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            To be a bit more verbose, I don’t think all programming languages are created equal, and its a disservice to pretend it is.

            Duck Duck Go was written in Perl. GitHub (originally) in Ruby on Rails.

            They’re tools only because they’re general purpose programming languages. The real path to success is in choosing a tool that you’re good at using (no matter how blunt), rather than pretending all tools are equal.

            • Hexorg@beehaw.org
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              3
              ·
              1 year ago

              Sure but dissing on languages you don’t like will only make devs who like those languages defensive. Not every dev is good only at languages you’re good at.

      • bouncing@partizle.com
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Fair, but for me, both Rust and Php mean I won’t be customizing or contributing much to the project.

        • nii236@lemmy.jtmn.dev
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          The repo’s contributor archetype will change based on the language too. What language would you be comfortable in contributing with?

          • bouncing@partizle.com
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Me? I’m always at home in Python. It’s like a warm cozy blanket of productivity and joy.

    • jimmyjoners@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Are there any sites in the Fediverse written in .net? I’d like to contribute to these sites, but I haven’t touched PHP in over a decade.

    • rysiek@szmer.infoOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 year ago

      Oh I am not saying it is not doing fine. I just found it super-interesting that a much younger project got ahead, even if perhaps only temporarily, as far as active users are concerned.

      • spoonful@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 year ago

        Honestly, many people are turned off by Lemmy tankies. I myself though I’d never come back to Lemmy until I found beehaw.

        • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          Honestly, many people are turned off by Lemmy tankies.

          I keep hearing people commenting about that, but so far I haven’t noticed any particular tankie-ish influence.

          Maybe I’m just not choosing the communities where they hang out?

          • Rhabuko@feddit.de
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            The problem is lemmy.ml From what I get, a lot of the old guard (before the Reddit exodus) are tankies. That includes the admins and mods. And Lemmy.ml was or still is the biggest instance because new people automatically choose the server of the Lemmy devs (Because many people don’t understand the concept of federation).

            • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              1 year ago

              So for those of us that do t have any association or federation with the “tankie lemmy”, there shouldn’t be any taint, right?

  • Danacus@lemmy.vanoverloop.xyz
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    21
    ·
    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.

      • ubergeek77@lemmy.ubergeek77.chat
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        1 year ago

        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.

          • Woedenaz@lemmy.fmhy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            9
            ·
            1 year ago

            I don’t see much proof there outside of some “this definitely happened” type thing. Not that I don’t believe them but that’s not the strongest proof.

            • Celivalg@iusearchlinux.fyi
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              1 year ago

              Heh, I just used another instance throught doubt just in case. They’re overloaded anyway. Code doesn’t have a political opinion (well, licences might), and other instances don’t show signs of what the commi instance is being accused off as far as I can tell

              • Wereduck@lemmy.blahaj.zone
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                6
                ·
                1 year ago

                To me that looks like a fairly non-controversial perspective amongst leftists and communists (especially internationally). But that’s just my (communist) perspective.

        • HawkMan@beehaw.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          I suspect both the tankie, extreme right and left wing content is being suppressed by the slew of new content being posted now. And that shit not getting the votes it needs to be seen anymore.

        • AGTMADCAT@infosec.pub
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          1 year ago

          I mean, there are very different flavors of communist, so it kind of makes sense. You can believe in communal ownership of all non-personal property without supporting the violent oppression of dissent.

  • deephurting@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.

  • Towerism@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • dystop@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      I don’t like that beehaw doesn’t allow community creation (or nsfw).

      Is kbin also part of the fediverse? Can you interact with kbin from lemmy, and how is it different?

      • yogurtwrong@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        Use another instances then? Afaik beehaw is more of a family friendly place and not for nsfw. lemmy.world allows both community creation and nsfw

  • trachemys@iusearchlinux.fyi
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    1 year ago

    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.