I am torn. Lemmy feels slimmer and easier to use with a wider variety of apps. Kbin has an advantage of being an “all-in-one” solution for the Fediverse with a better UI.

That said I use Mastodon for microblogging, so Kbin having that built in only clutters the site in my particular use case. While Kbin has a better UI it’s also more drab in color and harder to navigate. Kbin also has this karma/points system which feels odd. It skews into the negative VERY easily and is displayed on your profile. I prefer Lemmy’s upvote/downvote system but doesn’t have a permanent karma/points system.

I’ve been reading Lemmy is growing much faster than Kbin, but then I hear that “it’s all bots” and not real growth.

Where do you stand on this? Where do you think you’ll find yourself when this all shakes out?

    • nevernevermore@kbin.social
      32·
      1 year ago

      The “home button” being hidden behind the hamburger menu and the fact that I can’t collapse comment threads are my only 2 QoL issues, otherwise it all works great for a product that’s only like 6 weeks old lol

      There’s just a polish to this site that Lemmy instances don’t have

    • relative_iterator@kbin.social
      12·
      1 year ago

      I’m on iOS and have the site added to my homepage as an app. There’s no way to refresh so I’m constantly falling into this trap 😩

    • TimeSquirrel@kbin.social
      7·
      1 year ago

      It would also be nice to have a “context” button on comments in your profile so you can quickly see your comment surrounded by the comments you were interacting with, like Reddit did. Right now I’m having to go back to the original thread and find my comment to see the sub-thread it was part of and remember what it was we were talking about.

      Also having trouble seeing comment reply notifications from instances outside of kbin. They don’t show up at all and I am unable to see if people are replying to them. Have to go back to the original thread again.

      • thereisalamp@kbin.social
        2·
        1 year ago

        This is really the only fair I’m struggling with, wick access to the thread content before replying is important. I’m trying to avoid commenting on similar threads atm so I don’t accidentally include something from a different thread

  • lixus98@kbin.social
    35·
    1 year ago

    There’s multiple things to consider, both are great options, but right now I’m liking kbin more for these reasons:

    • Better algorithm, when I go to my homepage I feel that the site is full of new, active content, where people are having discussions.
    • Integration with Mastodon, I like to take a peek from time to time on the Microblog tab.
    • No feed bug. Lemmy has a problem where it would show every single new post on top of the feed (I know this is being fixed)

    Overall both Lemmy and kbin are in their infancy and I expect both to get better to a point where choosing between them won’t come down to which one of the two have less bugs, and more focused in the features and appearance you want, this ofc will change with the many apps being developed, since they will be vastly different.
    I might end up in Lemmy or I might stay on kbin, it depends which one feels more “active” to me.

  • timothy_120@kbin.social
    33·
    1 year ago

    For sure Kbin. I keep trying Lemmy from time to time but between the UI and the inconsistent sorting algorithms over there I have chosen to stay here!

  • FreeBooteR69@kbin.social
    24·
    1 year ago

    I prefer kbin myself, though it is imperfect. Comment box should be at the top of the thread, and our subscriptions we subscribe to should be more easily discoverable, under profile name/settings seems non obvious from what i’ve seen of questions asked by others.

  • theinspectorst@kbin.social
    21·
    1 year ago

    I think Kbin, but the lack of an easy to navigate list of subscribed magazines has made me rethink a few times. On Lemmy, it’s easier to get to a list of what communities you’re subscribed to and the ‘local’ feed option can be quite useful too (e.g. on feddit.uk I can more easily use this to browse the UK content).

    • Double_A@kbin.social
      5·
      1 year ago

      This. I miss the list of things I’m subscribed to that reminds me to check in on some of those communities from time to time.

      • Naminreb@kbin.social
        4·
        1 year ago

        You can find that in your profile.

        Open your profile, and at least in mobile, there’s a menu showing you your active posts, threads….and subscriptions is towards the end.

        I use it for the same reason you describe here.

        Hope it helps.

        • theinspectorst@kbin.social
          2·
          1 year ago

          You can, but it takes several clicks and a bit of scrolling, and that only gets you to a non-alphabetical list that is inexplicably cut over multiple pages. It’s making it unnecessarily difficult.

          On Lemmy, they have a button at the top of the screen titled ‘Subscribed’, and if you click it you get a drop-down with all your subscribed communities alphabetically organised right there.

      • Rhaedas@kbin.social
        1·
        1 year ago

        Wow, thanks for the link. The default interface is why I’ve tended to use kbin since getting an account for both, but finding user scripts like this for kbin to fine tune things is why I’m staying unless Lemmy changes a lot.

  • iAmTheTot@kbin.social
    15·
    1 year ago

    Kbin is my preference but it’s not perfect yet. I have a few nitpicks but it’s still the best I’ve used so far.

  • wackypants@kbin.social
    14·
    1 year ago

    Going to have to say Kbin, considering that every attempt to log in to one of the big Lemmy servers just results in an endlessly spinning circle.

    • can@kbin.social
      2·
      1 year ago

      There’s no way for it to tell you if the username is already taken at the moment so that could be an issue. Could also be you need to click an email?

    • 34@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      Have you ever been able to login? I had the same issue with Lemmy World and it was because I forgot to verify my email address, it doesn’t tell you the issue you just get an endless spinning circle.

  • PabloDiscobar@kbin.social
    14·
    1 year ago

    I tried lemmy, I’ve been lectured about “orientalism”, Zelensky was constantly trashed talked about. Enough is enough…I left lemmy for kbin.

    It’s not about the technology, it’s about the community. I prefer to restart from scratch on kbin.

    • maporita@lemmy.ml
      3·
      1 year ago

      So what? Are your beliefs so fragile that you can’t risk them being challenged?

      I prefer a community where everyone is free to say what they want without risk of being censored. Apparently I’m in the minority on that one.

      • PabloDiscobar@kbin.social
        3·
        1 year ago

        So what? Are your beliefs so fragile that you can’t risk them being challenged?

        I debate all the time, but I won’t do it under their moderation.

        I prefer a community where everyone is free to say what they want without risk of being censored.

        Nonono…See what you wrote on lemmyworld:

        If you are so fragile that you need to be protected from a troll then maybe the internet is not the right place for you.

        It’s a different ballpark than what you are presenting here. Here you are all polished, in favor of freedom of speech, but on lemmy you are in defense of trolling. It’s “lemmyworld”, ladies and gentlemen, it’s not lemmy.ml level yet.

      • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
        1·
        1 year ago

        I prefer a community where everyone is free to say what they want without risk of being censored.

        Do you, actually? If you joined a book club in the real world, for instance, and everyone around you was constantly going on about the Jewish problem and why slavery really wasn’t that bad and why women are useless for anything but housework, would that be a place where you want to spend your time? Would you be a coward with fragile beliefs if you decided to go somewhere else? Would it be horrendous censorship if you wanted rules for basic respect and decorum as generally exist in normal society? If someone followed you around all day constantly challenging every thing you ever said, would you really not find that at least mildly annoying?

        Just because one might not want it to be illegal to state opinions, that doesn’t mean that people can’t appreciate at least some common understanding of a space’s purpose and rules for discourse. Real wold communities almost never allow unlimited speech, because that can get extremely disruptive very quickly. I don’t understand why people think that online spaces must be so radically different.

    • Kichae@kbin.social
      1·
      1 year ago

      You can see all of those same users on kbin, too, though. You can access those same communities from here on kbin.social.

      It’s really only Lemmy.ml and Lemmygrad.ml that have aggressive Chinese apologists on them. There’s a whole pile of Lemmy instances out there that care way, way more about Beehaw than China.

      • SkyNTP@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I blocked lemmygrad, as I did see those extreme posts, but I haven’t seen any of what is described here in Lemmy.ml.

      • PabloDiscobar@kbin.social
        2·
        1 year ago

        No, it’s not the same content. Lemmy was up way before kbin. And lemmy has slowly built a community parallel to reddit. There can be new instances of lemmy, but you can be certain that they brought in all the old guard of other lemmy instances lemmy. kbin? Probably not so much. kbin mostly brought in the old guard of reddit.

        It’s not the same people posting and commenting the article. The protocol is the same though. I can clearly see the difference anyway.

        • Gex@discuss.tchncs.de
          1·
          1 year ago

          Don’t really know how kbin works. Is it one single instance? Anyhow it definitely is the same content to some degree because we are talking with each other right now.

  • llamatador@kbin.social
    12·
    1 year ago

    Lemmy needs just one click on an image and it enlarges the image just below the post. Kbin requires 3 clicks to see an enlarged image. Maybe this is a settings issue, and I am all ears on how to make kbin work like lemmy. But, for me, as of now, lemmy wins with this feature.

  • justooon@kbin.social
    12·
    1 year ago

    Ultimately Kbin, but I’d love for there to be a “collapse child comments” button like reddit and lemmy

  • DirkMcCallahan@kbin.social
    9·
    1 year ago

    I really dig kbin’s interface, so much that I haven’t really explored Lemmy too much. My main issue with Lemmy is that the threaded indenting is so minuscule that it might as well not even be there.

  • literallyacat@kbin.social
    8·
    1 year ago

    Started using Lemmy first but ended up staying with kbin. I just prefer the UI, even though it’s still a bit rough.

  • AnarchoGravyBoat@kbin.social
    8·
    1 year ago

    @Jezebelley
    I’m really impressed with kbin so far. I’m still learning how to navigate it and all, it’s missing the polish of something like Mastodon that is further along its development path. But it looks really promising.

    Ultimately, I’m kind of hoping to end up on a much smaller instance possibly even self hosted after things settle down and mature further. The fediverse integration is wild and kind of strange to wrap your head around at first. At least it was for me.

    To me, kbin feels the most like old reddit. I liked old reddit, but I’m definitely missing some QoL features.