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?
Seems pretty even to me:
https://fedidb.org/current-events/threadiverse(Should not look at created accounts, those are spammers)
It’s actually the opposite. Kbin has been growing faster than Lemmy.
And that’s surprising, given it’s s newer, less-established platform. But it’s not like Lemmy was a household name before this.
I can give only my impression why I have chosen kbin. Better looking, more clear interface.
Yeah there’s something about the way kbin works that just resonates with me more than Lemmy.
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.
Even on mobile I like the look of kbin more, but functionality is better for lemmy. I think it will change in future, kbin is just too young. In any case for mobile I have to see an app in a long term.
What mobile app do you use for kbin?
Those are actually really valid reasons and presumably why I’m liking kbin as well. Design and feel are really big factors for user adaption, thanks for sharing your experience.
It’s also surprising because there are just fewer prominent kbin-based websites. Lemmy has lemmy.ml, lemmy.one, lemmy.world, and sh.itjust.works. And Beehaw, I guess, but they specifically throttle their growth.
kbin has kbin.social, and then a bunch of instances that are just way, way lower profile.
I mean, it’s so surprising that we should probably question it a little bit.
Kbins documentation for hosting is a bit of a mess and leaves a lot to be desired where Lemmy is much more turnkey for someone looking to setup an instance.
Anecdotally, from looking at Mastodon, it seems like people there are hyping kbin (and fedia.io) more than lemmy… that could just be the people I happen to be following, though.
Well, you can use Mastadon with a kbin username so there’s that. I don’t think you can with Lemmy.
Those graphs are quite informative, and yeah, it seems more like similar growth for both sites based on that info.
Honestly, looking at active users over the last 24 hours I’d say kbin is growing faster than lemmy.
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.
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.
I have been trying to login to Lemmy for the past 2 days and just get a spinning wheel
I have the same problem on mobile (both through browser and Memmy), but not on my desktop. Really annoying. Been using Reddit since 2009. Feels really odd to switch things up, but lemmy.world, kbin and squabbles seems like potentially good alternatives. I wonder which one will end up being “the one”.
It iis easier to sign up for kbin I think because kbin lets you sign up with google or facebook. I did gmail google sign up because I like being lazy.
Kbin is slightly more confusing (they named everything a little weird), so if you do make a kbin.social account lmk or ask many questions about how to do stuff. It’s easy once I knew stuff like magazine = subreddit
I created my Lemmy account first, because it was easier to remember for me than kbin…
Same, but I’ve abandoned that account completely in lieu of kbin.
I also think some of the growth of Lemmy is the ability to get the project to a functioning stance. The start of Kbin still seems a little rocky, but getting better.
@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.
Same on the layout.
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.
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.
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!
I like the simplicity and lack of color at Kbin! So, they’re definitely different selling points.
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.
Well that’s an entire hassle and seems far from ideal, lol. I have a mastodon account I never use, but for now I’m just gonna stick to kbin and follow whatever lemmy folks or whatever I want from here.
yes, please stay off the rest of the fedi.
Coming off as oddly hostile there.
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.
I haven’t quite decided between the two, but I’m planning to self host one of them. And if kbin sticks around and keeps gaining traction, I’m much more familiar with hosting and working with PHP than with Rust
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.
What is it about Lemmy’s developers?
Questionable opinions about such diverse topics as:
- Is the Uygher genocide in China a thing?
- Is North Korea bad?
- Was the Russian invasion of Ukraine actually a noble attempt to liberate its people from Nazis?
Tankies.
Kbin is growing faster than Lemmy. Lemmy just saw a huge amount of spambot registrations recently.
This is the answer.
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.
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.
Fediverse is fediverse
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.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
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.
Lemmy is having a lot of bot issues. I think once they get that sorted we can get a better comparison.
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.
Check your email. You probably need to click the verification link. I had this problem too.
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
Same for me. I haven’t decided jet which one I’ll prefer longterm.
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!
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.
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
