this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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What's the benefit of using Kbin over Lemmy? (feddit.nl)
submitted 1 year ago by UnanimousStargazer@feddit.nl to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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I see a very small minority of people using Kbin, but I don't understand why.

Is this just a coincidence and did some people choose Kbin over Lemmy or is there a good reason to use Kbin?

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[โ€“] maegul@lemmy.ml 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes you can follow users on kbin, which you can't do on lemmy, and this applies to both users on mastodon/mblogs and lemmy/kbin.

However, from what I can gather, kbin is still community/magazine focused. For instance, I don't think you can get a feed of just the posts of those that you follow, as you would on mastodon. You can select the subscribed channel and then look microblogs, which can get you close, but is really a view of all the posts from the people you follow and that have the hashtags for all of the magazines you follow (I think). THe important bit here being that kbin puts posts form mastodon/mblogs into magazines based on hashtags, where each magazine can defined what hashtags it will "scoop up". And so "subscribed microblogs" includes all of those posts tagged with hashtags scooped up by the communities/magazines you follow.

I have no idea what kbin's road map is for this, but for me personally, who has a mastodon account on an instance I'm rather happy with, as well as this lemmy account, it doesn't offer something that would prompt me to migrate as a user.

One thing I'm probably missing here is whether one can more easily post to both communities/magazines and one's mastodon followers from kbin. I don't know enough about whether that is so and why and how far lemmy would be from achieving the same, but at this point in the fediverse's development, it's a not insignificant factor, as, IMO, so many are on mastodon and other microblog platforms that bridging that gap is vital to creating a sustainable and healthy ecosystem of platforms on the fediverse.

[โ€“] TeaHands@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Fwiw you can post to both Lemmy communities and Mastodon at the same time, that does work pretty well, but it has to be from your Mastodon account and you tag the Lemmy community as a user. (First line of the Mastodon toot becomes the post title on Lemmy, fyi if you're going to try it, and you can tag the community at the end it doesn't need to be the first thing in your toot)

Not actually sure if that works the same way for Kbin magazines, I'm subscribed to plenty of them but most of them are kind of inactive so never had chance to test it. If anyone's done the science and can report back, that would be interesting to know!

[โ€“] maegul@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yea posting from mastodon to lemmy is a nice way to join the two platforms actually.

I keep encouraging mastodon users to do it more, as they don't have any groups and hashtags and not great IMO.

For those interested, I've written a little demo of doing so from mastodon, with comments/replies that provide links to the resulting lemmy post: https://hachyderm.io/@maegul/110483509521476095. If you think it's helpful, feel free to share it around to anyone else you know that might be interested in posting to lemmy from mastodon.

[โ€“] TeaHands@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nice! Bookmarked for when this inevitably keeps coming up in support threads haha :D

I've definitely found it to be a good way to get interactions going in smaller communities so far, if the topic has a decent presence on the Mastodon side. Can't quite decide if that's cheating or not but some of those communities need all the help they can get!

[โ€“] maegul@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Not cheating at all! It should be happening more IMO!

  • First, there's a lot of parallel chatter and interests kept separate because people are on different platforms.
  • Second, bringing down the boundaries between instances and platforms (so that don't all have to use screenshots all the time) is what the fediverse is about)
  • Third, using existing communities and platforms to activate new communities and platforms is supposed to a super power of the fediverse, as it makes it easier and easier to kickstart new things as the fediverse grows
  • Fourth, and getting back to the second above, the fediverse's "killer app", IMO, is the eventual creation of a diversity of communities and platforms that interoperate in a useful, flexible and engaging way for the user.

At the moment, I'm actually frustrated at the lack of cross platform engagement between lemmy/kbin and mastodon. A big part of it, IMO, is the simplicity of mastodon's UI and how integrating with any other platform with a more sophisticated UI becomes difficult. Right now, for instance, mastodon has no nice way to deal with a community/magazine or a post with multiple threads of comments beneath it, as all mastodon does is see everything as a flattened stream of posts in reverse chronological order.

Right now, posting from mastodon to a community is the only way to bring these worlds together that works for users of both platforms, except for the user making the post, which is a problem.

[โ€“] TeaHands@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You've articulated my thoughts perfectly and emboldened me not only to keep doing it, but to do it way more.

The trickiest part so far has been wording toots in such a way that they still look and read like Mastodon content, but also are in the correct format for Lemmy. Also the fact that I recently moved from an instance with an extra-long character limit to one with the default, but such is life lol.

[โ€“] maegul@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh yea ... that character limit man ... once you have a decent one (>2000) you can't go back!!

I've actually though of suggesting to some communities that do regular posts like star trek's episode threads to post them from a mastodon account just to get some engagement.

It'd be cool if there was some bot that made this easier.

[โ€“] TeaHands@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's one of those use-cases (and I understand why it's not a thing, but still) where I'd love to have quote toots. Just being able to share the Mastodon version of a post but add a bit of text and hashtags and stuff so people on there see it and can easily interact with it. Commenting works but is a bit awkward on one side and a bit spammy on the other.

So many ways the integration could eventually go! But what we do already have is still pretty cool, just gonna keep experimenting with the best way to get people talking to each other.

Anyway consider me a recruit to your Lemmy/Mastodon crosspost revolution! ๐Ÿ˜„

[โ€“] maegul@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

Totally with you.

Thanks for the chat ... and Awesome!