ELI5: What's the differences between Lemmy and kbin?

lemmy is the more mature platform, whilst kbin is newer and more feature rich.

What it amounts to is that kbin can do things that lemmy can't do, but the things that they both do, lemmy tends to do better. And as kbin is effectively in alpha at the moment, it doesn't have much documentation, making installation and configuration a challenge.

The biggest point of difference in features is that kbin is aware of other fediverse content in a way lemmy isn't. kbin and lemmy both talk to each other really well, but kbin also natively supports other types of fediverse groups (gup.pe, friendica and chirp). kbin also lets you see non threadiverse content, by attaching hashtags to groups. So if you set up say a cycling group on kbin, you can also make the group watch the #cycling tag, any any mastodon or other micoblogging content will appear on a special tab in your cycling group.

So if you set up say a cycling group on kbin, you can also make the group watch the #cycling tag, any any mastodon or other micoblogging content will appear on a special tab in your cycling group.

Now that is a powerful feature. Great way to fill a feed with content too.
- I think that will have me switch eventually, but it sucks its php.
Thanks, your post makes sense. Will Lemmy have the opportunity to adapt to do what kbin does that it can't, or is that a ground up change?
- The hashtag watch feature would be trivial to implement. Properly implementing groups compatibility would be a bit more work though. I think it's mostly going to be a matter of competing priorities more than anything else
(Not shooting the messenger, just as info for other readers.)
Using hashtags for this seems like an idea with some severe limitations because it can only see the posts it has happened to come across otherwise. (Unlike the other group formats.)

@ada @meteorswarm
- Yep, but that's true of keyword search on all fediverse platforms, and unlike lemmy, you can follow micro blog fedi accounts from kbin, so you can federate non group content in more readily

ELI5? McDonald's and Burger King. One has a Big Mac, the other a Whopper. One has red and yellow, the other red and blue. Either way, you're getting a burger.

Oh, they're also right next to each other so you can wave to the people in Burger King from McDonald's and vice versa. Now everyone is enjoying burgers together.

What if I want a taco?
- That would be Mastodon.
- We'll tell you to get out! We don't do that folding thing here. Bun, meat, bun... ONLY.
  
  *Don't ask how we'd eat a hot dog.

Lemmy and kbin are two different forum software that can be installed and run on servers. Because both use the ActivityPub protocol, the content between them can be shared. So, a Lemmy user will be able to see content from a server running kbin, using Lemmy.

But how can I see kbin content from lemmy, I couldnt find an option yet. Also from kbin I cannot find lemmy communities
- Hi from a kbin instance!
- There isn't an option, you can't even tell but you already have the kbin content.
  
  You can't disable it.
  
  The reason that's happening right now is because kbin is enacting ddos protection using cloudflare so they aren't federating properly, this is a temporary problem.
- This is due to Kbin using Cloudflare anti DDoS, which disallows Lemmy instances reaching it
- To see Lemmy content on kbin, just add the full address of the Lemmy instance to the end of the kbin URL. For example, https://kbin.social/m/lemmyworld@lemmy.world lets you see content from @lemmyworld@lemmy.world on https://kbin.social.
  
  The other way round should also work (ie. to see kbin content on Lemmy), but for some reason it's not working on major Lemmy instances for me, even though they are federated to kbin.social and other kbin instances.
- Same here. I can actually see the Kbin communities when I search, but it is showing no content. Not sure what it looks like from the Kbin side.
How do I find kbin communities and how do I add them to my Lemmy instance?

Is there a tutorial anywhere?
Lemmy instances seem to have trouble seeing content from kbin instances for some reason.
- The main kbin instance, kbin.social is getting slammed and cloudflare is breaking their sync in both directions, so currently you can't see their content on any other Lemmy or kbin instance afaik, and you can't see Lemmy content on there. Hopefully that gets fixed soon but it'll probably take a while. The other kbin instance are tiny and don't have much content but I think should be visible here

Kbin is also written in PHP where as Lemmy in Rust, nuff said

Is that why KBin never works for me, but multiple Lemmy instances do? Lol
- Probably not the reason. Rust is just more systems level and performant than interpreted PHP

It is the difference between nginx and apache: two pieces of software that do basically the same thing. With the exception of some naming conventions and UI differences, they are the same and both participate in the community in the same way.

Okay, so think of every website that is part of the "Fediverse" (aka uses "ActivityPub") as just being different ways to display the exact same data. Sometimes their data works really well between two of them and sometimes it's a bit more awkward. Lemmy and Kbin are both trying to imitate the "forum-style" UI that Reddit uses, so they integrate really well with each other. Same data, slightly different UI. Mastodon, on the other hand is imitating Twitter. So trying to read Mastodon in Lemmy is like trying to read a Twitter feed as Reddit threads. It's messier. Kbin seems to be trying to find a way to better display Mastodon-style threads within their UI. Otherwise, I think the big picture way to understand the difference is just that it's a matter of UI and which one you prefer more.

Both kbin and lemmy utilize parts of the activitypub protocol - a generic way for different social media sites to talk to one another - to make a reddit-like functionality. This means that regardless of whether you are on a server which uses lemmy or kbin, they can access and use each other. The only real difference for users is going to be the UI and that kbin has also used activitypub to give its users some dedicated mircoblogging capabilities (think mastodon). My advice is: if you are only interested in a reddit-like experience then use the one with the UI and community you perfer, but if you want an all-in-one account (and are okay with the added complexity that comes with) kbin is closer to what you want.

Effectively just two different methods to access the Fediverse. They each have different thought processes on how to do that, and both are at different stages in their development with kbin being the newest of the two.

I'm watching kbin's development as I really like its intended ability to interface directly with say Mastodon, but as its stands it's not quite their yet imo.

Kbin’s built in php which makes it less attractive to contribute to imo

Gross
What is lemmy built in?
- The backend is Rust, the official frontend is inferno i think.
- The Lemmy server is written in Rust, the frontend is Typescript.

Great question. As I'm new to these things too, I forwarded it to ChatGPT 3.5. In summary:

Lemmy is designed for creating and participating in online communities, while Kbin is designed for organizing and sharing knowledge.

Lemmy is more focused on discussions and social interaction, while Kbin is geared towards structured content creation and collaboration.

They seem to have more in common than they differ, especially for users who only read posts, visit links, write comments.

I also heard they are meant to be able to access each other's content, although that's currently not working.

Please correct what is wrong, happy to learn.

Yeah that’s totally wrong. Please don’t post chatGPT summaries as a way to fill gaps in your knowledge.
I am not really certain ChatGPT’s analysis here is correct
@Spzi KBin wasn't even a thing when Chat GPT's training cut-off date happened.

Federation is having some difficulties currently, mostly due to things overloading or the solutions to the overloading. It'll get better as there are more instances.

@meteorswarm
I also heard they are meant to be able to access each other's content, although that's currently not working.

I don't know about Lemmy being able to see Kbin's content, but I'm posting this from a Kbin instance right now. Most of the posts I see are in fact on Lemmy instances.

I prefer lemmy but you can use kbin if you prefer it. Its the same information at the end of the day since they can pull the same stuff