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
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…
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.
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).
Can you provide a source to your claim that lemmygrad is ran by Nutomic or Dessalines?
It used to be deployed on the same IP address as lemmy.ml. I don’t have the receipts. Take it or leave it.
Edit 2: another person expressing concerns (with receipts) about moderation policy on lemmy.ml
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
instances of both federate with one another
At least for me, I cannot access most kbin magazines from Lemmy
Try magazines from https://fedia.io, which is also a Kbin instance. The “main” Kbin instance, kbin.social, currently does not federate due to the load.
Good to know, thanks!
I’m not able to join magazines on fedia.io either.
Huh. That’s surprising. I just joined https://fedia.io/m/cybersecurity from my Lemmy account on szmer.info.
Did you find it by searching for !cybersecurity@fedia.io on your instance?
Edit: Interestingly, I was eventually able to join Kbit magazines by pasting the full URL into the search - it seems like this works but using the ! format doesn’t, at least on my server.
Can someone explain the “tankie” baggage? I’ve seen it thrown around quite a bit but no one seems to explain it in detail.
(Some) Lemmy devs seem to have political ideologies that are within the “tankie” settings. That’s mostly it. Some people express they feel uncomfortable about it. Such devs hold an instance separate from the flagship instance (lemmygrad.ml), which in my opinion is not bad at all, I think it’s better they keep them to themselves giving an option to other instances to block it. They’re not trying to shove tankies ideas down anyones throats through the softwate or anything. Though this has leaked to the flagship instance sometimes as shown by this post
While true, there’s still some pretty questionable/pro-CCP moderation on lemmy.ml.
Well, TIL a new word: tankie.
Purge it from your mind before you fall down a rabbithole of some of the most brain-broken people on the internet.
Great news to me I’m not “pro-lemmy”, I am “anti-reddit”.
Same! I use a Lemmy instance myself. I’m just happy to see there is diversity in terms of software projects in the Threadiverse.
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.
As I understand both make the greater platform bigger, more Kbin users means more Lemmy content as well.
Imagine competition being mutually beneficial!
Can I use kbin to read Lemmy content?
Yes. Check out the biggest currently active instance of Kbin, https://fedia.io/ — plenty of stuff from Lemmy instances.
Can someone please explain the “tankie baggage”?
I understand the words, but not the history.A “tankie” is a pejorative word for a Stalinist. (Just in case any readers aren’t familiar with the word?)
Basically lemmy (the project) was started by some Marxist-Leninists who have a soft spot for the CCP and authoritarian communism (really). Lemmy.ml and lemmygrad.ml actually share the same IP address. And lemmy contributors seem to have lemmygrad accounts.
@feditips, who is a pretty well-respected Fediverse advocate, has recommended against lemmy here and here, with pretty good reasoning.
Having said that, the politics of the authors of the software do not necessarily dictate how you, me, or anyone else choose to run instances.
The thread from fefitips makes claims without providing any evidence. They say they “have receipts” and can provide on request, but why not simply post it if it actually existed?
I have no dog in this fight - today is the first time I’ve heard the word “tankie” - but I would take the linked claims with a grain of salt until proof is provided.
Ok, here’s some evidence. There’s two primary/full-time developers of Lemmy. Here’s one’s github page of essays.
If you search that tree, he mentions lemmygrad several times, has a crash course on socialism that points you to “asktankies”, and his FAQ denies several holocausts, including (for example) Stalin’s slaughter of millions of Ukrainians.
The guy is an apologist for crimes against humanity. He’s pro-genocide. He’s a “Hitler did nothing wrong” type, except it’s not Hitler, it’s Stalin.
Many thanks for the links, that’s great to start a dialogue. I didn’t see anything particularly terrible in my read through the crash course (I might have missed something). In the FAQ I see a link to What about Stalin? Didn’t he kill millions? (Revleft podcast on Stalin), which is an external podcast and I don’t plan to listen to it to find out what it contains. Is there something specific which the developer wrote which you can link to?
Regardless of whether any particular developer is or isn’t a “tankie”, Lemmy the software and Lemmy.ml don’t appear to support any ideologies. Their Code of Conduct specifically states “We are committed to providing a friendly, safe and welcoming environment for all, regardless of level of experience, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, age, religion, nationality, or other similar characteristic.”
Please don’t think I am merely arguing or playing devil’s advocate. I have only just started using Lemmy and would prefer to not waste my time on a platform that ultimately I wouldn’t like to be associated with, but so far it feels a bit overblown.
Regarding lemmy.ml as an instance: Dig further into it. They do have a certain ideology.
At any rate, you asked what evidence there is that the devs are tankies. I would simply point out that they describe themselves using exactly that word. And even the official docs are laden with political commentary. Regardless of what you think of their politics, or how much politics is “too much” or outside of your overton window, I don’t think it should be controversial to call them tankies.
Thanks for the links, I will go exploring. And for the record I don’t think it’s controversial to call someone a tankie - as stated today is the first time I’ve heard the word.
Hmm, interesting. I just spent some time getting a Lemmy instance set up – maybe I should’ve gone for kbin instead?
I don’t think you need to worry about it. It’s up to a given community whether or not that baggage affects it or not, I think. Building communities that are very explicitly not tankie is a great way of helping overcome that baggage for the whole project.
i think you can engage and interact across both so it may not matter as much.
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?).
This is actually more like a return to the 90s of Usenet and mailing lists imho.
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.
Sorry guys, kbin is built on PHP.
So even if it did succeed, it won’t be for long.
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.
I, too, can use a banana to hammer in a nail
I know this is a joke, but not only is KBin built on PHP, but so are Facebook, Pornhub, and Wikipedia.
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.
You’d be surprised. Modern PHP with Laravel can actually be quite nice to work with.
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.
.wtf?! I just frowned at my monitor
There’s more where that came from.
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, interesting choice for a greenfield project though. 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 personally much rather spend it writing Rust than PHP even if PHP is decent these days.
If history has taught me anything - I would say that means that kbin will persist forever.
I mean, almost half of all the websites on the internet is built on WordPress, so maybe you’re onto something here…
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.
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.
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…
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
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; programmers are 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.
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
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.
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.
A lot of people seem to be talking about whether PHP has enough developer support, but that isn’t the main issue.
The issue is that code written in PHP is probably at least 10 times less efficient in terms of CPU and memory than the equivalent code written in Rust.
This means that loads of hobbyist developers will be able to run lemmy instances for a fraction of the ongoing cost of kbin.
And the main issue Reddit and a migration has is server costs. So, it could be running into a face plant.
Lemmy.World instance has a new dedicated host with EPYC 7502P around €200-€300 a month with 15k users aboard. If PHP is even x2 as inefient that’s absolutely insane. Those prices may be off but even so, shits going to cost and we all need to participate.
Looks like this post didn’t age very well
In what sense? Kbin is struggling with the wave of new subscriptions just as Lemmy is, and since it’s a smaller project with fewer resources, it’s having a harder time doing so.
That does not make the fact that at some point Kbin was ahead of Lemmy in terms of active accounts any less notable. I would even argue it makes it more notable.
Looks like KBin has an edge over Lemmy now in terms of monthly active users.
I just followed the links in the post:
KBin 2,753 users Lemmy 112,013 users
I watched all the charts and every KPI have the same ratio of 1:40
Note that I am a today subscriber to Lemmy, and just took a look at KBin.
KBin is dealing with the onslaught of new users, and as it is a newer project, it’s not handling it as well as Lemmy.
Also, you are looking at user accounts, I was talking about monthly active users.
Also also, biggest instance of KBin is currently out of federation (so does not show up in these stats), but it is still growing and is pretty damn huge now: https://kbin.social/statsWe shall see what happens when kbin.social re-joins federation. But also: this is not a competition. What matters is that there are independent software projects in this space.
The fact that Kbin is handling the wave worse than Lemmy is not unrelated to the fact that Lemmy’s tech stack is much lighter weight and more efficient. It is a fundamental issue with the technology. If either are going to become major players then they need exponential growth, and Lemmy is just better at that.
Why is that? I’m out of the loop.
Oops, Looks like I am out of the loop too.
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
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.
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.
/cries in iOS
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.
Didn’t he open source the server backend? Not the app
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.
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?
Use other instances then? Afaik beehaw is more of a family friendly place and not for nsfw. lemmy.world allows both community creation and nsfw
yeah, that’s why I signed up at lemmy.world :)
Any ideas what are the pros and cons of each option?
Lemmy is written in Rust, has been around for a while, and there are a bunch of established communities on established Lemmy instances already.
KBin is sadly PHP, relative newcomer, arguably better interface, and no baggage.
That’s all I got myself. Hope others will chip in.
Why is php a bad thing in this case? It seems like exactly the kind of application that php is well suited for. Plus there’s the maturity of php’s major frameworks. While I’m not saying Rust is necessarily bad for building web applications, it’s web frameworks must be less mature and battle tested. Plus, it seems like a lower bar to get community dev contributions for a php project than rust.
Well, to me Rust suggests that a given software project might be somewhat more performant, and somewhat more secure — but it all also depends on the developers, of course.
Well, that kind of sounds like the normal rust propaganda, don’t get me wrong, I do think the language is decent, it’s just tiring to see so many people just buying into and parroting some weird claims like “it’s rust, so it’s secure”
I mean the reason people believe that is because it’s a very explicit language. It knows what’s in its memory at all times, and so at the lower layers it’s more secure by nature.
As opposed to php, you’re less likely to introduce a vulnerability by being sloppy with data sanitation - the language demands you tell it exactly the data structures you want it to put into memory. For that reason, the language is more secure - the parse json function is going to be less likely to be able to run rogue code maliciously embedded inside it than php, and if it does manage to do so, it’s easier to write php to blindly open a hole in the system from inside an interpreter than it is to break out of or hijack the runtime.
Obviously that doesn’t make it secure. It just means that all else being equal, rust is less vulnerable to a sloppy mistake at any given layer in the stack. Doesn’t mean you can’t make a logical mistake and open up a glaring security hole
And obviously you can write bulletproof php code, but every layer of the stack needs to be just as bulletproof. Including the interpreter and all your libraries - which historically were very much not bulletproof (it’s definitely much more strict than it used to be, and I think I heard fb tried compilation and I’m not sure if that’s become a thing, but it’s generally is more secure than interpretation for similar reasons)
All that being said, humans are just dumb and sloppy. We write shit code, and we try to minimize the surface area for mistakes. Rust has a much smaller surface area than php
I’m very much aware of that, I have programmed stuff in rust as well, but claiming that it’s secure and “better” because it’s rust is just pr, believe me, I can write some really sihtty rust code.
I’m no evangelist for PHP, but I say use the tool that you know, when I make a new program I’m going to do it in nim, because it’s the langauge that I have the most fun working with. It has mostly the same pros as rust, just with a lot nicer syntax and it’s generally more flexible.
No shade on people liking rust, but this constant parroting of the same point by people who probably never even used the langauge is getting kind of old.
I like rust a lot, but it’s definitely in the place Go was a few years ago, where people just assume “written in rust” = good for some reason.
Exactly :) That’s what I mean as well, sure there are great things written in rust, but they are great because they are great, not because they are written in rust :)
just looked for the first time, I really do prefer kbin’s UI to Lemmy’s right now at least the default web client. Is there value in running both or just one?
I notice I can see mastadon posts on lemmy as well but how do I find stuff on Kbin or Mastadon from lemmy?
That’s what I think most of us newcomers are struggling to figure out right now. Do I need a Mastadon account and a Lemmy account, or can I just use one to see the rest? Is there a better Android app or other website to integrate it all? Is matrix.org a part of all of this fediverse stuff?
Lemmy doesn’t federated with mastodon type servers.
Kbin is the one you need if you want both reddit style fediverse and Twitter style fediverse. Lemmy only does link aggregation/reddit.
Lemmy should get kbin content but I’m not sure it federates it because kbin allows NSFW and lemmy… Does not for the most part.
How did you manage to fit so much wrong into a single comment?
