Only heard of it recently is it another federated platform like Lemmy or pixelfed?
It looks to be another federated instance that seems to be compatible with other Lemmy instances.
Yes. It’s also similar enough that the “magazines” of kbin are close enough to “communities” on lemmy, that they translate quite well. Lots of people on kbin subscribe to lemmy communities, and vice versa.
Both pool their content fairly well, so you can pick which you like better, and still access most of the same stuff.
Whenever I am directed to kbin I get a website with a feed and then the status has me not logged in … so it makes it appear as though I need a login to use this… the way people are talking on here though im led to believe you just subscribe and it’s almost seamless… sooo what am I missing ??? How do you subscribe to magazines etc with Lemmy ? It’s currently not very intuitive.
It can be seamless. Unfortunately neither lemmy nor kbin translate links that would take you off-instance into links that don’t. So we have to link things correctly manually.
Some links will take you outside your instance, and show you content directly on the home instance of that content, this is what’s happening when you “stop being logged in”. The fediverse rainbow icon also does this, its a button for going to the “original” of any given comment or post. But as you noticed, this means your account wont work.
Some users don’t yet know how to correctly link things so they open from the “local instance”, meaning the link directs your instance to look at the content from another instance, rather than go to that instance directly. Doing this keeps you on your instance, letting you interact with that content using your account.
The way to do this is with relative links, like this one that leads to the Reddit migration kbin page, but inside your lemmy instance. That link will work for others on other instances, too. It will open that kbin page, but never take a user “outside” their instance. Seamless.
Relative links only work if your instance already knows about what it’s linking to, tho. In those cases the search method has to be used. Also lemmy relative links do not work on kbin, and vice versa. They are also borked in Jerboa, atm.
Accessing the content of other lemmy instances using the search method, is fairly simple, you use the
!name@instan.ce
format, which you post into search on your home instance, this triggers your server actually connecting to the outside instance to go get that content since it hasn’t already.This method does not work for kbin magazines. Instead of the
!name@instan.ce
text, you need to paste the full kbin magazine url into search, to get the same thing.So when a link takes you somewhere you aren’t logged in, try copying that link into search instead of opening it. Also note that this is ALSO borked in Jerboa.
i get it… the server i belong to hasn’t mapped its own path to the outside server. So if i run a search it will then have knowledge of that and map it so that future visits will seem as though it’s part of your server instance and then you can subscribe etc. ill try this when ever i find the kbin site instances that my server doesnt know about. thanks.
Yeah, it’s another platform, heavily inspired by wykop.pl, which combines reddit-like link aggregation and twitter-like Mikroblog
Yes
Can you elaborate?
I read that Kbin defederated with Lemmy because it couldn’t initially handle the influx of new users migrating from Reddit, but that it has federated again.
So is it a Lemmy instance, like Beehaw?
I know that Kbin doesn’t use communities (“/c/”) but uses magazines (“/m/”) so I thought it was different.
I also read that there was some new way to post to Lemmy from Mastadon, but I thought those were different, like Reddit and Twitter. But they both rely on something called “ActivityPub”?
So is Kbin similar to Lemmy (by being Reddit-like), but distinct like Mastadon (which is Twitter-like)?
I didn’t have a Twitter account, but was a heavy Reddit user. I don’t have a Mastadon account, but I’m liking Lemmy. However I have some FOMO about Kbin because I don’t understand how it all works together.
Kbin.social is federating with lemmy rn, that’s how I see your comment.
So is it a Lemmy instance, like Beehaw?
No. It’s a different technology - in the same way that Mastadon is a different technology.
However, Kbin federates with Lemmy - so users can engage in each other’s posts.
So is Kbin similar to Lemmy (by being Reddit-like), but distinct like Mastadon (which is Twitter-like)?
Kbin does both.
There are communities (they use the word ‘magazines’) which works very similarly to Reddit. And also, there is a Microblogging feature, which works very similar to Twitter.
However I have some FOMO about Kbin because I don’t understand how it all works together.
It doesn’t cost you anything to sign up for, so give it a try.
Personally, I never cared about Twitter-like microblogging - so I’m okay with keeping just a Lemmy account.
It doesn’t cost you anything to sign up for, so give it a try.
Well, it does mean your Lemmy presence is split into yet-another account. I must say, it’s quite annoying to keep creating accounts while you’re “shopping around” different instances.
I have been exploring Kbin a little bit and can answer some questions.
ActivityPub is a protocol for sharing content. That content can be of multiple types like posts, threads, blogs, videos, microblogs, etc (I forgot the exact names of those types so the names might be off). On Lemmy we have communities, which are comparable to subreddits, that are hubs for ActivityPub content of the thread type. Mastodon is build for microblogs, which are similar to tweets.
Kbin is indeed similar to Lemmy, as it also runs on ActivityPub content, but apart from having communities (which they call magazines), you can also post and read microblogs there.
So if you like Lemmy but you’re also on Mastodon or are interested in that, maybe Kbin is more suitable for you.
Very helpful. Thanks!
This should give you an overview: https://kbin.social/about
lemmy but better, you can see lemmy content from kbin too! greetings from kbin!
Don’t forget you can also see and interact with Mastodon tweets (toots?) in kbin as well.