I moved to KBin for a time when Lemmy had various issues such as auto-updating timelines that were hard to deal with and hugely broken algorithms for "Hot" posts, etc.

Somewhere around release 0.18.3 a lot of these issues were fixed and I ditched KBin. I figured in the long term, it was likely that Lemmy would have more development attention. It also used more straightforward terms like "communities" instead what KBin terms them ("magazines"), which just seemed to be unnecessary and confusing terminology for the sake of being different rather than because it made sense.

The KBin interface looks polished, but it hides a lot of fundamental issues with the software under the hood. I hope the project receives more dev attention and thrives in the long-term, however. It's good for the Fediverse that choices exist.

Ernest, the main developer of Kbin, has given an explanation of what has happened: https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/544021/So-what-s-the-status-on-the-update-edit-ernest-responded#entry-comment-3006120

I tried Kbin, but I don't know why it just never clicked with me. I kind of like the barebones lemmy UI.

Also, the instance I'm on has an "old.reddit" style page that is really nice when I'm on PC.

Relevant post: https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/451896/Is-Kbin-dying-I-wanted-to-address-the-deleted-thread, attempting to explain why contributions weren't being merged in and deployed.

Posts by Ernst since mention lots of bots and ads, and some outright DDOS.

The latest word: https://kbin.social/m/kbinMeta/t/544021/So-what-s-the-status-on-the-update-edit-ernest-responded.

TLDR: Ernst has had a lot of unexpected personal issues to deal with, had to take on a temporary job, and has not been able to give full dedication to this project. What efforts were originally planned - e.g. an official API - seemed to instead have gotten redirected against maintenance vs. outside attacks rather than improvements to the underlying codebase. Back when he was not keeping up with contributors' proffered changes, he even planned to step down if he could not catch up, for which he gave himself a 1-month deadline, but he seems to have decided that he has met the basic minimum to not do that.

Looking forward, several months from now Kbin may be significantly better. Or barely better. Or not at all, who knows. But right now it is what it is, which is far behind Lemmy in terms of pure software features at least. I think Kbin's main selling point was that it was not built off of the original Lemmy contributors, and it does have a very nice interface (sort of, on desktop at least). Not that it matters: account migration doesn't exist on the Fediverse - even on Lemmy, right? - so those of us who migrated and asked all of our friends to do likewise are kinda stuck with our initial choices, good or bad, unless we make a clean break from our entire history.

Note I have nothing to do with Kbin, I just wanted to offer those helpful resources if you want to read them. I am glad that you found something that works well for you. I halfway wonder if I should make an alt somewhere even if just to more readily read posts from a mobile, b/c the mobile browser experience for Kbin is horrible (reading is mostly fine, but commenting is absolutely horrendous).

I personally recommend https://a.lemmy.world if you're going to use an alternative frontend.

I preferred the kbin ui on pc originally but the phone apps and the release of “old reddit” style ui for lemmy got me to switch

I started on kbin myself. It was mostly a population consideration, though I did like the downvote accounting. Community moderation is one thing Tildes does right, and that was a step in that direction.

I ultimately bailed when even the big magazines weren't being moderated anymore (spam everywhere).

Loved Kbin, but yeah the slow development made me come back to lemmy as well.

I started in Kbin. I think that the activity level was smaller in there, which made me swap. Another reason was that Lemmy feels nicer to use (I like its looks more and I found a neat app on the phone to use it. Didn't find an app for Kbin).

Welcome back!

Love to see Photon love! (https://p.lemmy.world is using the Photon UI)

Yes. The constant logouts were bad - a little on desktop but constantly on mobile, and needing to refresh/login spam 4x to get in sometimes. After awhile growth and activity also looked to be stalling out. I realized a bunch more communities I was missing out on were from Lemmy and I needed to make an account to fully interact.

When I found old.lemmy.world it was game over. I don't think I'll go back to my kbin account much anymore.

Wow. Photon UI looks really nice. It's a lot like Sync

If you're not ready to leave yet mbin fork that integrates community fixes faster. Fedia switched to it.

Wrt fediverse, you can keep using all of them at the same time. How cool is that!

Kbin kept logging me out. At some point, it got so annoying, I deleted my bookmark.

I'm actually the opposite. I've tried using Lemmy and I still do to an extent but I dunno. I love the feel of kbin

Im on kbin and have a lemmy account but i dont really know what the difference is? Except the interface. Ive still not fully grasped the fediverse stuff since im a reddit refuge. But ive been enjoying my time on kbin. Maybe theres just something im fundamentally missing by not using lemmy but i have no idea.

I'm still here but I also have a bunch of accounts for other instances. Between the bugs, domain blocks and defederation, this fediverse seems like a bad example of how to use activity pub in practice tbh. Either the protocol is not defined enough or not enforced well enough by the sites using it, but it seems like a mess.