Kbin is pretty new, no apps, and faced a lot of issues during the wave of incoming redditors. Some lemmy instances did, too, but there were more of them so there were alternatives when one crashed. If we compare kbin.social to a big instance like lemmy.world, it's not doing too bad.

Tildes is invite-only so I don't think they wanted to grow that quickly in the first place.

For me personally, it was the farewell message on RIF specifically mentioned Lemmy.

Don't know if some of the others apps also did this but it would certainly have helped.

Lemmy: Oldest federated link aggregator, better documentation compared to Kbin, easy to self-deploy, less resource consumption, provides the most similar experience to Reddit

Kbin: Poorer documentation, no API access yet, harder to self-deploy, terminology and UI differences from Reddit can turn people off (I really don't like "magazine" for a community)

Tildes: Centralized, invite-only and elitist. Not comparable to Lemmy and Kbin

For me it's straight up the fact that the guy who made Sync is porting it to Lemmy.

It's a great client, and if he picked this I guess he thinks he can keep that quality on this platform, so here I am.

For me I heard more about lemmy on Reddit and Apollo was in its final days. So I gave it a try

To answer the question about Tildes specifically, Tildes has been around for years and remained effectively dead. Its moderation is extremely controlling and screen all people before letting them in. It's a club of people the owner approves of that only post "quality" content (I.e. the in-group's definition of quality). This results in an extremely inorganic experience where content is removed for little reason beyond mods thinking it's too "low quality" (the definition of which is very flexible). Your presence on Tildes is considered a privilege that can be taken away at any time for any reason (no alts, no second chances), so there is a perpetual sense that you're under the lense, and can't disagree with the rest of club. It's a custom built wind tunnel, ostensibly to screen out hate, but in effect created a gated community of the same people celebrating their own exclusivity and very concerned with strangers walking down the sidewalk.

In essence, it doesn't want to be reddit, because it views itself as "better" than the riffraff. It's an elitist clubhouse, not a true social network.

The main thing for me would be the plethora of high-quality apps already available for Lemmy, not even a month out from the start of the Reddit APIcalypse.

That being said, I think kbin looks infinitely better in either mobile or desktop browsers, making the need for an app less urgent. I don't even think there's an app available for kbin right now, at least for Android.

More mature, you can’t even collapse comment on kbin.

Honestly, I'd say because I've never heard of the other two whereas Lemmy is pretty much plastered over Reddit as an alternative

kbin

I could actually find my subscriptions feed on Lemmy

tildes

Well, I actually got an invite. Which is a gigantic barrier of entry, and is enough of an answer. But more to the point: It was boring as hell inside.

That is it?

Oh, no, not even close. There were more places I made an account for just as a placeholder thing. Some of them were actually nasty (one called communities straight up had transphobic memes on the frontpage) Lemmy is actually the best on offer. Period.

Take my answer as snark, but: it has a catchy name that sounds like a thing. And it’s not invite only.

I heard a lot about both Kbin and Lemmy over on Reddit, and at the time, Kbin seemed to be getting more positive mentions, at least where I was looking.

I tried out Kbin first, and it felt confusing and there were a lot of little annoyances. Then a few days later, I signed up on Lemmy, and I liked the experience a lot better. Then a bunch of 3rd party apps started coming out for Lemmy. There was just no reason for me to log on through Kbin anymore, especially since the small handful of communities that I liked on there could also be accessed from Lemmy.

Lemmy seems to be more established than KBin with more instances, also additional features of KBin don't really appeal to me - but as a Lemmy user I interact with KBin quite a lot, so in that respect I feel like more of a citizen of the fidiverse than of just Lemmy.

I've never heard of Tildes in my life.

Kbin is written in php and lemmy is written in rust which may scale better in long run.

Kbin doesn't have a easy way to enter into your subscribed 'magazines'. The two options involve link hunting. see..https://kbin.social/...

That's all that it took to get me to migrate to Lemmy.

So when I was scoping out an alternative, there were five platforms I was looking at.

1. Lemmy
2. Kbin
3. Squabbles
4. Tildes
5. Raddle

I opted against places like tumblr since I was looking for a similar experience to reddit (didn't mind some innovations, but places like mastodon or tumblr weren't the right fit)

Squabbles was interesting but I did not care for the interface, especially on desktop. It's a bit better on mobile but it's basically the card interface on steroids and it's not my preference. I like the flexibility in apps/ways you can consume Lemmy in comparison

Tildes is invite only and tightly controlled. If you aren't interested in like the 4 topics of discussion they have there it's just not that engaging.

Raddle is open source and not for profit which are pluses, but outside anarchist political communities and a few meme ones theres basically nothing else there. Also some of the theming for their forums on desktop are atrocious.

Kbin has some pluses in that in that it can interact with Lemmy and the fediverse. It even has some better integration with places like mastodon due to the microblogging tab. It's still an option in my mind depending on how it and Lemmy evolve. But for now im on Lemmy and haven't regretted it.

I think the big reason Lemmy grew though was exposure and circumstance. It's very decentralized nature I think appealed to people who have experienced what guys like Musk and Spez have done to their social media sites lately and the idea that if an admin/owner here goes off the rails there's some recourse available besides having to entirely leave the platform they've invested their time and energy to. Squabbles, tildes and raddle can't really promise that by the fundamental fact they are closed platforms. So when the reddit drama popped up and after what people have dealt with in Facebook, tumbler, digg, Twitter, etc this place and the fediverse was pushed really hard as an alternative experience that sought to resolve this recurring problem.

The name, it's the best of all of them.

Lemmy has been around for a while. I was lemming back in early 2022. Lemmy had time to iron out their technical challenges and have a solid product before the Reddit drama began.

It’s down to the apps available from my point of view. Using wefwef and enjoying the fresh content through a very Apollo-like interface.

I am also a complete noob when it comes to the fediverse and Lemmy just seemed more accessible.

This seems to highlight a common misconception, kbin isn't really any smaller than Lemmy when we look at active users, in fact it seems it has only just (three days ago) caught up:
https://fedidb.org/current-events/threadiverse
Somehow Lemmy seems to have stronger brand recognition, and people often seem say Lemmy to mean things which include Lemmy and kbin users/platforms.

Tildes is just too small. The obvious explanation for growth is all of the Fledditors (Rexit? I like Lemmygrants, but that really only covers people who came to Lemmy) looking for an alternative. People wanted a drop-in replacement for what they already had. Tildes didn't even have enough of a seed in their biggest subs, let alone their (very few) niche groups. Same for Raddle, Squabbles, etc. The only subs that made a significant migration to those are the ones that packed up, locked the doors, and left a forwarding address to anyone left - Similar to what r/piracy did, except that went to Lemmy (complete with instructions to ignore the federation questions)

As for Kbin, I think the bigger factor is coverage. As soon as anyone started mentioning people leaving for greener pastures, Lemmy was always the first thing mentioned. Kbin was always a second-place alternative, along with a few others. Since Kbin has the same confusion about federation as Lemmy, it didn't pick up a lot of people that bailed on the first choice.

Not that it matters much anymore, since Kbin is well-federated with Lemmy

I really feel like it doesn't matter what you use as long as it's part of the Fediverse. If whatever you've chosen is federated we all benefit. I feel that ever since Kbin federated there's way more content even on Lemmy. I'm just glad that we can all see and interact with one another.

The fact it was recommended more, and doesn't require an invite like Tildes. I only heard of any of these because of the migration, and only heard of Kbin here on Lemmy.

I wanted to try Tildes after seeing the page, but I have no friends there to invite me to try it.

Usability

Tildes, for what it's worth, is not intended to be a replacement for Reddit. Its creator/admin is trying to purposefully cultivate a very different culture than what you might find on Reddit or Reddit replacements like lemmy/kbin/squabbles/discuit/etc. From their Philosophy page:

High-quality content and discussions
Tildes prioritizes quality content and discussion through its mechanics, design, and organization. Fixation on growth and related metrics results in other sites having a bias towards high-appeal, low-depth content like funny images, gifs, and memes. The priority on Tildes is to cultivate high-quality communities, which are far easier to build when they don't have to fight an uphill battle against the platform itself.

Limited tolerance, especially for assholes
Tildes will not be a victim of the paradox of tolerance; my philosophy is closer to "if your website's full of assholes, it's your fault".

This is a difficult topic, so I want to try to be clear about where on the spectrum Tildes is trying to land. I'm never going to refer to the site as a "safe space" or ban anyone just for occasionally acting like a jerk in an argument—I'd probably have to ban myself fairly quickly. However, it will also never be described as anything like "an absolute free speech site".

Personally as an old, I love it. The whole vibe promotes longer, better thought out replies, as opposed to the modern internet where people are more often looking to do quick hit n' run posts with popular sentiments for easy internet points. I also love the proactive removal of problem posters. Some people are just looking to stir up trouble wherever they go, but don't fall under a specific rule that might get their account axed. Tildes isn't afraid to uninvite problematic assholes.

If its culture is something that resonates with you, feel free to hit me up for an invite while I have some.

Probably luck, really.

A bunch of subs moved to Lemmy, first and foremost, which spread its popularity more than other apps, as more subs went and joined up with Lemmy.

Alternatives like Kbin followed behind, but since Lemmy had already taken first spot, that was more or less that.

You also had a few that were also closed, that hampered their growth, for better and worse.

I joined because it was mentioned on /r/piracy. Seems everyone I hear says something similar.

I’d say it has better growth because it got better advertising. I have no idea if it’s the ‘best’ instance.

Most things like this don’t happen because the thing growing is the best, it becomes the best because people come to it and it gets resourced.

I'm weirdly nostalgic to the era of hanging out on a random phpBB forum with 40 or so active users, so a part of me feels like maybe they're right. :)

I go back and forth between Kbin and Tildes, with a toe still left in reddit for a few niche communities. I like the idea of the fediverse, but there are definitely a lot of growing pains that it seems to be going through, and kbin just seemed like the most modern, polished, choice. (plus the devs are much less sus than Lemmy)

Tildes on the otherhand feels a lot more close knit, and more about discussion specific topics rather than being a collection of different communities. I kinda like the smaller size, plus the overall tone there is very respectful, so it's great for more nuanced conversations. This is where I come for my memes and my random conversations though.

I tried kbin and lemmy, and although initially it was harder to find communities as new instances were popping up and growing, ye overall feel of lemmy was more compatible to how I felt using reddit. Being a Sync user, Jerboa and wefwef (and the other developing apps) were just a bonus. Once I learned how to use lemmy, I felt it was more intuitive than the kbin interface.

The fact that multiple people came together to work on the code, provide instances for users, and commitment to continuous improvement keeps me in the lemmy game. While I know ernest@kbin is doing a great job, I feel the nature of multiple instances in the fediverse gives lemmy an advantage.

But that's just my experience and opinion. Just happy the fediverse exists despite whichever platform users choose as their primary access to it and thankful for all who have contributed to its growth and development.

It got mentioned a lot on /r/RedditAlternatiives and since its API is already up and running, there are a whole bunch of apps for it. With mobile apps being the thing that started the whole Reddit disaster, it makes sense that Lemmy would grow quicker than kbin which doesn't have mobile apps yet.

Lemmy was mainly ready for it.

Kbin's cloudflare on top of the stability issues made it unusable for the first few weeks. Tildes wasn't an option.

For me, it was the top google result for "Reddit Alternative". There was a github post explaining the basics of Lemmy and essentially said if I wasn't sure where to sign up, just head over to lemmy.world.

Now that I'm here I can safely say the interface feels like an improved old.reddit.com and am quite pleased.

Lack of awareness of Kbin I think. Also the monthly average users are the same, but lots of communities were created on lemmy instances.

Lemmy is older and I think when people thought a million people had signed up they thought that was the place to be. But it was all bits and the two are similar in terms of users, although most Kbin users are on Kbin.social at the moment.

I've tried both and I prefer Kbin. I like the interface, I like the mobile PWA app, it just feels more modern and polished compared to lemmy. But it's just a preference thing they're largely the same.

The future of Tildes seemed obvious given the experience with reddit so why bother? Kbin pretty much is Lemmy with a different UI. The structure of Lemmy makes sense, basically it is like reddit except the instances add a new dimension which makes much more sense to me. I know lots of people who would enjoy features of reddit, but don't use it because they don't identify with the brand of reddit.

I'd say the main difference is Lemmy has been around for 4 years and Kbin is only a few weeks old.

I’m on both (repeatedly, multiple servers and accounts) but even with Memmy I find myself gravitating towards Kbin and once Artemis is out I’ll probably stay there. Beehaw has the best interaction on its local communities, but Kbin is just a better feed for me mostly. No brand or server loyalty for me, I will continue using all until one seems to address all my wants.

Just FYI, only recently did Lemmy pass Kbin on active users: https://fedidb.org/current-events/threadiverse

Being federated helps both platforms to grow together, as the content is the same for both of them. So just choose the interface you prefer!

Only great advantage of Lemmy for now, is the API that helps with having apps..

When I was browsing options, Tildes didn't even allow sign-ups. I tried multiple days and eventually said fuck it and checked other options, settling on kbin.

I went to lemmy first, noticed federation wasnt working, then went to kbin, and federation still isnt working. So far I havent seen any entrance to the fediverse that can actually see the fediverse.

Personally, it's the availability of surprisingly high quality Android apps for lemmy. I made my Kbin account first but the UX of many of the Lemmy apps are much better than kbin at the moment. My big pet peeve is how many actions it takes to access a list of my subscriptions (profile>hit the little sideways arrow to expose subscriptions>subscriptions>select magazine). I love the potential of the microblogs though so I'm excited to see where kbin goes as apps become available.

FWIW I went KBin before Lenny. Since it’s federated I didn’t see a reason to change. I’m also still new to all of this and haven’t had the time to really dig in and understand the difference.

I’m also on Tildes- the whole invite process probably stymied their growth as people couldn’t sign up while the iron was hot, but it appears that was intended over there.

Also trying Squabbles. I like the default layout the best but like the content on the others better.

kbin's doing pretty well isn't it? I thought it was sort of comparable to lemmy in active users. I don't know anything about tildes though.

I know for my part, I probably contributed to overloading kbin.social by opening an account there. I guess I read that it's best in lemmy to choose something other than the really big instances to spread the load a bit and did so, but somehow in my mind I thought kbin = kbin.social?

My experience from the "early days" right when the Reddit blackouts were planned and people were looking for a new home, Lemmy was the main name being dropped. Plus when you went to the general Fediverse hub, Lemmy showed up at the top, while I just happened to read someone mention Kbin being a better interface and I had to search around for it.

If you decide to make Kbin a home (you don't have to have just one), stop by the KbinStyles magazine. I think this is where Kbin is showing its true power, customizing. I haven't really seen much of the same possibilities mentioned for Lemmy (yet). Both softwares are very early on, so there's lot of potential for either.

For me it'd be word of mouth and a more memorable name. It was people making posts about Lemmy over on the sinking ship that caught my attention first and kbin second. Call it lizard brain or whatever but "Lemmy" is close to "Lemmings" which is a game I loved as a child while "kbin" makes the mistake of not being a single, simple word. One sounds personalable and a finished product, the other sounds like the backend of bigger software.

I'm reading this from Kbin.social. I subscribe to Kbin magazines and Lemmy communities, so I don't really see a difference between the two.

I'm also on Tildes and really enjoy it for longer, nuanced, contemplative posts and comments. And I'm on Squabbles when I feel like memes and quips.

Un short, I think ex Redditors are trying out more than one platform. We're sampling all over the place.

For me it was that it was privacyguides making their own lemmy instance that led to me opting for it as my first introduction to the fediverse. Other than that other subs like piracy set up their own instances and now Android. So I wonder if getting a Lemmy instance set up is easier than Kbin?

Has Lemmy passed kbin? Last I heard they were growing pretty evenly if you compare the biggest individual instances at least. Maybe creating your own instances is simpler with Lemmy?

Tildes felt like an unpolished pre-alpha to me.

As someone who first switched to lemmy, and then quickly switched to kbin due to rampant de-federation in the lemmy world, I say I just first heard about lemmy.
But, Kbin is much more modern, and spectating the changes done in the last days alone, it moves fast and attracts many developers while all lemmy 0.18 did was breaking federation with kbin. I can fully recommend the switch to Kbin, its that good.

There is also the issue of Lemmy being developed by a group of genocide denying tankies.

About Tildes, it seems to be more of a clone of Digg in the old days.

kbin as about the same amount of active users as Lemmy