For me:

1. Privacy reasons. When a comment is "deleted" on Lemmy, the comment is actually only hidden to all except instance administrators. The comment remains on the post and continues to display the poster's username. kbin is also not a beacon of privacy, but it at least removes deleted comments from threads. This is also why I try to interact more on kbin magazines than Lemmy communities.

2. kbin has a sweet community search tool that not only searches kbin magazines, but also Lemmy communities and even Mastodon groups. This means you can easily find communities all across the #Fediverse for any of your interests.

3. kbin has a much nicer/more modern UI. It's got some quirks, but it's easier to read and navigate than Lemmy by default.

4. Customization options! Lemmy has themes, which is cool, but kbin has themes and lots of fun toggles to change your experience.

5. Last but certainly not least, Lemmy devs have a pretty shit stance on human rights. (See here: https://mstdn.social/@feditips/106835057054633379). There are communities like #Beehaw, which are super friendly and non-problematic instances separate from the Lemmy devs, but it's worth noting that instances like Lemmy's flagship instance and Lemmygrad are run by folks with some grossly misguided views.

For me it simply came down to the fact that I prefer the layout, and it's also nice knowing I can block whole domains (looking at you, furry spammers). It also integrates with Mastodon if that's your thing (it's not my thing), and I have high hopes for the ability of Ernest (the founder and only dev, to my knowledge) to usher it in a good and healthy direction. I can see all content from Lemmy and interact with it though, so it really just comes down to personal preference.

There is this post by fedi.tips that explicitly warns against using Lemmy because of developer concerns: https://mstdn.social/@feditips/110476830253102884

Lemmy is developed by tankies who deny and censor talk about human rights violations.

https://kbin.social/...

100% because the tankie thing.
A long-time believer of "you can't separate art from the artist".

The main difference is the UI. A lot of people like the interface of Kbin over Lemmy, but really there's nothing from stopping you choosing one or the other. I'm replying to you now from Lemmy.

I am not advocating Kbin or Lemmy. But it is interesting to me that the reason behind the inception of Kbin was related to Lemmy. See the full discussion here where the creator of Kbin, @ernest, stated:

The point is, I don’t want to create a lesser evil here. I want to create something truly good, which is why from the very beginning I’ve been striving to be transparent on all fronts. I’ll just say that before starting from scratch, I tried to create kbin as a fork of Lemmy. I like Rust, I respect them as architects and I’ve learned a lot about managing such a project. However, ultimately, I believe that I cannot remain indifferent to certain things. That’s why kbin is what it is now. Nevertheless, that collaboration with Lemmy’s developers can be beneficial for all of us at this stage. After all, Lemmy is not just one instance, and many amazing people are building the fediverse using this software.

What was those "certain things" we do not know. But the full discussion there revolves around the political views. Check it yourself. But at the end of the day, choose what suits you best since they are contribute to the same Threadiverse.

Lemmy devs are tankies.

I looked at Lemmy.world then Kbin.

I went with Kbin because Lemmy keeps pulling new threads onto the top of the home page feed. This pushes down content on the home page as you're trying to read it. And I just don't want it to be constantly pulling in new data, especially if I'm doing other stuff and my browser is just in the background.

Lemmy developers support the CCP and Russia,
Kbin dev doesn't.

I'm new to Lemmy and kbin, so these points may be more a me-thing than a Lemmy/kbin-thing, but from what I can see:

• Accessing Lemmy content from kbin is pretty seamless, but it's difficult to access kbin from Lemmy.

  • Ex) It's easy to access gaming@beehaw.org from kbin by going to https://kbin.social/m/gaming@beehaw.org, but I couldn't find a way to access https://kbin.social/m/Amsterdam from beehaw

• kbin's integration with Mastodon/microblogging fediverses is neat.

• kbin seems to have more magazines catering to more of my specific interests and hobbies, while Lemmy's communities are more generic.

• This is specific to the instance I am on (beehaw.org), but I can't access the Lemmy instance when I'm using ProtonVPN.

• I just read through the Mastodon thread on how the Lemmy developers are not consistent with their own policies of human rights. While that doesn't automatically mean that Lemmy is bad, I feel more comfortable using software by developers who are not known to be "tankies".

First time I've looked at kbin and what immediately struck me is that the page is properly viewable with javascript turned off.

A welcome surprise and I'll create an account there.

1. I like the UI more
2. Not developed by tankies
3. Catchier name IMO (reminds me of GabeN, while Lemmy makes me think of Lemmings, which isn't the best)
4. Microblogs are neat

i really want to switch to kbin but im struggling seeing lemmy posts/communities on kbin whereas the opposite works better for me. i would love to switch to kbin because of the tankie thing though.

A friend told me to try Kbin when the owner of Reddit turned out to be so terrible.

I like it here.

Kbin's software is much more impressive to me, despite being a lot newer it's far more robust. Having dual functionality for both threads and microblogs is really cool for the Fediverse.

And yeah, the tankie thing.

Wider layout, actually black text (compared to Lemmingish grey), and clearly distinguished boxes with comments. Plus several "skins", including solarized light and dark. Less eye strain.

The community on kbin seems nicer… I know, it’s impossible to say in a few days, but I’ve had a better experience here and on beehaw than other instances…

1. Better UI
2. the initial lemmy instance I had was error-filled
3. Microblogging built in

Maybe it's nostalgia from my vbulletin/phpbb days...

Kbin has access to lemmy stuff and mastodon stuff without needing multiple accounts/sites/apps.

Also I heard some rumors about tankies and that sounds like drama I'd like to avoid. I believe there are other instances not involving them but it's confusing about what instance to sign up on when you're new.

When the blackout came, Lemmy had some dissent (people couldn’t fully recommend it). A community about Kbin got banned and I came and looked at it. I just liked the way it looked.

Took a bit to get used to it, but the layout makes sense and it made me look into Mastodon.

Once federation kicked in, I could easily see posts from everywhere here, and the local magazines had nice people. Didn’t see a reason to look elsewhere.

I can’t speak to “why not Lemmy”, but genuinely I like it here and don’t see a reason to go elsewhere

Mainly better UI, less questionable dev, and better support with mastodon if I chose to browse mastodon.

I feel like the Hot/Active short is vastly better on KBin than Lemmy. I know Lemmy has an open bug regarding the Hot sort, so maybe that will change. But as it stands, I feel like I am seeing much more meaningful content in KBin, even though it's all federated.

Lemmy wouldn't let me create an account after several attempts.

I like the looks and the features of kbin. I looked at lemmy a year ago but the whole communist vibe on the, then only, instances was too much for me. There are more "normal" instances now, but I still gravitated towards kbin more.

1. Involving microblogs is very interesting and I eager to see how it opens up more discussions after Kbin grows bigger.
2. Solarized light theme looks very nice!

Because I'm dumb.

Not that "signing up for kbin was a dumb move"; more that I was too dumb to understand the front page full of technical bullshit on the Lemmy landing site.

I started to skim it and went "Wow, ok, this is complicated, I guess I'll have to figure it out later; I only have about thirty minutes right now."

Then I clicked on a link to kbin, and there was content, and a login button, and a sign up button, and a quick registration page, and bang! I'm on kbin commenting on cat pictures. The only adjustment I had to make to my browsing habits was using my middle mouse button to click links instead of my left button (to open them in a new tab, which I had set Reddit to do by default).

Beehaw was the same way, so I signed up there, too, but their web UI doesn't work great for me. Sorting by "local" and "active" only shows me stuff from yesterday through last week, but sorting by anything else floods my feed with a dozen new topics every five seconds that automatically scroll everything down. I don't even have enough time to read a longish thread title before it's rudely shoved off the bottom of my screen in favor of six posts from some random citrus-appreciation instance, or something. So I'm going to check back there in a month or two, because I like the on screen layout better.

Because I applied to 3 Lemmy instances and never got anything more that the spinning icon when trying to log in. I'm glad I ended up at kbin.social, though.

Better layout, and it was showing me all the Lemmy threads anyway.

I liked KBin for including other fediverse posts in the feed, and slightly the UI. I went through the TOS and some Lemmy instances I couldn’t even find them.

• User interface
• Microblog

The layout of Kbin is so much better Lemmy was just confusing as heck.

I like the layout, and I really like the ability to microblog at a magazine for more casual posts that don't truly deserve a whole thread of their own.

If I'm going to post "new event x starting on y date with z rewards, discuss here" I'll make that a proper formal thread. If I'm going to post "I thought the new event was cute, though they could have done abc better" I'll make that a microblog.

tried them both out without an account and kbin was better. lemmy was unusable without an account. so I made a kbin account.

Mostly I just think it looks better than lemmy hahaha.

I was able to subscribe to discussions on Beehaw using Kbin ; I wasn't able to do that using Lemmy, for whatever reason (probably me, but who knows for sure)
Anyway, Kbin works, so I'm using it.

I started on Beehaw, but Lemmy had some automatic refresh thing that I could not turn off anywhere so I came to kbin.

Got tired of the Lemmy front page bugs (the one where new posts come flooding in, and the one where hot/active stops working until the server gets restarted). Kbin front page "just works."

(at least until today, when the entire front page became Sync is coming to Lemmy)

Mostly #3. It looks nicer and seems to work better. And it happily also means I don't have to deal with #5 because ick!

Frankly I have trust issues lol. I wasn't sure if I wanted to do the thing that most people seemed to be flocking to. And kbin seems to have more features and is already its own thing, already has an identity, isn't trying to replace an existing social media channel

Happy here so far

i didnt look too deep into it, i just looked at both, and thought Kbins UI was nicer

I like the layout better all there really is to it.

The first time I went to make a Lemmy account, I found the "join lemmy" page and ended up confused and just decided to deal with it later. I then heard that the founders of lemmy were "genocide deniers" and "tankies" and whatever, then the same day I heard that reddit had just banned a community that existed to help people move to kbin.

So I immediately went to kbin, clicked "sign in with Google," and it was that easy.

I know I already posted it in the other thread, but here's another link to the list of evidence:

https://kbin.social/...

Whynotboth.jpg?

I feel like the UI for Kbin is cleaner, though not without its problems. And I can access Lemmy communities from Kbin as well (this works a lot better than I expected it would), so I'm not really missing out if I choose it over Lemmy.

I'm also giving an answer to the other thread on Lemmy, since I think there are good reasons to use that one as well. They're both solid, and I'm using both regularly--often viewing posts from one service on the other. For me, it's "yes AND," not "no BUT."

Honestly it was pretty arbitrary, I happened to pick Kbin over Lemmy on the day, and figured I might change my mind and move to Lemmy if I didn't like it. I feel like I've made the right choice though, I like it here!

Because no obvious Tankies.