There's so many ways to interact with the Fediverse. The most popular, by far, seems to be Mastodon, but Lemmy, Misskey, and Pixelfed are also relatively popular. Kbin used to be popular, but it has apparently been abandoned, and is mostly dead at this point.

I recently learned that Mbin is a thing, checked it out, and it looked really cool! Has anyone used it? How different is it from Lemmy? I hear they have better integration with Mastodon.

What Fediverse services do you actually, regularly use?

For me, it's mostly Lemmy, though I do hop on Mastodon every now and then.

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[–] Pamasich@kbin.earth 15 points 2 days ago (4 children)

I'm an Mbin user.

Mbin is a fork of kbin. Kbin's dev didn't really trust people much, so he wanted to have sole control over what code gets added to kbin. Which led to issues when he wasn't available and development just came to a halt for months because no one could accept changes anymore. The other devs wanted more control so they could actually get shit done, so they decided to fork the project instead.

How different is it from Lemmy? I hear they have better integration with Mastodon.

I think the biggest difference is really the fact that you can subscribe to not just communities but also users. This is where the superior Mastodon compatibility comes into play by allowing us to see posts that don't mention communities. Lemmy only sees Mastodon posts if they mention a community explicitly or an Mbin user has interacted with it.

There's also other stuff like public upvotes, boosting, tags, reputation (karma), and custom community CSS. I don't really know Lemmy well enough to give a full list of where they differ.

[–] gon@lemm.ee 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

I’m an Mbin user.

The Fediverse is pretty cool... Hello, Mbin user!

you can subscribe to not just communities but also users.

Oh, that's interesting.

Not sure what the point of public upvotes is, or what boosting is, but tags and custom CSS sounds cool. How's my Mbin karma?! IDK if that's how it works... I've signed up on your same instance, I'll see how it goes.

Thank you for your comment!

[–] Pamasich@kbin.earth 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not sure what the point of public upvotes is,

Well, you can see who upvoted something. kbin also allowed seeing downvotes, but that got removed because of worries about harassment.

By looking at who upvoted a specific post you liked, you can find like-minded people to follow. I also find it cool to see the different instances and platforms the upvotes come from.

Boosting is a bit complicated. It's supposed to be retweeting basically, and does work that way under the hood. Posts boosted from Mbin do appear that way from Mastodon. However, I don't think Mbin itself currently treats boosts as more than just an even more public upvote (with regular upvotes you can see who upvoted a post, not what posts a user upvoted; boosts are publically listed on profiles).

[–] gon@lemm.ee 1 points 1 day ago

Hmm I see.

Not sure how much use I'd get of public upvotes, personally, but boosting/re-posting seems like a genuinely nice feature.

[–] Fitik@fedia.io 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

How's my Mbin karma

A screenshot It's 2500~, but it doesn't affect anything on Mbin, so there's no point worrying about it

[–] gon@lemm.ee 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Thanks! Yeah, I have no idea how that's even calculated or whatever so... If it doesn't even affect anything, I don't see why I would care lol

[–] Fitik@fedia.io 2 points 2 days ago (2 children)

It's basically the same as Reddit karma, it's just the sum of upvotes+downvotes you got

If it doesn't even affect anything, I don't see why I would care lol

Same, idc, but some people care about it. Also piefed cares, I think it puts a red icon in the username of the users with negative reputation and their posts start with 0 upvotes instead of 1. (If I'm not mistaken)

[–] coldsideofyourpillow@lemmy.cafe 1 points 18 hours ago

It's basically the same as Reddit karma, it's just the sum of upvotes+downvotes you got

There's one difference: boosts give you +2 reputation points.

[–] gon@lemm.ee 2 points 2 days ago

Meh, I suppose!!! Thanks for the info~ :D

[–] FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Is there plans for an Mbin mobile app?

[–] Pamasich@kbin.earth 2 points 2 hours ago

There's Interstellar which is made by the admin of my instance. I don't know if the Mbin devs have plans for their own official app.

[–] macfranc@poliversity.it 1 points 1 day ago

@Pamasich @gon

Kbin's dev didn't really trust people much, so he wanted to have sole control over what code gets added to kbin

The developer of Kbin is an absolute genius and Kbin was one of the most beautiful and original things ever done in the Fediverse, with a hybridization between microblogging and threadiverse like never seen before. It's a real shame that he ended support for Kbin, but I think he got burned out...

I think the biggest difference is really the fact that you can subscribe to not just communities but also users

This is an added value, but it was also a critical aspect. The fact of having allowed to follow users and not only communities (magazines) has determined a significant slowdown of the server.

Furthermore, this great added value of joining microblogging to threadiverse, does not make the interface very easy to read. This was taken sic et simpliciter from Mbin, without further developments. Perhaps, if the original developer had remained active, he could have taken the responsibility of making some sensible changes to the Knin interface...

[–] LandedGentry@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I’m not entirely sure what makes “subscribing to users” different from following people on social media. Can you explain?

[–] Pamasich@kbin.earth 1 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Oh, that's what I meant. And Mbin calls it following too. I just said "subscribing" because it's the same action behind the scenes, just different terms to refer to it, and I was using "communities" first in the same sentence.

subscribe to not just communities but also users

[–] LandedGentry@lemmy.zip 1 points 1 hour ago

Ah got it. Context threw me off I see what you mean now