I’m not sure I completely understand the differences. Are they seperate or somehow connected?
Also I’ve read you can view kbin instances on Lemmy somehow. How does that work if they’re two different things?
I’m using Liftoff is it somehow possible to view kbin instances on there?
They are two separate projects with similar goals (implement a Reddit clone). They both use the activitypub protocol, so they can generally interoperate. Other activitypub based services, such as mastodon, can also interact with either Lemmy or kbin, but in a more limited and clunkier way.
Lemmy was started first so there are more servers and more users, kbin is more recent.
They are two disparate software that both work on the ActivityPub platform.
Lemmy is a thread aggregator(like reddit) only, where kbin does thread aggregation and microblogging(Like Mastodon).
Both software federates with others, so you can see lemmy communities on kbin, and you can see kbin magazines on lemmy.
If I can piggyback with a question: Does anyone know how “Read” status for posts is stored and accessible on both softwares? I know that it’s stored and it would be cool if it was private, but I’m guessing it can be collected and used.
This information exists wherever your account exists. It’s nonfederated data, similar to things like your email address, hashed password, and 2FA master key. No other instance has any need to know what notifications you’ve viewed, so they are never made privy to that information.
To clarify: federation is not like P2P where everyone gets a copy of everything. Federation only shares exactly what needs to be shared for the software to function. In the case of Lemmy, this boils down to the following data:
- User profiles
- Communities
- Posts
- Comments
- Votes
- Follows
- Blocks
- Private Messages
Some of you may be raising eyebrows at this list. Does this mean that anyone can see your votes & PMs at any time? No, not exactly. There’s two big things to keep in mind here:
- When possible, the smallest possible amount of federation is used (e.g.: votes are only sent to the instance where the post/comment is, Blocks/PMs only get sent to the instance where the other user is, etc.)
- Unless it’s something the website shows, only instance admins can view the data that gets federated with it. Your PMs may not be secure, but they’re not exactly out on Google either.
At worst, here’s what information can be captured by a random bad actor running their own evil instance:
- Your username
- Your public bio
- Your home instance
- Your moderated communities
- Your moderation history
- Your comment history
- Your post history
- Your votes specifically for posts/comments belonging to the bad instance
- Your follows specifically for communities belonging to the bad instance
- Your PMs specifically to users belonging to the bad instance
- Your blocks specifically of users belonging to the bad instance
The majority of this information is already publicly searchable on your home instance’s website. Pretty much all of the scary stuff requires you to actually directly interact with the bad guy’s instance. If you’re about to vote or follow something sketchy, consider double-checking who runs the instance before you attach your name to it (that’s what the rainbow link is for).
Thank you so much for the detailed answer
After reading these comments since I also wanted to know the differences, I have determined I am still “technologically challenged”. I basically understood the punctuation.
You know you are old when you think there should be something like a “Technology and Federation for Dummies”!!
What part are you having trouble understanding?
Lemmy and Kbin basically just use the same protocol for exchanging information.
Both are similar in that they interpret and present that information in a way that looks similar to Reddit which is why you can see a community on Lemmy as a magazine on kbin and vice versa. In addition Kbin also can interpret it in a way that resembles twitter.
They both started with the protocol but the way they store, serve, and present the information from the protocol is different. For example, I think Kbin stores the information that shows who upvoted what, but I don’t think Lemmy does.
The part about PHP and Rust, the differences of which is the better code?/foundation?
Most of my confusion lies with which instance is the better option as a whole. Is PHP not as reliable as Rust even thought Rust is new? I can not read code so I have no idea what any of that means.
Apologies for my ineptness. I would like to understand better.
A car can run on petrol, LPG, diesel, electricity or hydrogen. The result is still the same - a thing that moves when you push on the go pedal.
For almost everyone, it makes no practical difference which fuel makes the website work.
