Kbin is the first Reddit alternative I looked at and i liked the UI so I stuck with it. I kind of assumed everything would be kbin. I thought I understood things. I thought it was kbin and lemmy separate but they federated and so I’d be able to access lemmy stuff from kbin. Which I guess is true. But now I’m confused. I look at all, and I see a post in m/main@sh.itjust.works and the post is from lemmy.world and it’s devs. I’m not subbed to m/main, so did Ernest curate /all and add it? Are people cross posting from lemmy into sh.itjust.works? I feel like I need a drawing or red string diagram.
Kbin and Lemmy are basically web applications. They both use the same protocol to communicate (ActivityPub), which is also used by Mastodon (more of a Twitter alternative). kbin.social or lemmy.world are instances, basically specific servers that you can register to, like you’d register with an email provider. They’re running their respective kbin or Lemmy applications that you use to view and interact with the content on their servers, as well as the other ActivityPub servers, as they’re federated to communicate with each other. There’s plenty of other instances / servers, you can even set up your own ones if you want to. Each one can have their own set of rules too but overall it usually does not matter too much where you go to for your account. However, some instances like beehaw, which is a Lemmy based instance, is heavily defederated & moderated. Sort of a safe space if you will. Communities on Lemmy, or Magazines on kbin, are basically subreddits. Kbin’s microblogs are basically Mastodon threads / toots. The main / all page contains pretty much threads from all federated instances on kbin or Lemmy.