We’ve just updated to the latest version of Lemmy which comes with a ton of bug fixes and an updated UI without websockets (yay, easier debugging).
You can find the full changes over at https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/releases/tag/0.18.0.
This also appears to have fixed an issue with connecting to kbin instances. You should now be able to search those up in the same way as other Lemmy communities: !community@domain, but let us know if there’s any issues!
Websockets cause continuous strain on servers regardless of if the user is even interacting with the site
With HTTP/2 or even 3, it should be much less load overall. Especially if they optimize their API a bit better.