The Redditor's Guide to How Kbin Works.

If you know anyone who is trying to figure out what/how to use Kbin, share this post to them. You no longer need to explain word by word from scratch every single time, Let's make Kbin and the fediverse easy for everyone.

 1. Joining Kbin 👥

Steps: Go to Kbin's Homepage, click at "Instances", and choose one of the listed Kbin instances.

 

Explanation: Think of choosing an instance like choosing your email client/provider (ie: choosing between Gmail, Yahoo mail or Outlook). When you pick the email provider you want, you simply create an account there. 

 

For example, I create an account called "example@yahoo.com", I can still send an email to my friend "example@gmail.com". 

 

You see what's happening here? It does not matter if both you and your friend use different email providers, you can still connect with your friend and send emails to him even if he uses Gmail, and you may use Outlook, Yahoo mail, or anything else.

 

The same concept can be applied to Kbin, it does not matter if you sign up on a different instance compared to someone else, all instances are interconnected and you can connect with people from other instances on Kbin.

The above concept is called the Fediverse, a term you will often come across while using Kbin, the fediverse not only interconnects Kbin instances, but it also allows Kbin itself to share and recieve information from other platforms that also use the Fediverse, such interconnection is often called as "federation", as Kbin federates with other platforms such as Mastodon and Lemmy.

This is possible thanks to ActivityPub, the decentralized and federated social media protocol used by Kbin. Just like Gmail or Microsoft Outlook uses email as a protocol for communication.

Bonus: Are you more of a visual learner? Check out this amazing video that explains what the fediverse is.

2. Using Kbin on mobile 📱

• Artemis - A heavily inspired mobile client by Apollo for Kbin, available for Android and iOS. (Support Community - m/ArtemisApp)
  
• Lunar - A dedicated iOS client for Kbin. (Support Community - m/lunar)
• Web Apps - Also called as "Prorgessive Web Applications", act like native applications that run directly from your web browser. Here's how you can do this.
• There are many more 3rd party apps in development! We will update this as they launch.
  

3. Instances you can use 🤔

Please use this actively updated resource for the list of available Kbin instances. Our general suggestions/recommendations would be artemis.camp, fedia.io and kbin.social (run of Kbin's developer).

 

Our recommendations are based on how long an instance has been maintained properly and if they are a general english speaking instance with a wider appeal, hence brand new instances that lack reputation or instances that have a more focused topic, for example, is unlikely to be recommended by us. Hence, more instances is likely to be recommended moving forward. Hence, you may also want to look into the other instances as well to better decide on which suites you best.

4. Customizing Kbin to your liking 🖌

Kbin has in-built UI customization allowing you to customize it as per your liking.

 

Click at the settings icon for the customization bar to show up, which can be found on the right side in your Kbin user interface, as shown in the image below.

5. Terms Kbin uses that differs from Reddit 📖

• Subreddits = Magazines
• Reddit Posts = Threads
• Microblog(ging) = Posts

New users coming from Reddit can often mistakenly take Posts on Kbin to be equivalent to how Posts work on Reddit, but Threads is actually equivalent to Reddit Posts, while Kbin's "Posts" are microblogging, like Twitter/X or Mastodon. Microblogging is an additional feature that Kbin has, if you are coming from Reddit and don't have the need to use Microblogging, you can simply ignore that and continue to use Kbin's forum/reddit-like functionality.

 

Magazines on the other hand, is simply Kbin's way of calling communities, just like Reddit's subreddits.

6. Difference between Upvotes and Boosts ⬆️

1. Boosts: This is similar to how retweeting/reposting works on microblogging platforms, this is useful for those who also use the microblogging side of Kbin, if you don't, simply ignore this.
2. Upvotes: This is exactly how it sounds like, upvoting works just like how it works on Reddit. Upvoting means you are showing approval/support for a particular thread, Downvoting means you disagree with it, this functionality is used to determine how high or low a thread should be ranked in a Magazine.
   

7. Kbin's Reputation Points System ⭐

Kbin's Reputation Points works exactly like how Karma works on Reddit, if your thread receives more upvotes, you will gain more reputation points in your Kbin account.

8. Accessing your subscribed magazines ⛏️

1. Click on your username (top right corner)
    
2. Go to "profile"

3. Find "subscriptions" as shown in the below image to see the list of magazines/communities you are subscribed to.

   
   You can find "subscriptions" as shown in bottom right of the above image.
   

9. Is there an r/all equivalent on Kbin?

Yes!! Simply use "/all" at the end of your instance's link. For example, if I'm using kbin.social, i'd do kbin.social/all, if it's fedia.io, then fedia.io/all.

Done with our guide here? Check out our "First things to do after joining Kbin!"