Currently, it's an uneven split between fledditors and tech nerds, which I would chalk up to mastodon/fedi in general brimming with mostly nerds, and kbin specifically being a platform in its infancy that would naturally attract more curious devs than shitposters.
I think it'll balance out more over time, as people who have made their home here make it the home they're looking for. I'm hoping kbin will always keep the air of kind hyper-inquisitiveness that it currently carries.
Genuine question, because the Lemmy app I'm using right now (Thunder) doesn't show instances next to user names, and I haven't generally been paying attention to which instances host which communities. What about kbin makes it attractive to inquisitive people?
For me, I had my own reasons that were similar to Nougat's. Sensible, non-eye-burning interface. A frankly surprising admiration for what I'd seen of what would become my dev's personality and approach, where I hadn't felt anything but veiled contempt for an admin in decades. I didn't know about the other perks (individually muting instances, neat community tagging system, 70% compatibility with mastodon) until later, but those make me even more satisfied with my choice and I'm content to wait out the small stuff.
For inquisitive people, I'm not overly certain beyond what I've said. It could have been a fluke. It could be that, since lemmy was the first choice anyone ever mentioned, shitposters are just looking for the easiest way to have a good time. So lemmy got all the shitposters. And if you weren't interested in what lemmy had to offer, there was a very good chance you weren't interested in where the fediverse currently was in general, in order to bother reading through all the other options. A lot of people decided they didn't like how janky and different it felt and they just went elsewhere.
I could be overly-projecting, but people who kept looking long enough to stumble across kbin instead of choosing lemmy or giving up I think would tend to be the more anxious, detail-oriented types that are liable to do their homework before making anything approaching a decision. Which would...inherently make them more likely to be hungrier for that kind of thing in general? Which naturally meshes pretty well with the aforementioned nerdiness of those who were already here when we arrived.
I really don't want to make assumptions, though, or end up implying things like "Lol, lemmy got all the lazy chodes and we got the smart people." Especially between such closely-linked communities that started out as quite literally the same group. Expecting such a clear delineation would be a bit laughable, and we'll blend with each other like we always have. I have no interest in tribalism, I'm just enjoying the time period this platform is troll-less.
It's where I happened to land, but I've been quite happy. ernest is the dev, and he's tops. There's a KBin Enhancement Suite going already which includes a toggle for @username@instance display, as well as plenty of other things. hariette is developing Artemis as a kbin-compatiable mobile app for iOS and Android (which also promises future lemmy compatibility). The kbin interface is pretty clean and intuitive, and I'm looking forward to how it matures.
@Nepenthe My impression is rather that actual nerds are few and far between on Mastodon. It used to be somewhat nerdy in its infancy, but it no longer is. Most people use it through mobile apps on iPhones and think that alternatives to any GAFAM products don't even exist. They don't want to read nerd stuff.
Once a nerd who ends up on Mastodon learns that there are Fediverse projects with way more features, and that Mastodon is actually quite lack-lustre and underequipped, as long as they don't have hundreds or thousands of faithful followers yet, they'll go elsewhere. Akkoma. CalcKey, as it's still being called but not for much longer. Mitra. Friendica.
And the hard-core nerds take the next step and move to someplace with working nomadic identity, namely Hubzilla or (streams). Seriously, Hubzilla has no casual, non-techy normies, and (streams) has even fewer.
It makes sense, but it's more than a little depressing and I would have thought the features wouldn't really be much of an issue for someone who chose that platform. Someone on Twitter might be aware that Reddit exists and how it works, but they're still not very likely to uproot themselves from a platform they know and use just for that (current events notwithstanding).
Can I ask what kind of service Hubzilla is, that puts it above the other options? Especially for nerds? I've heard the name maybe three times now, but I know nothing else. Is it just the fact that they're not tied down?