My understanding with this was that lemmy was actively blocking kbin content. I don't think it's kbin's fault, and lemmy/ml is being shady.

This was helpful, and I understand it now, thanks! It's just SO clunky though to have to use a different URL to get to the same place depending on what instance you're a member of. I don't understand what the benefit of all this added complication is. I feel like good programming should make it so that when I type [email protected], whatever instance I'm in should just automatically link me to their version of the URL. Like kbin should know that that needs to go to kbin.social/m/[email protected] without me having to change anything.

And in the meantime... we're going to have different communities for each instance because of how confusing this all is. Who decided that [email protected] was going to be the default memes community? Won't there be other communities that pop up at [email protected] and [email protected] etc? It seems like chaos to me. How do I know which one is the right one?

I 100% agree. I should just be able to click a link to go to a community, and then there should be a simple way to subscribe when I get there. Like... that functionality may not be "basic" to program, but it is a basic necessity for ease of use and growth...

I picked kbin too. It seems like the most complete platform, and is more easy to navigate than lemmy... but that's kind of a low bar. I'm still very lost.

I still don't understand how to subscribe to groups that aren't on my instance. I sometimes was able to get it to work on my PC but it's impossible on mobile. This platform needs a lot of work.