I found the same, tbh.

I've been on the thrediverse using lotide until now, which is different then lemmy or kbin. There were some federation issues so lotide wasn't federating just as the place was blowing up with more users, so I decided it was time to install one of the new pieces of software.

I spent 3 days trying to get kbin working and federating, and just wasn't having luck with it. Even now, kbin.social is pretty dodgy about federating, and doesn't federate with a lot of other stuff at all.

My instances require good federation. That's non-negotiable because otherwise it's just me sitting here talking to myself.

Ultimately I went with lemmy, which I managed to get up and running quite a bit quicker.

To be fair to kbin, it's a super new project. lemmy and lotide have been going for years, I hadn't even really heard about kbin 2 months ago. I think it'll get a lot better, but it's going to take time and effort.

I sucked it up with respect to the lemmy devs politics stuff... Instead of bitching that they're not exactly like me, I'm going to just be thankful to them for creating a platform we can share.