kbin seems to have died, but it was controversial because it didn't have the feature of the user automatic upvoting every post/comment the way lemmy does. the user was however permitted to manually upvote own posts and comments. but also on kbin all votes were public so everyone could see they had done it and there was something of a norm forming around that being a bit embarrassing.

except for the part about all votes being public, I kind of liked it. You can upvote yourself but you shouldn't; so funny.

it was hypothesized that because of the lack of initial default upvote, kbin users would be at a systematic loss. which I also liked and thought was funny.

but kbin is dead now so I guess it didn't work out.