I’m not new to link aggregators/communities, but new to those outside of Reddit. About a month ago I joined Lemmy and today my curiosity led me to Piefed, although I’ve come across the name before.
My research told me Piefed is developing at a much faster pace than Lemmy, is that true? I like the onboarding of Piefed better, because it allows you to select things you might be interested in as part of the process, which is helpful. Overall, it’s a much more guided approach.
I’ve also gotten to know it doesn’t really matter for the average user which of the platforms one joins. So I’m specifically posting this question on a community on Lemmy through my Piefed account.
I’m based in Europe if that makes a difference, which I believe it doesn’t. Nonetheless I’m happy to read your thoughts. Thanks
74 Comments
CombatWombat@feddit.online · 30 pts · 1d
Being able to follow individual users, in addition to communities, is enough to tip the scales for me in favor of piefed. There's a lot of content on the fediverse that is inaccessible from the threadiverse, and getting pixelfed photographers and mastodon meme accounts in my feed has been a huge improvement for me.
slemptastrophe@piefed.social · 11 pts · 1d
Can you link to some good meme accounts on mastodon?
CombatWombat@feddit.online · 3 pts · 1d
I like @vicfroh@mastodon.social , @i0null@infosec.exchange , and @funnysnarkyjoke.bsky.social@bsky.brid.gy (this is technically a bluesky account via a bridge to give credit where credit is due)
I would also recommend @nonfedimemes@wetdry.world but I think they might have stopped posting? idk maybe follow anyway in case they come back
(also hi y'all! sorry I'm a little late for follow friday)
ride@piefed.social · 7 pts · 1d
That sounds useful. I’ll give it a try
stopforgettingit@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 7h
what UI do you use as a that lets you add pixelfed and mastdon to your feed? I am on Voyager but it doesn't fully support piefed and I don't see anyway of adding non lemmy fediverse places to it.
CombatWombat@feddit.online · 2 pts · 7h
I use the pwa. The interface for following users is still pretty clunky — you have to browse the instance on the instances page, and you only see accounts who have interacted with your instance previously. I went to pixelfed.social and gram.social and followed just some random accounts and it has turned out way better than I expected. My favorite is an account that posts photos from a gameboy camera, @harryfk@pixelfed.social
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online · 25 pts · 1d
Cons of each:
Piefed is a lot newer and is therefor in some areas still under construction.
Lemmy is maintained by people who also run the ML instance promote Russia's invasion of Ukraine, promote North Korea, promote Donald Trump, etc. The have postulated that Trans people are a "liberal psyop" and they think the word liberal is synonymous with right-wing fascism. The periodically add a banner to every instance running lemmy begging for money to fund their extremist activities. LINK TO MEGATHREAD
ride@piefed.social · 6 pts · 1d
That’s interesting. Although your link is dead and doesn’t let me proceed.
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online · 6 pts · 1d
Link is working but here is alternative: https://feddit.online/post/593416
ride@piefed.social · 3 pts · 1d
Getting error on that too: Response error: No object found. with status 400
If you give me the topic perhaps i can search it rather
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online · 8 pts · 1d
Documentation of Lemmy.ml's Extremism [Megathread]
submitted 1 year ago by cm0002@lemmy.world
!meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works
Just open the link in a new browser where you aren't signed in and it should work unless you've been IP Banned
ride@piefed.social · 5 pts · 1d
Found it. Thanks
toothpaste_sandwich@thebrainbin.org · 4 pts · 21h
Oof... They're even more problematic than I realised, then.
GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 16h
Yet even with lemmys people being like that, their software is free from bias and authoritarian-style features that are made to stifle free speech and to encourage an ideological echo chamber, unlike Piefed.
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online · 1 pts · 7h
Except for that banner I mentioned. Sure, instance owners COULD try to remove it every update; but they don't.
rimu@piefed.social · 1 pts · 13h
Lemmy's lack of features is why Lemmys community is how it is and that suits the Lemmy devs and their political goals perfectly.
Schwim@lemmy.zip · 25 pts · 1d
I found Piefed to have some minor refinements to Lemmy, enough so that I moved to it for everyday browsing. Probably the most important for me is the combining of multi-community duplicate posts. The way I browse(All/New) will often result in seeing the identical post crossposted to 5-10 other communities. In Lemmy, it results in endless scrolling of duplicate content, especially if more than one person happens to be doing it at a certain time. In Piefed, when it works correctly, I'll see only one example of the post and it will offer a dropdown if I'd rather see it from another community. Things like that really help soften the rough edges of the fediverse.
I've also heard that it's more quickly developed than Lemmy but I have no firsthand knowledge of that.
At the end of the day, you can see the exact same feed regardless of which your using so just pick the one that makes your time on the fediverse more pleasant.
ride@piefed.social · 8 pts · 1d
I was getting annoyed with the duplicated posts as well. But I don’t see that on Piefed, I guess a big plus for Piefed.
HuntressHimbo@lemmy.zip · 21 pts · 1d
Personally like Lemmy. Both the Lemmy devs and the Piefed dev have their faults, but its been a while since I can remember that controversy crossing the barrier into the source code on the Lemmy side. Its been fairly recent for Piefed with upvote limiting, and PJ leaving over it
mondoman712@lemmy.ml · 20 pts · 1d
Piefed has (had?) some weird opinionated behaviours that to me make it seem worth avoiding https://lemmy.ml/comment/23662293
1984@lemmy.today · 11 pts · 1d
I agree about the attitude score he calculates but saying the word stupid is ableism is silly.
Think about it. If you are stupid, and nobody can tell you that, you get a society full of very stupid people.
Humans do stupid things and we should tell eachother. It's fine if someone thinks I'm stupid. It's an opinion, and I want to live in a society where people are allowed to have that opinion.
rimu@piefed.social · 1 pts · 1d
I removed the word 'stupid' from the code 3 months ago, the function is now called 'reply_is_low_effort'.
The haters don't bother keeping their propaganda up to date.
1984@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 18h
I think you shouldn't have removed it because saying something is stupid is not ableism.
Anyway, most people like piefed and I think its great with many alternatives. In a project like this you will get many opinions. Listen to the ones that make sense and ignore the ones that are stupid. Yes, I called something stupid. It's not ableism for gods sake.
I think your attitude score is stupid. But that's my opinion and in the end it's up to you, since it's your software. It's fine. Your intension is to create better discussions which is good. How to do it is not so easy.
rimu@piefed.social · 4 pts · 18h
Abelism or not it took seconds to change so I don't mind.
Attitude has turned out to be a lot less useful than I hoped...
1984@lemmy.today · -3 pts · 17h
Yeah. I think hacker news has some decent ideas about how to manage these things. You can ask chat gpt about some details to get the idea, but I think its something along the lines of users not being able to affect a discussion with voting until they have some sort of reputation. And I believe that reputation has to come from reactions by the community.
I think if you ask chat gpt about that and have a discussion, some good ideas could surface. They have karma but it's a ladder system where users get more options only after contributing successfully to the community, not just by time.
rimu@piefed.social · 1 pts · 16h
Interesting, thanks
mondoman712@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 1d
If you want to nitpick you'd be better off replying directly to the comment I linked to.
homes@piefed.world · 4 pts · 1d
Piefed.world has a different admin and different policies— more open and less controversial ones
ride@piefed.social · 6 pts · 1d
You could say the same thing about Lemmy then—lemmy.world is different from lemmy.ml
AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 1d
There are some piefed instances that have forked and rolled back the controversial decisions by the dev. Take a look at quokk.au.
homes@piefed.world · 0 pts · 1d
Lol, that’s certainly true, however, the controversial views of the Lemmy devs and that of Lemmy.ML are a lot more extreme than the piefed dev and that of piefed.social, and as a result, piefed.social, its dev, and the instance overall have a lot less distance between them than lemmy.ml and lemmy.world.
diffaldo@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 1d
Lemmy devs have never ever put their opinions into the codebase..
homes@piefed.world · 0 pts · 1d
Yes. There are both similarities and differences in the comparison.
Thankfully, with piefed, it’s both transparent and simple for admins to disable during setup. Also the difference between piefed.social and all of the other PF instances.
GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 16h
Piefed is ideologically driven by the creator, and encourages pre-emptive banning and blocking users who don’t just participate in echo chamber behaviour.
Lemmys devs might be ideologically captured too, but their software isn’t, so it’s the better option.
orgrinrt@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 15h
Even if I don’t personally agree with all of the ideology behind the lemmy devs, at least they are ideologically posed to keep the thing open, for the people, by the people. I respect that. A lot, in fact.
Piefed, on the surface, seems a lot less principled, and seems to also attract the non-leftist types by default, perhaps as some kneejerk reaction to the lemmy devs’ ideology. As a rule of thumb that sounds just outright worse to me, as a user, even if it seems not to impact much yet.
This is just me, as a political and ideological layperson, following my fragile principles. I might be betting wrong in doing so, but then again, might be right too. Either way, they work much the same and talk the same protocol, so it seems to me it’s just a choice of principle.
Either will work. Just thought I’d share my two cents.
rimu@piefed.social · -1 pts · 13h
What. Check out the modlog, they ban more people than anyone.
rimu@piefed.social · 2 pts · 13h
It's up to the mods and admins what they do with PieFed's functions. Anything can be misused, even simple stuff. Like for example lemmy.ml has a description "a community for Foss and privacy enthusiasts" set by the admins and then ridicules and bans anyone who pushes back against the .ml political line on China. Lemmy.ml is not about foss and privacy.
The software feature of having a instance description is innocuous but it's being used for deception.
Dookieman12@piefed.social · 13 pts · 1d
The head developer(s) of Lemmy are hardcore Marxist/Maoist/Leninist. The "ml" in Lemmy.ml means "Marxist/Leninist". They openly ask for donations so they can quit their jobs, develop Lemmy full-time, and use Lemmy to spread their beliefs.
PieFed was created specifically so people could contribute to the Fediverse without contributing to the advancement of Marxist/Leninist ideologies.
birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 17 pts · 1d
On the other hand, Piefed also has a bit of a weird social credit system that I'm not a fan of.
ride@piefed.social · 3 pts · 1d
You mean earning tokens or referring to something else?
aaaa@piefed.world · 11 pts · 1d
It's a little overstated. Piefed has some indicators to show when someone is usually downvoted more than upvoted, which can help people in moderation decisions, or it can be ignored
There's also some controversy over a configurable limit to number of votes per day, in case an admin is worried about someone being more of a voting bot than an engaged user
But most piefed admins have configured things in ways they are more comfortable with
FiniteBanjo@feddit.online · 3 pts · 1d
They don't like how you're limited in the number of up and down votes you can submit daily.
Personally I've never hit the limit.
ride@piefed.social · 2 pts · 1d
Good to know. Thanks
ride@piefed.social · 10 pts · 1d
I was wondering what the .ml (it’s certain that Mali isn’t some important country in the Fediverse) represented. Very interesting to know
FleetwoodLinux@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 10h
It's actually a fun coincidence, the Mali TLD used to be free, so they picked it, but it's not free anymore
originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com · 11 pts · 1d
mbin!
unknownuserunknownlocation@kbin.earth · 7 pts · 1d
+1 for mbin. The dev(s?) doesn't seem to be as problematic as the Lemmy dev and it federates with a whole range of fediverse systems. The only real complaints I had with it turned out to be me misunderstanding how it works (for instance not noticing that some of the stuff on my feed is Peertube since it's just really well integrated), so now that I understand that, I'm extremely happy with it.
Infrapink@thebrainbin.org · 6 pts · 1d
Oh wow, I thought I was the only mbinaut here.
palordrolap@fedia.io · 2 pts · 1d
There are dozens of us! Dozens!
BladeFederation@piefed.social · 11 pts · 1d
If I'd already had a Lemmy account I'd probably have just stuck with that but yeah Piefed has more features. The combined comments from cross posts are really nice.
PlzGibHugs@piefed.ca · 9 pts · 1d
I'm using PieFed at the moment, although its more a matter of avoiding the Lemmy devs' hate and support of violence.
PieFed is definitely developing faster, and has a host of features Lemmy doesn't as a result. PieFed has following users, de-duplication of posts, flairs, among other stuff, which Lemmy still lacks. That said, the PieFed dev has some very weird opinions on social media design, so for every new feature, there's an anti-feature. For example, I love the extra moderation tools, but the voting quota limits the ability for more dedicated users to contribute. Its mostly a dislike of internet culture and those who spend a lot of time online, so PieFed tends to discourage things like memes. All-in-all, I'd say PieFed is better, but if you care about the specific downsides, you can easily disagree.
rimu@piefed.social · 4 pts · 1d
The vote quota can be set to whatever the instance admin desires. Just like any other terms of service, it's up to the admin what they give away for free and under what conditions.
afaik only piefed.zip and multiverse.soulism.net have chosen to increase it, though.
PlzGibHugs@piefed.ca · 6 pts · 1d
It can be disabled, but IMO, choosing to leave its default so low is pretty hostile towards your most dedicated users. I know you don't agree, but as seen by the pushback you received, many dedicated users in the fediverse’s already small userbase were against that design decision. I'm not trying to attack you, and I'd still rather use PieFed than Lemmy, but a user looking to set up shop somewhere will want to know about design philosophies like that, whether it affects them immediately, or is just something they may be concerned about in the future.
rimu@piefed.social · 0 pts · 1d
There is a 99% chance it won't effect them because 99% of people don't vote more than the quota. I was very careful about that.
ride@piefed.social · 1 pts · 17h
Thanks to both of you. In the end if the data backs up what you’re saying then so be it. I’m obnoxious to what the quota is, but I doubt I’d go beyond any quota.
rimu@piefed.social · 0 pts · 16h
Cool.
Btw if the default UI of piefed isn't doing it for you, try https://b.piefed.social/ or https://p.piefed.social/. Use the same login.
hexagonwin@lemmy.today · 7 pts · 1d
i use lemmy because theres a frontend that looks exactly like old reddit. https://old.lemmy.today/
mehquestion@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 13h
Has it been working for you? It's been down for me all weekend
hexagonwin@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 8h
was on my phone when commenting that, checking now yeah it's down for me as well...
anyone who wants to check out that interface can take a look at https://old.lemmy.zip/ instead
mehquestion@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 8h
Thanks for the suggestion.
That is down, as is old.slrpnk.net, I'll give old.lemmy.zip a shot and see what happens to it
rumba@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 23h
I have an account on both, both servers run by the same guy.
They're both functionally equivalent. One doesn't surface data significantly better than the other. For a webpage, Piefed moves a little faster on an average release. I prefer the user acct in the upper right with drop down rather than center top page with a dropdown.
I prefer seeing up and down votes upfront on my posts.
I like lemmy's interface a bit better. I like the speed and cleanliness of piefed.
no wrong answers.
MahouOwl@piefed.zip · 1 pts · 16h
I'm relatively new here so I'll probably get used to it eventually, however right now I still instinctively go to the top right to get to my account before realizing "Oh wait, it's not there".
chris@l.roofo.cc · 4 pts · 13h
Just as an FYI: Lemmy has a big update in the pipeline for the front and backend in the pipeline. You can see it on https://voyager.lemmy.ml/. I think this might bring some nice improvements.
So technical aspects might soom-ish change.
one_old_coder@piefed.social · 4 pts · 1d
I started with Lemmy but moved to Piefed because it was compatible, had more features, and was faster to load. Nowadays, I don't know if any is better, but I'm happy with the Piefed.
ride@piefed.social · 2 pts · 1d
Thanks for sharing
Wren@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 1d
It depends on your values and what kind of experience you want. For me, I couldn't find a piefed instance that met all my criteria.
I wanted no instances blocked, no flagged users for low karma (I didn't want karma to matter at all,) able to see greentext communities (4chan screenshots are blocked on some, if not all piefed instances,) and be able to see the modlog.
Piefed has additional features that lemmy lacks, like following individual users and multi-coms, but it wasn't enough to get me to switch.
I like the openness of the lemmyverse, since there's more room for individuality between the instances without a developer ideologically holding the reins, though I've heard Rimu has walked back their more controversial decisions. For all the criticisms of ML and Grad, the developers affiliations don't pollute the wider fediverse.
Whichever you choose, make sure you look into the instances as well, since they have unique features, blocklists, and supports for apps.
ride@piefed.social · 2 pts · 1d
Thanks for this.
At the end of the day I think political or personal views are just what they are. We often tend to find others controversial because we hold entrenched positions ourselves. We must, however, be willing to adjust those positions in the face of facts, situations, etc. Glad the Fediverse is what it is—diverse.
Wren@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 1d
Same here. I'm glad it allows for growth and forks rather than a collapse when schisms occur. It's why I keep saying I don't like piefed, but I'm happy it's there.
maxihuenu@lemmy.ml · -2 pts · 1d
we dont need following individual users. It is a discuss community, not mastodon or pixelfed
Wren@lemmy.today · 0 pts · 1d
What.
maxihuenu@lemmy.ml · -3 pts · 23h
what you see
Allero@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 14h
Lemmy
Technically: less often updated, may have less of the shiny features. Some see it as positive: Lemmy stays out of the user's way.
Ideologically: devs are far-left, but the project itself is neutral. Wherever you find yourself politically, you'll find a place.
Main dev: @Nutomic@lemmy.ml
Overall: Lemmy is a good option if you want to see the "raw" Threadiverse. Less bells and whistles, no content or moderational filters pushed on the user aside from what instance admins and users themselves decide.
PieFed
Technically: fast-paced development, "move fast and break stuff", highly experimental, but feature-rich.
Ideologically: Liberal/moderate, enforced. All PieFed instances filter out "radical" left- or right-wing content (see no-qanon PieFed list), all user filters come on top of this list instead of replacing it. It also suffers from the backlash on some of the decisions made, such as vote throttling.
Main dev: @Rimu@piefed.social
Overall: PieFed is a shiny and new, fast-paced, but also opinionated and controversial project. Whether it's going to be a "peace of mind" or "power tripping dev hellscape" software is only for you to experience.
Potential compromise: PyLova
PyLova is a fork of PieFed designed specifically to cut out opinionated pieces while keeping the technology.
However, it's only currently present on quokk.au, which is itself opinionated (anarchist, far left).
anticurrent@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 13h
lemmy is lighter on resources if you care about your internet usage footprint. and far more stable overall.
quick_snail@feddit.nl · 1 pts · 8h
What are the available options for piefed clients on Android?