PieFed has a dizzying array of settings and options that instance admins can tweak. Most of them have obvious and sensible default values but some of those have been a bit controversial, especially to do with what gets blocked by default. In this post I explain what those are and how they can be configured.
What PieFed blocks out of the box - and how to unblock it
https://join.piefed.social/2026/08/13/what-piefed-blocks-out-of-the-box-and-how-to-unblock-it/
16 Comments
RickyRigatoni@piefed.zip · 32 pts · 24d
Autoblocking lemmygrad and hexbear is a solid W in my book
cloudskater@piefed.blahaj.zone · 15 pts · 24d
Yeah, fuck tankies. All my homies hate tankies.
eurodyne@piefed.world · 16 pts · 24d
Bookmarking this, so I can link it to people who keep comparing Piefed to Tesseract.
cloudskater@piefed.blahaj.zone · 9 pts · 24d
I agree it's nothing like the Tesseract situation, tho I was recently told about some other things the PieFed dev has done, and it isn't all defensible. I'd like other people's takes on this stuff.
rimu@piefed.social · 10 pts · 23d
Yes I listen to feedback and make changes accordingly. This is how good software gets made.
Incorrect.
I went no contact with the whole flotilla after they were abusive for weeks. Going no contact is grounds for more abuse, according to them. In any case, inter-instance drama is a separate thing from what features PieFed has.
comrademiao@piefed.social · 7 pts · 24d
Those links seem surface level at best while remaining quite alarmist. If that’s concerning to you then you must hate the Lemmy devs
cloudskater@piefed.blahaj.zone · 5 pts · 24d
I mean, I do dislike the Lemmy devs bc they're tankies, but it hardly goes further then that. I just want to confirm or debunk some of what I've heard.
rimu@piefed.social · 5 pts · 23d
I felt like the "stealing code" part was worth dealing with separately so I wrote this https://join.piefed.social/2026/08/14/did-piefed-steal-code-from-pylova-lets-look-at-what-happened/
Fizz@lemmy.nz · 3 pts · 23d
Insane that someone forking an entire project would complain about taking a single patch.
rimu@piefed.social · 2 pts · 23d
It makes a perverse kind of sense in the context of the disinformation campaign the flotilla (which Pylova is a part of) was/is running. They desperately needed anything they could to undermine trust in PieFed. Because to them I'm not a human being - they're convinced that I'm a transphobic zionist nazi, so any kind of attack is acceptable to them. A means to an end.
eurodyne@piefed.world · 3 pts · 24d
He’s the OP on this post, and what this post is here to explain. Why don’t you ask him yourself?
cloudskater@piefed.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 24d
Oh... wow I didn't notice. Thanks lol
HubertManne@piefed.social · 4 pts · 24d
I understand defederation needing to be applicable to all users but can users reverse the blocks at the user level?
wjs018@piefed.social · 2 pts · 24d
There are two different levels of domain blocks. The ones rimu is discussing here are instance-wide, controlled by admins. Basically an admin saying that they don't want their instance to host any posts that point to these domains. In addition to what rimu pointed out in the article, this tool is most often used to prevent spam posts that point to domains that host malware/phishing/etc. Whenever a remote spam user pops up spewing posts that point to some new malware domain, it is simple to ban the domain and those posts now will no longer federate to your instance even if the remote user isn't dealt with by their home admins.
There are user-level domain blocks as well in the filters tab of your settings page. Those only apply to an individual user.
HubertManne@piefed.social · 1 pts · 23d
ahh. so domain blocks are never federated instances as those are defederations?
_ed@sopuli.xyz · 3 pts · 23d
Checks blocklist - Explodingheads - there’s a blast from the past. Right up there with wolfballs.
Hopefully this will help clear up fud.