So, it seems like PieFed is becoming a real alternative to lemmy.
What are the differences between these two? From a tech perspective, and also morality/ethics, if you want. Any differences in vision for these services?
Say whatever is on your mind. I want to know.
On which one should we put our weight?
Edit: I will leave this post here, which is a post by one of the devs of Lemmy that enumerates some of the things Lemmy 1.0 has. Lemmy 1.0 seems to be already in alpha stage and is already testable. The feature selection does look fantastic. Here is the post I am referring to: https://lemmy.ml/post/40744781
i picked Mbin
There are dozens of us!
Piefed Game Changer number 1: Custom feeds, ex:
that way I can look at non-tech non-politics stuff (either few memes or all memes) when I want.
Piefed Game Changer number 2: Scheduled posts. That way when I got free time I can make a bunch of posts and schedule them over the next couple days or weeks.
I still keep a Lemmy account bc a couple things are still easier there. Plus to see what the posts look like to other people.
Basically custom feeds are just a content recommendation algorithm.
See my complaint about the non-existence of Content Recommendation Algorithms on the fediverse today here
IMO they’re both good and deserve our weight, I do think they can work off each other.
I use Lemmy because their mobile app support is much better and Jerboa (the Lemmy maintainers’ app) has everything I need and not a single bit more. I think it would be great for Piefed to get more app support.
There are a lot of features that I think Lemmy can benefit from emulating from Piefed, like the option to show comments from crossposted threads, filters, and more granular moderation capability. I heard Piefed is a lot lighter on resources, so if I were to self-host I might use that one. Also I have no idea how many of Lemmy’s shortcomings are due to be addressed in their planned 1.0 release.
Lemmy development is slow whereas Piefed is a bit faster, I think each is great in their own right. Not everyone agrees with me here, but I think the Lemmy developers do a good job keeping their personal beliefs to their own instance, rather than let it infiltrate the code base. Same with Piefed. I think the development of both should be encouraged rather than trying to find rifts and making it a team sport.
and this one:
User vote totals: You can see the total number of upvotes and downvotes given to each user.
people were happy that lemmy does not do this…
- A lot of people on the Threadiverse refuse to donate to Lemmy due to their beliefs, which hinders future growth of the code.
- A lot of people on Reddit or X or Facebook hear about the devs and immediately nope out of the entire Threadiverse, possibly going instead to Bluesky.
So PieFed is great for the health and growth not just of itself but for the entire Threadiverse, imho. And then seeing how well and which features are most popular in PieFed, Lemmy can copy to improve experience on that side. Also as people leave Lemmy - e.g. lemm.ee shutting down was a major event but even more relevant is the overall reduction in number of active users, from ~55k in the peak after Rexodus to only ~35k today - then hopefully PieFed can at least entice some of those who are definitely leaving Lemmy to remain at least in the wider Threadiverse.
That said, as Lemmy moves forward so slowly, increasingly it is going to miss out on an ever-growing share of what that wider Threadiverse offers. e.g. polls and hashtags, neither of which I see mentioned in the planned 1.0 release. Every single post, if Lemmy can render it at all (it can’t for polls) will lack information that only shows on PieFed. And with funding, active user counts, and number of new instances all decreasing… this going to affect Lemmy further. Most of that would have happened anyway regardless of whether PieFed existed though, so again I am glad for the latter since otherwise people would just leave the Threadiverse entirely. e.g. here is one such very interesting irl story: https://jeena.net/lemmy-switch-to-piefed.
The number one issue with the fediverse in general is the tiny stagnant user base. Everything else is way too insignificant to matter. People could make as many fediverse platforms as they want, it doesn’t mean anything if nobody is using them.
Not so many people use Mastodon, yet they get all excited and flock to Bluesky. It is possible to entice people to join, if they are offered something that they want. They have expressed reasons for not joining, or leaving after joining even for months, perhaps we should try to improve things so that they feel more comfortable being here?
The people who use Mastodon are very different from the people who use Bluesky. The people who use BlueSky are the former unhinged left wing Twitter users of years past that gave the platform it’s notoriety as being the most toxic platform on the internet. When Musk took over, Twitter’s title as the worst platform remained the same, except he shifted the source of the toxicity from being left wing to being right wing. This led the unhinged left wing Twitter users to seek a clone that replicated the toxic environment that they once thrived in, and BlueSky just happened to be the one that lucked out.
The point is that the BlueSky people don’t care about anything outside political tribalism. That’s what drove them out of Twitter and it’s what drove them to BlueSky. That makes them very different from Mastodon users who, for the most part, actually value things like privacy, security, freedom of the internet, ownership, and control. The people who use Mastodon are tech nerds, privacy activist, or niche interest groups that thrive in such a space like the crypto community. I feel like even if we streamlined the process and it easier for people to join, the BlueSky types still wouldn’t have an interest in joining.
That’s actually why I like it better here. On Reddit I would doom scroll endlessly. Here I can take in my rage bait, get into pointless political arguments, and lament humanity’s future, and still get something accomplished that day.
Also lemmy doesn’t have the ‘karma’ system. There’s literally no point to karma farm here. Like, it doesn’t matter if my comments get downvoted to oblivion, it’s not hurting my imaginary score that I have to maintain to interact in certain big subreddits.
we should make a new one and then make a new one again so that the community is split into smaller and smaller pieces with less users and the whole fediverse thing can be less interesting overall
piefed and lemmy users see the same content though
Tell that to the instance admins on lemmy.ml who ban people from communities they’ve never so much as heard of for making offhand comments. Or to Steve Huffman himself who should have done Reddit the “right” way?
Seriously, all FOSS is good. Being able to start up your own instance, either Lemmy or PieFed, is good. The fact that they all communicate together is great.
If PieFed brought an additional 100k content creators to the Threadiverse, that only enhances the user experience, even as viewed narrowly from purely the Lemmy side.
I for one have accounts on both Lemmy and PieFed, and while I use PieFed far more often lately (since it offers far more features that I like?), I do legitimately use both for different purposes. I revel in having options to choose from!:-)
i don’t care about the lemmy.ml drama because im not on there
Right, because you have alternatives to have an account on instead:-). This is an example of where divisiveness can be a good thing - we don’t all have to be on the same instance, or even using the same software, whether Lemmy vs. PieFed vs. Mbin vs. nodeBB vs. flarum (eventually), or Mastodon or Friendica, all of it can be interconnected. I would argue that this makes the Threadiverse a more interesting place to be, actually. Because I definitely would have gotten kicked off of or voluntarily left lemmy.ml long ago, if that were the only option available…
The number one problem with Lemmy (and reddit) is censorship. I hear that piefed makes censorship easier. This seems like a bad thing.
🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩
Censorship is a tool of the state to squelch free expression and prevent uprising.
Moderation is a tool of community to keep dangerous people from harming its members.
Lemmy has moderation, not censorship. And the fact that you’re being moderated is a big old red flag. To wit: I’ve never seen this complaint from anyone outside the right-wing.
Lemmy has moderation, not censorship. And the fact that you’re being moderated is a big old red flag. To wit: I’ve never seen this complaint from anyone outside the right-wing.
So you’re unfamiliar with [email protected] or [email protected] then? Never seen someone banned for having the gall to speak against Stalin or the CCP, or any other wrongthink according to the Marxist-leninists that run .ml, grad, and bear? You must be new here, or agree with that as “moderation not censorship” because you are a tankie too, or have decided to classify Marxist-Leninist tankies as right wing because “left only when good,” or think “right wing is when call out leftists on their bullshit,” I’m just curious which applies.
I just reread my comment, and you know what, I didn’t see a single assertion that moderation couldn’t be weaponized or misused; only that it wasn’t censorship when it was deployed by someone other than the state. But the fact that you immediately reacted with such rage at the implication is maybe an indication that you’ve been moderated for reasons other than just your viewpoint.
Let me be more clear: misusing moderation isn’t censorship, unless you’re doing so at the behest of a government. It’s just misusing moderation.
Tbf, some of them may be doing it at the behest of some government, it just might not be yours.
But really this is a semantic issue when the real outcome is the same: suppression of dissent. You can pretend you just “didn’t mention” abuse of moderation all you want but this being lemmy, it would have been a good idea when it’s such a prevalent problem, so I’m inclined to believe that rather than simply neglecting to mention it, like many others here you possibly support or endorse it. You also employ the often used tactic of calling everyone who considers this “abuse of moderation” a form of censorship “right wing” which just so happens to be on page two of the tankie handbook, so I’m even further inclined to believe that you’re just aligned with them.
But really this is a semantic issue
It’s very much not.
when the real outcome is the same: suppression of dissent.
Is that more common? Or is abuse disguised as dissent more common?
You can pretend you just “didn’t mention” abuse of moderation all you want
🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄🙄
but this being lemmy, it would have been a good idea when it’s such a prevalent problem,
Like I said in my previous comment, seems like you’ve been moderated for reasons other than your viewpoint.
so I’m inclined to believe that rather than simply neglecting to mention it, like many others here you possibly support or endorse it.
Believe what you like. I support communities keeping their members safe.
You also employ the often used tactic of blah blah blah
I’m not interested in your ridiculous ideological turf wars. All I’m interested in is people staying safe.
So many times in the small town I grew up in I heard the argument that says, “we have to have guns so that if there’s a fascist government we can rise up against it! The casualties that come from that are worth it if we can protect our people against the excesses of a tyrannical regime!” And then millions of people die from that right, and then an actual fascist government really does arise, and oops, the gun owners side with the tyrannical regime. I always knew it was nonsense, but seeing the actual results is pretty notable.
In the face of that, “we have to have completely unmoderated spaces so that if a fascist government tries A Censorship we can speak out against it!” sounds pretty familiar. “The casualties that come from that are worth it if we can protect our people against the excesses of a tyrannical regime!” I’ve heard that line before.
EDIT TO ADD:
Tbf, some of them may be doing it at the behest of some government, it just might not be yours.
To be fair, this is a reasonable point to make. I don’t think it’s enough to reconsider the value of moderation, but it is a fair point and worth keeping in mind.
By “abuse disguised as dissent” do you mean it’s abuse to refute tankie propaganda and the bans for doing it (the tankies suppressing it) are then justified? 'Cause…
Like I said in my previous comment, seems like you’ve been moderated for reasons other than your viewpoint.
Like I said in a previous comment, it seems you’re unfamiliar with the entirety of .ml, lemmygrad, and hexbear. Or you support their moderation tactics, and “anyone who dared speak against them must be a right wing troll who deserved it” which coincidentally is what they say any time they ban someone for not praising the CCP or the russians in Ukraine, coincidence? I think not, too many of them around here for that.
By “abuse disguised as dissent” do you mean it’s abuse to refute tankie propaganda and the bans for doing it
No.
Like I said in a previous comment, it seems you’re unfamiliar with the entirety of .ml, lemmygrad, and hexbear.
No. That’s what I mean by misuse of moderation. That doesn’t mean it shouldn’t still exist, it means that people shouldn’t be on those instances.
Your argument is merely semantic. And then you accuse me.
It’s slimy junk like this.
It’s not semantic in the slightest. It’s a crucial difference. One is a community protecting its members, the other is an oligarchy protecting their power. The fascists have tried to conflate the two in order to further their agenda, and you fell for it.
Piefed provides instance owners and admins with more tools to catch bad behaviour, that’s absolutely true.
What are you doing here? Are you trying to re-narrate what I just said? I hate that slimy stuff.
Just confirming. I don’t see that as a bad thing though. The instance tools are designed to make it easier to catch spammers, trolls and AI posts.
Cease the bullshit.
The tools for stopping bad behavior can be used to stop any behavior. And they invariably are and will be used to censor any voice those in power dislike, as we all know.
That’s a fact. There is no good dictatorship.
The tools for stopping bad behavior can be used to stop any behavior.
Not really. Do you know what the tools are specifically? They’re just isolating the behaviour of new users for instance admins to catch tendencies often presented by spammers, trolls, bots and AI posters. There’s nothing baked in that can specifically target a specific group.
There already are various lemmy instances known for partisanship moderation without any specific tools.
Oh stop greasily prevaricating already.
Legit question: Do you oppose any and all moderation, and quality of life tools to that end for moderators and/or instance admins?
someone who only speaks truth to power or just opposes the status quo will almost invariably be downvoted. using those downvotes to identify trolls is just bad practice.
i’d say it gives tools to moderate based on groupthink
Yes. Rather than creating better tools for censorship and groupthink we should create tools to prevent that.
Ever been in truly uncensored online spaces? I have. Know what you very very quickly get lots of? Nazis and child porn. This is not good
I’m new as of today. I joined piefed.zip. I think I’ll do alright here. I’m already on Mastodon.
As soon as I can microblog straight to my own profile I’m sold. On mbin I had to make an admin only magazine for my microblogs to all be in one place.
Could you describe your problem in more detail?
Microblogs are always associated to your profile. If you want to post something which is not meant for a specific magazine, the
randommagazine is what you need to use. It is a pseudo-magazine (and so not federated as a community) which aggregates all microblog posts which are not attached to a real magazine.Yeah but like. Why not just straight to a profile? That’s what masto does.
What exactly do you mean “to a profile”? Can you give an example of the difference (I never used Mastodon)?
Well tumblr and Twitter are the same way. There are no magazines / subforums / subreddits / individual communities (or weren’t last I used them). Your profile has your posts and people follow other users individually. You can tag your posts but you can use just about as many tags as you want the post isn’t bound to any one tag. The only specific thing they’re bound to is literally just your personal profile (or that of anyone who reblogs / retweets / retoots / reposts it to their own profile). A microblog is literally a completely different format to a forum / message board style post while kbin treats it like a forum post lite. You don’t microblog to an individual community you microblog as yourself to your entire sever (and beyond, if properly federated).
Lemmy, I started with Lemmy and have not seen a reason to move away.
Lemmy’s approach to moderation protects assholes. That’s why I’m on piefed.
How does piefed defend against acts like this?
On one hand, Lemmy is developed by an authoritarian dipshit who likes fellating Eastern dictators.
On the other, PieFed blocks trans related words as community names by default.
I’m not exactly happy with either of these facts.
It was just 196 because Rimu’s got a thing for meme subs, that’s been removed anyway.
Not blocking 196 by default is unfortunately a mark against piefed and lemmy tbh.
Not true, stop slandering.
On the other, PieFed blocks trans related words as community names by default.
That was removed. Are you referring to 196?
Also, no it doesn’t. That was in referenced to an auto-federation function. Communities can still be made manually and federated manually.
I was using Lemmy, I now use Piefed and I quite satisfied (it’s not perfect, sure, neither am I ;).
Can’t recall why I switched but I know there was some technical reason.
To me, they’re just two ways (among a few more) of accessing the same fediverse. I use the Web UI, on a desktop computer as I don’t do social media on my phone.
I like piefed.
I dont have a client, just the web ui in my phones browser is fine.
It honestly just feels exactly like lemmy to me, but I prefer not to support lemmy for ideological reasons.
I have borh and i find mobile with firefox is still the best.
I wrote an article on my blog about it.
You may want to update that with your current experience, as some of the points there no longer apply, like not having a stable API for 3rd party clients (which now exists).
Good point, I’ll Do that!
Link?
God damn haha thanks for posting it, I was sure I posted the link but apparently not ^^
I used Lemmy for a few years, but switched to PieFed recently. They offer very similar functionality. PieFed suits me slightly better. I would be happy with either. And I’m still using Voyager.
