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

  • FiniteBanjo@feddit.onlineEnglish
    0·
    15 days ago

    Cons of each:

    1. Piefed is a lot newer and is therefor in some areas still under construction.

    2. 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

  • GoatSynagogue@lemmy.worldBanned
    0·
    14 days ago

    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.

    • Rimu@piefed.socialEnglish
      0·
      14 days ago

      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.

      • GoatSynagogue@lemmy.worldBanned
        0·
        13 days ago

        Those are in no way the same thing. Lemmy having community descriptions that individual mods and admins can lie in is not the same as Piefed having automated “hey everyone, block and ban these users preemptively!” messages or banning everything that’s not on one side of politics.

    • orgrinrt@lemmy.world
      0·
      14 days ago

      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.socialEnglish
        0·
        14 days ago

        ideologically posed to keep the thing open, for the people, by the people

        What. Check out the modlog, they ban more people than anyone.

        • GoatSynagogue@lemmy.worldBanned
          0·
          14 days ago

          The software is open and has zero political or ideological leaning is what that person and I mean.

          Yours, on the other hand, is not, and does. I’m sure I’m tagged by default on Piefed already as “low quality” or something of the sort, purely because people downvote me because I’m not in the echo chamber of allowed opinions. Over the last few days I’ve had like 300 downvotes to about 15 upvotes just on about 3 comments in the one topic, where my comments are 100% factually, undeniably, demonstrably, correct - but people don’t like it because they think it’s “pro Apple”, and the echo chamber says they have to hate Apple.

          That would make Piefed put a giant target on my head, wouldn’t it? Basically telling everyone “block this guy and ban him from your communities”. Lemmy doesn’t do that.

          You also have a curated-by-you list of banned sources, which includes basically everything anyone left of centre would call “right wing”, which in reality is anything that isn’t left wing biased. Lemmy doesn’t.

          • Rimu@piefed.socialEnglish
            0·
            13 days ago

            Of the 12,730 accounts that were active in the last week, there are 60 with the so-called “low quality” indicator, or 0.4%.

            And this is in an environment where people cast 32 times more upvotes than downvotes so to earn that badge you need to be super super completely absolutely unpopular. Consistently.

            You’re part of a pretty special group.

            Maybe try being less of an asshole? See how that goes for you.

            • GoatSynagogue@lemmy.worldBanned
              0·
              12 days ago

              And there you go proving my point :)

              Your software encourages an echo chamber and pile-ons of people, just like you’re doing right now, purely based on downvotes, downvotes which aren’t a representation of truth/quality but almost exclusively from not being part of the echo chamber.

              What did you think putting a target on people’s backs would do? It’s almost like that was the whole point…… and going by this very comment of yours, it’s hard to argue it’s not.

              • Rimu@piefed.socialEnglish
                0·
                12 days ago

                There’s just you and me here, 1 person isn’t a pile on.

                Sorry you’re having a bad time, I hope you feel better soon.

  • StankStain@lemmy.today
    0·
    13 days ago

    I prefer Lemmy because unlike Piefed there are no hardcoded instance or user blocks. Although, you do have to find a lemmy instance that isn’t defederated. I like being able to see a multitude of opinions and manually block people/communities that I feel don’t contribute to discussion.

    • Rimu@piefed.socialEnglish
      0·
      13 days ago

      PieFed has no hardcoded instance or user blocks. You were lied to by bad people.

      • StankStain@lemmy.today
        0·
        13 days ago

        I was just repeating what I’ve heard elsewhere. It does appear that the included blocklists can be edited. I have mixed feelings about labeling certain websites.

        • Rimu@piefed.socialEnglish
          0·
          13 days ago

          Fair enough.

          How websites are labelled is up to the instance admin. It used to be that all labels were warnings but in the latest version of PieFed it became possible to use neutral or positive icons as well:

          image

          It still says ‘warning type’ and ‘warning on posts’ in the UI which is an oversight I’ve just noticed!

          This change was a result of criticism I read. Often when people write that stuff they think they have discovered some nefarious thing that exists that way because I want it to. The fact is it was all thrown together very quickly so it’s not always well thought-out but when people don’t like things I listen and make changes. Nothing is set in stone.

          • StankStain@lemmy.today
            0·
            13 days ago

            I appreciate you clarifying. I didn’t realize you were the developer. You reminded me the importance of verifying information before posting about it.

  • communism@lemmy.ml
    0·
    13 days ago

    The Piefed devs are gigalibs who hard-code in their politics, blocking left-wing instances in the server software itself rather than letting instance admins configure that sort of stuff. Even if you agree with their politics, consider if you want to be using software that actively forbids users from interacting with conflicting politics even if the user wants to. If you agree with the principles of free software, then that doesn’t seem to respect user freedom to me.

    • Rimu@piefed.socialEnglish
      0·
      13 days ago

      PieFed has some sensible defaults but all blocks can be changed by the server admin. They’re not hard-coded.

  • Loco_Mex@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    13 days ago

    Lemmy.

    The PieFed dev has some pretty extreme views and goes out of his way to censor and limit what users can do.

  • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
    0·
    15 days ago

    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.

  • CombatWombat@feddit.onlineEnglish
    0·
    15 days ago

    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.

  • Wren@lemmy.todayEnglish
    0·
    15 days ago

    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.socialOPEnglish
      0·
      15 days ago

      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 fact of facts, situations, etc. Glad the Fediverse is what it is—diverse.

      • Wren@lemmy.todayEnglish
        0·
        15 days ago

        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
      0·
      15 days ago

      we dont need following individual users. It is a discuss community, not mastodon or pixelfed

    • unknownuserunknownlocation@kbin.earth
      0·
      15 days ago

      +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.

  • Schwim Dandy@lemmy.zip
    0·
    15 days ago

    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.socialOPEnglish
      0·
      15 days ago

      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
    0·
    15 days ago

    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

  • one_old_coder@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    15 days ago

    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.