Some context for people reading this and out of the loop
Piefed has some filters that are disabled by default and configurable by admins: https://piefed.zip/c/fediverse/p/1005977/piefed-admin-settings-that-allow-to-enable-or-disable-content-filters-they-are-disabled-by
Piefed does more hand holding during the on-boarding process: when you first login, you get a list of a few topics you would like to follow, so that your Subscribed feed already has a few communities, instead of directly arriving to the All feed.
A regular issue from newcomers is that all there is on the Threadiverse is US news: https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyCanadian/comments/1qr4tji/a_canadianrun_reddit_alternative/o2lrxli/
The onboarding process helps with that.
Piefed also has a few features that Lemmy does not currently have
- cross-posts comments consolidation: example: https://piefed.zip/c/privacy/p/1011777/say-no-to-palantir-in-the-nhs#post_replies . Community fragmentation is a regular criticism of the Threadiverse, and this solves it.
- multi-communities, so that smaller communities are not drown in the most active ones in the Subscribed feed, allowing once again to avoid the “all there is is US news”
- built-in keyword filters
For a detailed list: https://join.piefed.social/features/
Lemmy 1.0 is planned to add some of those features, but still doesn’t have a defined release date yet: https://lemmy.ml/comment/23570258
Due to all of this, Piefed is currently considered a better platform for new joiners than Lemmy. This can change once Lemmy 1.0 is released, but that’s how it is right now.
Why not point to both? Now that most of the tech crowd left Reddit after the 2023 API shutdown, the average Redditor isn’t ready to go through a lot of hoops to get to a new platform. See also https://lawsofux.com/choice-overload/
A recent comment showed the disconnection between a Threadiverse enthusiast and a potential new joiner: https://old.reddit.com/r/BuyCanadian/comments/1qr4tji/a_canadianrun_reddit_alternative/o2m2h2o/
On the other hand, the Fedecan guides are quite helpful: https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/get-started
But even beyond that, as we all know, people don’t have to understand federation to use the platform: https://lemmy.world/post/35166124
That’s why a few people have been pointing only to Piefed recently.
(Why should we even try to get people from Reddit to here? More people allows niche communities to become active rather than relying on one single poster, if any. That’s an issue we usually see on !fedigrow@lemmy.zip )
There have been a few posts recently on Reddit promoting Piefed:
- https://piefed.zip/c/fedigrow/p/1004482/post-mentioning-piefed-ca-in-r-buycanadian
- https://piefed.zip/c/buyeuropean/p/999260/post-on-r-buyfromeu-promoting-the-fediverse-stop-relying-on-us-big-tech-decentralized-open
- https://piefed.zip/c/fedigrow/p/995146/something-to-help-people-lead-to-the-fediverse
There has also been a post about the Piefed filters I mentioned above: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/62580326
It seems like since then a few Lemmy users have been on a campaign against Piefed:
This position is a bit surprising, as quite a few Lemmy instances have a Piefed instance as well
- https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/ and https://anarchist.nexus/
- https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/ and https://piefed.blahaj.zone/
- https://lemmy.ca/ and https://piefed.ca/
- https://lemmy.world/ and https://piefed.world/
- https://lemmy.zip/ and https://piefed.zip/
If Piefed was as bad as the posts against it say, then probably most of the instances would have shut those instances down already.
Both software coexist and are federated, so this kind of targeted posts against one of them seems counterproductive.
That’s it for me, good Sunday everyone.
‘where is the hostility coming from?’ sure, the evangelists for it tend to be very polite, however it’s because there’s been posts like this happening all year that makes it pretty clear why people prefer piefed:

The conclusion is that piefed is popular with people looking to be free of ‘degenerates’
i’m becoming increasingly convinced that piefed is a cult
I hope, say in a few years, that I’ll be able to make light-hearted jokes about the “piefed v lemmy” flame wars and people will either not care to learn about it or smile knowingly and then change the subject anyways.
I still love and sometimes go back to the old Digg v Reddit war comics
when you first login, you get a list of topics you would like to follow
Wasn’t this universally hated upon when the non-free giants did exactly that? This is just unnecessary delay before the content.
Where is the drama other than these posts?
I just came across three of these piefed Vs Lemmy posts (by piefed users), is there a bunch of dramas from Lemmy users I’ve missed?
It does very much have that Disney “those people hate it, so you will love it” feeling to it, doesn’t it?
Maybe it’s the vehemence of it? So far I’ve seen more meta-posts about those posts than actual posts about this topic!!!🤪
I see a lot of posts complaining about hate towards piefed but literally no posts about hating piefed. Seems a little inorganic
I noticed this too.
There’s one point you haven’t mentioned that, to me, is the most important one and is honestly, I think, the core issue most people are talking around: Piefed defederates actual Socialist instances (Hexbear, Lemmygrad, Lemmy.ml) by default in a blatant bid to suppress left-wing speech.
If some libs want to go off and make their own little safe-space reddit clone because seeing a post sympathetic to China makes them angry, sure, go ahead I guess. But I’m a Socialist, and all serious Socialists - or Liberals who believe in the merits of free discussion and debate, of which there are vanishingly few these days - are going to be opposed to that sort of thing.
I moved to Lemmy because /r/CTH was banned and /r/GenZedong getting quarantined was the final straw. It is clear to me that the goal of the administration of the major PieFed instances is to recreate the same Anticommunist culture of Reddit within the fediverse.
If the developers of PieFed want me to like their app (or at least be neutral to it), literally all they have to do is refederate with Lemmygrad and enforce moderation policies that do not infringe on legal left-wing speech. If they choose not to, it’s they who are putting their politics ahead of their development goals, much in the same way (if this isn’t too melodramatic) Imperialist states suddenly stop caring about free markets and the international rules-based order when it comes to the Cuban embargo, Iranian and Russian influence, or Chinese loans.
“Piefed defederates actual Socialist instances (Hexbear, Lemmygrad, Lemmy.ml) by default in a blatant bid to suppress left-wing speech.”
It has less to do with your politics and more to do with pretty much everyone collectively deciding they don’t want to deal with your toxic instance culture. You guys create such a massive moderation overhead in instances where you engage that it isn’t worth having you around.
I don’t agree with some of that stuff either but this should be an individual choice no? Does piefed give the choice to the user to fed with all instances or is it an admin only option?
I’m starting to see the drama now, this isn’t good for either platforms.
I think it’s a “defederated by default” type situation, but I’m not familiar enough with Piefed to say 100%
Talking about the merits of free discussion and debate while advocating for those instances is hilarious
smh I know, they don’t even allow you to advocate for palestinian genocide
Absolutely rich
Why not point to both? Now that most of the tech crowd left Reddit after the 2023 API shutdown, the average Redditor isn’t ready to go through a lot of hoops to get to a new platform. See also https://lawsofux.com/choice-overload/
This! But it does draw into question Piefed’s decision to an instance chooser into the registration page.
I going to stop engaging with this stuff now. I’m just so sick of this inane inter-software fighting. Piefed does some nice things, Lemmy does some nice things, both have questionable aspects. That’s just software, baby!
Instead you should do something fun, like listen to this dope album out of Czechia.
I feel the same. I’m going to be a bit self-centered and quote myself from the piefed matrix chat:
I like lemmy. I still use, run communities on, and donate to lemmy instances.
Different threadiverse implementations just means different features available to people looking for them, and a bigger, more diverse threadiverse is a better one.
I also think as the fediverse grows, the very openness of activitypub will mean more software, more communities. Are we going to start a drama each time?
This is a bad look for us all, no more drama please, it’s petty.
Are we going to start a drama each time?
Depends on how threatened the tank brigade feels about their control of the narrative.
Nice album drop, I dig it
that’s pretty much it - having options is good, pick whatever you prefer
Even though I’m on lemmy, I was very interested in Piefed and even upvoted this post thinking it’s very cool, but then through this post I’ve read this comment and this is lame af https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/62580326/24059434
It pisses me off too
Other piefed instances have turned this off
I kept reading and found someone else pointing a lot of those filters are off by default (like decreasing reputation if you reply with a gif, what was even the idea here lol). I’m also not a native speaker, and if I’m talking about a serious subject and write a long text I usually use a chatbot to grammar check me and sometimes that crap changes my hyphens for em dashes and I don’t notice - at least it seems like you only get flagged for posting an em dash instead of losing score. I’m still not sure what to think about the reputation score though…
Lastly, even though I have blocked hexbear and lemmygrad, I find it lame that’d they’d ban it by default :PWell most instances do block them even on the lemmyverse. Dbzer0 obviously doesn’t. But the default defederation includes a lot more instances than them in the first place. They’re just the most notable.
That’s quite surprising given by how touchy they are about everything (that ml user comment even says “stupid” is ableism), I thought they would be welcomed all around the fediverse.
Lemmy.ml isn’t blocked at all.
I meant hexbear and lemmygrad.
Irelephant’s OP there is a solid point, but the comments down below are horribly misleading disinformation.
To name just one thing wrong, nowhere is lemmy.ml ever hard-coded in as a defederated instance (hexbear and Lemmygrad I believe are, but not Lemmy.ml). I’ve seen this piece of disinformation floated several times now in multiple posts - but it is simply not true.
The PieFed devs welcome honest questions and feedback, but if someone is going to spread criticism about the code all over posts in several communities, it could help if they actually read it first to confirm what they are saying?

With many of those comments being the recent code-level takedown of PieFed. I mean, I’m not saying that this user is a nutomic sock puppet account, but it would be hard to make it more obvious.
Piefed looks cool. I gotta try it. The fact that multiple servers cooperate is nice
Piefed doesn’t even have mobile clients right? New users are gonna want that
Many Lemmy apps actually added Piefed compatibility fairly quickly once it was catching on. Boost, Summit, Blorp, Voyager, Interstellar and Mlem all support Piefed.
Do any of these have the gesture of swipe up/sideways to go back/close picture from full view? I’d like to move away from Eternity, but I use this constantly. The ones implementing gestures or swipes seem to be focused on upvoting actions and so on, but not to go back.
Summit you can swipe right while in comments to go back. You can swipe left on a comment or post to vote. It’s extremely similar to Sync was on Reddit or the Lemmy version.
I think Mlem does, although I usually swipe down to close an image from view so I’m not sure about up. I definitely swipe sideways to go back, but it’s been a bit hit-or-miss since the new iPadOS uses this in the corners to shrink an application for some reason I can’t fathom.
I’m not well versed in all of them. Summit has press-and-hold to maximise a picture from thumbnail and then swipe up to dismiss, which works well enough for me. Also basic swipe to go back and three tier swipe gesture actions on posts/comments (swipe, longer swipe, longest swipe).
Most Lemmy apps are also Piefed apps, further punctuating the futility of the schism between the platforms.
It does, I’m posting from Thunder right now, and there are more. But it’s not at the same number of apps as Lemmy yet.
Lemmy mobile clients have mostly enabled piefed access now, although some features may be lacking.
Old News. Many work with it now. Voyager has experimental support
But my favorite has to win! There’s no way the devs would/should be able to learn from each other, and they smell for making a competing product. Monopolies are awesome. /s
Also, we are not allowed to share posts with the ActivityPub Protocol. All posts are mine alone to keep, mine! (do I need a /s here?

It seems like since then a few Lemmy users have been on a campaign against Piefed:
…
How is a post that has “Piefed is cool” in the title a “campaign against Piefed”?
The other two posts are by one person.
Its the picture you used in the post that suggests it’s all one-sided ranting from Piefed users
I’ve definitely noticed some anti-piefed sentiment in the past week or so. But before that it seemed mostly vocal Piefed users against Lemmy.
It’s all silly.
…yeah this is absurd. We’re all reading the same content. Who cares how we read it? They’re both pretty great as far as I can tell as an ignorant end user.
Piefed: defederates from instances full of really obnoxious trolls
Obnoxious trolls: but, but, but, then how will we troll them? :(


















