Adding to this: a lot of the most heinous, truly “problematic” stuff ended up being demonstrably false accusations - like a feature may be opt-in, or at worst opt-out, but either of those is a far cry from being hard-coded as was claimed.

That said, the software truly is “opinionated”, pushing its own agenda even if you can opt-out of most of it - an instance admin still has to be wary of each new feature added, especially with the lack of transparency surrounding the announcements.

Although personally I think Lemmy is equally opinionated, just more in the sense of what features it decides not to implement at all.

Both platforms have their advantages, and it seems more important for an end-user to pick a good admin team that reflects their values more than picking a platform, especially if using a 3rd-party app than replaces the UI anyway. (Though secondary to that, I do think PieFed has the strongest edge, especially right now before the release of Lemmy 1.0.)