1st Feb is #GlobalSwitchDay
Today the first of Feb is Global Switch day, Spread awareness of the Fediverse in your communities.
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Comments339View original on piefed.social
Today the first of Feb is Global Switch day, Spread awareness of the Fediverse in your communities.
FTFY
I've tried to promote Lemmy on Reddit in the past, only to be met with people complaining about the really old UI and bad UX, they also complain about tankies.
PieFed doesn't have that bad rep, so I've found it easier to promote, both lead to the Fedivers so either is a win.
PieFed has its own share of dodgy stuff:
UX/UI are only as bad as the client is. For me, Lemmy is indistinguishable from reddit (if you don't look at numbers of comments), because I use Lemmy Sync, as I used Reddit Sync before
I used Lemmy for months, mostly in the browser and my UX was absolutely horrible.
The default browser UI sucks.
I had to try many different settings and eventually through a lot of effort found the Photon UI, which is nice.
The vast majority of users just won't go through that effort. PieFed's default UI is quite clean and modern and much nicer to use, which is why I promote it instead
In what ways does the Lemmy UI suck? I would appreciate feedback in order to improve it. For what its worth I only use the default UI on desktop and mobile, and like it a lot.
Any actions you need to take that could have been avoided = bad UX.
Any time you need to think and not immediately know what to do next = bad UX.
Sadly we're in a time where users expect their hand to be held the whole time and where they expect zero effort to be put in and everything to just work.
For me the biggest issue with default Lemmy is, why do I have to click on a image post to view the image, when it could just have defaulted to a bigger size?
But I don't want a bunch of huge images in my face. Isn't that what pixelfed and Instagramy things are for? I only want to click on the things I'm interested in, not be shown an ugly frustrating stream of giant, semi-traumatic political pictures one after the other. Thumbnails exist for a reason and claiming they're bad UX is incorrect, it's the industry standard design pattern for any control that allows a user to browse quickly through multiple images or to provide an impression to a user before they decide whether or not to open the full content.
Lemmie/piefed is more about text and conversations so titles should always be the largest clearest part so you can read them quickly to know whether you want to engage with the post or not. Otherwise, how is it different from pixelfed? Likes vs upvotes is not a big difference.
I don’t understand your problem. Can’t you just tap the image to see it larger? I don’t have to click an image post like you claim to.
They seem to want new reddit ui and not understand most hate that ui/ux
How long ago? It was a bit flaky a couple of years ago but for me now it's perfect - like Reddit UI before it enshittified.
I'm sorry but the default Lemmy UI is objectively bad, it breaks so many UX principles.
Photon is good, but go to Lemmy.world and it looks like a website built in the early 90's
If it looks like anything of the past then it looks like the web from 10-15 years ago pre-mass-enshittification, maybe people have forgotten what non user hostile websites look like.
Photon has infinite scrolling, which is horrible.
Infinite scrolling is optional and also a feature the majority of users (not hyper specific tech nerds) want. If we are to have any hope of bringing the average social media user onto these platforms, we have to design it for them. Most of the addictiveness comes from the algorithm (lemmy lacks a personalized one), not necessarily the infinite scrolling itself
Yes there's been enshitification, but not everything has gotten worse. UI's are much better than the past.
Why is infinite scrolling a bad UX? It saves the user from clicking next-page
You could argue that it's dark-ux, but it's not bad-ux
I use the the apk called "Thunder" and it does a fantastic job. Much better than just using the website of here or reddit.
Okay then recommend Lemmy with PhotonUI?
Too much friction, and that's really bad UX.
And now you have to explain to people why the default UI sucks. I tried to promote https://p.lemmy.world/ to people, and they tell me to get lost with that dodgy virus link.
Don't link p.lemmy.world. it's well over a year out of date.
phtn.app probably looks a bit less suspicious, and also lets you use any Lemmy/Piefed instance.
You could say it as "phtn.app is a web portal for the fediverse" or something like that because the concept of web apps is confusing to many
People are very sensitive and suspect of dodgy links.
If you tell someone 'hey checkout lemmy, PS the default UI sucks so actually go to phtn.app'
they simply don't click and think you're trying to scam them
That's just fine. Don't worry yourself too much. I don't know about everyone else, but I only want the people open to making a switch here. If you're so put off by trying something new that you aren't willing to give it a chance, then I'm not going to be begging for you to join my community.
I honestly use the Voyager web client in my desktop PC, it works pretty well.
I tried out a handful of Lemmy apps and Thunder is what I used for most of it but then switched to Summit. There's aspects I like about both and aspects I dislike about both, but they don't have a bad UI.
i recommend trying out thunder, I just switched from sync.
It's foss and actively developed
I’m checking in with voyager here, and I came from the reddit Apollo app and I feel the same.
It was practically seamless, though I’ve considered switching to try out other clients.
Tried Piefed and find it clunky with my current level of familiarity
"Complain about tankies" it's the same fediverse... With the same content...
Sure but PieFed doesn't seem to have a tankie problem. They're blocked from what I've seen.
Even if that wasn't the case, PieFed doesn't have a reputation for having a tankie problem.
The bottom line is when I promote PieFed I don't get people on reddit telling me the UI sucked and that it's flooded with pro-russia propaganda.
So I find it more efficient to promote PieFed
Anyone can instance can defederate from any other instance in Lemmy, not that hard to understand.
I agree, and I think it's a shame it has gotten to this point, but I understand his viewpoint completely and have seen the interactions myself. At this point it's simply more efficient to promote Piefed on Reddit instead of Lemmy, because you want the absolute least amount of friction for potential new users. Literally any single minor inconvenience/negative thing will cause people to not even consider trying it out. Lemmy has unfortunately already accumulated a reputation, and if you promote it you are very likely to run into comments about tankies which is typically enough to scare potential new users away.
At the end of the day it shouldn't matter to us which software people use, as long as we get more new users into the ecosystem.
People will always find some excuse to do nothing and stay on Reddit. Whether its Lemmy or Piefed you will only ever get a few people to switch.
Sadly piefed isnt innocent either, they are trying to poison the AP protocol: https://communick.news/comment/8015757
Piefed starts out with poisoning the ecosystem, as linked here quite a few times by redwizard.
It's a shame to see that people think of Lemmy creators as some sort of villains.
I created my account on .ml before the Reddit blackout, but there wasn't much content there, so I didn't use it much. I properly started using it after the "Reddit blackout," and that's when I learned about the so-called "tankie problem." I've met people with weird opinions, but the developers and Marxists in general aren't bad people. People just usually make a strawmen to argue against.
Anyway, none of their opinions are reflected in the software. Lemmy is done in a truly democratic and user-oriented way, and I respect them for it.
The Lemmy devs? I'd suggest to read what they actually write. They are good guys.
I also don't think it matters. For example, I don't really like the behavior of the Duckstation dev. It's a PS1 emulator. But I don't have to agree with him in order to use it.
PieFed literally uses a social credit score system and it gets lowered if you post content the Dev doesn't like. It's shit. And it's ugly, people who want a low density enshittified web app interface should be actively filtered out.
For different UI you can linnk people to blorp, vger.app or phtn.app. There are also a lot of mobile apps.
I hear that, but the thing is anyone can block whatever/whoever they feel the need to in the fediverse. I truly believe server admins should federate across the board, as it's a disservice to end users only allowing federation with certain servers based on admin preference.
As far as UI and UX go, Lemmy's devs are some of the biggest players in the overall fediverse functionality. So while the UI/UX could use some more attention in select areas, being able to interact with the other platforms is a much bigger aspect to the appeal of the fediverse! The Lemmy devs really do deserve a lot more credit for their work, regardless on their opinions or how
thethey approach discussing them.Lemmy doesn't truly block stuff and the devs refuse to fix that
Really? Huh, I have a decent amount of communities blocked and I've never seen a single post from anyone of them after implementing the block
I’m assuming they mean it isn’t a two way block. Blocked users can still interact with your posts/comments, you just can’t see them. I personally think that should be how it works, but I’ve seen a lot of arguments for the Reddit-style blocking where they can’t interact with you anymore.
User level community and instance blocks will stop you from seeing posts from those places, but it does not block their users or their comments, so you'd still be able to see them around in non-blocked communities.
You can also establish a user block though too, so if their comments in unblocked communities are making your experience less than ideal, just block that user.
That's not a terribly good user experience if a user doesn't want to interact with or see any comments from users of a particular instance, as then it would require the user to manually block hundreds of users over a long span of time.
Granted I browse Lemmy via voyager on Mobile, and Alexandrite on desktop, but this has never been an issue. I find it incredibly easy to block stuff, and curate what I want to see
It's honestly bonkers to have a community hosted on Lemmy this hostile to Lemmy as software and the developers.
Because so many keep getting told it's by tankies and stop thinking immediately after that
Is this bait? There is hardly any hostility here towards the software and the Lemmy devs want to push the world towards being an authoritarian hellscape. If anything they dont get enough shit.
Are you referring to ![email protected]? This wasn't posted by the mods.
This comm is often full of comments pushing lemmy alternatives, with PieFed being the new frontrunner.
You'd think the post here would include Lemmy, which I believe is still the most active platform
But it's the same platform! They all interoperate!
Deb's a tankie with the most bullshit oppinions ever seen on earth.
Not true.
Demonstrably true. Try saying anything contrary to a tankie talking point on .ml and see how long before you get banned. May I suggest “Russia was wrong for invading Ukraine” for starters, or “China committed unjustifiable atrocities against peaceful protestors”.
Russia was wrong for invading Ukraine.
In fact, Russia is an expansionist state with rampant nationalism and homophobia and led by an obvious fascist. I support the political autonomy of Ukrainians.
Catch me in the modlogs.
Now, I believe all of that, but I can also believe that there are geopolitical forces making the situation more nuanced and complex
You're replying to one of the Lemmy devs. Hearing them say it's not true when they literally run .ml as a tankie community is hilarious.
Who is deb?
Developer
I am unreasonably angry about the stretched icons.
Hey, hey you.
Get some.
Much better!
It makes it look like a shitpost at a glance lol
I'll join you. 😡
Some icons are stretched and some aren't. Double infuriating
Lol, posting Piefed as an alternative to reddit to Lemmy...
Also, PeerTube is super obtuse to get an account and has almost no reach. You almost have to personally know someone who has a server or host your own. There's a reason why video hosting has gotten so corporatized: it's expensive. That said, almost "no one" used Mastodon for nearly a decade and it's finally starting to take off, so maybe it just needs another decade or two.
Please add chess.com → lichess
Should be Lemmy over piefed.
I've seen the Reddit users be more receptive of PieFed over Lemmy. In a post suggesting Lemmy, the Reddit users will just comment that it looks ugly, it's confusing, devs are tankies, etc. Posts suggesting PieFed get less complaints and more signups.
Also I think the instance choice is easier for PieFed compared to Lemmy. If you tell people to use Lemmy, they'll probably end up on lemmy.world which is overpopulated, or lemmy.ml...
Instead of recommending Lemmy in general, you should recommend a specific instance which matches the audience. For example someone posted about piefed.ca in /r/BuyCanadian. Or you can link to a different frontend like vger.app.
I did make a redesign to join-lemmy.org recently so that new users can reach the registration page with a single click. I am also curious about any suggestions you have to improve the onboarding.
join-lemmy.org looks much improved now! And yes linking directly to an instance is the way to go, I would've put URLs in this promotional image instead of just names
I'm not sure if I have any specific ideas at the moment. It's possible Lemmy has just reached a saturation point with Reddit where the people still on Reddit are the ones who bounced off Lemmy before, so they won't give it another chance anytime soon, but they haven't tried PieFed yet. Maybe the optimal strategy is to cycle between the recommendations to catch everyone with whatever suits them best. I think we should also try changing out the Mastodon recommendation and see if something else catches people who haven't already switched to Fediverse microblogging.
I think PieFed's idea of asking new users what they want/don't want to see is a good idea.
I made a couple of "Help Design Lemmy" posts in ![email protected] recently to get feedback and ideas, which was very helpful. I will continue to make such posts to improve join-lemmy.org, and also Lemmy itself.
Had a look at the Piefed signup now, choosing categories like that is a good idea. But the question is how these categories get curated. We have something similar with the instance topics on join-lemmy.org but no one is really helping to maintain them. So for community categories it would probably similar. In 1.0 we will have some improvements for discovery, like multi-communities and a "suggested communities" collection which can be set by local admins.
For the Mastodon recommendation there isnt any good alternative software that I can see. So its probably best to recommend a single Mastodon instance, depending on the target audience.
That person was me.
I've promoted Lemmy in the past only to be met with comments complaining about the 'dogshit UX' and tankeis.
So I switched to promoting PieFed instead, and have had no such complaints.
And so you decided to spread that misinformation further, instead of simply replying that it is wrong? I'm also very curious in what ways you consider Piefed's UI better than Lemmy.
Good UX is all about removing friction and making users have to click less and think less.
Users these days are expect their hands to be held and things to just work, that sadly is just the reality.
Let me start off with saying, I started on Lemmy and even donated to Lemmy, PieFed can only grow because it's standing on the shoulders of giants (lemmy)
My alt is AnonomousWolf, you can look it up, since I joined I complained about bat UX, but people told me to GTFO. PieFed fixes many of those issues I complained about.
Let me do a quick test and walk you through my thought possesses and UX. I'll make 2 comments in this post, one for lemmy.ml one for piefed.social
-- open https://lemmy.ml/
-- met with a list of posts, most images too small for me to see or read.
-- click on first post so that I can see the image - https://lemmy.ml/post/42503928 -- taken to a page where I still can't see the image I clicked to see -- Click on the image, now I can see it.
-- See some comments
-- now I need to click back to continue
-- see another interesting post, image to small, can't see so I have to click -- https://lemmy.ml/post/42501566
-- Still can't see image so I click on the image -- now I'm taken to https://mecha.so/comet#overview
-- WTF, why am I on a different site? Why am I here,where are the comments -- Realisze I can't distinguish between Image posts and Links to a different site. -- Why is this so confusing to browse?
Sounds like you are specifically looking for a client focused on image browsing. In that case I would suggest linking to vger.app, phtn.app or blorp which I linked in another comment. Lemmy 1.0 will also have a card view which admins can set as default, where images are already expanded.
This is only the link preview (indicated by the arrow icon), not an image post. Is the icon too small?
-- open https://piefed.social/ -- met with some interesting image from c/selfhosted
--keep scrolling -- some news articles, not really my vibe
-- keep scrolling -- cut cat picture from c/cat -- keep scrolling
-- some meme about cars and fuck Trump, cool -- keep scrolling -- more memes and cats, keep scrolling -- this keeps happening, doezens of more memes and cats -- repeat
-- bunch of posts I don't have to click to open, I can see the image clearly and what's happening
-- interesting but I can just keep scrolling -- bottom of the pace, have to click next
-- more semi interseting things
-- keep scrolling, click next again
-- eventually find something interesting enough to interact with and leave a comment, of move on.
Review of the two experiences:
With PieFed I can just keep scrolling without needing to click. Things just work and are where I expect them to be (based on pas UX experiences (reddit)) I can see way more content without ever getting confused or needing to click or make decisions, making me stay curious and engaged. Where as with Lemmy I very quickly got frustrated and confused, making me want to abandon ship and do something else, and I'm way way way more resilient than the vast majority of users
Not everyone likes infinite scroll, but some apps such as vger.app offer it.
This is why I stopped promoting Lemmy and switched to PieFed.
UX is everything, and Lemmy UX sucked. The default UX (for your average user) is dog shit.
People want 'it just works' and PieFed offers that more than Lemmy does.
Thanks! I personally think as long as people land in the fediverse, its going to be ok. But its cool to give some highlights to piefed.
Also congrats on making a "controversial" post! Thats how you know its good :D
Yeah but this is like when Disney makes star wars tv shows. Ignore what the current audience likes and use the show as a vehicle to try and tell them what they should like.
I didnt think they could do worse than Discovery but the Academy is incredibly bad. On the plus side, Im rewatching Deep Space Nine again.
And BlueSky over Mastodon
Revolt (now known as Stoat) isn't federated though.
Is there a federated version, either in the works or planned? Because otherwise, Stoat is the only option.
Yes
Matrix
Matrix just isn't up to it. It doesn't feel like Discord at all. It hasn't taken off in any meaningful way.
None of those really "feel like" the things they're replacing. I don't really even think that should be the goal. They occupy the same space, though, and the infographic would look stupid if it showed all the options in some category, so they just picked a popular proprietary/centralized one, and a popular federated alternative in the same category. In this case discord is a popular chat app, and the most popular federa chat app afaict is matrix.
True, Matrix is going to win currently by default of there being no other alternative, but it just isn't being used in the way Discord is even if you assume a smaller scale.
No.
Other alternatives are Root, not federated.
There's also Roomy in development which is federated, and will tie into Bluesky.
Links?
https://www.rootapp.com/
https://roomy.space/
Thank you.
Roomy says they plan to integrate federation in the future, though it doesn't have it now.
https://itsfoss.com/roomy-discord-alternative/
Well damn, I need to update the pic I guess. I didn't make it, just saved it some months ago
Maybe add Matrix as a Discord alternative?
The Element application is solid now. Still I think it'd be a rough transition for most discord users. But more users probably means more potential for developer interest
Eh, kind of. I have almost 300 unread message notifications I cannot get rid of. I have scrolled up as far as I can then slowly back down. I have gone into threads and done the same.
Last time I checked theirs still no channels ? Discoverability is not really their ethier only active one I really found was the monero one
It now has workspaces (it's called servers in Discord) and there you can have chats, which are basically channels like in Discord.
Fair point,
I omitted Facebook in my image because fuck that kind of social media (my opinion)
I picked PieFed over Lemmy because UX is everything and currently PieFed has much better UX.
Fuck that kind of social media but tiktok and Instagram are better?????
What's the difference between Piefed and Lemmy?
Piefed has quite a few features that Lemmy doesn't have:
https://join.piefed.social/features/
Lemmy should get there in version 1.0, but they still don't have any precise timeframe for that release, and still need to do some testing https://lemmy.ml/comment/23570258
You might see a few people discrediting Piefed for some optional filters it offers, but all of those filters are configurable by admins and disabled by default: https://piefed.zip/c/fediverse/p/1005977/piefed-admin-settings-that-allow-to-enable-or-disable-content-filters-they-are-disabled-by
The fact these filters exist in the first place are not a good sign. When Microsoft introduces new shitware that is "disabled by default" people are skeptical that it might not be disabled for long, but when a fediverse dev does it to block content they personally don't like it's fine? This goes against the entire concept of the fediverse imho. Just block people you don't like yourself
it's Python. It's foss.
I've removed code I didn't want in mine. (A feature I later re enabled).
If I want to add code, I do so. Or I remove code.
Microsoft is closed, and they are leveraging tons of cash to manipulate. Try turning off updates on a windows 11 machine... Is it just a toggle? What if Microsoft removes the option or requires.. oh wait closed source and they already did.
All piefed has been doing is giving options.
Blame admins if you like but be honest about your intentions instead of this campism.
Masto and other fedi services give options of blanket blocks or filters, so arguing entire concept of fedi is nonsense.
It goes against your concept of the Fediverse. You are just as much trying to force your personal preference on others with this argument of slippery slope of Microsoft nonsense.
I think it is great if different instances have different profiles that cater to different audience instead of everything just being the same with different domain names. If it is all the same it may as well be a single instance and the entire point of federating is lost.
Microsoft does not operate on a federated model.
The Piefed devs have no way to change the configuration of other instances.
if only there was a way for devs to distribute changes to the software they made
If you believe that the Piefed devs would get away with overriding the configuration of other instances with an update, that's not realistic.
Most of the Piefed users (myself included) would leave immediately.
What our experience is is the opposite: the Piefed dev team is always receptive to feedback, and improves the software based on this constantly.
It took 2 days for a PR to go though on piefed. It was a great experience.
Reading the code is VERY easy, even compared to other projects. I was able to get it up and running in about 30 mins with very little knowledge of the project. The "filters" are all optional on the admin side and instances can and have modified them to suit their needs.
Congrats @[email protected] ! Your project has gained "controversy", the main way you can tell its getting successful 😁.
I specifically chose my instance by what content they did and didn't choose to block. I turned away from several otherwise appealing instances because they didn't block some of the content I would've wanted them to. I know I can do it myself, and I do when I need to, but I want an instance that aligns with my interests enough that I don't have to worry about blocking every problematic group as they pop up. If something changes and the instance ends up blocking things I wouldn't want blocked, I move to another instance. It's as easy as moving to another seat on the bus - barely an inconvenience.
Piefed seens to have a lot of issues baked into the code
https://lemmy.world/post/42299745
Also piefed violates basic compatibility in fediverse: https://communick.news/comment/8015757
That's actually some very interesting discussion down there.
That looks like one very specific issue rather than a lot of issues of something to really worry about.
Personally I haven't noticed had any issues uploading images for posts.
Create a PR and fix it.
Lol, why? I don't use Piefed and besides, I work on my own open source project.
But seriously, why would I contribute to a project I don't use and have no association with?
Because it would address what you talk about above. You dont like it, fix it. Ive done it on quite a few fedi services, its not terribly hard. It makes the world just a tiny bit better.
And it works really well :)
Piefed has been a great experience.
Are these features available on mobile apps? Because I mostly use Lemmy on Jerboa
How can I pick which piefed server doesn't have the social credit score enabled?
I recommend MULTIVERSE, the anarcho-antirealist PieFed server. We have a karma system the same as Reddit, which you're used to, and we don't do any extra processing of the score. Some PieFed sites ignore karma earned on meme communities to prevent repost farming, but on MULTIVERSE, we just look at upvotes - downvotes, and unlike Reddit, your karma score means absolutely nothing for your ability to post on communities.
Does it still prevent people from replying to people that blocked them so the conversation can continue without the blocker?
piefed has an opinionated dev reimplementing karma and filters for content they don't like right into the application
I was thinking of giving piefed a shot. Any further reading on this?
Edit: Why on earth is this so downvoted? I was thinking of switching from mbin to piefed, saw this, and asked for elaboration. FFS.
I don't think there's a writeup, but I can search for explanations later, I'm kind of on the go rn. These filters are technically optional, it's just another piece of trust you have to hand over to your instance admin and hope they don't turn them on. Also you have to trust that these optional filters are the only ones, and that there won't be any hidden filters.
If you wanna give it a shot then by all means go ahead, but I personally feel very uneasy knowing these exist and the dev is willing to implement algorithms to punish people who post "bad content" in their eyes
Lemmy also has filters, you have to have the same 'trust' that admins don't add words to them.
Lemmy intransparently punishes users for using reaction GIFs, writing "this" comments and punches communities for having the words "meme' or "shitpost" in the title? that's crazy
All of these things can be turned off, moreover, the "punches communities" specifically refers to the mass federation tool that instance admins can use that has had a lot of terms removed.
Here's at least some of the 'feature' list. was about to switch to piefed until I read it.
https://join.piefed.social/2024/06/22/piefed-features-for-growing-healthy-communities/
check out this comment
piefed isn't made by tankies
It's made by feds.
wait are you sure? there was a lemmy admin talking about how the software is authoritarian and has a "social credit score" that sounds like what a tankie would put in
I wonder if they mean the genocide-denying lemmy admin or the transphobic lemmy admin. It's easy to mix those two guys up
Oh boy oh boy, I think I'm about to receive a fun link with more Nutomic bad takes
I am really curious, who is it that goes around and slanders me behind my back? Why do they care so much what a random person on the internet says? And these are just some casual comments in an obscure online forum. Does this individual not have work to do, or friends to spend time with instead of this? So feel free to send me a private message with the username who sends these links.
Bullshit, you are lying.
No this person: https://feddit.dk/u/SorteKanin
I think I understand now and it is clear I need to make a new account on piefed
Piefed has two user rating systems. Your attitude, which is public, and allows people to see what your ratio of up votes to down votes is. The other being reputation, which is generally reserved for administration and moderation iirc. Which is an accumulation of how other people upvote and downvote you. Basically the sort of thing anyone could get just by looking at the public information just condensed all in one spot.
Anyone calling it social credit score is being disingenuous. The most controversial feature it has is its content filtering system, which is disabled by default.
Piefed provides sections or slices of the fediverse and often is incorporated with mastodon, whereas Lemmy is a much bigger aspect of the overall fediverse. While everyone is entitled to their option how they approach certain topics, Lemmy's devs have a huge impact on federation protocols, moderation norms, and general user experience across the fediverse!
They are similar platforms and they federate, i.e. you can see all Lemmy content with a Piefed account and vice versa.
And also most of the things you said are simply wrong.
Nice screenshot by the way, which leaves out 90% of the actual comment. Link for comparison. I wont even get into the other deceptions, you really are true to your name.
Ah yes because one sentence by someone you dislike is enough basis to judge a different person that you dislike. Why dont you do something useful with your live, instead of hating on people who actually create something useful?
All the people upvote you, it's only "them" who downvote you. You have a clear picture of the world around you!
Ew gross, fuck tankies. I'm really confused so both lemmy and piefed are tankie-adjacent?
No, Lemmy is fine. We may have our personal opinions on our things, but we never let them affect our work. A lot of admins and contributors also keep an eye on it. If you dont like how moderation works on a particular Lemmy instance, you can find a dozen other instances with different rules. As developers we could not even ban the clowns on ![email protected] if we wanted.
but you do ban users who are from ![email protected]
Piefed was created because users weren't happy that the developers spend more time arguing on tankie talking points and censoring dissent than developing Lemmy.
https://join.piefed.social/features/
And it's not being developed by tankies.
Isn't lemmy the reddit of the fediverse?
TikTok -> driving rusty nails through your nipples
Also, to avoid doing unpaid labour for Jeff Bezos, go from Goodreads to Bookwyrm!
Bookwyrm is cool, it just needs more attention and interaction. It would be cool if it could expand into other forms of media (games, movies) like NeoDB, which again feels like posting into the void.
I'm a little behind on this, what does goodreads have to do with bezos?
In 2013 Goodreads was sold to Amazon 😭
It's impressive how Goodreads has been owned by 10+ years by the company with the largest cloud infrastructure and supposedly great engineers, and still it loads like shitty personal blog from the 2000s. It's pretty obvious it was just bought so they could redirect traffic to Kindle store, just like IMDB redirects to Amazon Prime.
As pointed out, Goodreads has been owned by Amazon for a good while. And they also own slices of some other similar book sites (LibraryThing, for example, and some other site that was merged into Goodreads).
There's also StoryGraph - it's not federated, but ran by a tiny UK company, but seems pretty popular. I like the content warnings feature and stuff like readers rating the pacing and moods of the books, which is then displayed with graphs on the book page, but they have also introduced some AI features :/ (fortunately opt-in)
Nice suggestion. I didn't know this was a thing. :)
And also don't forget to donate to your devs!
And instance admins!
I recommend hosting yourself to see exactly what "admins" have to go through.
:3
Peertube isn't really a viable alternative. There isn't a substantial enough audience for creators and there isn't really enough content for an audience. I guess if you're one of the 100 people watching transport evolved that's cool but it isn't really a meaningful alternative. I suppose it could be supplementary, but why would creators want to drive their traffic to a site that doesn't actually matter for their visibility? I imagine the same probably applies to loops.
Also, like, with video you kind of want a reliable host that you know isn't going anywhere.
The rest are okay as long as you're not super worried about how many people are seeing what you post. Lemmy and Piefed are great for content aggregation and discussion, but they seem to be the only ones that at this point actually do anything that might be helpful.
I've tried Mastodon and while it's way better than Twitter it isn't exactly providing a way to reach a substantial audience. Personal websites are probably a better bet for ease of access.
I feel the same about PeerTube. And the fact it is a defederated network with opt in to federation is a bad model IMO. There's no way for a creator to get paid, either AFAIK.
I tried it out. First sign up, I was shuttled to an instance federated with only two other instances. Second sign up, I found what looked like an active instance but there still is just a lack of content. I'm not sure how to fix any of its issues as I see them. I'd love an actual YouTube competitor
Yeah the entry ticket is a little high. It's not easy to find an instance which has open registrations and integrates sepia (the federated search engine for peertube) but once you find one it works quite well! (I use peerate.fr)
For most other formats, everyone creates and shares: photos, posts, sharing links. For more crafted video material, there's too much of an imbalance between the number of watchers vs creators to make a new platform an easy sell. You'd need a strong creator promise like Nebula.
Yeah, agreed. The one thing the platforms you see that aren't YouTube that creators actually use have in common is financial incentive. Nebula is the best example here. Creators get a cut and have more creative freedom, so they actually use it and try to direct their audience to it for bonus content, which seems to actually work. Patreon is similar for a lot of creators, letting them put out additional content with fewer restrictions and letting them get more income from their viewers.
Some people also seem to have some success with independent platforms. If you look at like a Dropout or Viva Plus, these are both putting stuff out on YouTube and then drawing users in with subscriptions, and that seems to be a sound model.
But Peertube produces zero dollars for creators, which means they have no incentive to push users there. In fact, they're incentivized to avoid doing so because there are other platforms that will actually pay them if they can direct traffic there. Peertube lacks both the money-making side of things and the exposure side of things, so there's no real reason to use it.
Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see something independent like Peertube take off, but the model doesn't really work.
But you can have metrics with subscriptions/likes/comments and you could get revenue through sponsorship. Also it would avoid censorship.
Because YouTube can shoot down you account and all your videos get blocked if they want?
Every political content creator should use PeerTube at least as a backup.
They just use IG and TT as backups. Yeah, you could be banned from all three. But that's where the audience is, so without that why bother?
I love the idea of fediverse video, but even I don't use it. No content I care about. No audience that would care about me. I get more visibility on a Lemmy post that just says "beans" than I would spending an hour making a 30 second video.
No service starts as the winner. Each one has to work it's way up (or down).
But I don't say "don't use YT". Use it is you want (I do too). But, if you are a content creator, use PF as a backup. There are already some channels that do.
Most of them have Patreon for that, which actually produces income.
What's the incentive? All they would be doing is pushing views away from platforms where having viewers actually benefits them, either through metrics or income or both.
Honestly the best way to get that going might be to have a company and offer sponsorship deals with the requirement that creators also post to Peertube. But that would require companies having a reason to want people on Peertube.
Linux Weekly News already has a channel in YT and the same channel¹ in PT, with a sponsor (Tuxedo Computers).
¹ the same videos uploaded in both places.
My main issue with peertube is that I find it confusing. Its not self contained in the sense on how to subscribe to channels or people. AFAIK you also need a mastodon account for it and to jump through some hoops to subscribe to a creator.
You don't need a mastodon account, you can have a peertube account but finding an instance with open registration and that integrates sepia (the peertube fediverse search engine) isn't straightforward. You can try peerate.fr
I've been using lemmy.world with the boost app. Should I look into piefed? Am I missing anything? I mean I'm happy with what I got, but is the grass any greener?
There's been some controversy recently about censorship hardcoded into Piefed's backend. Basically it gives people a "social credit score" based on how they post.
Yuck. Do you have any evidence?
Here's the writeup about it, going around
So it basically is a worse version of Reddit's karma.
Essentially, yes. And maybe that's part of why people jumping from reddit like it so much, but personally, I don't think the things like this that Piefied is doing are good for the fediverse ecosystem
I can understand where the reputation comes from - spammers and trolls will do everything they can to shit all over everything. Maybe this isn't the best way to address that problem, but I definitely understand the desire.
I run a forum for a very specific model of RV, and fucking spammers came in so often that I shut off registration and register everyone manually after they send me an email. It raises the bar just enough. Every now and then someone will whine about it, and I'm like, I hear you but this is much easier than cleaning the mess the spammers always leave.
props to you for running such a niche forum! That kind of thing is rare online nowadays
Some of the code snippets are cringe. Ew..
Lmao that "AI filter" would destroy me. Let me have my goddamn em dashes goddamn it
To be fair, it only sends a ping to admins. And it only does it for new accounts.
Thanks. Disgusting
It has a lot of cool features, I'm almost tempted to switch but am waiting on the app I use to finish supporting it first.
I'm 1 foot out of Reddit
Welcome!
Since your Lemmy account is only 3 days old, I would recommend switching over to PieFed. It’s a much nicer experience and federates with all the same servers that Lemmy does, so you’re seeing the same posts but in a better way. You’re on lemmy.zip, and the same devs run piefed.zip.
With a little curation of your community subscriptions, you can get a very similar experience to Reddit but better.
What do you prefer about piefed? Lemmy seems perfect to me.
I like the interface more than the Lemmy interface, but it also has a number of cool features that Lemmy doesn't have. And the update schedule is crazy good. PieFed 1.5 has only been out about 3 weeks, and the dev just released 1.6 today with more features, updates, and fixes.
Not to mention that there is some..... questionable.... behavior by the Lemmy devs. While the PieFed dev may not be perfect, he doesn't have the baggage the Lemmy devs do, and I feel better using the PieFed software. It all connects to the same stuff.
The original version of this has Lemmy on there. Why replace with piefed? Could have added instead of replaced.
As someone who's trying to regularly promote the Threadiverse on Reddit, most of the potential new joiners are already overwhelmed with having to choose an instance, so adding another choice between two platforms will just stop them even earlier.
Regarding the choice of Piefed, it has quite a few features that Lemmy doesn't have:
https://join.piefed.social/features/
Lemmy should get there in version 1.0, but they still don't have any precise timeframe for that release, and still need to do some testing https://lemmy.ml/comment/23570258
You might see a few people discrediting Piefed for some optional filters it offers, but all of those filters are configurable by admins and disabled by default: https://piefed.zip/c/fediverse/p/1005977/piefed-admin-settings-that-allow-to-enable-or-disable-content-filters-they-are-disabled-by
The Fediverse's biggest onboarding problem is having too many choices that seem important but don't really matter. Namely, which instance to sign up on. Listing two different platforms that do the same thing and even federate with each other would only make it worse. I'm guessing that's why they only listed one.
As for why choose one over the other, I don't have a horse in this race, I'm sure they had their reasons.
Except it does matter which instance you choose because they choose to defederate with other instances, it may be an instance run by one person who disappears, on a huge instance that collapses, etc.
There's not really a way to migrate totally, AFAIK, so if you choose wrong, you start over. This has been my actual user experience. Kbin was my first choice because of UI and mastodon integration. That instance died when the Dev disappeared. Then I moved to lemm.ee thinking that a large instance surely would stay up. It didn't.
So "it doesn't matter" which instance you choose. Except it also kind of does.
I mean, the way to use Lemmy/Piefed is to have multiple accounts. You don't need to "migrate" anything, just start using it.
I do see this tendency from people coming from reddit to kind of fetishize the "status" of their accounts and try to preserve everything they've ever said as if anyone cares, but that seems both unhealthy and unrealistic. Nobody is digging through your posts from 6 months ago for content, and no one will care that you haven't reposted all your passing thoughts to a new instance.
If you look at the users who are active across multiple accounts, they're recognizable without worrying about what instance they're on. Like I have no idea what instances Stamets or cm0002 or whatever are using at the moment or how many of their posts exist where and I don't really care. I read my current feed, comment a little, post once in a while, and it seems like that's what most people do.
Do you walk around with a tape recorder meticulously archiving every spoken conversation you have in real life? Would such a thing make your interactions more significant? Just keep that shit in your brain and the collective memory of interactions with others and get on with your life.
I don't care about some karma number, but yeah, I definitely like to see some conversations I've had, or things I've upvoted because I maybe would like to share them later in a conversation.
So yeah, I like having the record for me.
We were also talking about getting more people on the platform and you are basically showing exactly why others hate this place. My criticism is valid and something a normal person would notice. You came in and wrote a small diatribe about... Not what I was talking about.
No, I don't obsessively go over everything I've ever said. But I sure do sometimes want to revisit, rethink and repost things.
I literally use Piefed every single day and am enthusiastic about the growth of the Fediverse. If it can't even take internal criticism from regular users with a vested interest it isn't ready for outside interest.
Yeah, you're right, and that sucks. Mastodon is much better at this.
I’ve tried to promote Lemmy on Reddit in the past, only to be met with people complaining about the really old UI and bad UX, they also complain about tankies.
PieFed doesn’t have that bad rep, so I’ve found it easier to promote, both lead to the Fedivers so either is a win.
If I make posts promoting Lemmy on reddit it gets a lot of criticism in the comments becose of the above reasons, so I promote PieFed instead.
You don't need to recommend Lemmy as a software in general. It's better to recommend a specific instance which matches the target audience.
Most users that have joines in the last week has been because I recommend a specific.
PieFed.ca
Link to a Photon Frontend then?
Not all instances have Photon UI, and that just adds more friction and confusion.
Now I have to explain to users why the default FE is garbage and why they should use Photon. And when I've promoted https://p.lemmy.world/ in the past I get people telling me to fuck off because I'm sharing dodgy virus links.
What I miss is a auth service for all of them. Something like a "common user" where you can have all your Fediverse services under the same user.
Yeah some OAuth would be nice
can anyone eli5 what the difference is from piefed to lemmy? i have a lemmy account, do i have a use for a piefed accnt too?
Its up to you. They are different software but both read lemmy and Piefed communities and instances.
ok thanks. sorry someone downvoted you
PieFed has flair and topics, which make it easier to find content you like.
oh cool. thanks for the info :3
To me. It's the same thing but PieFed has better UX and more featues.
Which one you pick is for the most part irrelevant.
thanks for the input. im gonna chekc out piefed
All the proposed services/technologies would benefit the wider consumer base and the user but switching is too big an ask for many people. We need to encourage people into using "as well as" the global defaults. That will build the network effects that lower the cost of fully switching
An easier and bigger immediate impact would come from people replacing Chrome and google search with respectful alternatives, and/or replacing gmail or outlook with private services like proton or tuta.
Starve the surveillance machines a little bit.
agreed, we need "Monthly Try Something New Day"
Look, I'm looking at reddit posts about niche stuff like a fiend. But when I make a post, I always go here first
I've switched, but I haven't stopped searching old reddit posts. The cache of information is just too rich to pass up.
It's all about mindset. I'm all in fediverse, despite actually using reddit sometimes. Switching doesn't mean blocking the entire website
What's the difference between Lemmy and piefed, and why should be choose one over the other?
You don't have to. Piefed is different software. It does have more features: custom feeds, hashtags, flairs, polls, events, keyword filtering, scheduled posts and more. Much of this is also arriving in lemmy 1.0, but the release so far is undated.
But some people dislike the UI of Piefed.
To users they're both mostly the same but PieFed has more features and a much better UX, so it's the one I choose to promote.
I'm not sure about the better UX. Take a look at the recent code analysis: https://lemmy.ml/post/42415919/23662293
I think the current behavior is very confusing. Unless you're an instance admin, you don't know whether these features are enabled or not.
But how does one switch from Lemmy to Piefed?
You create a new account on a Piefed instance. There’s a lot to choose from like Piefed.social, piefed.ca, piefed.blahaj.zone, etc
Theres a lot of animosity right now between some Piefed and Lemmy users for some reason. I use both, I dunno why people are picking this fight right now, it seems pretty fucking dumb to me.
You can register on a Piefed instance and use Lemmy's subscription export feature and Piefed's import feature to retain your subscriptions. Porting comments/posts isn't a thing.
There's work underway creating migration scripts for Lemmy databases to be imported to Piefed, but that is a tool for instance administrators only, of course.
Every day is a good day to switch
What's a good peertube instance that federates with a lot? I tried tldvids but its got like 2 regular uploaders and i cant find most channels I search for.
Is peer tube any good ?
No.
But mainly because content creators are on YouTube to get audience and a small profit. The technology is fine otherwise.
This is an interesting economics problem. How can a p2p FOSS alternative compete with advertising revenue? The YouTube creators don't even get most of the money, so it wouldn't need to be perfect to be better.
Yeah I think it's doable since most of the revenues are through sponsorship and you can evaluate the audience with likes and subscriptions
Is PeerTube separate from the rest of the fediverse? I'm on Lemmy and get everything from what's in the OP image except the video things.
There are some good youtube mirrors on peertube though and the videos can be downloaded. Also no youtube censorship! I bet you can find some good movies like in the old age of youtube
I'm having troubld findinv good peertube instances, anyone have any recs?
Crosspost from: ![email protected] ( A community for growing the Fediverse )
"But if you have a shitty attitude stay where you are"
Can we self host loops yet? I've been holding out on that one. Not that I use tiktok but I would use loops and could probably get my wife to jump.
Really wish Loops had an Android app.
Done. I thought it was going to be difficult leaving YouTube but then they blocked new pipe which was my YT crutch. I don't know what they were thinking I was going to do but it was not re installing their app.
Newpipe works fine for me, have you updated it?
PipePipe has never let me down yet. In case you still need to interact with YouTube.
It started to just error out on every video. Some people suggest to revert a couple of versions. But I simply gave up. There's no anything there that I need.
PipePipe is a fork of NewPipe, with more and better features (like built in SponsorBlock). I was watching videos on it just an hour ago.
Looks like there was an update over the weekend. I got to watch this video.
Try Greyjay for YouTube
Tiktok -> tiktok with less content and login required unless you like the 10 videos we have chosen for you.
I checked out Loops again last week, it's alright but needs more content. I think it'll get there if it keeps chugging along as it's been doing.
It's still in Beta.
I haven't checked it recently because it isn't my content consumption format, but has it really gotten better. If more people join I would really like to recommend it to people like my spouse... But as it was when I tried it, shed nope right out of there.
What I liked was if you shared a loop, they could view it without having an account, but I couldn't view a tiktok when she tried sending me one say last year
Indeed the TikTok login wall is frustrating
Content volume will increase over time but requiring login killed it for me.
Heck they’re even mimicking tiktok login begging techniques
For things that you're using by yourself, sure, it's doable. However, for content creation, it's pretty hard. Some of those alternatives just don't have the critical mass yet. Maybe it would be an option to do both in parallel for some time before switching completely, but might not work for everybody.
Practical example: I'm a hobbyist photographer. Small timer, less than 1000 followers. My livelihood doesn't depend on this, but I'm still serious about it. I mainly do concerts and sport events (so a lot of things involving other people) and my main outlets are Facebook and Instagram. Switching to something else would mean either 1) that no one will see my work or 2) that people will see my photos on the alternative place, they'll copy them over and they'll still end up on Facebook and Instagram, but this time without my creative control (thus badly cropped and recompressed several times - so even if I pay special attention to those things when publishing by myself, the effort goes down the drain when someone else does it).
There doesn't need to be a replacement for everything. How much does the world need to revolve around a random person's hot-take in 140 characters or as many seconds. These are artificial walls.
So uh, you joined lemmy why then?
I joined because I got banned from Reddit. Unjustly I claim.
So where lemmy fits?
instead of Piefed :)
I enjoy lemmy so much!
mbin should be on there too IMO. similar to Lemmy but it federates properly with microblog stuff.
UX is everything.
Because I don't want to give people more descion fatigue I picked the one I felt had the best UX
the ux is dependent on the app or webapp (usually tied to an instance) you are using, and mbin is the same ux as Lemmy like 90% of the time. there is only one mobile app (Interstellar) but its no worse than most Lemmy apps. i think the better federation alone would be enough to make it more popular if Lemmy wasnt the only thing being recommended for threads.
a big part of UX is having good defaults.
Lemmy's defaults don't work for most people, every time I try to promote it on reddit I'm met with doezens of people complaining about how shit and confusing the UI is.
Do you really want the world to join here? I don't think you do. A lot of the world is anti trans, anti woke or whatever they want to call it. I'm pretty open minded but the Marxist purists who continuously shout down differing opinions get really old sometimes.
Wtf is piefed? I mean, I'm searching for it now, I've just never heard of it.
Maybe I am just noob at using it. But calling pixelfed a substitution to instagram, is maybe just a little reach.. Pixelfed I found buggy, slow and dead community wise? Anyone to prove me wrong?
Loops is mid. The community is pretty inactive, and the iOS build is quite buggy and lacking.
Lets make February a switch month. It is impossible to switch in one day
Is there a voyager equivalent for piefed?
Last I heard voyager has experimental support for piefed, and that was several months ago. Don't know how it's going.
I use voyager and some of my alts are Piefed accounts. It works fine, I haven’t really run into any issues with it.
Voyager works great on PieFed, it doesn't yet have all the new PieFed features, but it works great.
What about streaming?
Hello and thank you for making the post! I just joined from reddit and have some questions. I really want to avoid some of the tankies I heard about it on the redditalternative posts.
One of the lemmy servers recommended had this admin and he made this comment recently about piefed
So is PieFed the tankie software or what? I dont' really want to use software that is going to build a social credit score on me or build barriers to actually use the site
By "social credit" system, they're referring to the fact that Piefed has a reputation and attitude system. "Reputation" is a bit like reddit - a downvote contributes negatively to it, an upvote positively. Accounts heavily downvoted will have negative warning signs on them (although the CCS here can be disabled by instance moderators who dislike it) so users can't see it. And users looking at a profile on piefed can only see accounts negatively downvoted, not accounts with high reputation - so it's not "karma" in the sense of Reddit.
"Attitude" refers to downvotes given. If you mass downvote, you'll get a very bad attitude and this is measured in percentage form for users. If you bulk downvote, and get a very low attitude - you'll be blocked from downvoting.
Thank you for explaining clearly someone is trying to put a lot of misinformation out there
Note, I've now seen you make this comment four times now on a brand new account - so my response here is meant in good faith.
No they're a 100% real user who despite only joining 35 minutes ago knows all about a 2 day old post.
I honestly think next time we should switch Mastodon out for something else (still Fediverse/ActivityPub of course).
We've already given Reddit users enough chances to try out Mastodon, we should see if the general Reddit users accept something else better. But I'm not experienced with microblogging at all, it's not my thing. Hopefully something with a discovery algorithm.
We've seen good results from promoting PieFed instead of Lemmy, so switching it up does work.
All due respect to Mastodon but BlueSky is way more viable right now.
But BlueSky doesn't support the fediverse yet, isn't it?
On Wafrn you can see and interact with posts on Wafrn, Mastodon, Misskey, and Bluesky.
Agreed and activitypub is great for creating a indie web kind of feel but it’s just a flawed model that brings the power dynamics of Reddit mods but with 0 checks to counteract it.