How the hell did I end up being all 3? 🤔🤪

As a distraction from everything else he was doing at the time and would do in the future?

At some point we really should just stop asking why, especially if we don’t want to know the answer 🥴

/s

Thank you for that context. Perhaps then one day Mastodon can try to hope to pull people away from Bluesky after people have given up on Mastodon and on X and spent all that time and energy moving to Bluesky, and then don’t want to have to move still yet again. I didn’t really use Digg but that seems to me to be an apt analogy where people gave up on it and seeing nothing better switched to Reddit, and then finally we here moved to Kbin, now Mbin, and/or Lemmy, and now PieFed as an option as well. Except so many remained on Reddit.

Once people move to Bluesky, they will stay there and resist moving elsewhere. Many would RATHER move to Mastodon, if only it would make its experience actually usable,. Especially by journalists who then write negative things about their experiences trying to use it and how frustrating it all was for them.

Also as I understand it, searching for content is really poor. e.g. https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/network/ says:

To allow you to discover potentially interesting content, Mastodon provides a way to browse all public posts. There is no global shared state between all servers, so there is no way to browse all public posts. When you browse Live Feeds > Other Servers, you see public posts from across the fediverse. Your server shows posts it knows about through various methods. Most posts come from accounts that other users on your server follow.

PieFed + Lemmy + Mbin has the same problem: someone must first join a community before it can be “discovered” by others on that same instance. Which typically means that someone must know about it - somehow? - via other means, and then go hunting specifically for it. I have tried to be the one who braved this trail for many a community on smaller instances such as Discuss.Online and PieFed.social (back when both were smaller than now), but not everyone - even scientists - are as technically minded as to want to deal with such complexities.

So if let’s say some University decides to set up their own Mastodon instance, by default it will not know most of what is available out there in the wider Fediverse, and anyone using that instance will get frustrated when it seems so very empty to them.

And the voting thing. And the impersonation issues. And so very, Very, VERY many other issues as well. I am not trying to criticize Mastodon here so much as I am advocating that will people please open their eyes and have some EMPATHY: mainstream normies do not enjoy using Mastodon. This is what is driving them to BlueSky where they say that it is FUN to use. We can cry about it, whine about it, do all the purity testing that we want and downvote me for saying this, but at the end of the day these people will either remain on X/Reddit or else move to BlueSky, but they will not, they will not, THEY WILL NOT move to Mastodon. They do not want it, and at the end of the day their consent is actually required if it were to happen.

Eww gross, I just looked up what programming language Mastodon uses: it is Ruby on Rails and Typescript/JavaScript front-end. No wonder it is so slow to be developed!! (not so many people use those languages) PieFed in contrast is written using the extremely popular Python language (+ more pure HTML, some CSS, and JavaScript), so at this point I wonder if (a modified?) PieFed would be used more by scientists sooner than Mastodon if the latter will not be able to catch up to the former’s pace of development? :-P

If only Mastodon would spend time making the platform more usable, perhaps they would. e.g. the impersonation issue, which is much less of a problem on a non-federated platform, plus Bluesky takes a highly aggressive stance against it.

Also the enormous discoverability issue on Mastodon has lead people to say that “Mastodon seemed to actively discourage discoverability.” This article seems very worth reading btw, as many of the same issues plague the Threadiverse as well - hostility to non-technical normies, hostility towards anyone less ideologically pure than oneself, hostility towards… wait, am I sensing a pattern here!?!:-P Early adoptors (who are proficient in using Arch Linux btw) are quite a very different crowd and while yes scientists are smart, they are also smart enough to realize that moving from a place where their work can be seen to a place where it will not be is not a very productive endeavor, in the short-term, for themselves.

Edit: also, when the tools go for years and years and years and years without ever getting any better at solving the issues that matter most to them, it sends a signal that they aren’t welcomed. I will state that again, unequivocally: mainstream normies are not really welcomed onto the Fediverse. … … … am I wrong there? Do we welcome them even here, on the Threadiverse, or are there a myriad of rules that are nowhere written down, must be discovered by each new person, all the while people talk down to them, criticize and even laugh at them, plus also laugh at them behind their backs when they go back to Reddit and share their experiences here, warning others not to come? From what I read at r/RedditAlternatives, this usually is b/c of facing “leftist” toxicity, which I put in quotes b/c it’s not actually leftist, but it just seemed that way to them, since e.g. Hexbear makes no distinction b/c facts and reality, only what works inside their echo chambers that are then exported everywhere else they - and their alts - are allowed to go. But please feel free to visit that subreddit and verify all of this for yourself.

Here is some additional evidence: (1) at https://mander.xyz/c/science, the top-most link points to a lemmy.ml community. Is lemmy.ml known at all for its stance on “facts” vs. “alternative facts”, and in particular which facts are allowed to be shared or not? This is a choice by mander.xyz to feature that particular link though. (2) look at https://join-lemmy.org/, and pay close attention to the very first image on the screen. “Landlord Love”, “Tankie…” - yes this is a screenshot from lemmy.ml. Does that instance make people in the Western world feel comfortable when they visit it - especially mainstream normies… or even scientists, who often trend toward liberal but even more aim to stay out of politics altogether, in order to more closely focus on science? The words on that page also are things like “mod tools” and “host your own server”, not things like “a place to discuss topics of interest”. That site helps people who want to become admins more than those who want to become a casual user - i.e. an early-adopter, Linux-using, config-file-editing crowd, not a bench scientist grad student who just wants to chat about science.

This is the part where you say “but mander.xyz does not itself espouse tankie beliefs and philosophy - I mean yes in truth it actually does promote that e.g. by putting in those links, but it does not PROMOTE promote that, not REALLY!? _{(not directly at least)}” In which case bam, now you understand why scientists continue to use X rather than spend time learning how to make use of Mastodon. Everyone does what is easiest and they feel is best for them. We do not really reach out to make them feel welcomed, so they find it easier to simply stay where they already are.

That should not matter - the same as if it had moved to some other Lemmy instance, you can use the new community the same way from your same lemmy.world account as you always have. YOU don’t have to move, just subscribe, if you want to.

Even Russia is a “democracy”.

Some people need none:-)🍒🥧

“Oops”

Furiously google’s “how to unread book”…

Yeah and as you have pointed out, the PieFed API is very new and not as mature yet as Lemmy’s, so there is value in waiting for it to advance while you work on other things like Svelte upgrades.

So long as you enjoy yourself in the doing, it’s all good 😊

I somewhat disagree: I used to use Facebook, then left that and joined Reddit ! whether I joined Reddit or not though, either way I was leaving Facebook) then left Reddit and joined Kbin, then left that when it imploded and joined Lemmy, then left that, and fortunately PieFed was coming up at the time. I view most social media as “bad” - at least for myself - and the interactions I was seeing on Lemmy were not worthwhile for me to remain. But if you enjoy it, that’s fine, I am just sharing my experiences.

And you asked “someone can just fork it and add the missing features”, which seems like a competition to me since you aren’t going to contribute to both Lemmy development (in Rust) and also PieFed (in Python): someone must make a choice where their time & efforts are going to be directed at.

Which if you choose Lemmy again is fine, but I am pointing out that it is in fact a choice being made. Hence I hoped to help inform that choice by pointing out some of the reasons to choose PieFed rather than Lemmy, which either way that ends up getting chosen will lead to increased efficiency and fewer regrets moving forward, with the cost having been counted in advance rather than discovered only much later on in the process.

Further, I would argue that the set of considerations is quite different for a mere user vs. someone thinking about actually contributing to development of a codebase. Even for an instance admin, I would hope that such a person actually would look at what is technically better than something else, before going to all that effort to set something up that will require much maintenance in the future. Of course, to each their own, I was just sharing my own thoughts on the subject.

That seems far too simplistic imho. Instance admins have done this for years and can tell you how quickly things fall behind: if you want to federate with any other instances (the entire point behind the federated model?), then you need to maintain compatibility. Fortunately Lemmy is fairly mature and far less likely to release groundbreaking changes than it did in the past.

But also, you have to learn to code in Rust, which even people who already know C++ seem to find very difficult, for a number of reasons including major lack of support by a standard library (such as C++ itself has in its STL), which in Rust is still fairly primitive iirc, forcing the user to build every tiny little thing from scratch, or use less well-written and tested code, possibly so poor as to negate the advantages of having chosen Rust over some other, more commonly useful language like C++.

And then you’d be doing all of that entirely on your own, and maintaining it in perpetuity. Don’t get me wrong, several people have done exactly that (Admiral Patrick, developer of the Tesseract front-end, comes to mind).

But all of that seems like it would be even slower, compared to PieFed releasing new features practically weekly? And also it is Python, which is a much easier language. And also you could work along with others, fixing bugs in your code that you did not spot, and vice versa. I’m not seeing the advantages there to what you are proposing: I mean yes obviously there are “advantages”, but relatively speaking I mean, they seem much smaller than if someone put the same amount of effort towards improving PieFed, which would then be shared and maintained world-wide even if you got sick or busy irl or something?

And even if you were right, that doing this with Lemmy would work out well, for how much longer would that remain true - six months? - before PieFed absolutely blows the set of features that Lemmy uses out of the water? Imagine social media that is actually fun to use, and where the computer automates the most common tasks so as to not require menial labor every hour of the day, as Lemmy does (I am speaking of the requirement for manual moderation efforts)? That much has already come to pass, to various degrees, in many ways on PieFed. e.g. in Lemmy you could search for every cross-posting across all instances wherever you can find them, then click on each one, and read through the comments, making sure to get the version of the community that is accessible from the instance you are on rather than follow a link taking you to a different one… but why do all that work, when PieFed provides it ready-made, instantly upon loading the post?

Starting with PieFed is starting ahead of Lemmy, in most ways (not all though: Lemmy’s search functionality is still way better, and reportedly about to get even better still by allowing limiting of search terms specifically to post titles separately from message contents).

Unless you just want to learn Rust for other reasons. 😁

It’s great to see you still posting on the Threadiverse! Okay so you’ve been doing it for awhile I guess but I’ve been sick myself so not staying up with things, anyway it’s still great to see!! 😜

You may want to think about it from the ground up: a lot of the need for Tesseract was due to things like the strict authoritian stance of the tankie devs - e.g. not providing a means to truly block all users from an instance, or not showing alternative image text, or not embedding video playbacks - forcing you to find creative solutions to that problem (note PieFed does all of those things mentioned, usually not as comprehensively implemented as well as Tesseract does it but at least to some degree, e.g. Peer tube and YouTube videos can embedd but not Loops ones). Maybe now Tesseract would not have to be an entire alternative UI front-end - especially when the development pace of PieFed is so rapid in comparison to Lemmy that would increase your difficulty of keeping up - but instead rather a “theme”, combined with changes to the underlying codebase that would affect all of the users of PieFed instead of only some of them? These devs I believe would be much more friendly and receptive to your ideas:-).

Although I am not a developer like you so too far away from the problem to see it anywhere close to clearly like you will, as you get into it, but wanted to throw out that oddball idea from left field in case it helps jar your thinking along creative lines. Remember to do six impossible things before breakfast each day!

But most important of all, if I can add, would be for you to enjoy it!!!

Hey, to be fair it’s all public in the modlog. They have weird geopolitical ideas, but I don’t see a lot of ways it’s influenced the design of the platform.

It’s not though. You not only do not receive a notification, unlike Reddit btw, but you also can’t message the person who did it, also unlike Reddit btw, and on top of that, the modlog simply says that it was done by a “mod”, so you can’t DM them either unless you DM every single mod in the entire community (tbf Reddit does NOT show which mod did something, but in that case you still have the shared modmail so there was no actual need to have it).

Even weirder, I remember when this feature was added: it used to always show the account of the mod, but over time it has become even more authoritian than it used to be. I am saying that Lemmy is somehow even more authoritian than Reddit itself. Instance admins and to a lesser degree mods have tremendous freedoms, whereas the end users not so much. The devs left Reddit, but how Reddit operated still seems very much prominent in their minds, except when they choose to do differently and yes, enormous kudos that there is a modlog, but without notifications of an event or a modmail it still on balance ends up being MORE authoritian than Reddit.

Whereas PieFed offers numerous features aimed at the democratization of moderation, allowing mods to be more hands-off and leave the end-user to decide what they want to see, possibly enlisting the aid of the entire community. e.g. one of the first things PieFed does with a new account is a sign-up wizard asking what their interests are and subscribing to communities based on the answers, and as part of that asking if the user would like to block All, Some, or None of any keywords the user would like, such as “Trump” or “Musk”. This allows mods to have additional options beyond simply remove that content vs. allow it: now, they can more readily allow it knowing that the users that are super tired of seeing it all the time have a means to see less of it, provided by the automated software (which also reduces the burden of manual moderation tasks too).

Sorry this is getting long and you had other questions but I wanted to point out that the pro-democracy stance of PieFed’s democratization of moderation and the pro-authoritarian stance (not from the perspective of an instance admin but to the end-users themselves) is very much baked into the code and a large part of the overall experiences, as it shapes what content is allowed to show up on the respective platforms.

Okay, that does sound dope. How is it implemented? Does it only work if the commenter is on PieFed?

It brings all comments together across all communities, both PieFed and Lemmy - it is one of PieFed’s most popular features! Here is an example showing 9 cross-posts where the comments are all brought together: https://piefed.social/post/1189671 (except I have Lemmy.ml blocked so those comments properly don’t show up for my account:-) - note clicking the horizontal lines shows the community sidebar with explanation and rules for each one.

As you said, it really helps posts to smaller communities maintain traction rather than get ignored by the masses of Lemmings, with that automated software feature allowing Pie-heads to be more connected across the Fediverse.:-)

Then you must be avoiding politics and the major news communities here - which is good advice for anyone to follow - in which case the rest of the Threadiverse is outright kind. Reddit used to have such people but they stopped talking years ago - I know I did.

One thing to note about Reddit mods: the Rexodus broke the power of anyone who resisted, so the tiny dick energy thing is by design as in anyone there nowadays is a collaborator to its authoritarian regime, who of course is a very different type of personality (a conciliatory style: think “cop”, where power flows downhill) than what used to be the case years ago. I am speaking though of small niche subs - the largest ones had already enshittified by then, for different reasons. Power corrupts.

But the Threadiverse is new, and so the early adoptor mindset reigns supreme. There are definitely authoritarians though - some of the more major ones you cannot see since Lemmy.world has defederated from them, thereby protecting you from that. Lemmy.ml still exists though, and if you ever say anything slightly negative about Russia, China, or North Korea (or in some cases simply not supportive enough of them?), then you can be banned from every community across the entire instance including ones you’ve never commented in before. So such things do exist here… but yeah there are also kind people here too, and that’s awesome! (Whereas on Reddit I simply gave up all hope whatsoever for anything positive, buried amidst all the mountains of trash)

It’s fine for you not to like it, it’s just software and there’s room to use different ones on the shared Threadiverse:-).

I do maintain that bringing up PieFed seemed very relevant to this discussion though. The OP had:

Is the number of Lemmy users actually increasing, decreasing, or staying the same? Is that data even available?

And then from there we went into MAUs, although the link offered only showed Lemmy stats so I shared a different link with PieFed stats, especially relevant due to the incident with lemm.ee and how many of its users moved over to PieFed.

But if you’ve tried it and don’t care for it, that’s fine, we just wanted to offer the knowledge that it exists and that a lot of people really do seem to enjoy it.

Welcome! You are going to absolutely love PieFed:-D.

Oh right, I did forget, thanks!:-)

WHAT!? I am genuinely curious why you think this?

For one thing PieFed was only centralized for a bit there at its start, whereas now there are already numerous piefed instances. It is true that piefed.social is still the #1 instance (much as lemmy.world had 80% of the Lemmy userbase at some point - but you still remain there even now so that does not seem to bother you?), but now piefed.blahaj.zone (not even 3 months old yet!!!), and piefed.world each have >100 active users, and piefed.ca, feddit.online, piefed.zip, quokk.au, piefed.au, etc. each have multiple tens of users.

More to the point, PieFed is FOSS. You could download the code and have your own personal instance spun up by the end of the day tomorrow.

I am guessing that you mean that the opinions of a single dev (Rimu) have an exagerated effect on the development of the code - which was definitely true in the past, but he also listens to feedback, apologies when he is wrong, and is amenable to going in other directions when the community wants that. The private voting debacle is one such example: I argued against it from the start, but he did it anyway, then abolished it and apologized to people when it received heavy criticism. You can read a really frank discussion about the topic where dbzer0 was considering whether to make a PieFed instance. Look especially at the comment starting with “I don’t trust Piefed at all - they’re far too eager to curate my experience, and they’ve reintroduced all of the reputation anti-features (plus more) that were part of what drove me away from Reddit and the absence of which is part of what I like about Lemmy and Mbin.”

TLDR: it was a new project back then, and things were different. Also you might be unaware of the history of the development of Lemmy too, and of lemmy.world. These things are common, and nowhere close to be unique to PieFed. BlueSky on the other hand is corporate and so WILL be enshittified, eventually. PieFed on the other hand is just a better Lemmy :-).