- cross-posted to:
- reddit@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- reddit@lemmy.world
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
I used Lemmy for months, mostly in the browser and my UX was absolutely horrible.
The default browser UI sucks.
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.
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
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
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.
Piefed starts out with poisoning the ecosystem, as linked here quite a few times by redwizard.
Sadly piefed isnt innocent either, they are trying to poison the AP protocol: https://communick.news/comment/8015757
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.
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
Deb’s a tankie with the most bullshit oppinions ever seen on earth.
Who is deb?
Developer
Are you referring to !fediverse@lemmy.world? 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!
Piefed sometimes makes it hard to interoperate: https://communick.news/comment/8015757
I understand, but most of us are here from the efforts of all those who built Lemmy and it was deliberately left off here as an alternative
Isn’t that because people are canceling it for some reason? I haven’t kept up with it enough to form an opinion, but I understand a lot of people want to ditch the project over something they don’t like about the dev(s).
The devs are Marxist-Leninists. They administrate the .ml instance with that in mind, and they will often ban or strictly moderate low effort anti-China content like depicting Xi as Winnie the Pooh (they see this as racist because yellow bear) and spam posts about Tienanmen Square. I’ve seen people claim they are pro-Russia, but most of what I’ve seen would fall under anti-NATO opinions than pro-Russia. I have never gotten the impression that Putin is popular in .ml, hexbear, or lemmygrad.
But they really just stick to their instance and don’t push their politics on the software’s development.
Yeah I agree, its all the same TBH.
People on Lemmy don’t need to be told about Lemmy though?
People on Lemmy don’t really need to be told about most of these. What’s your point? You and I both know this image was made for people outside Lemmy. In fact, it was updated to remove Lemmy
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.
A lot of people hesitate to promote lemmy because of how transphobic / authoritarian the lead devs are. It’s unfortunate, but if you’re concerned about that then piefed really is the more attractive option (I like my comment history too much to have switched yet but… man, it’s getting hard to justify not having done it.)
And obviously the Piefed codebase is so politically and ethically agreeable… /s
No one likes the lemmy lead devs or their stances. But, to my knowledge, they just keep doing their own thing over at
.mland never channel it into their actual codebase.When I first started here, I was on Kbin, and switched to lemmy because it was so much better. I considered switching to Piefed exactly because of these reasons you mentioned (I’ve already switched lemmy instances, comment history is not an issue for me), but when I looked into it there were so many just frankly aggravating things about the way it works and filters stuff by default (not to mention being written in Python, but that’s completely tangential) that I couldn’t do it.
Sure, lemmy developers have backwards principles. But at least their software doesn’t. I completely get why someone would use Piefed instead, especially if they’re trans or of some other demographic directly targeted by the lemmy developers, but I wouldn’t do it myself (unless it gets better, of course).
It’s a testament to (if nothing else) the ability of the piefed devs to behave like adults that I know nothing about them personally. Nu/Des are horrible people, both politically and interpersonally, but that’s the beauty of FOSS: Those of us comfortable with separating the software from the creators get to stick with the software we prefer over one that lacks features or broad support (i.e. all the piefed apps I’ve tried have been pretty rough). Same energy as why people still use windows instead of linux.
I’d argue that it is more because so many people have hate comms and groups set up specifically to target the lemmy devs. Idk why people hate Des so much
Theee are hate comms for the lemmy devs? I’ve failed run across them, huh.
There’s even a user who manually mirrors stuff posted on ml because they hate the devs that much
I’m not entirely sure what that means.
And obviously the Piefed codebase is so politically and ethically agreeable… /s
People are more likely to donate to a project that they actually use. If more people are using piefed, it means more money going to that project rather than a bunch of tankies. So I can see why people who disagree with the Lemmy devs might want to direct people elsewhere even if the software itself is apolitical.

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…
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
And BlueSky over Mastodon
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

Please add chess.com → lichess

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?
Thank you.
Roomy says they plan to integrate federation in the future, though it doesn’t have it now.
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
The Element application is solid now.
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:
- multicommunities
- onboarding process asking new joiners what they are into
- crossposts comments consolidation
- communities moderation features
- posts and user flairs
- keyword filters
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.
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 @rimu@piefed.social ! Your project has gained “controversy”, the main way you can tell its getting successful 😁.
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.
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
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.
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?
Are these features available on mobile apps? Because I mostly use Lemmy on Jerboa
And it works really well :)
Piefed has been a great experience.
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.
check out this comment
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/
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
You mean the lemmy.ml admin? The tankie one trying to deflect and make PieFed out to be the bad guy?
I wonder if they mean the genocide-denying lemmy admin or the transphobic lemmy admin. It’s easy to mix those two guys up
Excuse me that’s transphobic and covid denying.
Oh boy oh boy, I think I’m about to receive a fun link with more Nutomic bad takes
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 updates faster, is responsive to suggestions and user concerns, has way more features such as polls, topics (groups of communities that can be made by users, helps to browse all comms related to a topic) automated posts, it combines cross-post comments into 1 page, etc.
And the Lemmy devs are transphobes, genocide deniers, support Russia invading Ukraine, etc. so there’s an ethical component to people not supporting it through using it.
Because I’m sure “they’ll” come and rage here once they see this post I’ll pre-empt it and say the dev for PieFed is not perfect, no one is, and they’ve got some code around minimising meme images and 4chan content based on their personal preferences, but that stuffs all optional and can be turned on or off by the instance admins.
All the people upvote you, it’s only “them” who downvote you. You have a clear picture of the world around you!
I said nothing about votes.
I’m talking about the hatejerk comm where they brigaded from the last time this image was posted and spammed it with misinformation.
Ew gross, fuck tankies. I’m really confused so both lemmy and piefed are tankie-adjacent?
No, only Lemmy.
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.
Isn’t lemmy the reddit of the fediverse?
Lemmy and Piefed are both Reddit alternatives. I’m not sure what all the pros and cons are of each, but Lemmy’s developers are tankies so probably better to direct users and funding to a different project. I’m only on Lemmy because I wasn’t aware of Piefed when I first joined.
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

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:
- multicommunities
- onboarding process asking new joiners what they are into
- crossposts comments consolidation
- communities moderation features
- posts and user flairs
- keyword filters
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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








































