this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025

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Discussion - Potential piefed instance in the future? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 1 week ago by fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/div0_governance@lemmy.dbzer0.com

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Hello m@teys,

I've been waiting for this a long time (half a year), personally. After seeing the surge in piefed instances, i.e. blahaj, .ca, .zip, quokk.au, and .world creating their own instances, and clients guaranteeing future piefed support, we've been thinking about potentially opening an instance in the future. Not a guarantee, just an idea. This isn't a voting thread, just a discussion. Later on we'll actually vote on this.

Do note that this thread will not guarantee an instance; we are discussing a hypothetical. Suggestions? Ideas? Criticisms? make your voice heard.

Have a good week!

pie picture comes from here

governance type: sense check

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[–] div0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 16 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Acknowledged governance topic opened by https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/fxomt GNU: an icon of a wildebeest, in orange-red, black and white colors A book with a loaf of bread in the cover in orange-red, black and white colors First Mate: a pirate ship's steering wheel, orangered color

This is a non-voting post. Known users should leave comments with your thoughts on the subject.

[–] nothrone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 3 days ago

Honestly, I am against it. I think we should collectively improve Lemmy and port whatever features make PieFed a worthy alternative. Better mod tools? Get them on lemmy instead. Lemmy's UI is much faster and responsive than PieFed, I have found. I just don't like seeing the community split over and over again. Even if they are federated services, it just splits the community and serves as friction of entry. Choice overload is a really thing, it may lead to decision paralysis and get us fewer and fewer people on these services.

[–] Eric_Pollock@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 days ago

I love the idea, and would be very excited for a db0 piefed instance!

[–] Martineski@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Yes.

[–] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 4 days ago

[–] curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 5 days ago

Personally I'm for it, I think it has some approaches that are more interesting (topics for example).

So as long as its not a pain to run, I'm into it and would try it out for sure.

[–] empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 6 days ago

I think this may be a good idea. The questionable performance/behavior of the core Lemmy devs does not give me confidence for the long term prospects of Lemmy as a code base and service.
piefed seems to be growing rapidly while Lemmy has stagnated. There's obviously a reason for that.

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 6 days ago

I think its a good idea, more choice is almost never bad.
I might not use it too much if it happens because I'm too used to lemmy itself though.

[–] UniversalMonk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 6 days ago

I like piefed and think it's a great idea.

[–] quediuspayu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 6 days ago

As far as I understood a few days ago, there's no difference between the two for a user since both can interact with each other. To me looks more of an admin thing, so very little opinion from my part.

Just one thing, I will want an account there too.

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 days ago (3 children)

I'm pretty firmly against this since Piefed has those same Karma and user score systems that made Reddit so toxic but with the bonus of being able to exclude communities from giving you upvotes (but not downvotes). Karma is literally a lighter version of social credit and I don't support it. Also pretty against the fact that piefed literally lets admins turn off modlog sharing which is concerning to say the least and should concern people here considering we've built a whole community around mod accountability.

So yeah I don't support the move to piefed but since "everyone" is going gaga for piefed I'm sure this instance will end up getting a piefed instance to go with the trend and may even abandon Lemmy altogether, I really hope not I do kind of like Lemmy, but this seems the way things are going.

[–] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 4 days ago

For one , we wont have karma. We will keep the modlog.

So yeah I don't support the move to piefed but since "everyone" is going gaga for piefed I'm sure this instance will end up getting a piefed instance to go with the trend

No, I've been planning this for more than half a year by now, more than most admins have thought of it. This is just a window of opportunity for us.

and may even abandon Lemmy altogether,

No we will not abandon lemmy.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Karma is literally a lighter version of social credit and I don’t support it.

As much as I dislike karma, the recent lemm.ee shutdown still shows that there is a need for better tools to allow mods and admins to identify toxic users.

Karma shouldn't be the end game, but for now it's acceptable

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 6 days ago (2 children)

No, sorry. I don't agree. I don't think that users votes should be given power besides ranking in the feeds, vote manipulation is already a big problem if they think they can get people banned or limited over voting they'll do it even more aggressively. This isn't Reddit and vote fuzzing or throwing out votes won't work the same, federation makes this super messy and unreliable. People voting from remote instances can easily manipulate the score. Especially if they upvote everything else or randomly upvote a larger majority than downvote, while still targeting specific people.

You don't seem to understand. Karma on Lemmy is ripe for abuse in ways not even dreamed on Reddit. There's a reason the Lemmy devs did everything in their power to hinder the ability of weaponizing score.

Also since Piefed puts so much emphasis on voter anonymity so it makes that problem even worse since it makes it harder to catch if they take steps to hide their ratio.

So no, this is not acceptable. Please don't try to use the shutdown of lemm.ee to justify harsher draconian measures, which themselves are flawed and ripe for abuse. The reason they shut down was ultimately because they tried to be something they couldn't with a team that couldn't handle it. They wanted to be THE Lemmy server, the one everyone goes to. Kinda like Lemmy.world but they were not cut out for it and they learned the lesson the hard way.

[–] Skavau@piefed.social 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

To be clear, some of the things you're complaining about are specific aspects of piefed.social and may not necessarily be the settings instance admins roll with on their own hypothetical piefed.

Rimu has decoupled and changed a lot of the functions from being embedded into piefed as optional, and has changed some of his positions.

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Honestly I don't think it matters much since what admins can do isn't usually what they will do. Defaults matter, and also it's very tempting for them to disable some features like modlogs that it will be done disproportionately.

But also the problem with the Karma features is that they are present on all of them, turning it off in yours doesn't make the issue go away and doesn't prevent people from abusing it the way subreddits abuse Karma scores right now.

[–] Skavau@piefed.social 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

The modlogs have already been made public by Rimu due to popular demand.

But also the problem with the Karma features is that they are present on all of them, turning it off in yours doesn't make the issue go away and doesn't prevent people from abusing it the way subreddits abuse Karma scores right now.

What's the issue if most instances don't run with a karma system? So you might get low karma'd in some piefed instances that you don't post from?

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

What’s the issue if most instances don’t run with a karma system? So you might get low karma’d in some piefed instances that you don’t post from?

That would be the case if most instances operated like that but most don't. Most will ultimately have it enabled, and if most of them have it enabled it will affect users even on ones where it is turned off.

The modlogs have already been made public by Rimu due to popular demand.

Is this a piefed.social change or a piefed software change. If it's the ladder then that's good and it's not really an issue anymore. If it's the former it's still a big trust issue because it can presumably be turned off and on at will, by making it hardcoded it can still be disabled but it's more work, requires maintaining a fork and basically guarantees that 99% of modlogs will be there and be recording.

[–] Skavau@piefed.social 3 points 4 days ago

That would be the case if most instances operated like that but most don't. Most will ultimately have it enabled, and if most of them have it enabled it will affect users even on ones where it is turned off.

I feel like this is speculative. I don't think karma systems across the fediverse are popular enough for that.

Is this a piefed.social change or a piefed software change.

Both.

If it's the former it's still a big trust issue because it can presumably be turned off and on at will, by making it hardcoded it can still be disabled but it's more work, requires maintaining a fork and basically guarantees that 99% of modlogs will be there and be recording.

You could say that about a lot of things that Lemmy instance admins could do, but choose not to.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com -1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

This isn’t Reddit and vote fuzzing or throwing out votes won’t work the same, federation makes this super messy and unreliable. People voting from remote instances can easily manipulate the score. Especially if they upvote everything else or randomly upvote a larger majority than downvote, while still targeting specific people.

Vote manipulation is continuously monitored, people like @MrKaplan@lemmy.world have created tools to identify vote manipulation

You don’t seem to understand. Karma on Lemmy is ripe for abuse in ways not even dreamed on Reddit. There’s a reason the Lemmy devs did everything in their power to hinder the ability of weaponizing score

Most of the time when I see someone with a reputation warning on Piefed, combined with the "new user" icon, they're a toxic user that usually gets banned a few hours of days later.

The current threshold is perfectible (see the comment below), but it's still something.

Please don’t try to use the shutdown of lemm.ee to justify harsher draconian measures, which themselves are flawed and ripe for abuse. The reason they shut down was ultimately because they tried to be something they couldn’t with a team that couldn’t handle it. They wanted to be THE Lemmy server, the one everyone goes to. Kinda like Lemmy.world but they were not cut out for it and they learned the lesson the hard way.

As one of the active posters on most of the Lemm.ee communities, I can tell you they were not trying to become THE Lemmy instance, the most active communities were still on LW by a large margin (like 18 out of the 20 most active communities would be LW, one might be on lemm.ee)

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Vote manipulation is continuously monitored, people like @MrKaplan@lemmy.world have created tools to identify vote manipulation

Wow it's like you didn't read what I wrote at all. I literally gave an example of how people can squeak by @MrKaplan@lemmy.world and @rimu@piefed.social's vote manipulation detection by voting in specific ways. Those same tactics can apply to boosting one's own score positively, not just punching down others.

Most of the time when I see someone with a reputation warning on Piefed, combined with the “new user” icon, they’re a toxic user that usually gets banned a few hours of days later.

The current threshold is perfectible (see the comment below), but it’s still something.

This is absolutely going to be automated by the laziest and most incompetent fediverse admins, and unless you set the threshold very high it will be exploited. I'm never going to support karma requirements like on Reddit, asking the community to vet users with votes (which people misuse anyway already) is already asking for problems, and is by design hostile towards new users.

Now I find the sentiment around piefed to be highly suspicious since a majority of Lemmy users on the Fediverse aren't favorable to the idea of Karma requirements or built-in social credit systems based on user voting. At best they are compliant due to their habits acquired from using Reddit, but they aren't going out of their way to ask for it and want that aspect of Reddit back. So I think this push for Social Credit voting controlled moderation features seems suspicious to say the least.

[–] Skavau@piefed.social 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I don't believe Piefed instances have to run a reputation system though. Piefed.world, I believe, has disabled it.

[–] Draconic_NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Of course not, but enough do that it'll become a problem. Something to consider is that for many admins the default options might as well be hardcoded since they are not attentive enough to turn it off, but for others. Karma requirements are enticingly lazy solutions for moderation, and turning modlog off is also enticing because it makes it easier to hide when things are removed and people are banned.

[–] Skavau@piefed.social 1 points 5 days ago

Do they? Piefed.world has turned it off.

[–] Skavau@piefed.social 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Every single time. I have yet to see a false positive.

To be fair, the system does (or did - rimu has acknowledged this) immediately identify a new user as "toxic" on the back of a single comment ranked at 0. It does need a higher threshold.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 6 days ago

Hum, fair point, I edited

[–] irelephant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 5 days ago

Most of the karma features can be disabled by instance admins iirc.

[–] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 51 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I mean, unless you're closing here I don't mind what you do. I think this is the best instance. I think the leadership is top notch.

I'm a happy guy

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[–] lvxferre@mander.xyz 35 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I think that, for most dbzer0 users (and quite a few landlubbers like me), being able to choose between a Lemmy and a PieFed instances is only positive. What you need to take into account is the additional work this incurs towards you guys, the admins; you'll be maintaining two instances instead of just one.

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[–] WatDabney@lemmy.dbzer0.com 28 points 1 week ago (3 children)

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.

If you're contemplating a second instance, I don't much care, because I can simply not use it. If you're contemplating a move, I think it's an awful idea.

[–] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 31 points 1 week ago (1 children)

iirc Piefed started as a small personal project, so it was quite opinionated. Now that there's more users rimu has said he'll make it more neutral, and give more power to instance admins.

And yep, it's a second, separate instance

[–] WatDabney@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 1 week ago (12 children)

rimu has said he’ll make it more neutral

I'll believe it when I see it.

It's an odd thing - the Lemmy devs are notoriously opinionated and intolerant, and are constantly castigated for it, but I don't recall ever seeing even a single hint of their opinions or even their intolerance baked into the Lemmy software.

Piefed, meanwhile, is a direct reflection of the dev's biases right from the start, and with everything from the curated subscription lists to the karma and private voting, seems designed explicitly for the purpose of empowering bias.

Say what you will about Dessalines and Nutomic - at least they keep their biases to their own instance and out of the Lemmy software. And further, they appear to have gone to some lengths to make the software as neutral as possible - not only not reflecting any specific bias but limited in ways that make it difficult for it to even be used to impose bias.

And the same can NOT be said for Rimu and Piefed.

[–] UniversalMonk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 days ago

Great points that I never thought of. Great post!

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[–] Even_Adder@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 1 week ago (5 children)

I don't know much about Piefed. What anti-features are you talking about?

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[–] UnrefinedChihuahua@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yes please. I'm in.

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[–] andrew0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I was hoping a dbzer0 piefed instance would happen sometimes in the future! I would totally use it, since it has some pretty cool features that Lemmy has been quite slow in implementing. For example, merged communities that cover one specific topic.

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[–] y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I think I'm for it, but I also don't know if I understand the implications. So, some questions:

Is there a downside?
Would this be in addition to lemmy or a replacement?
If it is in addition to, is that the permanent plan, would this be working toward an eventual switch-over?

I should probably try piefed a bit so I understand it a bit better, but it's just a different Lemmy basically, right? Does it federate with existing Lemmy?

If it doesn't federate with what we already have, I'd have to keep up with two things, and two is a big number, so I'd probably just pick one and stay there.

Anyway, exciting nonetheless. I'll go eat some pie now and see what that's all about.

[–] viking@infosec.pub 23 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Piefed federates with lemmy, it's basically a clone written in python instead of rust, with advanced moderator tools, and developed by people who aren't braindead Stalinists.

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[–] leMe@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 1 week ago (2 children)

i like lemmy a lot. i also like that piefed seems to have better mod tools (at least i am told so). as one of the many people who lost their lemm.ee account to mod burnout, i think the important thing is what you like to work on.

if you can only support one plattform, choose the one you like better - i will most likely follow db0 for its governance.

if you can support both platforms and have fun doing so, i don't see a downside in it.

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[–] alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (15 children)

A comment I came across a while ago puts it quite well:

I haven't used piefed myself but I wouldn't want to switch to it because I feel like it gives more power to downvotes and karma (or "reputation" as they call it):

Comments with -10 score are collapsed by default.

People who get downvoted a lot end up with a ‘low reputation’ indicator next to their name. You’ll know it when you see it.

Upvotes in meme communities do not add to reputation.

Those are three of the twelve points listed as differences to lemmy on their features page.

I also don't agree with some of the points in their article on "PieFed features for growing healthy communities".

from: https://sopuli.xyz/comment/17119490
the comments' thread is also quite interesting

Plus it's written in Python and has only 1,6k MAUs, so we can only guess how well it scales

Slightly edited from an older comment of mine:

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/19653620

EDIT: as such I believe that operating a Piefed instance would be a waste resources and actually harmful considering the fragmentation it would cause for little to no benefit at all (also it seems much better set up for a new Reddit with all the .world'ers flooding over there and the anti-features)

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[–] MrPoopyButthole@lemmy.dbzer0.com 19 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Some of my thoughts:

I value the community that we have and the style of communication that makes Lemmy different from other forum type software.

I very much dislike the political views of its creators.

I have an account on Piefed and while it's not terrible, it's still not as nice as here. I think it can get there over time.

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[–] anarchiddy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 1 week ago (5 children)

I don't think it's a good idea, but i don't care so long as the lemmy instance stays open.

I think people's concerns over the politics of the developers are overblown and fragmenting into a new project weakens the fediverse - especially when I don't see anything wrong with the software that is being done differently in piefed.

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