this post was submitted on 05 Jul 2025
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/0 Governance

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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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[–] y0kai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 1 week ago (5 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.

[–] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Is there a downside?

Not really, i think. We have the resources, and being an admin isn't too time consuming; surely we can make time for an extra instance.

Would this be in addition to lemmy or a replacement?

Addition

If it is in addition to, is that the permanent plan, would this be working toward an eventual switch-over?

Probably not. There would be way too many potential issues and it's risky.

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?

Yep. Try https://quokk.au/ (anarchist instance, too!) which is basically the closest thing we have right now

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[–] alsaaas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 20 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 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:

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)

[–] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (8 children)

I think rimu has made the karma system to be optional (i.e. in the admin settings, not hardcoded) so we'd just disable it anyway. I think the second feature should only apply to mods/admins, since its a very useful tool. #1 #3 i agree, they are not good.

I'll address each point in the Piefed Features for growing healthy communities:

Find people who have low karma

This applies to admins, and while not really that effective, its okay to have.

Find people who downvote too much

This is a very useful tool, since this is a big problem on lemmy. Same thing; only for admins

Spot spam easily

Sounds like a good idea; but with feature #3 as you pointed out, this might cause some new-user shitposters to get falsely flagged, but we would disable it anyway.

Don’t award karma in low-quality communities

This is now opt-in, and we would disable it.

https://chat.piefed.social/#narrow/channel/5-admins/topic/Low.20reputation.20communities/near/1872

Warnings on unusual communities

We would add nothing to communities, anyway; users are free to do whatever they want, themselves. (maybe to our own instance communities like /0 and governance? But not much honestly.

Icons next to comments by low karma accounts

As i said before, probably should only be seen by admins/mods.

Icon for new accounts

No problem here; most clients do this anyway.

Automatically delete content based on phrases in user name

Sounds very useful, and which is why piefed didn't struggle at all with nicole.

Report accounts, not just posts

Good idea.

Instance-wide domain block

We have this on lemmy too

Automatic reporting of 4chan content

Not a good idea imo. We'd disable it.

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

We'll always have this lemmy instance anyway :) but afaik it scales fine, and has some optimizations coming along soon.

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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.

[–] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 1 week ago

Thanks for your input! Don't worry, we'll keep both instances alive.

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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.

[–] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 week ago

Thanks for your input. To clarify we don't want a 100% switch, just a new instance alongside this one

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[–] anarchiddy@lemmy.dbzer0.com 15 points 1 week ago (2 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.

[–] 0_o7@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I think people's concerns over the politics of the developers are overblown.

It seems a little unnatural because people are trying to hide their racism, xenophobia, western superiority mentality, but the developers also made a lot of political posts to frame them as CCP talking heads. They should have just used alt accounts like rest of the internet platform owners. Rookie mistake.

But, at least they're honest about what they are and not covertly creating a foss product by hiding some sinister motive to rugpull later, like bluesky.

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[–] brickfrog@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 1 week ago (1 children)

If admins are okay with running both Lemmy and Piefed instances simultaneously then it seems fine IMO.

But otherwise don't feel strongly about it, I don't know that I'd actually use the Piefed instance unless something happens within the Lemmyverse side of things or issues with the dbzer0 Lemmy instance itself.

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[–] Hansae@lemmy.dbzer0.com 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Against this idea as it merely causes significantly more work the instance maintainers with (imo) quite limited benefits. I'd only be in favour if lemmy began crashing and burning for whatever reason.

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[–] TimewornTraveler@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

I dont really care, but I won't be using piefed. the default UI doesn't allow me to adjust the size of thumbnails as i see fit: tiny and on the left. that's a deal breaker for me, even if it's petty.

I do not like new reddit and i have never liked new reddit and i have tried new reddit and will not be using new reddit. piefed UI is a new reddit ripoff.

or i guess a lot of social media platforms do that layout, Twitter FB insta. thankfully i dont waste my time with that shit either. I waste my time with YOU nerds and I am happy with that

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Piefed has a custom CSS section in the settings that allows you to resize the thumbnails as you see fit

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[–] BananaOnionJuice@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Here's my two cents:

Because there's no direct integration with Lemmy, and we start with an empty piefed instance. I'll have to create a user and all that, and I "just" quit Reddit so it's not very appealing to me, even if piefed has better features.

I would create an account if everyone migrates, or if I can click a "move to piefed" button that copies all my comments and posts.

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[–] diffaldo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I really hate fragmentation. Linux suffers heavily from it. It creates redundant work. I think duplicate projects are curse on the open source so thats why I am not in favor of that.

[–] Geth@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 1 week ago

I agree but at the same time Lemmy devs are problematic to say the least and nothing bad has been uncovered about piefed so far.

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[–] dethedrus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Absolutely! The sooner we have the option to be free of the issues with Lemmy development (or not to the point, developers) the better.

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[–] Taser@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Yes, I'm all for it (assuming it wouldn't create too much work for you guys). Not supporting the Lemmy devs is a great idea. Heck, I would have moved completely to one of my piefed accounts if it wasn't for not wanting to abandon this account on db0.

Out of curiosity, would it ever be possible to migrate everyone here over to a piefed instance, allowing you to shut down the Lemmy instance? I'm not suggesting doing that (well, maybe lust a little), but more interested in the technical nature.

[–] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 week ago (3 children)

It is possible, but piefed isn't 100% backwards compatible with lemmy, so stuff like custom-emojis (we don't use them much, but threativore relies on it) wouldn't be imported, since piefed doesn't support it.

And piefed/lemmy use different encryption, so each user would have to reset their password.

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[–] zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Why would you go through the pain of maintaining another service? What is the actual benefit for you as an instance manager, but also for the user?

I’d rather have few very good maintained services, than the opposite.

[–] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

From my admin POV, lemmy lacks in a lot of ways that just makes it harder for me to get stuff done.

From my user POV, lemmy lacks features like flairs/tags, actually working blocking, feeds, etc.

It's not too much of a pain, since dbzer0 doesn't take much work to keep running.

[–] zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I’ve been a sys engineer for a long time. You have to know that it just adds up. A tiny service here, a tiny service there, some custom code here and there. If you will fully manage it, go for it. Then piefed will be up as long as you or a successor manages it. This setup will not affect lemmy and db0 and that’s all I want and care for.

[–] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 week ago

Thank you :) it will not affect lemmy.dbzer0 at all, and we don't bother modifying the source code of lemmy/piefed (besides themes) but besides that, it should hopefully be smooth sailing if it happened.

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[–] SadSadSatellite@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I don't know a ton about piefed , but wouldn't that be more likely to divide the community?

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[–] confusedwiseman@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Growing is usually good. Do the expanded tools to the admins warrant the additional headache?

Sometimes being small and having your own dark little corner of the internet where the “normies” don’t hang out is OK too.

A lot of forums started with a barrier of entry that required a small bit of tech savvy to get there. Not that picking an instance to get on the fediverse is that hard, but if it’s keeping someone at bay, that might be preferable.

[–] fxomt@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 week ago

We don't have interest in being mainstream, we like dbzer0 how it is. It's mainly about the faster development/extra features, and shouldn't be a problem to manage

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[–] Etterra@discuss.online 7 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I think a la mode is overrated.

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[–] HBK@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I would love this! I'd totally be in!

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[–] viking@infosec.pub 7 points 1 week ago (12 children)

Yes please! I've already joined piefed.ca to be able to support a platform without sponsoring communist propaganda, but they seem to have issues federating content properly, it takes over 24h to see new posts from Lemmy, and many discussions will be over at that point.

This very post for example is not visible there at all.

Would hope that with more instances we'd also get to see content sooner.

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