I’ve tried both [Lemmy and PieFed], and the UX is incredibly unintuitive and unpleasant. The main problem is that it’s quite hard to discover content you want while avoiding content you don’t, Bluesky at least has really good custom feeds that are easy to add (the default feed sucks). Another big issue is the general site layout, it’s hard to figure out how to do things as simple as saving a post for later or how to go back to the feed without being redirected back to the post I’m trying to exit.

Maybe they didn’t see the “Feeds” feature in PieFed? The top navigation menus in PieFed are a bit messy. Although shareable blocklists could be cool too, or maybe toxic?

That’s excluding the horrible lack of contrast most frontends use, which makes reading and parsing the site elements unnecessarily difficult (no Lemmy, grey text on a grey background is not good for readability).

I like the Lemmy colors, but maybe it should be easier to change, because they might like the darkly-pureblack theme.

Fediverse feels slower, but not in a good way. More of a ‘if I don’t use this for a week, I’ll see new things’. If I log in after 2 or 3 days, I’ll scroll for 10 minutes and see the stuff I saw last time.

Maybe this is a UX issue of not finding the right feed they would like.

I’ve tried using lemmy and have exactly the same issue. After blocking all the politics stuff, left wing meme stuff and tankie stuff there’s bugger all remaining. Even with all the blocks I’ve made it just seems to be a bunch of toxic left wing people calling each other fascist because of some minor difference in opinion.

I also want nsfw stuff now and then. I hate how censored the internet has become, at least with reddit if I want to see a bit of porn, I can.

Again maybe a UX issue of not presenting what communities they could subscribe to.

I tried twice to join those forums within the Fediverse and I can’t get past the captcha test. The fact that you need approval to validate your access doesn’t seem designed to encourage you to recommend it.

The captchas on Lemmy are AWFUL, I can’t do them either.

(that’s the “Medium” difficulty)

Lemmy v1.0 is adding the ability to do invites, so maybe there will be an invite-only instance that gets some momentum, that could be cool. Invite sites seems like a cool old-internet type of culture.

The fediverse stuff is way too complicated for me, Reddit is very easily accessible and actually has active communities for the topics I’m interested in.

Of course these are naturally going to be all negative because they’re users that bounced off the Threadiverse, but there’s probably hints to what can be improved

  • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
    2·
    8 days ago

    PieFed interoperates pretty much seamlessly with Lemmy - some post types Lemmy does not support (like user polls) so occasionally you’ll see something in PieFed but not Lemmy, though never the other way around.

    Settings Export & Import should work perfectly as well, definitely from Lemmy to PieFed though I never tried that in reverse.

    You should really enjoy it!! Anyway, you always have your Lemmy to fall back onto… like during maintenance or whatever.

    • Dariusmiles2123@piefed.socialEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      That’s my first comment since you convinced me to try PieFed.

      You said I’d occasionally see something on PieFed and not on Lemmy, but for now it’s quite the other way around. I noticed a crosspost between Peertube@lemmy.ml and Fediverse@lemmy.world isn’t showing at all.

      I’m gonna keep comparing Lemmy and PieFed and then choose one at one point.

      • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        Missing posts happen all the time on Lemmy as well - those phenomena are related to the per-instance dynamics (e.g. PieFed.social vs. PieFed.ca vs. PieFed.World, etc.), not the per-software differences (Lemmy vs. PieFed vs. Mbin).

        Reasons this can happen include:

        • major network delays - this is much more rare these days, but a bot attack could cause a temporary issue, or if you know about mander.xyz (a Lemmy instance dedicated to scientific content) that one is pretty much just gone for now (the backup is super old so admin is waiting, hoping it will come back rather than the most recent few months merely being permanently gone)
        • if the poster is blocked on your instance, for being a known troll (or the instance admin felt that way, whether overzealous in that opinion or no)
        • for Lemmy, at least pre-v1.0 that hasn’t been released yet, at least one person needs to to sign up to a community first, before content will start being pulled in from it for everyone else; although I thought PieFed did away with the requirement so this should not be an issue for you

        Taking a quick look, PeerTube@lemmy.ml looks pretty dead - sorted by time there’s one post from 2 days ago, before that only 2 posts in the last month, the next post 3 months ago, then others 7-8 months ago. And looking from a guest/anonymous account, that’s identically what I see on PieFed.social as well (barring some slight time reporting differences e.g. 2 vs. 3 months but the poster name matches) at https://piefed.social/c/peertube@lemmy.ml, and I also confirmed the same at https://piefed.ca/c/peertube@lemmy.ml.

        So I wonder if PieFed.social is now user-blocking lemmy.ml automatically. To confirm: did you add any kind of blocking for lemmy.ml communities or users? On a desktop machine, go into your Account, Blocks & Filters, scroll down to the Blocks section and look especially at the Instances section - does it have lemmy.ml in it, or is it empty?

        Of course if you are using a 3rd-party app, that could be a factor as well. In that case, first I suggest to confirm that you can see the posts that you are wanting to see from a desktop with your logged-in PieFed.social account, and then deal with whatever may be going on with the app.

        Is there a certain post in particular that you were hoping to see? (or at least using it as a way to understand what it is that you are seeing) That would help me to diagnose, like especially if it is super-old, like years, that could help explain what is going on?

        • Dariusmiles2123@piefed.socialEnglish
          2·
          1 day ago

          well to be honest, I haven’t done any thorough research on the topic, but I know I haven’t personnaly blocked anyone on PieFed since it was my first day and my first post on it.

          For now, especially because I can’t find a mobile app with an UI similar to Voyager, I think I’ll stay on Lemmy unless PieFed makes major progress.

          Edit: although I’m now noticing that the Progressive Web App has an UI I appreciate more than Interstellar’s, so I’ll give it a shot😇

          Edit2: it turns out that PieFed was already blocking 4 instances without me doing anything, so that’s why some comments were missing.

          • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
            1·
            1 day ago

            Oh wow, which ones are blocked automatically?

            It seems like PieFed.social is quite opinionated, which is a fact that has not been made transparent to the community - e.g. I have a PieFed.social account myself, and I had no idea that these blocks were there (also, they aren’t present for me).

            But that’s the instance itself - the software PieFed or its fork PyLova are outstanding, and definitely superior to Lemmy, even though your choice of instance admin matters far more than choice of software platform.

            If you did leave PieFed.social - not that I am recommending that you do, especially now that you see how to remove the blocks, which solves your immediate issue - then I recommend checking out PieFed.zip or PieFed.ca as both having outstanding instance admin teams that take good care of their users. e.g. PieFed.zip also has a couple of instance blocks placed onto your account when you join, but you are sent a message explaining what these are, and importantly how to remove them, not leaving you guessing what is going on.

            Again I am really curious which instances were blocked automatically for you, on PieFed.social?

            One more note: Lemmy.ml is notorious for being an echo chamber as well, instance banning MANY people over the years, so the fact that PieFed.social has lately become similar is not a strike against the PieFed software platform itself anymore than lemmy.ml’s choices would be a strike against you having an account on some other instance like sh.itjust.works.

            • Dariusmiles2123@piefed.socialEnglish
              2·
              11 hours ago

              Well from what I remember, there was lemmy.ml and 3 others that I don’t remember.

              Also to be fair, I got a message telling me some instance were blocked when I signed in on PieFed.social, but I never read it😅

              So I’m the guilty one!

              UdOK6RM1XbJDKLU.png

    • Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      2·
      7 days ago

      It hasn’t started well for now.

      First instance I tried said they were taking more people when the main Piefed page said they were.

      And now, I’ve been waiting for 2 days for an answer from another instance…

      If the answer is negative again or if I get none, I’ll go for the biggest instance available, but I’ll give up after this…

      This would be way too much for someone who would just give a try to the Fediverse…

      • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
        1·
        6 days ago

        Yeah the entire onboarding experience is a mess for the whole Threadiverse - both Lemmy and PieFed.

        Most people that talk poorly about us on Reddit or Bluesky or X claim to have had accounts here for several years, so it does not seem to get better even after making an account.

        We here still perpetually need to have the early adopter mindset, which seems like it will never go away.