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

  • Dariusmiles2123@piefed.socialEnglish
    2·
    2 days 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·
      2 days 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
        3·
        2 days 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

        • OpenStars@discuss.onlineEnglish
          1·
          21 hours ago

          The ones usually defederated from by most instances across the Threadiverse are hexbear.net, lemmygrad.ml, and hilariouschaos.com. However, it would be weird to instance block them from PieFed.social because they look like they are still already defederated from, so there should be no need to add a block on top of that?

          I am kinda glad that PieFed.social helps provide a less toxic environment for new joiners. The problem is, as you are discovering first-hand, the confusion that it creates when people have a really hard time finding this stuff out.

          Now that your immediate problem is solved, do you think you’ll remain on PieFed.social, or switch to something like PieFed.zip or quokk.au?

          How are you liking PieFed itself? For me it took weeks to figure out a whole new workflow, but once I adjusted I was definitely sold on it being better.

          • Dariusmiles2123@piefed.socialEnglish
            3·
            15 hours ago

            There was at least another instance which wasn’t in your list which was blocked, but, again, I don’t remember what its weird nane was😅

            Since the problem was me not reading their onboarding message, I’m gonna stay on PieFed.social except if there is a weird controversy I don’t know about yet.

            I also think I’ll progressively stop using Lemmy.