this post was submitted on 08 Jul 2025
0 points (50.0% liked)

PieFed Meta

1552 readers
2 users here now

Discuss PieFed project direction, provide feedback, ask questions, suggest improvements, and engage in conversations related to the platform organization, policies, features, and community dynamics.

Wiki

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
rimu@piefed.social
0
Some questions about Piefed.social (piefed.social)
submitted 1 month ago by PugJesus@piefed.social to c/piefed_meta@piefed.social
10 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I've been considering making the move to Piefed for a while, but I suppose there are a few things that I haven't been able to find that I was wondering about.

First, what is Piefed.social's structural situation like? After having survived the fall of Kbin (big RIP) and seen Lemm.ee fall because of admins who cannot continue for completely understandable and unavoidable personal reasons, what is Piefed's situation there? I don't see the list of admins on the sidebar like in Lemmy instances, do you have enough admins to weather growth? Is there a broader org you could theoretically cooperate with if there was a sudden need for admins?

Second, what is Piefed's financial situation like? I've seen plenty of sites, though so far no major Fediverse instances, fall because of an inability to keep donations and expenses in order. I see the donation page, but what is the financial health of the instance like? Some instances post monthly or yearly reviews of the financial situation, but if Piefed does, I don't know where to find it.

Third, what is Piefed's position on genocide? I fucking hate that I have to ask this, but having seen too many people on the Fediverse deny the Holodomor, Uyghur genocide, etc, including the Lemmy devs themselves (who are no small part of the reason why I'm considering making the move), I don't want to move here and then find out that the position of the admins is something horrific. I don't expect that the admins intend to play whack-a-mole with genocide deniers themselves, since if anything that's properly the job of moderators and communities to drive the bastards out, but simply knowing that the admins are not supporters of genocide denial would put my mind at ease a great deal.

Fourth, what is the defederation policy of Piefed.social?

Thank you for your time!

top 10 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] cabbage@piefed.social 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Great questions - I'm curious as well. Would also be useful to know as I'd be happy to volunteer as a mod or up my donations if necessary.

Regarding question 3, the answer is refreshingly clear. Here's from the rules:

PieFed is a place for thoughtful discussion, respectful debate, and factual engagement. We encourage diverse voices and aim to prevent content that harms, divides, or misleads. Accordingly the following types of content are prohibited on PieFed:

[...]

3 - Authoritarian and Fascist Propaganda

Content promoting fascist, ultranationalist, or authoritarian ideologies is not allowed, including things such as:

  • Genocide denial or minimization, such as denying or justifying atrocities in Gaza, Xinjiang, Ukraine, or elsewhere.
  • Use of fascist symbols & memes (e.g., Pepe the Frog), or 4chan/8chan screenshots.
  • Support for regimes or ideologies that suppress basic human rights including but not limited to Trumpism, Putin, Hamas, North Korea, Proud Boys.

There's also the Rational Discourse Toolkit in the side bar, which I think recognizes the role of social media as part of the problem and the challenge of trying to become part of the solution.

As for defederation, there's point 9 of the rules: "Generally this will be a last resort when problems from an instance are systemic or caused by the admins of the instance."

[–] PugJesus@piefed.social -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Oh, fantastic! I didn't catch that, I'm too used to things being in the sidebar, lmao. I have a lot of UI to unlearn/relearn

[–] cabbage@piefed.social 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I think making the rules more visible might also be on the todo list - they were just recently drafted after a discussion with the community. :)

[–] rimu@piefed.social 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Good idea. I've put a link in the sidebar now but only on the home page.

[–] PugJesus@piefed.social -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

With regards to rule 6 - what is the definition of sexually explicit content? For example, I recently posted, in .world, a 1st century AD artifact of a gladiator wind-chime fighting his own penis. Surely that is sexually explicit - is it banned? Similarly, on rare occasion I post risque memes with nudity or near-nudity and humorous sexual themes. Are those banned from Piefed.social?

[–] rimu@piefed.social 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Those examples are all fine.

Anyway if you're posting them on communities hosted on other instances it's really up to them unless you post things that are illegal, in which case I'd need to step in.

Piefed.social does not host NSFW-only communities like those on lemmynsfw. But community mods can make decisions about individual risque posts in their communities.

[–] PugJesus@piefed.social -1 points 1 month ago

I meant the question as "What if I posted those examples on a Piefed.social comm", but thank you for clarification!

[–] rimu@piefed.social 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Good questions. Wouldn't it be great if the instance-finder sites like join-lemmy or join.mastodon.org had filters for thoughtful stuff like that? I'm working on something along those lines ;-)

Admins. PieFed instances list their admins on their 'about' page, so https://piefed.social/about . It shows 4 accounts there but two are me, one is inactive and afaik Andrew approves new registrations but mostly does coding? Anyway as this is the flagship instance so there are people, like cabbage, who have been here since the beginning, are pretty into PieFed and who I trust so it feels like help is available if needed. But TBH running this instance is very little time compared to how much I spend coding.

Finances. Until a couple of weeks ago PieFed adoption was quite low and donations were embarrassingly tiny so I didn't make a big thing about them. They're still quite small - see https://www.patreon.com/c/PieFed and it'll show you how much people donate. About 38 Euro? There's a couple of bucks per month in Librepay too.

That's income. On the expenses side - PieFed is pretty efficient so the size of the server needed is low. I spend about 12 Euro per month for hosting. I can see that growing to 24 Euro soon-ish, as more mobile apps add PieFed support. At some point it could be necessary to close registrations which would be fine as there are other instances people can use and Lemmy has shown that the dev-run instance doesn't need to be the biggest.

The instance running costs are insignificant. The biggest expense for me is the time I spend coding PieFed when I should really be founding a startup or building an app with an actual business model or whatever. The dream is to one day get as much donations as a Lemmy dev so I can quit my real job and just do this. There's no rush, I like my real job.

Genocide - cabbage covered this well.

Defederation - I really need to improve https://piefed.social/instances so it shows the blocked instances. Anything that is a continual moderation headache gets blocked, temporarily or otherwise. This week aaalll the spam is coming from lemmings.world so they're out but once it dies down they'll be back. Hexbear and lemmygrad will always be blocked and PieFed is coded to block them by default on all new instances (admins can change it). No plans to defederate lemmy.ml as I've built mod tools that help me find the most odious users & banned them and now it's tolerable. lemy.lol is blocked because of it's fascist logo. That's about it.

[–] cloudless@piefed.social 1 points 1 month ago

Thank you for your effort in developing PieFed. I almost quit using the Fediverse because of Lemmy devs.

I can finally use software free of tankie influences. And PieFed is so much better in usability and features.

Your policies seem very reasonable.

Wish you all the best!

[–] PugJesus@piefed.social -1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Fantastic on all accounts! I don't have much, but regardless of whether I make the move, I'm going to see if I can scrounge up for a monthly donation in the near future!