Just noticed I was subscribed to both this place and 196@lemmy.blahaj.zone. I’d prefer if this community were on PieFed proper, so I thought maybe it’s a replica of this one on PieFed… but it’s not. They’re both on the same server, but the numbers are actual numbers in the url instead of being spelled out. Huh?
Despite the Lemmy devs being annoying tankies, at least their software has mostly remained ideologically neutral. Piefed has too many of rimu’s opinions baked into it, and that’s always rubbed me the wrong way. His allyship with trans people feels so conditional, and it often seems like he genuinely doesn’t understand FOSS principles. I don’t see him as a bigot, but I also don’t feel safe on his platform.
If Lemmy’s devs were half as ideological as Piefed’s, it never would’ve gotten this far. My only hope is that the two platforms push each other to be better versions of themselves.
https://join.piefed.social/2026/07/28/trans-friendly-piefed-features/
Hi rimu!
I’ll reiterate what I’ve said before: I don’t think you’re bigoted or malicious. If you were actually a bigot, you probably would’ve turned against us long ago, kinda like the Tesseract dev. I believe you genuinely want to do right by us, despite everything that has happened.
When I describe your allyship feeling conditional, it really is a feeling. I inherently distrust people who go on crusades against leftists they deem too radical, especially right now. Even though I hate tankies and people who defend authoritarianism, I hate anti-communist movements more. They are so often paired with reactionary scapegoating of minorities that I always get scared whenever I see it. Just like how I instinctively recoil whenever anyone says “fren,” I am instantly distrusting of vendettas against anarchists, communists, and socialists.
When you lashed out against anarchist instances and users; crashing out to the point where you took a hiatus, it made me nervous about how far you might fall. A lot of people who personally clash with leftists can be pushed into dark places; burning every bridge with those who might otherwise ground them. Interpersonal connections do far more to radicalize than memes or websites. If you push away trans people who genuinely want to help you with your platform for being too sympathetic to anarchists, who will you listen to on our issues?
So many trans people are anarchists, especially on Lemmy. Many of us need to bypass the official channels or break the law to get the gender affirming care we need. When governments from all corners of the political spectrum regularly make our lives a living hell, is it any wonder that we become so radicalized against it?
Alienating anarchists will necessarily drive away a lot of trans people. You don’t need to be our friends and you are allowed to voice concerns you may have, but please don’t drive us all away. Having trans anarchists on your side is the best repellent to fascism you could possibly ask for.
What opinions are baked into PieFed? Most of the things I see people complain about PieFed over are either non-issues or really petty, but maybe that’s because I’ve seen tankies hate on it.
Maybe another time I’ll give a better explanation. I’m really tired and used all of my energy explaining why Shoe0nHead is a Nazi, so I’ll be brief:
Rimu see Piefed as software that should only be used by certain people with certain ideologies, and institutes platform wide rules by default. One thing he won’t tell you is that the toggle for these features were added after people complained, and users were given an error message rather than a notice for why they couldn’t post. It wasn’t as bad as the Tesseract client that shadowbanned without telling people, but mostly because he choose to take input and not to double down like that guy did. There’s also the reputation score that dings you for posting memes (don’t get me started)
It’s also not just fascists and tankies that he has a problem with. Following anti anarchist Lemmy world drama, he escalated his own anti anarchist action and cast a wide net. After almost nobody sided with him, he took a break from public posting for a bit. He also really hates quokka for some reason, going so far as to try and fail to steal her code, despite the fact that it was voluntarily offered (I don’t have a link for this rn, sorry)
Sorry I couldn’t give better receipts. I should probably make a master document with all the lore one of these days.
The last one us really nuts. I don’t think “stupid” is a word getting upset over, but the person who brought it up was being very respectful and his response… Yikes.
The middle one sounds bad but I’ll need to look into it a bit more in order to have a strong opinion. I think its irresponsible to claim all anarchists bad though, even if you generally dislike the ideology.
The first one is what I see all the time and I’m sorry I just don’t get it. The guy lays out the things he doesn’t want to give credence to, which seem reasonable to me, and has places that sympathize with those things, such as authoritarianism, filtered out by default. I don’t think it should be hardcoded now or in the future, but its not like he’s hiding it either. You linked to a page where he explains it for all to see. It doesn’t come across as slight of hand. That’s not to say everything is fine so long as the person doing it says they’re doing it, but I wouldn’t want dictator apologists in my circle either if I could help it.
Just re-read a bit and saw ppl were given generic error messages. Yeah, not cool. I’m really conflicted over all. Idk what this guy’s deal is.
He really wants piefed to be his personal domain, not a FOSS project to serve the fedi community. Even if I agreed with every feature, I still think these things should be up to the instance admins, not the platform developers. Him being so hostile and petty towards anarchists wouldn’t be as big of a deal if he didn’t want to police behavior on more than just his instance.
I ultimately don’t think he’s a bigot or some horrible, irredeemable person. He is stubborn and his own worst enemy, but I really do want piefed to be the best version of itself. Beyond any problems with developers, piefed introduced needed features to this side of the fediverse, which encouraged Lemmy developers to add them to their own platform. Piefed’s existence is a good thing, but that doesn’t mean I want to use it. I don’t want to make you hate it, just help you understand why it isn’t a clear cut successor to Lemmy.
Gotcha I really appreciate the explanation and extra details. I personally stick with Piefed bc I don’t want to use software run by MLs and that is indifferent to LLM usage, but I hope PieFed is either forked or that he comes to his senses in many ways.
I don’t get why someone would make a FOSS project if he wanted it to only serve him, as you describe. It’s straight up counter intuitive.
My guess is that it’s because the rest of the fediverse (ActivityPub) is FOSS, and a closed project wouldn’t get the same attention the fediverse gets. There has been early development on forks by people like Mia and db0 for personal use, but I’m not sure of the current status of such efforts. I suspect that such projects will remain obscure unless rimu goes off the deep end as hard as the Tesseract developer.