ST-TNG dad jokes? That concept seems familiar somehow, almost as if, maybe…

Possibly… if it is likewise attempting to upvote, then that would be a violation of the rules!

Username checks out, except… por que no los dos? 😳🤢🙃

Your comment seems if not outright wrong then at least imprecise.

The PieFed.social instance is very much against tankies, but the software can be tuned however the admin installing it wishes. Like how reddthat famously turned off downvoting, you can turn on or off any PieFed feature that you wish. So e.g. if someone disliked downvoting, there’s still a Lemmy server for them! The instances are very much different than the software.

One feature vaguely similar to what you describe is the user indicator icons. New user accounts (of <2 weeks iirc) have a label placed next to the usernames, so that people realize that they are talking with a newb. That does not block making posts or comments, just an icon next to the username (which any instance admin can disable if they want).

Likewise, people who receive 10x more downvotes than upvotes will have an icon placed next to their username. It won’t block submissions, just display that icon, so that someone is aware that they are about to reply to a known troll. It is not underhanded, not a secret, it is instead very open and thus overhanded. But indeed, if you don’t like it, then don’t use it. I’m sure there is a way to turn it off for someone’s user account (it might not be as simple as merely pressing a button in the settings).

Beyond that… I don’t know what you could mean. There is a feature, turned on by default, to automatically collapse or even automatically hide comments if their score falls below a certain threshold. I don’t personally use either of these options, so I disabled them by setting the threshold to a ridiculous value of -10000. However, they are there if someone wants them, and I don’t begrudge someone else doing whatever they feel is right.

Oh, maybe you mean the image filtering stuff? That has largely been debunked - yes there is some code that will do filtering, but what people failed to realize is that when wrapped inside an if() statement, it becomes optional - it only happens if the instance admin specifically selects that option to happen? And thus again, it’s a per-instance decision, not so much something mandated by the software.

But yeah, if you don’t enjoy PieFed, then by all means do not use it. I begrudge nobody their choice there. I just wanted to make sure that people have accurate information upon which to base their decision.

Your username seems to imply otherwise though… 🤪

If those are great instances, then it’s good to be directing people there. On the other hand, there are just a ton of other instances (like Discuss.Online, leminalaspace, reddthat - although that one disables downvotes) that are likewise general purpose yet excluded for some reason(s) - that is “unfair” aka unequal treatment.

And more to the point, it’s not “a random Lemmy instance” at all, to only pick from just those 2. Instead it’s more “just come join my instance”… which I genuinely am actually totally fine with, I only am arguing against the usage of language that seems to misleadingly imply that it was instead a more equal distribution of picks among all (suitable by some criteria?) Lemmy instances.

There are SO MANY features that PieFed offers to help new users learn more about the Threadiverse - e.g. the entire set of community rules placed below each and every post that you read from it.

In this case, one thing that helps newbies is to either defederate or otherwise block new users from being exposed to the likes of !Chapotraphouse@hexbear.net, without being informed first about what that place is like. MANY people came here from Reddit, got chewed up by trolls, then quickly noped out and complained bitterly about Lemmy on Reddit, X, Bluesky, etc. Someone who is forewarned can handle that, hence the name “Choose your own adventure”, but if you want an instance to hold your hand for you and protect you from anything bad that might happen, then “Newbie-friendly” ones are more like that than the alternative.

PieFed already provides a HUGE aid to help here, and while Lemmy currently lacks this I believe that a future version is imminent that will help in this regard as well. I am talking about federating mod reports across instances, which will allow mods to remain on their home instance without having to continually check an alt account(s) on the same instance that houses the community. This will increase the pool of available mods for any specific community.

Edit: and this barely begins to scratch the surface of what PieFed offers in this regard. e.g. if someone does not want to see so much Trump or Musk spam, they can use a personal (automated) keyword filter, rather than have to rely upon kids to do all of that work for them. Likewise, users can set personal filters for unpopular content, with more than X downvotes, either to automatically hide it or at least to collapse it, needing an extra button press to see it - I personally have these turned off, but if someone wants them, it is available to them (note how this is different than a mod deciding to ban someone or remove their content: this is a USER decision). Another is the user account reputation indicator, placing an icon next to someone’s username who e.g. consistently receives 10x more downvotes than upvotes - it won’t hide their content, but it is a subtle indicator that helps you realize what you are getting into before you respond (e.g. a sea-lioning situation?)

All of the above literally reduces the amount of effort that a moderator is required to do, in order to make a community a pleasant place to visit.:-) Also, it democratizes the moderation work, placing more power into the hands of users rather than that of centralized authority figures.

Is that just some of the communities, or the instance itself, do you think? I thought their overarching tolerance policy was because they are anarchists, not actual tankies - like, would they be equally as tolerant of conservative viewpoints?

Anyway thank you for posting the link to learn more.

True. Fwiw, PieFed offers a number of neat automated moderation tools, like a setting providing a community moderator with the ability to limit voting to only Subscribers, which helps curtail drive-by downvoting from All. But if you mean CSAM type of filtering, that I do not know which software has better tools.

For a single-user instance, I would wholeheartedly recommend PieFed over Lemmy, no questions asked. For a small instance sharing accounts with friends… probably still PieFed there as well, but less confidently than it is always the better choice under all conditions. Also the UI of Lemmy is slightly better for the core features and Lemmy’s search functionality is superb, whereas PieFed’s is practically non-existent by comparison (by design), so especially if someone wants to do a lot of searching on their own instance, I could see using Lemmy for that use case. For everything else, PieFed tends to be more useful.

It’s not “random” though if it is always those two choices. And I also confirm that it is ALWAYS those 2 options - I’ve literally never seen a 3rd option offered that way. It’s highly biased towards those two very tiny instances (of <200 people each)… as in exclusively so. Which could be fine, the issue I have here is in calling that as “random”.

Also, if I were signing up that way, I would want to know the answer to questions such as: (1) are there multiple people on the instance admin team, (2) are they well-funded, since a negative answer to either of those might mean that the server disappears six months from now, which is a major inconvenience.

I can see why the instance picker might not choose to put that into front and center, but like… even with me having been on the Threadiverse since the Rexodus, I personally have no idea as to their answers. In contrast, something like PieFed.zip has an extremely established track record, with a very solid admin team. (To be clear, I am not saying that those other two instances do not, just that I do not know if they do or do not, and I didn’t see an explanation on the instance picker page).

Like this? https://feddit.online/auth/instance_chooser

I mean… that sounds to me like an entirely valid question ⁉️ - how WOULD we handle such?

PieFed is 25-fold more efficient in its data transfer than Lemmy, fwiw (source: that’s 5-fold less data transferred, despite it being for 5-fold more posts, hence 25-fold more efficiency)

If you were at all serious about that, I highly recommend reading https://jeena.net/lemmy-switch-to-piefed - the differences between those software platforms in terms of installation and maintenance is reportedly quite high, on top of the differences in features offered.

Nope, I still see both of them, very high up in the list too - despite it being sorted by “random”, which would make a kind of sense if it would weight more highly active instances higher, so not true random but with a random component. However, every time I refresh the page both lemmy.ml and hexbear.net consistently appeared in the top 5 instances every single time. So most definitely biased towards them, whatever the underlying reasoning may be.

There was something that removed lemmy.ml long ago, but apparently it is not that one.

I don’t want to send leftists to a conservative cesspit, and conversely I don’t want to send USA centrists to a leftist (“tankie”) version. Neither would feel terribly welcomed in those respective opposite spaces.

Instead, the list should be curated to show only “Newbie-friendly” instances by default, even while allowing those others to appear as opt-in alternatives. Which, surprise surprise, the PieFed instance picker does do exactly that - see one of those at e.g. https://feddit.online/auth/instance_chooser.

There is. Someone told me that it recommends lemmy.ml roughly half the time. I tried it personally and it first recommended hexbear.net, so I tried it again and then it recommended lemmy.ml. If I was an American-based centrist Reddit user, being sent to either of those places who literally celebrate and call for my literal and actual irl murder (not joking), I would nope out and never visit the Threadiverse again.

So yes, it is a very bad idea if the goal is to entice people to join from any Western civilization.

This is why we probably should be more careful when we do things that could potentially like, oh I dunno, open up a black hole here on Earth. I mean, it’s not like accidents never happen!! Oh wait… they DO!

J-j-just another few hundred trillion bro, it’s going to be so great, you just gotta trust me bro, I swear!