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7mo ago

PieFed, a FOSS Feed Aggregator alternative to Lemmy, but faster

join.piefed.social

PieFed - Open Source Federated Forum

Welcome to a new era of interconnected content discussion with PieFed – a link aggregator, a forum, a hub of social interaction and information, built for the fediverse. Our focus is on individual control, safety, and decentralised power.
Like other platforms in the fediverse, we are a self-governed space for social link aggregation and conversation. We operate without the influence of corporate entities – ensuring that your experience is free of advertisements, invasive tracking, or secret algorithms. On our platform, content is grouped into communities, allowing you to engage with topics of interest and disregard the irrelevant ones. We utilise a voting system to highlight the best content.

Video introduction the codebase

Opensource @programming.dev

Droid @sh.itjust.works

7mo ago

PieFed, a FOSS Feed Aggregator alternative to Lemmy, but faster

join.piefed.social

Python @programming.dev

Droid @sh.itjust.works

7mo ago

PieFed, a FOSS Feed Aggregator alternative to Lemmy, but faster

join.piefed.social

Che succede nel Fediverso? @feddit.it

damtux @feddit.it

1y ago

PieFed: nuova alternativa a Lemmy, Kbin (e Sublinks) in arrivo

join.piefed.social

95 comments

I believe one of the killer features is the ability to aggregate different communities.
- Multi-communities? Really? 😍
  
  Yes really. Here's an example - see the communities at the top, and hashtags at the bottom.
  On second thought, that's not a fantastic example of categories, so here and here are better ones.
  There's a lot that is not yet implemented in PieFed, like no preview feature for writing messages or user tagging (e.g. @openstars@piefed.social does not send me a notification), yet it already has several features that Lemmy does not - it's so exciting to watch it develop!:-)
  
  Still not at the personal level
- Finally! That is a great feature!
- I actually don't like that feature cause it's not something the user chooses, it's up to the dev or admin (not sure which).
- Yeah, that's really awesome
- Can I aggregate all threads that link to the same URL so I can view all comments on that URL in one page?
  Ideally across all instances of mastodon and Lemmy and others?

Hello from Piefed! I was a regular on Lemmy and Mastodon for years, but I migrated to Piefed because it is much more lightweight.
The features page shows some differences between Piefed and Lemmy - https://join.piefed.social/features/ Mostly, I appreciate that it is written in Python, so more developers in the community may easily understand and contribute to the code base, and that it is so lightweight. When I connect to the internet I always have to consider data caps, so it's a relief when websites make a genuine effort to be efficient. I can reliably browse the fediverse through Piefed even when my access is throttled to 50Kbps download.
- The lightweight claim is a bit of a stretch. You're counting content that gets cached in the browser.
  
  Well, regardless what tech stack makes it possible, when my phone data is throttled to ~55kbps Piefed is perfectly usable and most sites are not.
- Does it require JavaScript? Does it load in Tor Browser on strict mode?
  
  Some features of the site (like responding to your comment) require JS, but I just tried blocking JS with uBlock and I was able to use most of the site perfectly fine.
  I am not sure about strict mode on Tor, but you should totally report back if it works. Give it a shot!
- Not really as far as I understand. You can talk to Mastodon users though, if they post in community threads.
  
  I assume since it's using the same protocol, it can.
- Sounds great!
  But I suspect that the Lemmy backend is faster since it's in Rust. Also Rust codebases are much easier to maintain since it's a strict language.

Faster?
- Speed is literally not even a concern, the only thing I want more of is people. Make it easier to sign up or something
  
  I mean it connects to lemmy, kinda like mbin.
  
  Federation speed is a serious backbone concern. It aligns with perceived reliability. If it seems like comments votes or posts aren't "going where they're supposed to" then people can lose faith in the platform
- In my experience it's very snappy, and with minimal JavaScript (if at all). Hell, it's even somewhat usable in Lynx, though I couldn't sign in.
  
  Lynx - Now that's a name I have not heard in a long long time.
  
  I can log in with lynx... It sets a few cookies and then I'm logged in... Though I haven't tried signing up, if you mean sign up as in register a new account.
- And uses less data - helpful for using a mobile data plan. Those numbers shown in the article are all the more impressive even for sending 5x more posts on the home screen than Lemmy's default, even while still sending >4/5 less data - i.e. it's more like sending roughly only 1/25th the data per post, if I'm reading that right.

Curious to see if people haven't heard about it, Piefed seems to be mentioned quite often
- Tbf you're on Lemmy 24/7 so you'll hear about things much earlier than many others. I've also been on Piefed for a minute.
  But I've come to understand how slowly knowledge propagates through large numbers of people, at least via this medium. First with the APIcaplyse, when I realized that virtually nobody on reddit had even heard of the API changes, let alone moving to Lemmy. And then on Lemmy itself with various major events/dramas that people were totally unaware of until much later.
  Piefed is developing rapidly and seems like a worthy alternative to Lemmy and Mbin. The private voting feature is also really cool.
  
  No need to be on Lemmy that much, just watching !fedimemes@feddit.uk you would see Piefed mentioned every week
  Same here, on !fediverse@lemmy.world
- I'd heard of it already, since apparently I had added it to my block list, but for the love of me I cannot remember why. Looks like a pretty nice and standard Lemmy visualizer.
- What drove you from dbzer0 to cafe, blocking ml?
  It takes trial and then error because it's user depend, some people might have gone the opposite, from cafe to dbzer0

mahn kbin is dead. long live mbin. at least use more recent stats

I would curious to see if you could access piefed using Voyager for Lemmy as a front end. It’s about the only decent app for Lemmy that doesn’t squash things on my iPhone mini with text zoom enabled
- You can't, no. PieFed and Lemmy are operating in similar spaces, but are completely different architecturally. PieFed doesn't yet have an API. Unlike Lemmy (and a lot of other modern web platforms), it doesn't need one to operate, so copying Lemmy's to the extent that you'd be able to plug in something like Voyager would be overkill. It would probably also be against the TOS for Voyager (Jerboa actively prevents it's use with anything other than Lemmy, even if the API is the same).
  
  To be completely honest, if you want a healthy 3rd party app ecosystem, the official UI and backend need to be completely separated with a publicly documented API.
  Biggest win with Lemmy, and biggest fluff with kbin. And it shows when it comes to 3rd party app ecosystem. People wanted to build apps for kbin….
  
  It would probably also be against the TOS for Voyager (Jerboa actively prevents it's use with anything other than Lemmy, even if the API is the same).
  nothing like that in voyager terms

Private votes sounds pretty cool

doesn't seem to have a good dark mode, i also use wefwef/voyager ,thunder and phtn instead of lemmy-ui so... any apps? also seemingly no community creation yet.
- yep, it show's under 1 day on wefwef/voyager.
  i think I'll still stay on lemmy.
  
  @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone
  they have a theme of the colours of the trans flag, Steal?
- On my account I use the (dark) theme Card Shadow. I had an issue with it where I needed to disable the Dark Reader extension in Firefox. Lemmy ignored that but it actively messed up PieFed, though after disabling it, PieFed works perfectly for me.
  https://piefed.social/communities has a create local and add remote buttons that look like they would create communities, though I did not text them out.
  Edit: and the Create Local option has a "local only" checkbox, i.e. the default being to share the newly created community with Lemmy and Mbin instances via the ActivityPub protocol.

Faster and less tankies?
- I think it's an alternative way to access the same content, so probably exactly the same number of people you do and do not like
  
  It connects to the same Fediverse. But it has a few filters and features added. And the Piefed instances block some known unpleasant instances by default. And it doesn't pull in all the content unless someone subscribes... So it should be a bit better. But underneath, it's the same network and content.
- The second is probably the main argument.

Does it support importing Lemmy subscriptions?
- Yes. I added that myself a couple months ago 😎
  edit: you have to export your lemmy user settings. that comes down as a .json file. Then you make a piefed user, and there is an import settings in the piefed user profile.
  it will also attempt to import any blocks/bans of users/communities you had in the lemmy settings. But if the instance of piefed you are on does not 'l\know' about those users/communities it wont add them to bans list. But of course that means the community in question is not federated to the instance you are on, so half-dozen-of-one-six-of-the-other really.
  
  Nice!

Interesting... I'm very happy with the instance I'm on and with Lemmy but if I decide to self host I might set up piefed instead.

I personally do not like the
People who get downvoted a lot end up with a ‘low reputation’ indicator next to their name
I think this creates a prejudice on the person before you even read what they have to say and overall increases the echo camber effect.
and the
Upvotes in meme communities do not add to reputation.
to me seems quite an arbitrary rule.
- I've been on Piefed for a while. All the people I've seen with the warning deserved it.
  
  Understandable. Yeah, it's a matter of preference.

Can I access it via Eternity app? Is it basically another instance?
- It's not compatible with apps yet, unfortunately.
  
  Though there's a feature request for that where db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com said that he would be excited to work on!:-)
- no apps yet. work on an alpha API is in progress though, so soon(tm) hehe
  
  This? B/c see the comment elsewhere in this thread by db0 who said he did not have time to work on it right now... :-( But I do hope it comes soon:-). And yet the web UI I would hope would be polished regardless.

So is it a fork of Lemmy?
- it's inspired by lemmy but seeks to addres; community concerns stemming from that programming is a form of communication and the things the lemmy project owners value as messaging are vile
  
  I'm not sure what that even means. Does that mean it's right wing? If software can even be right wing or left wing.
- not a fork, its its own code base built from scratch.

95 comments