We are using their tools though…

Well, you are, while I am on PieFed:-P If you do not like what you’ve heard here, then consider switching to Piefed.World (Lemmy.World’s recently-announced PieFed replacement for Lemmy)

PieFed is a 100% for this.

Topic-focused puts you into the Threadiverse, where there are mainly 3 options: Lemmy, Mbin, and PieFed. I haven’t looked at nodeBB but that’s a fourth up-and-comer. (Also people expect flarum to gain ActivityPub support but it currently lacks it.)

Mbin’s major claim to fame is combining the topic-focused Threadiverse with the user-centric Mastodon like sharing, which sounds like not what you want… although it does have hashtags, and yet iirc only on the Microblogging side?

A very few - and unfortunately no longer maintained - Lemmy apps have some of what you want, but it is not worth what you would lose out on by doing so.

PieFed has perfectly what you have asked for. Hashtags sit on top of regular communities, so it is not either-or but rather both capabilities at the same time. And while I don’t know if you can block a particular hashtag (that feature should be added, if not, it’s a great idea!), the concept of keyword filtering (regardless of hashtags) can not only block out all of such content, but there’s even an option to only block out some, if you would rather, so that additional level of choice is nice. The only catch is that app support is experimental at best, so make sure to use the web browser view, at the very least to set up your account with the blocking that you want to see associated with your account, even if you then use an app for just daily browsing.

As Rimu (inventor of PieFed) already said, PieFed has numerous other features that you will fall in love with as well - e.g. categories of communities, which are both customizable and user shareable (so you can create a curated one if you like, and then share with literally everyone housed on the same instance, but there are pre-defined ones so that you do not have to) and many other features lacking on Lemmy such as user and post flairs, ability to hold polls, and just an absolute ton more behind all of that. It even goes further in terms of features than Reddit does, e.g. combining all the comments across all reposts of a particular OP into one view, to help deal with the fragmentation inherent in an implementation of the ActivityPub protocol i.e. the nature of the Fediverse trends towards fragmentation so this helps counter-balance that.

Happy explorations!

The excuse used to be that it was new and would eventually get around to it.

I gave up waiting and moved to PieFed, personally.

Lemmy offers a great deal of freedom - to an instance admin, and to a lesser but still high degree a moderator (e.g. their decisions are immediate, final, and unquestioned unless overturned by a higher authority) - though a lot less to an end-user. Reddit offers things like the modmail, notifications of events, and I can only guess that people are not aware of the level of censorship that has become more common lately. Meh, but if that’s how they want things, then perhaps we here would prefer that they remain over there as well:-P.

As in, perhaps they simply prefer the gilded cage to the level of effort required here to be truly free.

INTERESTING! Indeed I was relating a story from the past, although occasionally I kept confirming that it remained true, and today is the first day that I see that it is no longer. Like on page 1 I see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemmy_(social_network), then several pages later (on mobile) I see lemmy.world, but no lemmy.ml up top, anymore.

Thank you for telling me - I’ll stop telling this story or else make sure that I say that it describes the past rather than present.

I would argue that their authoritarian preferences get baked right into the codebase: e.g. there is a modlog but no notification of a moderation event, no modmail to contest or at least discuss such an event, no ability to DM or even be aware of which moderator performed the action (it used to say the mod name, but now it merely says “mod”), and deleted or removed posts disappear as if they never existed, ironically with the message to check back in later, as if it might come back but of course it never will.

The “rights” of someone being moderated are either to spin up their own instance or to not and just suck it up and take it, or else leave Lemmy entirely. Unsurprisingly, we see people leaving Lemmy in droves (and some, such as those who went back to Reddit, we don’t see so clearly, only being able to read their complaints about Lemmy if we go to Reddit to do so).

And yes the codebase is open, but it’s also complex and written in Rust. It is just easier to write an entirely new application of the ActivityPub protocol in a more comfortable language than to work with the Lemmy codebase, people such as the developers of Kbin, now Mbin, Sublinks, and PieFed seem to feel. And now these have a chance to do differently.:-)

For one thing if you Google search (we are talking mainstream normies here) for Lemmy, it pulls up Lemmy.ml as the first hit to an instance. And then that in turn, to an anonymous guest without an account, it shows posts solely from Local, rather than All. So a visitor does not see the part of the Threadiverse that is ignoring the tankies, they see the tankie home environment in full glory. There they talk about such things as beheading people who have bank accounts. Mainstream normies nope out fairly quickly… and then get mad at me for even having mentioned “Lemmy” to them in the first place.

It is easy for us who know how to ignore the propaganda, but we do quickly forget - I did for sure - just what kind of place this is, as in how it appears to others who have not put in the time we have to so heavily curate our experiences.

I am saying that we are a Nazi bar: we allow it, even while we ignore it, but it makes others uncomfortable so they leave.

This is definitely true. Also some instances like to push the boundaries, while others such as Lemmy.world prefer to “toe the line”. e.g. lemm.ee was notorious for not wanting to defederate with anything unless it was absolutely necessary (like for CSAM, but not for like trolling), a decision which kept burning out all the mods over and over and over and over again, thereby leaving it up to the admins to control that chaos, who likewise got burnt out again and again until… the instance itself finally gave up and closed its doors. But not before putting out numerous calls to have someone, ANYONE step in and actually lift a finger to help? No? Okay then… well good bye and good luck I suppose. Hexbear likewise has somewhat imploded multiple times over the course of its existence, due to “drama” among its internal controlling team. Each instance does as it chooses and Lemmy.World chooses to toe the line and steer clear of illegal content, leaving people free to steer clear of it in return, if that is what they want.

One incident I am aware of wrt to Lemmy.World was when the infamous Luigi incident happened late in 2024 in the USA, the mods decided to pause discussion as to whether outright, literal and irl murder should be allowed, and things related to that such as “jury nullification”. Keep in mind that the entire instance could theoretically have been shut down if the admins - who unlike the rest of us have their irl names and addresses exposed to the legal authorities - had been found legally liable under whatever laws in whatever countries around the world. Faced with this ENORMOUS amount of pressure, not merely theoretical but again threatening the very existence of the instance itself, the admins decided to pause discussions of this matter… for less than a week iirc while they looked into their legal standing. And then they lifted the ban and allowed those discussions (again iirc, though it’s been a minute). But many people about lost their minds that they had to wait a few days to do as they wished.

Tbf that probably had to do more with preexisting chaffing under the dominance of Lemmy.World that while today makes up only ~40% of the Threadiverse, at one point dominated it at ~80%, plus also a pattern of similar events than the singular one I described there (e.g. its decision to defederate from hexbear.net). But it does illustrate how Lemmy.World has to walk that line between allowing freedom to have discussions while maintaining a space to even be able to continue to have those discussions on the open clear internet.

I note the high level of irony that many people left Lemmy.World to the more “open” lemm.ee, which then closed its doors because people refused to volunteer to help clean up the toxic filth that they then generated. Lemmy - as a part of the real world - really can be quite an unwelcoming place. Like if you want to speak, then make your own instance and get to it, but if you want to go into someone else’s house and speak… well then you have to play by their rules, how is that not understandable?

That particular jury nullification decision btw is described in many places but one that I know of is https://sh.itjust.works/post/29086287 , and in general that community !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com is just a fantastic one run by a great mod who somehow manages to avoid the temptation to become a power-tripping bastard himself as he runs that instance and community that helps keep the Threadiverse in check by allowing people to air out their dirty laundry in full view for all to see:-).

Some people seem to think that, usually people who do not research things for themselves.

Separately it gets a bit complicated bc it really is healthier for people to be distributed more across a network as opposed to all being on the same node.

Both of these groups push for people to consider leaving lemmy.world, but for entirely different underlying reasons.

That seems to me to be akin to saying that you would like everyone to use Windows? Or less insultingly, only a single distro of Linux:-). Indeed, not everything needs to be a competition, but if someone wants to write code and make a better thing, and then turn around and allow everyone else to use it for free, then I for one am all for that!

But I do see your point, e.g. in how there are all these apps, making it confusing how people will view content when they differ in even fundamental things like how images are displayed or markdown syntax. It seems just the nature of the world, even FOSS where new features could theoretically be applied to all apps, if only people weren’t as lazy, as to e.g. not integrate the new freely offered feature, or to continue to use an app long after it ceases to be updated routinely by its cohort of devs.

Use of PieFed is optional though, only for those who want it?

Though as app support improves, like Voyager, more people may choose it to take advantage of features that Lemmy lacks. The list is quite extensive but includes categories of communities, which are user customizable and shareable, flairs, both user and post/community, hashtags, keyword filters, true blocking of instances, and so much more. Plus being written in Python, that list will only continue to be added to as time passes, taking days to weeks to add them rather than years.

Mbin? Its largest instance iirc is fedia.io, which accesses both “Threads” (Threadiverse, so like Lemmy, PieFed, other Mbin instances, nodeBB, etc.) and “Microblog” (Mastodon).

This… is… AWESOME! 😎 And YOU are awesome! You all freaking rock! 🤘

Ooh, interesting. Thanks for the heads-up:-)

Thanks for the update - it looks like I need to stop spreading misinformation. Sigh, and Loops as well - people like to generate all this excitement but actually delivering is a whole other matter:-(.

The only way I can think of to break out of that is to not play the game at all - e.g. instead of Windows vs. Mac, make FOSS Linux, and instead of Facebook vs. Reddit, make Lemmy, Mbin, and PieFed. On the other hand, people that already own a house have greater abilities to donate their time to such coding efforts, whereas younger people today… not as much.

Worse: they actively do not care. “I don’t know how to [insert business type here], but I know how to manage.” Like the former CEO of McDonald’s taking over (one of?) the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. Who needs a PhD, MD, or knowledge of things like biology, medicine, chemistry, physics, etc., when you know how to uh… what was the goal again? Oh yes: “make number go up”.

flarum (edit: this one seemingly not yet?), Misskey, Friendica, Mastodon, the list goes on - I don’t know so much about non-Threadiverse ones but see e.g. https://fediverse.observer/ for more details. Edit: also nice list at https://joinfediverse.wiki/Fediverse_projects . And another at the sidebar of !fediverse@piefed.social .

Note that Kbin is (semi-)officially dead - there is only a single instance (in Poland, https://bin.pol.social/) that still uses it, and the last commit of its software was on Dec 20, 2023. Everyone else switched to its fork Mbin that is actively maintained. This community really should update its sidebar text, to drop Kbin and add PieFed and Mbin. Kbin was a great idea at some point - I never would have come over to “Lemmy” with its known reputation as the place where many of the trolls went who were banned from Reddit (it’s… sigh… actually true), so Kbin was what convinced me to leave Reddit - and now Mbin carries its legacy onwards, but Kbin itself is extinct (I am not trying to be hyperbolic here, it just literally is, as far as actively maintained software goes).

There was also Sublinks but… its development got stalled by the main dev having a baby (its last commits were all in 2024 iirc).

PieFed is the hot topic though - all praise the PieFed. I admit to some bias in this regard:-P, however it is also backed up by the stats: not only do we get enormous updates practically weekly (often at least a minor one multiple times a week), but by comparison Mbin has about 700 MAUs (Monthly Active Users), compared to PieFed’s ~1500 (more than twice that). Which should increase rapidly now that app support is in the process of being firmed up, especially experimental support in Voyager the #1 Threadiverse app. Somehow PieFed has surpassed Mbin and even Lemmy in several featured areas - and astonishingly even that of Reddit (whose development for many years now has focused on increasing profits, not necessarily offering things that their user base actually wanted) - mind you it is still being polished, and some (very few) areas still need heavy work (such as the search functionality). On the other hand, it is written in Python, unlike Lemmy that is in Rust (which very few devs know, or want to know it seems, at least among those willing to donate efforts to the codebase), so feature tinkering is expected to proceed at a rapid pace for as long as people have ideas that they want to see added.