I read an old thread documenting the opinions of Lemmy maintainers an the .ml instance. The issue of funding a project with people openly expressing opinions many find distasteful and it being the biggest reddit alternative on the fediverse came up, so here's a topic to discuss it.

What should we do? What are the options?

Answer: No fork necessary, there are Piefed and Mbin.

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[–] Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

What is the difference with Lemmy? What’s better and worse with Piefed?

[–] realitista@lemmus.org 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

PieFed is newer so maybe missing a couple features with some clients, but in general is much better managed and more actively developed. It has some features above Lemmy already too. It will win in the end IMO.

Here is ChatGPT's take on the differences:

PieFed

Community topics & categories — lets admins organize communities into shareable broader topics.
Feeds — user-created bundles of communities (like multireddits).
Image-heavy gallery views for communities.

Lemmy

Traditional community per instance model without built-in topic categories (though users can simulate via tags/feeds).

🛠️

Moderation & Safety Tools

PieFed

Richer moderation toolkit — including stronger instance-level blocks, IP bans, and admin tools.
Keyword filters and block instance content hiding.
Emphasis on trust/safety tooling and reputation signals.

Lemmy

Standard moderation hierarchy (instance admins + community mods).
Moderation tools are improving but generally less opinionated than PieFed’s “healthy community” features.

👤

User Experience & UI

PieFed

Keyboard shortcuts, cleaner UI design (subjective).
Private voting option: votes can be hidden from the federation.
Comment collapsing at −10 score by default.
Low reputation indicators for consistently downvoted users.

Lemmy

Mature, widely supported UI with more third-party apps and tools.
Some features (like comment UI or search) are subject to continued refinement.

🔌

API & Ecosystem

PieFed

API support is still maturing; some features in the web UI don’t yet have API endpoints.
Some third-party clients are beginning to support PieFed but it’s not as broad yet.

Lemmy

Established API used by many clients, so almost all functionality is accessible to apps.

🚧

Maturity & Stability

PieFed

Newer project, rapidly evolving, occasionally incomplete features or polish.

Lemmy

More mature with a larger community and more stable tooling thanks to years of development.

📌

Interoperability

Both PieFed and Lemmy speak the same ActivityPub-based “threadiverse” protocol, meaning:

You can interact with communities from either platform regardless of which software you use.
Posts, comments, up/downvotes, and interactions federate across instances and platforms.