Oh boy. Seems flag month (week?) on piefed.social had a lasting effect (on some people). Which is probably a good thing?! I really enjoyed it. To go to piefed.social each day to find out what we fly today. Maybe some day Rimu can fly a literal “red flag” (The idiomatic one, Not to be confused with: Red flag (politics) 😂)

I’ve quit posting on reddit myself but I would have liked to post this in the discussion:

On Piefed.social, I like how simple it is to filter out whatever noise one does not want to listen to.

I’m not on piefed for politics, and I could not care less about people’s willingness to promote their own opinions, or to prove other’s wrong. What’s great is that Piefed makes it simple to spare me that.

When I log in I only see content from whatever communities I’m subscribed to and participate in. And when someone still manages to reach me with their noise, or even to specifically troll me, I can quickly filter out whatever keyword I need to mute them, or I can block them entirely as a user.

The other great thing about it is that it’ snot owned by anyone. As a user, I’m assured I’ll never be stuck in a specific community, say having to fight a power-tripping moderator or admin.

Worst case happening, I’m free to create my own community to challenge the existing one and invite users to join me there. I can also change instance (the server-thingy on which said community is hosted) or create my own instance (try create your own Reddit somewhere else and ask Reddit’s CEO what they think about it ;)

But to enjoy Piefed like I do, and I do, one needs to first filter out the noise (if you’re anything like me that means politics and most memes). Something that took me mere minutes, after I created my account.

Is it perfect? Nope. Obviously not. Neither is Reddit (remember the API changes?)

Recently, there was one event that completely took my by surprise. Out of the blue, one day, the piefed logo started being replaced by… various flags that were obviously reflecting political considerations related to oppressed countries and communities and minorities.

It happens I don’t want to be told what or who I should care about. Even less so by people who have not the slightest idea who I am, what my life, who I care for and what political engagements are.

So, you can imagine I was really… not happy about being required to watch some random flag (and its implied political/moralizing discourse) on my screen every time I logged to piefed.social. I was even more frustrated by the lack of a switch to turn of that ‘great feature’.

I discussed it on piefed (which is already nice to be able to do) and in a few hours later, maybe a day, someone shared a snippet of CSS code that allowed anyone to hide that flag thingy, moving back to the piefed logo. And there was no attempt that I know of from mods (or from piefed’s devs) to suppress our discussion or to change the way that flag thing works.

Do I still think it was a dumb move on their part? Absolutely. Political engagement is not about waving flags on a webpage anymore more than, say, having sex is about fapping watching porn a computer screen. That flag thing was… immature, at best.

But I’m glad I was able to discuss it within the community, and that there was a workaround.

Like I’m glad to know that if the next time they have another bright idea like that and they decide one should not be allowed to find a workaround, I would still be free to move away from them, deleting my account, while still being able to participate from some other place.

Piefed/The Fediverse is far from being perfect. Yes, it’s way too kind towards its own political biases (while being excessively hostile towards others political views). Yes, it lacks users. But it has some impressive qualities that make it worth considering.

• The first one being that it is not owned by anyone. We’re not handcuffed at the mercy of any power-abusing mods or admin, dev, or CEO… Or ideology.
• The other reason being that it is open to anyone. Meaning it’s just a matter of more people participating to change the type of content that is being shared and promoted.
• The last one: it’s not a vague idea, some future project. It’s an actual product that anyone can use, right now. What are you waiting for?

That’s what I would write over there. But as a Fediverse/Piefed user among other users I would say we should consider more seriously that kind of recurring remarks about politics.

The political… extremism (edit: oftentimes a very childish one) that is quite prevalent around here is a pain and can be a real incentive to quit using the space for no good reasons. A bit like children shouting in a restaurant or in a train have nothing to do with them being kids (they should be allowed to have fun) nor with their freedom of expression but everything to do with their parents lacking any skill in teaching their kids the basics of living in society : it’s fine to have fun (and not just as kids ;) but that should never be considered a right to ruin it for the persons around. There must be limits. The same with (immature) politics and political opinions.

You gotta love reading about Lemmy on Digg on Reddit. Can somebody post this to /. or fark?

@Skavau@piefed.social putting in the hard yards!

Forumverse is catchier than Threadiverse, but Lemmy and Piefed are not forum software. If additional forum software added ActivityPub support akin to nodebb, then they as a group would match the term better.

Jackasses confidently spewing inaccurate shit they hold as fact and will defend with toxic agression. Just another post on Reddit.

Good riddance.