This is a unique experiment in the Fediverse.
Whatās going on?
To explain whatās happening with my account:
Iāve created a new art form.
I donāt mean this in a pretentious āguy in a turtleneck sniffing his own fartsā way. I mean, literally, Iāve invented a form of art that hasnāt been done before. And to understand it, you first need to understand whatās happening.
The Backstory
A long time ago, I organized photos into categories and themes for an ARG (alternate reality game) centered around r/Sizz. But then Reddit went and enshittified itself, forcing me to abandon the original plan.
From that, I learned a crucial lesson:
- Never depend on an external platform to host my work.
- Always build redundancies so the work can survive.
Keep that in mindāitās key to what happens next.
The Problem with the Fediverse
I tried migrating the ARG to my personal server, atomicpoet.org, but I hit a wall:
The Fediverse makes it really hard to build an art community, and by extension, an ARG. The platform favors certain topicsāpolitics and tech do well, but art? Not so much.
At first, I was frustrated. But then I had an idea:
What if the same content could look completely different depending on where you view it?
The Breakthrough
Mastodon and Lemmy attract different audiences, which means people interpret the same post in completely different ways. What if I leaned into that?
Thatās when I discovered Piefed.
- Its moderation tools gave me exactly what I needed.
- Its masonry-style layout prioritized images over textāperfect for what I was building.
How It Works
On Mastodon, my posts look like scattered poetry, fiction, and chaotic personal musings:
š Example
But on Piefed, those same posts take on an aesthetically unified theme:
š Example
Two completely different experiencesāfrom the exact same content. The way each platform processes posts creates a divergent reality.
The Artform
Think of it like this:
- My personal account = a light beam
- ActivityPub = a prism
- Piefed communities = different ācolorsā refracting from that prism
Each community on Piefed has its own theme and patterns:
š Lumoura
š Blue
š Dustbloom
š Sizz
Look closely, and youāll see that these patterns form a larger storyāone Iāll eventually compile into multiple books.
The Big Reveal
Instead of making you guess the āgame,ā Iām telling you upfront: this is how it works.
And none of it would be possible without ActivityPub and the way different platforms interpret content.
@fediverse@lemmy.world
The fediverse really do be like that sometimes.
But seriously, this is very cool and I love to see people being creative and sharing things like this. I saw your earlier post about this and it seemed like a great idea.
Also Piefed is awesome and itās great to see more people discovering and talking about it.
So is piefed an app or another type of fediverse? Iām not sure I understand. It looks like it talks to both Mastodon and Lemmy, but I could be wrong.
Itās another type of content aggregator like Lemmy and Mbin. Totally unique software, not just an app.
https://piefed.social/
Itās not as well known because it only started development a little over a year ago, well after the APIcalypse when most of the Lemmy userbase came over from reddit. But itās been improving rapidly and already has a lot of innovative features that Lemmy lacks. I believe that one of those features is better compatibility with Mastodon, but Iām not entirely sure. Itās also written in Python which makes it easy for a variety of developers to contribute if they so wish.
Its exceptionally good at federation and has a unique(?) solution to multiple like communities (Topics). Topics can be lemmy communities, but can also be peertube channels. Example: https://piefed.social/topic/wholesome
It also has anonymous downvoting so you donāt have the issue like lemmy where admins know exactly how everyone votes across all of lemmy.
Indeed.
Although the private voting feature isnāt all that effective. First of all it doesnāt work with trusted instances (which includes many of the big ones), and secondly it only obscures the voter identity, it doesnāt completely randomize it.
See these posts for context.
https://piefed.social/post/408115#post_replies
https://piefed.social/post/205362#comment_2496068
I donāt necessarily think these limitations are a bad thing, because totally private voting could theoretically be a vector for bad actors to manipulate the visibility of content on the fediverse. This solution provides some protection for the average user but also makes it possible for admins to identify vote manipulation if it becomes a problem.
Its a lemmy alternative written in Flask (Python). Piefed has got more moderation features and is probably faster to develop being written in Python. Both lemmy and piefed can talk to Mastodon (and obv to each other too).