this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2025
659 points (98.7% liked)
Technology
75205 readers
3088 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It’s like Lemmy but with consolidated comments, flairs, spoilers, polls, topics, feeds (like multireddits), proper blocks, hashtags, piped video integration, disclaimer messages, better mod and reporting tools.
https://join.piefed.social/features/
A very concise description, wonderful! 👍
Is it like, a whole other network with different people or is it like a different front-end to the lemmyverse ? This is kind of confusing ? And what about that "kbin" I keep hearing about, is that the same deal ?
Lemmy is a software that people can host on their computer, and many people doing that form what is essentially a bunch of mini-reddits that can talk to each other to create one big platform.
Piefed is trying to fulfill the same goals as Lemmy, and is even fully compatible with Lemmy, so someone hosting a piefed server on their computer can join in with all the Lemmy servers, and to the Lemmy people, it appears to them like any other Lemmy server.
But underneath everything, the code base is entirely different. The commonality they share, along with mastodon, is they all use ActivityPub, which is the standard that allows them to all communicate and be compatible with each other, just like there's an email standard.
Kbin (now Mbin) is yet another Lemmy compatible software that you can host on your computer, but it also tried to implement features that make it more like mastodon (twitter-like), so it can act both like reddit, with threads and comments and communities around single subjects, or be like mastodon and work with hashtags and following individuals instead of communities, like a microblogging website.
They also use different interfaces, but it's only visible to people who directly use that server; to others who access it from their home server, it'll adopt the look of the software their home server is using.
So as an example, you are using Lemmy since your home server is Lemmy.ml. if you visit a community hosted on a piefed server from within your Lemmy, like !fullmoviesonyoutube@piefed.social, it'll look like any other Lemmy community.
But if you directly go to that piefed server by going to https://piefed.social/c/fullmoviesonyoutube you'll see it from the piefed interface, since you're accessing that piefed server directly.
All of three of the different federated Reddit-like softwares are intercompatible, so they all make up one big network.
Remember this big discussion? https://lemmy.ml/post/36058152
PieFed has had that feature for a long time, and many more besides. https://join.piefed.social/features/
Is there a piefed/mbin backend server or is it just an alternative webui client ?
I'm thinking of switching to a self-hosted single user lemmy instance and run all 3 self-hosted clients to my self-hosted server, is that practical ?
Yes, backend server.
https://codeberg.org/rimu/pyfedi/src/branch/main/INSTALL.md
You could run all 3 but it would be redundant as they all have the same content and people :D
One thing I don't understand, the clients (and servers) have different features ? So how are they compatible with each other ? I understand the activitypub allows interoperatibility, but if piefed for crosspost agglomeration but lemmy doesn't, how is that mismatch handled ?
Are they extensions that are just not supported like on XMPP ?
I think I'd want to run each of the 3 webui locally, to figure out which I actually like, but does that mean I should runt he 3 backends as well so that all the features work ?
Is there one backend that basically does it all and I should only run that one ? I do have plenty over ram with many HP G8 DL380 and 256gb ram each so .. it's mostly a matter of "crossing the desert" and configuring each one, which I suspect will be pretty similar but each with their own little gotcha (speaking as a self-hosting veteran, there's always something)
They each use a different backend, and their web UI's are designed with their own unique backend in mind.
There is Photon, a third-party web UI/client that may someday be compatible with both Lemmy and Piefed, but currently only properly supports lemmy.
As far as I know, Piefed, Lemmy, and Mbin essentially are just displaying the data made available from ActivityPub in different ways, like the comment aggregation for crossposts.
Thanks ! In that case I think I will make a self-hosted server and client instances of all 3 plus photon and then decide which one I like !
No, piefed is just another front-end to the fediverse.
Neither. It's fully compatible with Lemmy but different on both the front and backends.
Summoning @rimu@piefed.social
It's a different frontend with different features. You could be reading this very post on a Piefed instance instead of a Lemmy instance. Ditto for kbin.