In grey text on each post is the domain name of the content being linked to. Clicking on that takes you to a list of all posts that link to that domain, such as this one: https://piefed.social/d/3909

In the right hand column there is a "Block" button which will stop posts linking to that domain from being shown to you.

Instance admins have an additional button, "Ban instance-wide", which stops posts at the federation level - no posts linking to that domain will be accepted from remote instances. It also removes all existing posts that link there - great for cleaning up spam floods.

One of the issues with joining the threadverse is that until you subscribe/join some communities, the Home feed is either very sparse (because they couldn't find the right communities) or flooded with random garbage (same reason I guess).

I'm trying a few things to help fix this.

1. I'm subscribing myself to every popular community I can find so this instance already knows about it and has content in it, making it easier for others to find.
2. Communities are grouped into a shorter list of topics. Viewing a topic shows posts from all communities in that topic, and a list of child communities in the right hand column. The viewer can drill down into a community to see a more focused subset of posts.
3. After registering a new account, new users are taken to https://piefed.social/choose_topics where they can choose some topics that look interesting. Upon clicking 'Choose', they automatically join every community in those topics. For example if they chose 'technology' they'll be subscribed to about 25 communities. If they chose a few other topics too then they could potentially find themselves part of 100 communities right after registration.

It's a good start. Eventually I'd like to incorporate something like https://lemmyverse.net/communities which knows about every community there is, without needing someone to manually add it and manually assign it a topic. Some day.

In PieFed, communities are grouped under topics . Some of these topics are becoming quite big already (e.g. Technology and could perhaps be split up while there are probably very important topics that escaped my attention.

If you'd like a new topic, please suggest it in the comments below. There needs to be at least 3 reasonably active communities (active enough to have had a post in the last week) that can be put into the topic, to make it worth it.

Wondering if the roadmap for PieFed includes being able to use Lemmy mobile clients like Boost and Liftoff?
Its running ok as a web app in Android atm.

There are quite a few communities that are entirely image posts so presenting them as a vertical list of thumbnails doesn't really make the best of what is there.

To improve on that I've made use of the common web design pattern called 'masonry', where the images are arraigned like bricks in a wall. Check it out:

https://piefed.social/c/aww@lemmy.world

https://piefed.social/c/artporn@lemm.ee (wide tile - best on large monitors)

On each tile there is the title of the post at the bottom which can be clicked on to view the post and it's comments. This footer could be improved with voting buttons and perhaps the number of comments, in future.

This doesn't work as well for meme communities as memes often contain a lot of text, which gets squished. Perhaps there needs to be a 2 or 3 column version with larger thumbnails.

I've recently added keyboard shortcuts for common actions. I find it much quicker to vote by using the A or Z keys! Also using X to see an image is very useful.

For now this works for posts but not comments. The HTML structure of comments is more complicated so I'll need to write different code for navigating those.

I've just added a new section in the sidebar, the right-hand column. It's titled 'Rational Discourse Toolkit' and shows a random selection of links to resources that are intended to encourage mindful and informed discussions rooted in awareness, critical thinking, and the well-being of the community.

You can see a complete list of all the links at https://codeberg.org/rimu/pyfedi/src/branch/main/app/inoculation.py

These links are drawn from my history and research which is limited by my experience and interests. Any suggestions you have for additional or better links and resources will be much appreciated, just put them in the comments below!

If we're going to make it through 2024 with our sanity intact, we need to be able to filter out certain repetitive topics that keep coming up again and again.

You can choose to hide matching posts entirely, or just de-emphasize them by making them a bit transparent and smaller font.

Set up your filters at https://piefed.social/user/settings/filters

One of the more interesting threadverse instances is beehaw.org, which holds it's members to higher standards than most places. It wants people to be nice to each other. Imagine that!

When we browse a list of posts drawn from a variety of communities across many instances we don't really need to think about where the post was originally made so it's quite easy to forget that discussions are being moderated very differently depending on where the post is being hosted. Beehaw is finding it quite difficult to maintain their culture in the face of an onslaught of people unaware or uncaring of their standards and seems to be on the verge of defederating from every other instance.

Accordingly, I've added a short message with a link to all beehaw-hosted posts, just above the comment box with a link to more info. I hope it helps a little.

I'm not adding it as an issue because I don't know if it is intended as is, so I prefer to ask it here. On post lists in a community, on't be helpful to see last poster and date?

Right now, only OP and post date are shown, what makes a bit difficult to see if there are new replies to those posts.

Congratulations on having made such a great tool, even in its early phase! It seems very solid.

I'm curious about the long-term plans for the project: Is the idea to work strictly with the Threadiverse (similar to Lemmy), or are there plans to integrate more with the microblog platforms (similar to Kbin)? Any particular difference in approach to Fediverse integration vis-a-vis the two main platforms?

New feature: with that checkbox ticked, nearly all images are removed and most of the Javascript.

This is quite personal for me.

Despite making a living coding websites I have spent the majority of the last 10 years on the wrong side of the "digital divide" - living in places with unreliable and slow internet, where I was glad to have a 3G connection with 2 signal bars. For the last 3 years my electricity came from solar panels so on cloudy winter days there was only enough energy to do a couple of hours work and that's it for the rest of the day, unless I just browsed text-only websites or gemini which merely sip the battery.

I know how exclusionary the 'modern' web can be, for billions of people who don't have fiber optic connections, reliable electricity or the latest smartphone. I really know.

While things are now much more comfortable for me, I'm still committed to making this platform more accessible for people facing challenges in internet connectivity, etc. Let's build a more inclusive online space together.

There's a bit of maths that goes into the 'hot' sorting method... PieFed's code is based on this medium post. (NB there are different algorithms for posts and comments).

You can compare the results by looking at the same discussion on both PieFed and Lemmy. For example,

• this one on PieFed , with
• this one on Lemmy

It's hard to say objectively which gives better results. What do you think?

Lemmy 0.19.x added a data export function that produces a file containing a list of all the communities you've subscribed to and communities and people you've blocked. As of now, PieFed can import that file!

In Lemmy the export is under Profile -> Settings. In PieFed the import can be found at Account -> Settings, at the bottom.

NB lemmy.world, shitjustworks and beehaw are still on version 18.5 so quite a few of us don't have that option yet.

Assuming the name is a play on Python since those are the building blocks of the app. But do the creators also like pie? Any specific flavor? Will the mascot be a pie, or maybe a baker of pies? These are the important questions about a new federated platform that we all need to know.

Hi!