this post was submitted on 30 Jan 2026

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Lemmy.ca's Main Community

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34 users here now

Welcome to the lemmy.ca/c/main community!

All new users on lemmy.ca are automatically subscribed to this community, so this is the place to read announcements, make suggestions, and chat about the goings-on of lemmy.ca.

For support requests specific to lemmy.ca, you can use !lemmy_ca_support@lemmy.ca.

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Welcome new users to piefed.ca and lemmy.ca! (lemmy.ca)

submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 4 hours ago) by otter@lemmy.ca to c/main@lemmy.ca

56 comments fedilink hide all child comments

It seems that a lot of new people have learned about these platforms from a popular post on Reddit. We currently see 78 notifications (and counting) and a pile of applications on piefed.ca

I am pinning this thread on both platforms for new users to pop in to and ask questions. Please give them a warm welcome!

edit: 392 new users on the first day and hundreds more since then, all from one post 🥳

Please let us know how we can help! For example, here are some tips on finding communities: https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/lemmy/for-users/how-to-find-communities The guide says Lemmy, but the steps are the same on Piefed

Since a lot of people arrived here from r/BuyCanadian, maybe you will be interested in !buycanadian@lemmy.ca

🍁 Finding Canadian Communities on Piefed

Open a topic from this list: https://piefed.ca/topics
Browse that entire topic, or subscribe to individual communities from the sidebar

top 50 comments

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[–] mintiefresh@piefed.ca 40 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I saw this thread on Reddit

https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyCanadian/comments/1qr4tji/a_canadianrun_reddit_alternative/

This might have helped add some users.

Hopefully there isn't too much friction in joining and finding communities across the Fediverse.

And welcome everyone!!

[–] queerstudbroalex@piefed.ca 19 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Joined from that thread as well!

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Just so u know, 5 upvotes here are like 50 there. 😁

[–] queerstudbroalex@piefed.ca 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

What do you mean?

[–] ergonomic_importer@piefed.ca 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

The userbase here is far smaller which means a lot less engagement.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 11 points 2 days ago

It's also more genuine and transparent. Mod actions are public and votes are auditable, out of necessity for how the software works.

On Reddit the votes are private, fuzzed, and people buying upvotes/downvotes have been a consistent problem for years.

If you get 10 upvotes on here, you're much more likely to have reached 10 real human beings than on Reddit.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 days ago

I mean when you get 5 upvotes here, you should feel like you got 50 upvotes on Reddit. Because of our smaller population.

[–] Sunshine@piefed.ca 10 points 2 days ago

Byw the Summit app is Canadian🇨🇦!

[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 7 points 2 days ago

Welcome!

[–] iamthedruman@piefed.ca 13 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Also joined from Reddit. Glad to see this. Thanks for putting it together!

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 8 points 2 days ago

Welcome! Feel free to ask any questions that come up, the community here is very helpful :)

[–] lance20000@lemmy.ca 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Is there any difference between lemmy.ca and piefed.ca?

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

They run Lemmy and Piefed. Other than the differences in software and some of the differences in features that come with it, they work together, can cross-read, cross-post, cross-comment, etc.

[–] lance20000@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 days ago (2 children)

That's what I thought. Thank you. I didn't see any info on the differences or similarities.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 days ago

Piefed has a few more features than Lemmy at the moment. AFAIK many of them are expected to land in Lemmy 1.0 which is currently undergoing testing.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 6 points 2 days ago

We have some information here, but that page is already out of date since Piefed is pretty stable now.

https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/fedecan/our-platforms

It's been harder to make an accurate comparison as both projects are under active development and either have, or are working on many of the same features.

The extra features on Piefed that I personally use are scheduled posts and topic lists.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 27 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Sorry to anyone that might be waiting for a reply from me on reddit or on here, I’ll be away for a few hours. You are in great hands here with the rest of the admin team and the wider community :)

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 17 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I want to add to new users, to make sure to check Hot, Top every 6 hours, Scaled, Active, etc. if they aren't seeing interesting things. For Lemmy, Active shows up as the default and it comes across as the least active.

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 14 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

And switching from Local to All lets you see the stream of posts from all the other Lemmy/Piefed/Etc. communities worldwide.

[–] Pixel_Jock_17@piefed.ca 25 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (7 children)

Just joined. I was suggested to use an app called Voyager for this. Having some trouble getting that to work. Does any have a step by step? I've already registered and been approved for piefed.ca. So when I went to login, it gives me an network error.

Edit: looking into it more, do we have to make a lemmy.ca server account as well?

Edit 2: after waiting for a while and trying a few more times before waiting longer I am happy to update that I am now logged into the Voyager app on my account using the easy steps provided and I think it was simply just a server load issue that needed time to just resolve itself. I'm happy to be here and can't wait to see what's going on!

Thank you all for assisting me!

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 17 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

For sure! Here is what I did:

Tap the profile icon in the middle of the bar at the bottom of the screen (it might have the text "lemmy.zip")
Tap "Get Started"
Select "Log in"
Type in "piefed.ca", and confirm that you understand the support is experiemental
Log in with your username and password

The same app can be used to sign in to a number of websites, so that might be the point of confusion. However, once you have signed in, you should be able to use it normally from here on out :)

[–] Pixel_Jock_17@piefed.ca 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Thank you for this. This is exactly what I've done and I run into a connection error notice. Turned off wifi and tried again, still not working.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 12 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Can you try again now? I think there are two potential causes:

Our server is being overloaded with new people
Around 15 minutes ago, we upgraded the server specs to handle the increased load, and so it might have been down right as you were trying it

[–] Pixel_Jock_17@piefed.ca 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I just reinstalled Voyager and tried it all again and the same error is occurring.

I will take a break for now and try again later on. I love how much help I've received and hopefully my issue can be resolved and help others in the future.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Are you able to view piefed.ca in the web browser of the device that you're trying to use the app on? Do you have a VPN enabled?

That should hopefully narrow down where the problem is. We might also be having issues with CloudFlare, we're looking into that :)

[–] Pixel_Jock_17@piefed.ca 2 points 1 day ago

Yes I was able to access piefed.ca on the browser, that's how I was replying initially. No VPN enabled at the time.

I did manage to sign in on the app earlier. I think it must've just been a server load issue from earlier and it is working now!

Thank you!

[–] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

You might have to type in piefed.ca as your instance. I think it asks what instance you're on, but it's probably not on the list. Once you're in, you'll love it and all of this is worth it. I swear.

Edit: Also, it looks like there is a voyager crypto app, be sure to get the lemmy version. https://vger.app/

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[–] BedSharkPal@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I use boost or synch, but I'm using lemmy.ca and not piefed.

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[–] Sunshine@piefed.ca 13 points 2 days ago

Here’s to 1k Piefed.ca users! I can’t wait for more stability thanks to the increased attention.

[–] veeesix@lemmy.ca 20 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Welcome to the resistance!

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[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 17 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

To all new fellow canucks:

Switch your feed to All
- All shows posts from the worldwide Lemmy/Piefed network. This is equivalent to Reddit
- Local shows posts only from lemmy.ca or piefed.ca, whichever you're logged into
- Subscribed shows posts from communities (subreddits) you've subscribed to, from local and the worldwide network
Switch your sorting to one of Hot/Active/Scaled
- Hot is similar to Reddit's
- Active is also similar in surfacing actively discussed posts
- Scaled is like Hot but it also surfaces more posts from smaller communities
To curate your feed, subscribe to communities (equiv of subreddit) and switch your feed to Subscribed with Scaled sorting

A curated list of Canadian communities (subreddits): https://lemmy.ca/post/2890824

[–] shittydwarf@piefed.social 19 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Spez is a pissbaby!

[–] CaptDust@sh.itjust.works 12 points 2 days ago

Greedy little boot licking pig boy

[–] stinkytofuisgood@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Guys I’m still confused. I have the Voyager app for iOS and I’ve signed up to lemmy.zip, lemmy.ca, and some others. Do they all host different content? What about switching between them? In the app for each account I just hit subscribe to the “starter pack” but don’t know if that’s best outside of the recommended lemmy.zip

And piefed.ca is down at the time of writing, and don’t know the difference between it and lemmy.ca!

I’ve been doing my reading upon signing up etc but still feel a little out of touch.

I guess I can use this time to ask others if they see lemmy as an improvement to places like Reddit, or is it just an alternative that we happen to have, does it feel like it has a more authentic community and engagement overall? So many questions!

[–] Shadow@lemmy.ca 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

piefed.ca hasn't had any outages since this morning, what were you seeing?

You only need to sign up for one instance, they all see each others content. Think of it more like email - you wouldn't sign up for both gmail.com and hotmail.com

For example these two both show the same community which is hosted over at lemmy.world:

https://lemmy.ca/c/technology@lemmy.world vs https://piefed.ca/c/technology@lemmy.world

Lemmy.ca and piefed.ca are both run by us (fedecan) and are just different software platforms to interact with the fediverse. Lemmy was the first big popular one and is written in Rust, but Piefed came along more recently and is written in Python (hence the Pie in it's name). Piefed has been quicker about adding features, and many people have issues with the politics of the Lemmy developers. Ultimately they both let you interact with all the same communities and posts.

Otter put a nice doc together at https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/get-started which has some pictures that might help you understand it all. It can be a little confusing at first!

[+] stinkytofuisgood@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] Shadow@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

You can use either, they're both under active development and we maintain both instances. Many people prefer piefed, I personally have stuck with Lemmy. Lemmy makes up much more of our user base still compared to Piefed.

I personally use Thunder on android and I quite like it, but I don't know what's popular in the ios world. It looks like it's available for IOS too, but I can't speak to the quality of it on there - https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/thunder-for-lemmy/id6450518497

[+] stinkytofuisgood@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] Shadow@lemmy.ca 13 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I left reddit during the first big API debacle exodus and joined lemmy.ca, around that time Smorks was tired of running the site all himself so I offered my help. Otter and MP3 joined shortly after to help administer everything.

As we took things over I wasn't comfortable taking donations without a proper non-profit in place, hence Fedecan was born. Big thanks to otter for putting in most of the work around it. We used to be hosted on OVH but after a big outage I donated some beefy server grade hardware to run us on, and we're in a datacenter in Vancouver now.

Monthly bills (hosting, domain reg, non-profit related stuff) are fully paid for by donations. We have no other funding and no affiliations to any other groups. We don't take any payment for running this, all our time is volunteered.

https://lemmy.ca/post/47466646 is a bit old now but has some more data about our donations / sites / infrastructure. There's several links at the top to more details as well. We're due for another big status update post but it might take me a bit to get to.

[+] stinkytofuisgood@lemmy.ca 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] Shadow@lemmy.ca 8 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

If Fedecan funding ever ceases to pay the bills, is there a plan in place, or does it shut down?

Realistically it would probably just shut down, but our donations are more than covering our expenses at the moment and the site is still growing. I don't have any concerns about not being able to pay the bills. The site only costs us about $200/mo to run so it's not a huge amount, but I'll admit it's only that low due to my donating a server worth around $40k (when it was new, although it'd be like $80k today thanks to ram prices).

May I suggest looking at government grants and funding if they don’t interfere with your goal and operations, especially now, the government is looking to boost Canadian enterprise.

Honestly, that sounds like a lot of work 😂 I'm not keen on spending time writing up business growth docs and having meetings, my day job has enough of that for me. If someone else comes along and wants to join the org + help drive that then we'd probably be open to it, but we've all got busy lives and it's not a priority for us.

do those working with Fedecan pay themselves for their work?

Nope. It's something we've discussed, but for now we're all on board with keeping things lightweight and not trying to turn this into wikipedia with regular fund raisers to pay salaries.

[–] Sunshine@piefed.ca 3 points 1 day ago

Lemmy.zip and Lemmy.ca access largely the same content with slight variations on which servers are allowed to communicate with them.

You chose the provider based on rules, moderation style, hosting location and federation list.

[–] CircaV@lemmy.ca 15 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Piefed.ca is currently down!! Must be A LOT of interest.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 18 points 2 days ago (1 children)

We're also configuring our server to handle the load. It definitely has the capacity for it, but there may be intermittent outages as we restart things.

Judging by the time of our comment, I think we were making a config change right around when you made that comment

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

How's the compute usage per user on piefed.ca compared to lemmy.ca?

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[–] Ek-Hou-Van-Braai@piefed.social 15 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Let's goo!!!

Find a Organized List of Canadian Communities here --> !canada@lemmy.ca

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[–] SpookyBogMonster@lemmy.ml 11 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Hi Canadians! 👋

[–] SneakyWeasel@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

Well hello! Bonjour!

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