piefed - no idea but judging by how people talk about it, Lemmy is clearly becoming too mainstream so some people feel they need to move into further obscurity.

No. Piefed is simply another piece of software with different tools that reads lemmy instances. It's not an instance in itself. piefed.social, which I am posting from - is the largest piefed (and original) instance.

I really like Lemmy on paper but good god this instance drama is off-putting.

You barely notice if you don't follow certain communities.

which I find silly altogether because people are specifically hyping fediverse because “iTs AlL coNnEcTeD” and “you are in charge of your feed”. I’m contemplating running one or two communities (and I’m totally fine with them being small and slow) but I don’t know where I dare to make them because apparently I’d have to be paying far closer attention to the nitty gritty of every bit of instance drama to make sure I’m not on “the wrong side”.

What are the communities you're wanting to make?

lemmy.blahaj.zone - LGBTQ+ folk who hate tankies and lefties

Blahaj hates lefties? What do you mean?

I run my own instance that has just two users. I Federate with who I want (including most instances you named). I subscribe to low drama instances like startrek.website and mander.xyz. I subscribe to communities from MOST of the instances you mentioned, but not a single one has drama (for example, no one on the lemmy.ml cybersecurity or selfhosting communities argues about politics... they just post and talk about those things).

I experience almost no drama. Two years ago, it was different, but I left those communities (but not even those instances) and just avoid engaging with those users (and it was honestly only a few very vocal users).

In my daily life, I'm involved with a number of protest and mutual aid organizations and I can tell you, the whole left is full of very vocal "my leftism is better than your leftism" people. But MOST people aren't actually like that... just the loud ones. If you challenge them in their spaces, not only will you end up on the receiving end, they'll turn you into one of them (I have been down that road a couple times). Not that they'll convert your politics, necessarily, but they'll convert your behavior. They create and feed off drama triangles and "I escalate, you double down, you escalate, I double down" feedback loops. This isn't unique to Lemmy. You can experience the same thing in your local hacker space co-op (ask me how I know).

Historically, leftist political and social discourse has always been like this, for all of history. It's not something special about Lemmy, it's in the nature of collective groups of humans interested in free expression, positive social change and social justice. We're angry, we're trapped in an abusive relationship with the Right and we all think we have the answers. The Left's greatest strengths and values (diversity, creativity, expression) are its greatest weaknesses. Same is true of the Right (conformity, hierarchy, rigidity).

*therefore

Yeah, militarists-nazi-LGBT-crazy"left" drama is strong here. But moderation is mild, so this shit isn't important. Plus we don't have shady things here like shadow-bans, so overall it is a rather good place: most people are completely disgustingly crazy but most of them hold banners with a full listing of their crazy beliefs. Read those listings and avoid speaking with local people on these themes.

slrpnk.net - Hippies who like cyberpunk

Completely wrong. Anarchists who hate cyberpunk and want the opposite. Ecologically-minded communitarians. Idealists and hard-nosed pragmatists both.

Blahaj.zone doesn't hate 'lefties'? It doesn't tolerate tankies but is very much on the lib-left side of things for the most part.

.ml has a bit of nuance not mentioned. Before the reddit exodus it was pretty much the only active instance and during the exodus it was still one of, if not the largest, before .world appeared. So a lot of communities and people registered to .ml, many have migrated away but plenty are still there that are 'general' users with no ideological alignment. It is also the instance made and run by the main lemmy devs.

And piefed really shouldn't be considered a new walled area, it interacts with the established lemmy instances its just different software from different devs. Same to be said of kbin/mbin which seems to be far less prevalent than it was.

pretty much. yea

-"tankie"

the distinction I'd make for hexbear is that by user base it's also one of the major LGBT instances

not sure what "ultra-tankie" means in this context, because ultras tend to be less into lenin

gotta agree that the instance feuding is pretty toxic though

lemmy.dbzer0.com - Anarchists who hate tankies and any rules except their own, which are different and therefore better

I mean. The only real rules we have mostly surround don't be a dick and the bare minimum to manage a public forum. If you can't really pass that test then you weren't welcome in the first place.

Lemmy is what you make of it. You have to put effort into tuning your subscribed communities, blocklists, etc. There is no algorithm to filter the chaff for you. I see very little inter-instance drama these days because I've filtered it out.