New to the fediverse in general, but an exile from Reddit trying something new. I want to join a community, !comedybangbang@lemmy.world, but it doesn’t show up in searches, and pasting it into the URL just gives me a “not found“ page (whereas, another community that I tested, aww@lemmy.world worked). My meager understanding of lemmy/piefed/fediverse is that all lemmy.world content should also be available on piefed.social. Is that incorrect? Is there no way to join this community through piefed?
this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2026
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Clicking the link that was generated in my post actually got me to the community and I was able to join it. I’m still not sure why it didn’t come up in searches. If somebody could shed some light on that, I would appreciate it
Because it was not federated to piefed.social. Communities made externally need to be manually pulled in and grabbed by users like how you did it.
At this point, Piefed.social has most communities - but apparently not all.
Is there any sort of 'about' page that I can look at which might have more info about the site? So far (after 15 minutes) I'm loving this place. Reddit getting rid of /r/all was the last straw. I don't mind there being less active users here, as long as there are users here.
Well done to the devs!
Well, there is "about" at the very bottom of the page but I'm not sure that's what you're looking for
Well this is specifically the flagship instance of Piefed. The "about" page is here at the bottom of the page. It doesn't say a lot though. What did you want to know specifically?
Apologies, I didn't notice the about at the bottom. But for example, I keep seeing 'instance' mentioned, what does that mean? what is piefed? who made it, what is it for, and why should I use it? That's the kind of thing I'm wondering about (and sorry if this info is easily available and I've just missed it.)
thanks.
So you signed up to piefed.social. The software is called "Piefed". "Piefed" is an open source reddit-styled software that anyone can spin up and host. You're on piefed.social which is the flagship server hosted by the developer.
So basically you're on a federated reddit alternative. It's lots of different reddits hosted by different people that network together. So people on other servers (called "instances") can interact with you and you can interact on them. The idea is that there is no single owner so the entire system can't be compromised - so if you don't like the policies of a particular server you can go elsewhere within the network and not lose access.
Brilliant, thanks for the info. My suggestion would be to have that type of explainer front and center for noobs like me who want an alternative to Reddit.
I understand that. I should say there's more to it than that lol - I tried to make it as brief as possible. Instances have different policies etc, but newbies don't all enter into the Threadiverse the same way so it's hard to have it visible at all points.
There's also "Lemmy" which is the original software which is how most people join the Fediverse, which you didn't - making you unusual.
Yeah the more I explore the more confused I get tbh. I think I just found a link here on the redditalternatives subreddit and went from there.
Is there any guide for newbies with the type of information I'm after?
Well if you are interested in more depth, let me just copy and paste myself from Reddit.
Federated social media still exists, and it's perfectly functional. It comes in three forms: Lemmy (Lemmy.world here), Piefed (Piefed.social), and Mbin (Fedia.io). All of the different softwares have different UIs and tools that may appeal to different people. I've linked the largest, 'generalist' instances of each particular software for people who are curious to join. They all can network together regardless of which one you choose to join.
For all those who don't understand "federated" social media (I've seen people not quite get it in the comments in prior discussions) - it's basically like if there were hundreds of different reddit-type websites but all federated together. Users on one particular reddit site can interact with users and communities on the other sites, provided they are federated together. The entire point of the system is that there is no single owner. An instance that goes bad, only makes itself go bad. Any user that does not like the policy of a particular site can just go elsewhere and an especially badly run, toxic instance will find itself completely blocked by other instances - left in the wilderness (reactionary, right-wing instances that formed are completely isolated with no-one that links up to them). So in lemmy terms, most users land on Lemmy.world. It's the largest instance. However, if you don't like how the management of that place run the instance - you can move to Lemmy.zip or sh.itjust.works or wherever else.
It's also quite cool too beyond that because it there are themed instances. There's instances focused on specific countries (lemmy.ca/piefed.ca, feddit.uk, aussie.zone etc). There's instances for particular topics (programming.dev, mander.xyz (science), ani.social) - so there's a real potential for diverse instances for people to join focused to their interests. There's also language-based instances - I know of a German-based one and a Portuguese based one.
It's much smaller than Reddit obviously, but no other reddit-alternative has come anywhere close to the activity of the Threadiverse. It isn't perfect, it'll never be perfect - but it's the most built-up and active alternative that exists, and because it's smaller across-the-board, there's actual opportunity for users to have some input in shaping the culture of it via the communities they make (a note here is also that badly-run communities on a particular instance can also be abandoned and remade elsewhere - there's no ability to capture a name and squat on it on the Threadiverse on the basis that there's dozens of other viable instances where the same community can be made, and better-run elsewhere). This is actually a pretty good thing.
For example of federation, we're both on piefed.social - but if you look at this community - you can see it comes from piefed.zip. Newcomers@piefed.zip. But because piefed.zip is federated with piefed.social, we can interact on it.
I've seen communities starting with c/ (such as c/newcommers) but also communities starting with r/ (like r/random), what is the difference?
- communities always start with /c
- The r/random isn't a community but a very fresh piefed feature that just come out today : it is an exploring button. You hammer it to find new communities :)
ah, okay. thank you
This seems like it is going to come up a lot, as people freshly migrate here from Reddit.
Yes, i think /r/random coffuse new users, most of them are from reddit. We should wait a little and ask again for feedback.
I saw a nice idea : piefed.social/random :)
Yes I thought about mentioning that one - I love it as well.