Signal is “easy” onboarding, just install and follow a wizard. I still have trouble convincing people to just download the app and try which is the hurdle. Most who bother to try it end up liking it and sticking with it since it’s easy and familiar to SMS but nicer. The people who don’t want to bother just never mention it again, or make up some excuse “won’t run on my phone” (it’s an iPhone) to stop the conversation.

how are piefed and lemmy different from one another

Think of “the fediverse” as a language spoken; Lemmy and Piefed (and Mastodon, Misskey, etc.) all speak the same language (ActivityPub) but they have different regional accents, so how the language sounds is a bit different depending on who you’re talking with at the moment. Each speaker has their local idioms and slang, if you will.

For Fediverse users, the interaction is mostly at (a) the web browser layer, and (b) the phone app layer. The piefed and lemmy softwares are written in different programming languages, have slightly different features and look slightly different in your browser - sort of how a Honda and Nissan are close, but different.

Same for phone apps, but “not the same” since many fediverse apps support multiple services, like the Android app “Fedilab” - they can support many at once by speaking the ActivityPub language generically and implement custom features for each type on their own. (meaning independent development of the language, ensuring that the language itself, ActivityPub, is conformant).

Edit: picture is worth a thousand words - view these two presentations of the same content, this post with our comments:

• https://lemmy.world/post/35434972
• https://piefed.social/post/1225683

Colors, layout, element positions (links etc.) are all just a wee bit different between them but it’s all just wrapping the same content in different views. I personally feel Piefed has a lot of work to do to make their webUI appealing to me and it’s what keeps me from using it as I use the browser a lot.

As a white guy living in a significantly “brown” large city, these racists are only emboldened to say it to me thinking “he’s one of us” (racist); it’s extremely noticeable when I repeat what they said like I couldn’t hear it (being old has it’s advantages) loudly so other people around us in public can hear what they said. Edit: and a major number of these people I run across are older white women from an ad-hoc statistics viewpoint.

No shade meant to the squids for that turn of phrase my bad; Army taught me how to swear and smoke. :)

It’s hard to say the USA anymore, we are very deeply divided as a country. Here on the fediverse you’ll find like-minded left-oriented people (presumably, based on my travels) but man our country is in the toilet. I’m in the over-50 category, been on this Earth awhile and this is some really bad shit - in society we have accepted standards of behaviour and we all know how Trump has dealt with that - dude paved over the Rose Garden to put in a gilded ballroom. Nicolae Ceaușescu, anyone?

Last week, not an exaggeration, an older white man I know I ran into (at the grocery) said something like “if I have to pay a black man reparations, I should be able to bring him home and beat his ass first.” I was in complete shock these words came out of his mouth and I’m a “rough” guy so to speak, I’ll swear like a sailor daily but these racists are emboldened to spew their hate loudly in public now.

Point being: the white racists with money have taken over USA politics, regardless of how people say fancy headlines I live here - it’s all about white racism and supremacy. Every single thing they do is rooted in their hate of anyone and anything not being perceived as white power. Everything else is a smokescreen, their actions show you their beliefs. Trump has (and is) systematically fired any person of color who holds a position of power or influence, it’s in the news every day.

It’s some of my neighbors (I live in a very “brown” area, mixed races etc.) and we’re all walking on eggshells because these MAGA lunatics scream and yell like little children without any logic. “Why did Trump choose 50% instead of 35% tariffs on xxxxx, what’s the math behind it or economic policy?” - “it’s the art of the deal!” (seriously, that’s the response - blurt out a Fox News talking point with zero knowledge, pure ignorance). It’s exhausting to deal with adults who have the reasoning of a 5 year old fueled by their hatred.

The Woz™ recently commented on this topic: https://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=23765914&cid=65583466

by SteveWoz ( 152247 ) on 2025-08-11 20:36

I gave all my Apple wealth away because wealth and power are not what I live for. I have a lot of fun and happiness. I funded a lot of important museums and arts groups in San Jose, the city of my birth, and they named a street after me for being good. I now speak publicly and have risen to the top. I have no idea how much I have but after speaking for 20 years it might be $10M plus a couple of homes. I never look for any type of tax dodge. I earn money from my labor and pay something like 55% combined tax on it. I am the happiest person ever. Life to me was never about accomplishment, but about Happiness, which is Smiles minus Frowns. I developed these philosophies when I was 18-20 years old and I never sold out.