My ratings:

Communities - 5/5 (tons are local, most others are federated)
Culture - 4/5 (nothing is perfect)
Moderation - 5/5 (seems reasonable, stays out of the way most of the time)
Availability - 5/5 (no issues for one year, beyond quick updates and such)
Performance - 5/5 (hosted in New Zealand but works well for me)
Federation - 5/5 (just a handful of servers are not federated and the list is public, can be reviewed)

Their home page tagline:

Federated, open‑source, ad‑free, and fully under your control. Build or join a community that reflects your values with no corporate overlords.

I moved to my piefed.social account last year when the lemm.ee instance I'd been on for 2 years prior shut down. Piefed, the lemmy-compatible software has lots of additional quality of life features, so that's great, and piedfed.social's admins stay mostly out of the way and just let us converse. There are about 700 daily users, from what they self-report and that to me is plenty of people to always find someone to chat with.

I mod a few communities on here, including !fullmoviesonyoutube@piefed.social , !raygungothic@piefed.social and !artporn@piefed.social.

I'd love to hear what others, both on and off piefed.social think of this instance.

Cheers,

I’ve been hanging out on Example.ml for about three months now, and I figured I’d share my experience for anyone currently "instance shopping."

Overall, it’s been a really solid home. It’s running on Lemmy, and it seems to have a pretty heavy focus on open-source stuff and Linux. If you like staying in the terminal or just care about privacy-respecting tools, you’ll probably fit in fine here.

The good: The uptime is impressive—I don’t think I’ve hit a single "server error" page since I joined. The moderation seems to be handled by people who are actually present; they’re pretty quick to shut down the spam bots that pop up once in a while.

The catch: It’s not really a "general" social site. If you're looking for memes or light conversation, this probably isn't the spot. It’s definitely more of a "power user" environment.

Has anyone else spent time on this server? Curious if anyone else has run into issues with the software updates or if it’s just my browser acting up.

4/5 stars

Maybe we could establish a simple template for the reviews?

Something like x/5 ratings for a few criteria :

• Communities
• Culture
• Moderation
• Availability
• Performance
• Federation

This won't replace a written assessment of course, it's just an at-a-glance view.

I’ve been an account holder on Example2.net for about six months now, and I’m starting to wonder if it’s time for me to pack up and move to a different instance.

When I first joined, everything felt snappy and the moderation was really hands-off in a good way. But lately, the page load times have been brutal, especially during the evenings. I don't know if it’s because the server is getting overloaded or if they’re having issues with their database, but it’s making it hard to actually hold a conversation.

The pros:

The community culture is actually really chill. People are friendly, and there’s very little of the "toxic" back-and-forth you see on the bigger instances.

The issues:

Reliability is definitely dipping. I’ve had quite a few "500 Internal Server Error" messages over the last two weeks.

The mod team seems to be less active than they were a few months ago, so some of the duplicate threads are starting to clutter up the front page.

Is it just me, or is everyone else on Example2.net seeing the same thing? If you guys think it’s just this instance, does anyone have a recommendation for a more stable pixelfed server that has a similar "chill" vibe?

2/5 stars

Interacting with people on hexbear reminded me a lot of Hell as visualized in Good Omens - that is, a collusion of dimwits and bootlickers stuck in a cycle of perpetuating petty grandstanding, abusive behavior, and thoughtless hostility toward any ideas different from those already approved by the community.

0/10, do not recommend.