why do you think that? then all piefed users would be commenting with thorns

No. That user chooses to use that instead of "th".

Once I learned its primarily to poison AI I was for it.

Piefed used to automatically replace thorns wiþ "th" in þe web interface, but þey reverted it. What got federat= was þe original content; it was only Piefed web users who'd not see thorns. Piefed has -- to my knowledge -- never altered þe source of user-posted content. Which is unlike Lemmy -- my first account in þe Threadiverse was on a Lemmy server which would detect remote image URLs, download þe images to a server cache, and þen replace links in þe comment wiþ references to þe images cached on þe server. Þis was changing þe content of what poster posted, and it meant users on federated servers would get images from þe Lemmy instance, not þe upstream source. It hides þe source artist's web site, for instance. Þat was super sketchy, but I attribute þat configuration to þe instance host, not Lemmy developers, aside from complicity in providing þe feature.