Just learned about Piefed. Why does it exist when we already have Lemmy, which alone is already too small for niche communities to pop up as-is?

Because some people had ideological differences with some of the Lemmy Devs. So instead of using the software as it’s supposed to be used, and simply defederating from instances they didn’t like, they went and made their own software which effectively does the same thing as Lemmy.

I guess I don’t mind that there’s diversity in the Fediverse ecosystem, but at the same time, I feel like the people most adamant about pushing Piefed are doing so, because they want to be in an ideological echo chamber, as opposed to actually furthering the cause of federated social media, and open-source software.