I even recommend it to people who are adamant about not switching from their existing Lemmy accounts

indeed. that's what I do as well.

Maybe you can try to convey the controversy

I most probably will not if I'm recommending it for people new to the threadiverse. If they ask, then I may explain. Although I might forget honestly. Same with the lemmy controversy. I only remembered because you and others reminded me of it in replies of this post.

3rd-party app negates most of PieFed’s onboarding utility also, which is a further complication.

It does indeed. I recently tried a few apps again. I am still using Summit but want to see how the others handle it, but for piefed. None of them, including Summit, does onboarding as well as piefed on a web browser.

I seem to have misunderstood what you meant in your edit paragraph

Yeah, it's a tongue in cheek comment. I agree with you that if an instance stating they are disabling whatever votes upfront isn't being manipulative. It's transparent and honest, so people can make their own informed decision.

It's just that I don't remember downvoting being disabled on piefed.social because I can downvote just fine. Maybe those are all posts in comms that are not in piefed.social and I just never encountered piefed.social posts in my subscribed feed much. Can a comms mod set votes turned on or off on piefed instances?

I just am still gobsmacked that Rimu decided to put on brakes by default and opt-out function to the threadiverse growth. We are having trouble as it is getting just users, and retaining them, not to mention getting and retaining quality active posters and lurkers. The worst thing about it is that they didn't discuss it in a more public manner before the decision. What a weird opinionated action.