Logged onto piefed.social via my laptop instead of my phone for the first time. Got hit with a sequence of what looks like new user onboarding: a form giving me options on what I want to do with each of NSFW, NSFL, reposts, AI, and certain political stuff. Filtered, hidden, blurred, shown regularly, and maybe one other option. Also got hit with the posted screenshot asking me to pick topics that interest me (probably to populate my feed).

I am curious if this is a new feature that went out to PieFed users, or just PieFed.social. Or if it was always there and I just got hit by it on the first time when I switched from phone to laptop. Also curious who it went to; since I am subscribed to a few communities and have used this account to post and comment before; it's not totally fresh. Did it go out to everyone, or just new enough accounts?

And I wanted to thank you so much for not forcing me to pick topics (and thus, I assume, sub me to pre-selected communities) and letting me just hit Proceed without choosing any topics. This way I can pick by myself without having to go to the trouble of unsubbing from forced-on-me subs. It is a small convenience, it would take maybe a minute max on my phone to undo the forced sub if unsubbing went really inconveniently, but I really appreciate it. You're offering a familiar onboarding experience for social media that probably works for a lot of people (great for onboarding new folks who might need a little more help, people who I assume are outside of the typical Fediverse demographic and who I'd obviously like to be able to join us), while still offering choice to the user to curate totally for themselves (which I imagine the current Fediverse demographic would rather take). Helpful for folks like me not new to the Fediverse, just instance-hopping (I'm originally from programming.dev, lured over by the filtering features PieFed has). And I am sure it's helpful for others too. It probably went to other people who also already set up an account and don't want to be forced to add new communities to their setup.

This onboarding has been in Piefed for quite some time now. But since you joined a week ago, it's weird you're getting it now. It should have been on your first log in

AFAIK the decision to show this is a flag in the DB. So it won't matter if you have subscribed something earlier. But how it got toggled back? Gremlins?

is a new feature that went out to PieFed users, or just PieFed.social. Or if it was always there

It has always been there.

A few people have said they were shown the onboarding unexpectedly. I think there's a bug lurking somewhere in there.

That flag was only added fairly recently so possibly a lot of old accounts that have been logged in for ages will get shown the onboarding process. I think that's it. OP is only a week old so should have the right flag from the beginning, though.