Fedia and Piefed have baked in code to block their users from seeing our replies, posts, and comments, while allowing a form of one way federation.
from Nakoichi@hexbear.net to fediverse@lemmy.ml on 27 Aug 07:51
https://hexbear.net/post/5970051
from Nakoichi@hexbear.net to fediverse@lemmy.ml on 27 Aug 07:51
https://hexbear.net/post/5970051
I think this warrants a fediverse wide boycott of all piefed/fedia instances until this is rectified.
threaded - newest
@dessalines@lemmy.ml @davel@lemmy.ml I am curious as to your thoughts on this. It is very annoying for myself and others to write out effort posts refuting shit these liberals spew on our platforms only to find out none of them will ever see it. Meanwhile we have to be subject to their garbage posts and takes with no recourse. This is fundamentally detrimental to the fediverse as a whole.
I’d argue it’s more of an issue for them, since they do not get to counter-argument :P
Your reply refuting their argument can be read by everyone that is in an open platform, while their messages only go unchallenged on their own echo chamber anyway.
To me, it would be worse if it was the other way around: them spewing shit and me not even realizing to be able to respond.
In my experience, fallacious arguments spill and unravel over several comments, rarely up front, so it’s not a great thing.
It depends.
The invalid reasoning a person might have for an argument does not necessarily invalidate the argument (if you can reach the same argument from multiple reasonings), it only discredits their ability to form arguments with a valid basis.
So a long conversation can lead to the person losing credibility, but a strong rebuttal focused on the initial argument, to me, is more important if what we want is to refute the argument.
Both have their place, but usually arguments start from low-effort jabs that then turn into serious refutations from others. Fundamentally, though, is the response, giving the original jab-maker a chance to give an actual argument, upon which it can fall apart and prove the original argument better, or can refute the argument and justify the jab.
Funny side note: hexbear blocked one of my diet communities at the instance level, so the echo chamber goes both ways.
There’s nothing we can do about server-to-server blocking, but I think over the long term, people will join servers that do less instance blocking, so that they can personally be in control of what they see.
And of course everyone not on restricted servers will still see your replies / takedowns, so it really only harms them. In a big way, responses are just as important to onlookers, than the one you’re responding to.
Oh yeah for sure I was just curious as to your thoughts on people taking this project and building in their own ideologically motivated blocking. I know that there is nothing to be done about it as its all open source I just find it scummy that they do this in the first place. I get not wanting to federate with specific instances but the way this works is to just automatically make it one way only unless the person using their fork manually changes it.
I don’t want to force them to see our posts or comments or anything idgaf about that I just don’t want to have to guess which people I can see on my end can actually see my replies to them ya know?
Updating the defederation blocklist is done via the admin UI. A fork implies having to recreate the source code and modify it. This is different.
Recent comment from another admin
wetshav.ing/comment/92409
Whatever, point still stands it’s shady AF and you are obsessed with defending it and I really don’t give a shit how you spin it.
Pardon my ignorance of how federation works, but would it be possible to have federating/defederating at a more granular level, like at the user or comm level? Like if in individual user wanted to block a whole instance instead of instances blocking each other, or if instances wanted to prevent certain comms from showing up and not others for a specific instance?
That’s the way we’d prefer it, and it’s already working in lemmy. But unfortunately that wasn’t added until after full instance blocking, so most instances kept their blocklists.
We have instance community blocks working rn, and instance user blocks will be in the next release.
Of course I do think instances should fully block some servers, like the ultra right kiwi-farms and stormfront type ones… but unfortunately those communities set up on the big instances now anyway.
That’s really great to hear and it seems like it will be a very positive change. Thanks for the response!
You can still federate after the instance setup, like piefed.zip does
You said I spammed this, but you still didn’t register the information?
hexbear.net/post/5959834/6443954
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.zip/pictrs/image/8fe87aa1-00db-4b64-9a27-7855a38d30a5.webp">
I think it’s more that the admins are the only ones that can do that.
See this comment: lemmy.ml/post/35276820/20723645
Long story short, instances who defederate hexbear were doing so on their Lemmy instances anyway
THAT IS NOT WHAT THIS POST IS ABOUT. You are just shilling for this garbage ass perversion of lemmy at this point. You just keep spamming the same irrelevant post over and over again.
He’s just very committed to making sure the Nazi bars have a good public image okay?
There’s a huge post in their snark comm where they’re spinning this as ‘just a default’ and he’s pasting it there too lmao
But it literally is just a default
This whole post is also just standard defederation.
Even people on hexbear say it
Maybe I should start using that comment from now on
It’s the default setting for the echo chamber that I took issue with.
I did say that it was something admins can change manually in my initial post here, twice.
The OP was calling for a Fediverse-wide boycott when this is how defederation works, and always has been (see hexbear comment above).
The issues I have with piefed are more related to the auto-collapsing comments based on votes, and the terrible search features, particularly its modlog. Seems way worse for transparency to have things that opaque and censorship happening through votes.
Question, do you feel comfortable posting in comms where other people are getting called degenerate roaches?
Modlog fitering has been added on 24th of August: crust.piefed.social/modlog
For the votes, I agree it should be an option, hopefully in the future it will be, but for now there are other priorities, and personally I’m not that impacted as the communities are in are usually smaller and without a lot of downvotes.
I’m going to be honest, I’m not the biggest fan of !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works, I unsubscribed from it and this type of comments reminds me why. I ignore it most of the time, but yesterday I was curious to see what other people could think about this thread, and as expected, there was one. Where people were also incorrect about the way defederation is configured in Piefed, which is where I pasted the comment you mentioned.
I think Rimu is the same, he just got pinged into that thread, and answered there to clarify things, he doesn’t particularly endorses that community.
Let’s see how the mod answer, maybe there should be another community with moderation rules that ask to respect the humans, even though ideas can be criticized.
@goat@sh.itjust.works , do you support this kind of comments? sh.itjust.works/comment/20140833
Hmmm. Okay, I’m going to DM goat directly
Or you could just leave the Nazi bar. shitsjustfash was federated for about two days with hexbear if I recall correctly and in that time we experienced dozens of their users posting: ableism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism, literal Nazi apologia in the form of the “clean Wehrmacht” myth, downplaying the genocide of indigenous people in the americas and the ongoing one in Palestine. So when they claim that we are denying a “genocide” of Muslims in China (there literally isn’t one and they don’t actually give a fuck about Muslims) it would be funny if these people weren’t all over places like piefed too and trying to ensure that nobody from anywhere like here can actually provide any counterfactual arguments to their Nazi propaganda.
And you. Yes you yourself, are all over here spamming your little copypasta trying to defend this decision and the BEST you can fucking do is “oh hmmmm I’ll look into it by asking the literal Nazi mod of shitsjustfash if they’re a Nazi, I’m sure they will be forthcoming and honest”
Lemmy.ml doesn’t exist now?
Also, as I said above
Are you calling lemmy.ml Nazi propaganda?
It’s the opposite: lemmy.ml is still federated with all the Piefed instances, and allows people to provide counterfactual arguments to Nazi propaganda.
So you can admit that you have an anti-Lemmy.ml agenda, just not to me? Interesting. Yea, equating leftists to Nazis is a certified tell that you’re deeply unserious.
It’s the opposite: lemmy.ml is still federated with all the Piefed instances, and allows people to provide counterfactual arguments to Nazi propaganda.
Interesting to see you projecting the worse possible interpretation of my words, some people might consider this ‘dishonest’
If that’s what you genuinely meant, then I apologize, but given your past behavior and refusal to clarify your aims in any way, it’s still deeply suspicious. You could just as easily plainly explain what your goals are and why you always seem so excited to move communities from Lemmy.ml to Lemmy.zip despite saying Lemmy.ml is smallish, while claiming to help decentralization, as well as minimizing the clear ideological bias in putting leftist instances alongside CSAM and spam in default block lists.
If you gave an explanation, then people wouldn’t be so quick to interpret your vague statements in an anti-Leftist manner.
Here is the last comment I made on the topic, feel free to answer there if you want, it’s getting off topic for this post:
lemmy.ml/post/35293458/20736835
I told you I was disengaging from there, and I did, but since you insist on continuing this dead conversation, your answer there was entirely unsatisfying.
Lemmy.ml is an instance almost always put alongside Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml. You defend moving communities away from Lemmy.ml, and you defend default blocking Hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml.
Moving communities from Lemmy.ml means Lemmy.ml users that tend to scroll locally can no longer access these communities without going to all, and further means moderation style changes with new admins. I underatand that Lemmy.zip is federated, but you’re just telling me that I’m not allowed to take issue with this. It’s toxic behavior.
None of these answers why you are doing this, why you push heavily for Piefed.social especially, and why you bat so hard for devs that pre-bake anti-leftist sentiment into defaults.
.
Ok, so I got an answer from goat, which said basically that calling other people cockroaches happens on hexbear as well
hexbear.net/search?q=cockroaches&type=Comments&li…
It seems true from what I can see.
As I said, I don’t have a dog in this fight, it seems indeed bad to have such comments on both sides.
I usually avoid !meanwhileongrad@sh.itjust.works, those comments in that thread were the first I made there in a month (sh.itjust.works/search?q=+&type=Comments&listingT… )
I believe there should be another community to report bad faith arguments made by any instance (!yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com , but broader), but I don’t have the time or energy for that.
From that link pretty much all of the usage is talking about the literal insect, or talking about reactionaries/fascists using it to refer to muslims, immigrants and other ‘undesirables’.
Out of the handful of remaining uses, it’s stuff like in the hexbear thread on this meanwhileongrad thread: <img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/97ad0f13-1b61-425c-8046-c7e5fa28dfa5.png">
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/87c584e9-3fa4-412c-ac12-53e32517ce19.png">
This is the most questionable usage I found, and it’s referring to fash/reactionaries.
That’s not the main point though, the bigger issue was getting called a ‘degenerate’ that’s pretty much a red flag that someone’s a cryptofash.
citing db0 on this one: <img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/45a0a1fa-a570-4301-be8c-30364a9caa81.png">
compare the use of the term on shit vs hexbear: sh.itjust.works/search?q=degenerate&type=All&list…
hexbear.net/search?q=degenerate&type=All&listingT…
While looking I found this one on hexbear 5 years ago, almost 90 upvotes shitting on stalin for criminalizing homosexuality, and quoting him calling someone degenerate. I read this as extremely critical of Stalin:
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/a0d19ac0-2d5e-449a-8ea5-de7feb0bf869.png">
All the usage on hexbear I see is either self-deprecating or discussing (negatively) about people using the term.
meanwhile on meanwhile on grad:
hmmm, calling people degenerates and complaining about commies, progressives and furries. <img alt="thonk" src="https://lemmy.ml/api/v3/image_proxy?url=https%3A%2F%2Fhexbear.net%2Fpictrs%2Fimage%2F922fe80d-74f6-43b6-a4e1-c74dbc4df512.png">
Goat seems fine with replies calling people he doesn’t like degenerates:
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/3a9a73ec-7816-4bc8-b9cd-9b573ad55f1e.png"> more examples:
On the shit main community someone deleted their posts after getting called out for this behavior, this is a known issue:
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/9eb13fc1-d66f-48c2-b49a-b959a96e2bf9.png">
‘degenerate tankie roaches’
site admin calls it out, entirely downvoted lol
Like you might think I’m being melodramatic, but I really don’t see how meanwhileongrad isn’t a nazi bar.
I really hope you re-assess both sides, because they are not equivalent.
I understand, there’s plenty of problematic posters to go around, the issue I have is that it’s normalized calling an instance which is overwhelmingly trans and queer ‘degenerates’, that’s a major red flag, and it’s behavior like that which was why hexbear defederated shit in the first place.
sh.it doesn’t seem to have improved in that time
Thank you for the detailed answer. I’m going to be honest, I don’t have the time to check all of this, and being insulted here in the last few days (lemmy.ml/modlog/14810) doesn’t really incite me to keep coming back to this thread (I made an exception for Jet as he didn’t have access to the other thread on SJW)
I summarized my view on the whole thing in this comment: lemmy.ml/post/35392790/20764278
Coming back to the Piefed default blocking list, I investigated more, here is what an admin setting up an instance experience is like (wetshav.ing/comment/92409)
I agree it should be improved to make it fully optional, but it’s still acceptable for now. I guess we disagree on that, and that’s fine, hopefully one day the change will be made.
I did say as much in my post, it’s still an ideologically motivated preset. I’m sure all those sorts would be able to create their echo chamber without it being pre-configured for them. It’s hard to have ‘good faith’ when all the usual suspects plus its developer are posting in the comm alongside the people saying that we’re degenerate roaches. That’s why it looks like a Nazi bar from where I’m at.
True, and I disagree with them having it.
Piefed is still a cool software, and I think having a diversity of threadiverse softwares is a good thing. Stuff like flairs and polls are nice to have.
I don’t disagree, they have nice features and I hope that results in those features eventually spilling over to similar improvements in lemmy. If it wasn’t for the ideological crusade some people are on I wouldn’t care at all.
A lot of the promotion of it has been along the lines of ‘fuck those tankie degenerates, come use piefed’, an example of which I included here
Omg dude we get it stop spamming this. We know. That is not what this is about.
If someone runs an instance that has manually unblocked us cool but that is not what this is about and you are clearly the one not registering what I am pointing out here
You are presenting this like the baked in code forces one-way federation, when it’s clear that the admins can update this later.
Example of two Piefed instances that currently federate hexbear:
List of Piefed instances that currently defederate hexbear:
piefed.fediverse.observer/list
As you can see, instances defederating hexbear are instances managed by teams which were going to do so anyway, as they already did on Lemmy.
Instances who want to federate know how to do so, there are three examples.
Yes but I am saying we should block at least any that have this one directional federation. You are putting impressive effort into missing the point.
Edit: And thankfully we apparently just did.
Oh my god please shut the fuck up. No it is not. You are being an annoying pedantic little piece of shit you do get that right? You fucking know what I am complaining about here and you keep posting this “welll AAAACKSHUALLLLLY”.
Let me spell this out for you one last fucking time:
“federation” in spirit is the sharing of content BETWEEN instances and is intended as a two way affair. Piefed instances default to blocking any and all traffic from hexbear or lemmygrad and thus there is no way to know if being federated with those instances is actually allowing mutual communication unless tested and therefore without explicit prior statement that the instance owner has gone in and removed the malicious coding nobody should federate with them at all.
Finally and what this entire post is about: I am calling for everyone, not just hexbear, to defederate and block piefed on principle because their devs are deliberately trying to worsen the entire concept of the fediverse by trying to enforce their fascist ideology through blocking dissent through their code.
It is underhanded and dishonest and a shameful display of liberalism aiding fascism.
There is, I linked to the /instances pages that show which instances are federated or not above
You seem to be misunderstanding that defederation being one way is new. I literally used a comment from another hexbear user above clarifying this.
If you want to complain about Piefed having a default defederation list, feel free, but don’t start to question the way defederation has been working between instances for years.
.
Then call it like this instead of pretending that Piefed’s implementation of defederation isn’t standard.
.
The behavior you demonstrate here is exactly why hexbear is so widely blocked, and it makes it difficult for those of us trying to keep the infrastructure less opinionated when this is how you behave when you have a legitimate grievance
Another example that got moderated: lemmy.zip/modlog?userId=1633475
I see them all, as a admin voyager shows me removed comments in place. I’m surprised the earlier messages didn’t also get purged, they deserved to be
Where is that code? Does it block some specific instances or how does it work?
For hexbear + lemmygrad it’s by default
from what I can tell, when a server is spun up there’s the option to subscribe to an existing blocklist on a piefed server.
This means blocklists can propagate transitively:
If instance A blocks lemmy.ml, and instance B subscribes to A’s blocklist, and instance C subscribes to B’s blocklist, then whatever instance is blocked on A will also end up blocked on C (unless filtered out manually).
quoting the developer of piefed, hexbear and lemmygrad are blocked by default:
This is why piefed is so popular with centrist extremists.
Thanks. That’s unfortunate. But everyone running an instance will know about blocked instances sooner or later and can get them if the list of they like.
The blocklist subscription would be super useful on mastodon but I think the threadiverse is a bit different. However I’m on my single user instance and am subscribed to communities on other instances only, so I already get a pre-moderated experience even if I don’t block any instances myself so far so is experience doesn’t match that of the admin of an instance with more users and own communities.
Piefed just seems like it’s going to be a social chauvanist echo chamber, most people like Lemmy because even though the devs have their own ideological principles, it doesn’t pre-configure the user experience based on those principles.
Does it not have that slur filter still? Not sure that’s really the reason people use lemmy
I don’t think the slur filter is something enabled by default, or if it is, is a widely known setting.
It used to be hard coded, not even in the database but in Lemmy code itself and couldn’t be changed without forking. If I read the issue github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/622 correct, this has changed though.
Ah, gotcha.
The slur filter was one of the most genius moves I’ve ever seen.
I think it’s a bit heavy handed and there are legit reasons why one wouldn’t want it, but it certainly repelled the right type of potential Lemmy admins
It’s rather unfortunate that no one gets to see other perspectives. And it’s messing with my hope that the USA can get better, because it’s feels like this: lemmygrad.ml/post/8939607
These people are willing to accept the “lesser evil,” but it’s the same evil, and they are condemning poor people and PoC to have to deal with it, because we’re the buffer. But they won’t stop at us.
Moreover, this is the censorship they screen bloody murder about with the “great firewall.” Absolutely zero introspective
abilityeffort.It’s deeply unfortunate, that’s why I try to do the best I can to stay optimistic but realistic.
Well collective karma is real, and they think by throwing some into the volcano it won’t erupt. But the volcano is going to do what it does, eventually.
I hope so.
🫂
🫂
Harcoded block lists in your software? Gross.
Bruv, OP asks ‘What’s your stance on Genocide?’ and then refers to Ukraine and China rather than Israel, that’s bad enough, but then the PieFed guy replies with that ‘they ban speech which minimises atrocities committed by Hamas in Gaza’! Sheesh.
That’s a known social chauvanist powermod, one of the fediverse’s loudest anti-communists and Israel defenders while vaguely posturing as a leftist.
“wow switching to piefed cured my Havana syndrome”:
<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/62987d8f-3bad-4b13-a754-6fd028c579c2.png">
I think it’s annoying, but im not sure if there’s a clear solution. Id say this type of one sided block is similar to ghost bans and feels just as abusive.
I cant imagine it’s very pleasant on their side either, since it would feel as if everyone from grad or ml were giving you the cold shoulder and make the fediverse feel dead.
The nature of the fediverse is open though - escalating this to another ban/block or banning the custom fork would be counterproductive, imo. If thats their preferred way to curate content, I guess thats their prerogative
I have removed the piefed instances that did not unblock hexbear from our allow-list to prevent the one way federation
Awesome thank you. <img alt="rat-salute" src="https://hexbear.net/pictrs/image/94bcb899-8542-45fb-9dd7-b4a49a944346.png">
Absolutely deserved tbh
Nah, pre-censoring leftists is a great way to make a chauvanistic echo chamber.
“Leftists”
Yes.
Isn’t this how it’s always worked? I think it’s the same with lemmy.world where you can see comments from .world users on Lemmygrad but they can’t see your replies.
Can you point to the file in the pieced codeberg repo that hardcodes these blocks?
I need to understand if this is a block built into the software, or just an option the operators who deploy piefed have set in a blocklist.
It’s a default option: codeberg.org/rimu/pyfedi/src/commit/…/cli.py#L116
Admins can obviously edit it later on, like those instances do:
Thanks for pointing that out.
That level of opinion in core infrastructure software is very inappropriate. This is disturbing
It would be better to default to dynamically pull from feediseer
That can definitely be improved. On the other hand,
List of Piefed instances that currently defederate hexbear:
piefed.fediverse.observer/list
As you can see, instances defederating hexbear are instances managed by teams which were going to do so anyway, as they already did on Lemmy. I’m still waiting for an example of an instance that defederated hexbear “by mistake”.
Instances who want to federate know how to do so, as we’ve seen above.
Setting up an instance isn’t trivial, assuming that admins would revise the defederation list doesn’t seem realistic.
Recent comment from an admin
wetshav.ing/comment/92409
Now you’re talking past me.
The issue is not that there is an option, the issue is not that there is even a suggested option.
The issue is a writer of core infrastructure software is putting their prejudices into the software as a default that have to be opted out of. That is antithetical to federation. That is pushing an agenda. That has no place in core infrastructure software.
Imagine if the Linux kernel by default, hard coded, blocked all IP addresses connecting to China, anybody could go in and remove those blocks, but they’re there by default… Infrastructure should not have political opinions baked into it
We can go back and forth about wither this has had a material impact. That’s not actually important. What it demonstrates is this software project is not mature yet. They still have too many emotional biases baked in.
I half expected them to have the Lemy.lol block baked in, thankfully they didn’t, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if they did.
As I said above,
What I expect down the line is that there will be a (y/n) option during setup that will allow admins to choose.
As of now, it’s not a priority, there is bigger fish to fry. Piefed 1.2 is around the corner (codeberg.org/rimu/pyfedi/projects/19472 ), with many improvements that have been required for a while (e.g. communities and username autocompletion)
Let’s also not forget that for years Lemmy had a built-in, activated by default slur filter impacting all users, people still used Lemmy even with that in place.
I don’t know, this level of what about ism feels like an attack on a very real and legitimate issue
Absolutely I agree that pie feed does great things, and they’re updating, but 100% this is a real legitimate issue. And it needs to be addressed.
Given this is the only place I have found this discussion happening in a productive way, we shouldn’t sidetrack it.
Basically we’re talking about the lead developer maturing and removing their opinions. It takes almost zero effort to code that, but it might take a lifetime of effort for them to come to that position.
I understand other commenters frustrations with your counters, it feels like a dismissal, this is a real problem affecting real users today and they have legitimate grievance. If they want to organize, that is very reasonable.
Let me just reach out to the admin I quoted above. I’m not sure about the details of what they had to do during setup, maybe it’s even easier that we thought.
There is this post as well: hackertalks.com/post/15572214?scrollToComments=tr…
Comment from Rimu there: hackertalks.com/post/15572214/10757273
Other commenters also state that changing those settings requires to fork the project, when it’s just a settings modification
lemmy.zip/post/47272125/21126381
Frustration goes both ways
Edit: I did, I just pinged you there: hackertalks.com/post/15572214/10761436
Thank you for providing links on my home instance, that is very considerate of you
I don’t think it matters how easy it is to opt out, the fact that a political opinion is the default is the problem.
A fork is appropriate, to remove the political opinion, it can follow the other project with the modification to the block list.
This comment implies that admins need to create a fork to modify the federation list. This is incorrect, it’s a configuration change.
For instance I use pipe pipe which is a fork of new pipe plus sponsor block, because the new pipe developers decided sponsor block wasn’t good philosophically
If new pipe gets an update, pipe pipe updates, and it rolls through a couple hours later. No big deal.
Indeed, I agree with what you are saying, but the quoted comment is still incorrect. A fork is not required to change the configuration of the federation list.
A fork could be made later following what you just said, but that’s not what was being said in the quoted comment.
I have no interest in debating your quoted comment from above. I’m as an individual saying a fork makes sense to get around the strong political opinions of the developer.
All good then, see you around
Lots of people made a fuss about it, which is the reason we eventually removed it from the defaults.
I’ll edit the comment, along the lines of ‘people were still using Lemmy even with that in place’
edit: done