Cross posted here as it was highlighted that the individual is a lead Lemmy developer, raising serious concerns about the direction of Lemmy, a leading Fediverse platform, and the impact on future user adoption.
Hi
There have been some rather concerning actions taken by an admin of the !privacy@lemmy.ml community, dessalines@lemmy.ml. Based on recent moderation decisions and a complete lack of communication, it seems like their account may have been compromised, or even more concerning if these actions are deliberate.
- Erroneous Rule 4 Enforcement, First Instance: a guide posted to !privacy@lemmy.ml, despite receiving many positive votes and comments, was removed under Rule 4:
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
However, this post was a guide and not a question, so Rule 4 does not apply. Attempts were made to reach out for clarification but there has been no response, despite their account showing recent activity.
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Erroneous Rule 4 Enforcement, Second Instance: an on-topic informational video also posted to !privacy@lemmy.ml, despite also receiving many positive votes, was again removed under Rule 4. This post was again not asking a question, so again Rule 4 does not apply. Again, no explanation has been given.
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User Bans in Completely Unrelated Communities: user bans of over a month have been applied for not only !privacy@lemmy.ml but several completely unrelated communities:
- !emacs@lemmy.ml
- !personalfinance@lemmy.ml
- !linux@lemmy.ml
- !lemmy_support@lemmy.ml
- !opensource@lemmy.ml
- !india@lemmy.ml
- !asklemmy@lemmy.ml
- !steam@lemmy.ml
- !linux_gaming@lemmy.ml
- !degoogle@lemmy.ml
- !libre_software@lemmy.ml
This is especially concerning given that the above posts have no relation to these communities, and no recent activity has been made in any of them, meaning none of their rules could have been broken. Moreover, a public track record of positive contributions across Lemmy has been established, with many positive votes and comments received over a sustained period. Given all of this, the bans appear to be highly disproportionate, only adding to the growing concerns around moderation practices.
- Repost with Disclaimer Removed: a repost of the guide, despite a disclaimer explaining the original removal appears to be in error and that attempts to contact the admin have failed, despite again receiving many positive votes and constructive comments, was once again removed. Again, no explanation has been given.
Given all of this, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that something is not right. Mistakes in moderation happen but the complete lack of communication, the disproportionate actions, and the ongoing bans from unrelated communities raise serious concerns. It seems as though the account is most likely compromised, or even more concerning if these actions are deliberate.
Has anyone else experienced similar issues with this admin, or does anyone have more insight into what might be happening?
TL;DR: Admin dessalines@lemmy.ml of !privacy@lemmy.ml appears to be making seriously concerning moderation decisions, including erroneous enforcement of Rule 4 in at least two separate instances, failing to respond to messages, and applying user bans in completely unrelated communities despite a long track record of positive contributions across Lemmy. This has led to speculation that their account is likely compromised, or even more concerning if these actions are deliberate.
Any thoughts or similar experiences would be appreciated.
Cross post with https://lemmy.world/post/43944126
This is literally how he always acts. There's a reason that many instances do not federate with lemmy.ml, his instance.
He's incredibly pro communist, pro Russia, pro China, and will ban you for even mentioning that something could be foreign propaganda.
At the end of the day, hopefully your instance builds their server code from source and inspects it to make sure there's nothing nefarious. It would be nice to use a decentralized Reddit like platform not coded by him, but no one else has the time, resources, ability, and/or dedication, to step up.
I would still rather use Lemmy over Reddit, though I did switch to donating to piefed, the Canadian instance runners, over donating to him.
You literally mentioned piefed in your next sentence.
Mbin also exists...
Also, to be fair, the software isn't necessarily problematic like the moderation is. No point throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Worth noting that Lemmy receives at least some institutional funding for its development. And I believe some of that funding is contingent on hitting active user goals or similar metrics.
Power tripping people rarely limit themselves to power trip on a single angle.
And while Lemmy's open source, it's a big enough codebase for someone to add a bit of admin override that can go unnoticed for quite a while. Just remember what happened with xz.
Sure, but we allow people to power trip by giving them power in the first place. People choose to use Lemmy and participate in lemmy.ml, directly or indirectly; that gives the maintainers and admins power.
Now, I don't see eye to eye with the tankie crowd. That's fine, whatever. But I can still appreciate the creation of Lemmy as an open software project.
Ultimately FOSS gives us agency. I don't feel that the creators of Lemmy have any power over me personally. They're not very significant, but I do appreciate their project.
I moved onto piefed when the lemmy instance I was on shut down, and I don't regret it at all. It's a solid choice and promotes options in the threadiverse.
What's xz?
A utility package for Linux that MANY packages depend on, often including core distro/system packages. It implements LZMA de/compression. Meaning it would come pre-installed on many, many distros.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor
Tbf Piefed also does have opinionated moderation literally hardcoded into the source code.
It's pretty easy to modify since it's python and not rust, but still not great
In b4 discussion of what constitutes hardcoding
Ok what opinionated moderation?
There were a few, not exaustive since it's been a few months since I looked through the source code, some of this might have changed and there's also a few other checks that I'm forgetting:
Edit: the other thing is, a lot of this hardcoded moderation isn't documented anywhere outside of the code, likely because a lot of the measures would be useless if people knew how they worked
Edit 2: updated based on Blaze's reply from another comment, I misremembered the shadow banning, I was confusing it with the federation errors that occur when one user blocks another
There are some disabled by default, filters built into piefed. That the main Dev uses on their instance. It's not really even remotely the same thing or as controversial. But it's the closest thing piefed has and gets brought up regularly because of it.
Honestly I would consider [user-obscured] hardcoded ~~shadow~~banning just as bad.
Just because I'm closer to agreeing with the PieFed dev's opinions a little bit more doesn't mean that I'd support ~~shadow~~banning someone because the trivially-evaded checks caught a false positive in the crossfire. Piefed's auto moderation/social scoring is pretty much textbook definition security-by-obscurity. The second anyone knows how it works, it's useless. It will pretty much exclusively catch people who just wanted to post a harmless meme or something.
At least (for now) Dessalines isn't hardcoding his tankie beliefs into Lemmy's source code.
Edit: Blaze is right, it isn't shadowbanning, but the rest of my point still stands, added the [] part to clarify
Piefed is known to incorporate CCP-style shadow profile and similar measures, such as "Social Credit", so it'd be hilarious to complain about l.ml's alignment to then migrate to piefed of all places.
no matter how many times you illusionary truth effect this, piefed users won't be getting mortgages on using antislop abuse.
Why lemmy & dessalines depend on slop is beyond the topic of this crywolf 🧵 ╮(︶▽︶)╭
PieFed and Mbin don't share any code with Lemmy at all, they're in totally different programming languages
Piefed isn't the canadian instance runners, you're thinking of fedecan