This morning while checking if Quokk.au's new instance logo was federated out, I discovered that overnight we had been shadowbanned from the PieFed.Social Instance Chooser (This is a tool to help spread out users across the platform and help avoid funnelling users into the largest.)
Knowing that Rimu was happy to explain, I just asked for some clarification as we were visible on every other PieFed instance except his.
Apparently for ' obvious reasons ', of which I can only assume is our left leaning anarchist/pro-trans stance we were chosen not be advertised on the PieFed flagship instance and first point of contact for many potential new users. Seeing as a large portion of our new users found us via this method, it will have a tangible effect on a small instance such as ours.
This was a pretty sad sight to see, and reflects the sort of petty drama that is emanating from the PieFed project lately. It's now the third such move to discredit and harm left leaning instances by PieFed's lead developer. This also shows a trend towards autocratic unilateral decision-making on Piefed.social, of which is starting to be run as a personal fiefdom without consulting the team or users.
I must commend Lemmy.ml for remaining neutral and not letting its own political leanings influence [despite what they do with their instance itself] join-lemmy.org, while simultaneously condemn PieFed.social for this immature move that is harmful to the health of the Fediverse.
Following this exchange, Rimu announced a new update to PieFed allowing for some rather concerning things.
- Modlog: Reason for the action is only shown from trusted instances, so abusive mods won't have an audience. Admins can still see the reason though. Which instances are trusted is set in the admin UI.
This feature means problematic users can now go undetected, and will harm moderators ability to view their past moderation history. For example PieFed.social runs a 'trusted' list of only 34 instances, meaning any mod action taken by any of the hundreds of instances outside of this will not show up. So for example if Quokk.au was to ban a user for transphobia (our most common ban), this will not be reflected for piefed.social users potentially leading towards more hate speech on the Fediverse.
- Instance silencing similar to Mastodon. A silenced instance is not defederated from but their posts do not show in the Popular or All feeds and their communities are not shown in Starter packs aka Topics. Their communities can still be found in the communities list and joined in the normal way. Once joined, posts in there show up in the subscribed feed as usual.
This is another way to shadowban instances and not 'advertise' them. Surely if an instance is problematic enough that a defederation would be in order rather than this reddit-like move.
OC writeup by @Quokka@quokk.au
3 times already? Only knew about one, about hardcoding banning communist instances at engine level, which afaik requires admins from other instances to fiddle with settings if they don't want to go the same way.
Kinda odd, since centralized decisions without much of a saying of those affected is the modus operandi I'd expect of communism. Almost feels like I'm seeing a dispute for power unfold.
If it keeps going that way, the best I can say is "everyone is free to do whatever they want, but no one is free of the consequences of their actions".
Nothing hardcoded about it. This is all editable in the UI by any admin for their instance, no code editing required.
didn't he add that UI because they were hardcoded and people complained? the same with penalizing upvotes on memes?
This stuff with the instance chooser was never hardcoded, and was added to the codebase 8 months ago. It has always been an option that any admin can prevent other instances of their choosing from appearing in their own instance's version of the instance chooser.
The meme stuff was added to the admin UI 10 months ago. Back then, piefed basically only consisted of piefed.social and a couple other very small instances. So, as the software grew, and different kinds of users/instances have been using the project, those have been made optional (off by default) and editable. I am the one that made those settings optional, and I got zero pushback from rimu about it. In many cases where I have made the piefed codebase less opinionated, it is usually a relic of when piefed was basically a single-instance project and it was intentionally pretty experimental.
Thank you for this comment.
Interestingly enough, that's valid for both sides of the situation. Had the dbzer0 admins directly reversed the ban calling Rimu a Zionist, that whole thing would have been avoided.
https://piefed.zip/post/1470832#comment_5164740
You mean the thing they offered to do?
The thing they were ignored about and never engaged in conversation with?
Quokka, is your instance defederated from the troika? If so, why?
Edit: if not, why did you choose piefed?
The troika?
I chose PieFed as I can read and understand Python, allowing me to edit the code and maintain the software. I originally ran Lemmy, but found even editing text to be highly confusing and stretched across multiple files for the most minimal of changes.
Lol. 2/3 blocked, question met with silence. But don't punch left.
Hey so I had to leave for work, and am now on my morning tea break.
You’ve already seen, but we are federated with .ml.
We are defederated with HexBear due to concerns over trolling and harassment of our users. And grad is grad.
As anarchists that’s punching up not left. We don’t consider MLs to the left of us 🤭 Hope that’s cleared up your concerns.
You're kidding yourself. You're reactionary af.
Would you like me to introduce you to some anarchist theory? It might help you understand what we value and what we don’t.
No, I outgrew it when cognitive dissonance broke through from the subconscious to consciousness.
It’s okay, I understand it can be a struggle for some people to naturally want to do good without being forced by the state.
Lemmygrad, .ml, *hexbear. Thanks for answering the part you can. I understand.