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 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.
Owned for using the anticommunist lemmy lmao 
I dont really understand how less transparency can be better. I guess I get seeing a wall of "you have been banned" notifications can be stressful, but I'd rather know than not know. This also sounds like it makes the modlog pretty useless if you are an average user? Or it at least also games its transparency. Unfortunate decisions that bring more questions than answers.
Well it's not supposed to be helpful. It's for shadow banning.
It's the passive-aggressive way. Avoid confrontation and dodge accountability as long as possible
it's just mods doing mod things, they aren't doing it for the wellbeing of anyone but themselves
there's a medium belligerent type of malicious user who will get bored and wander off if they're shadowbanned and don't get any engagement with their bullshit. if they care enough to check the site signed out then they'll figure out the ruse of course.
the mods at piefed believe every single hexbear user to be one of those "medium belligerent type of malicious user". This has and will be used against average leftists who say anything critical, which is perceived by reactionaries and liberals as "belligerent malevolence"
true but i don't think shadowbans are effective against a wide front like us and the tankie pentad that also includes anarchists somehow, and the infiltration of .world's admins.
Before it became an internet slur, I always heard "tankie" as a term used by anarchists to draw critical attention to the use of tanks against the inconveniently rebellious workers of Soviet states by their governments. Weird to apply it to anarchists as well, who say what you will, very rarely find themselves controlling tanks.
It was originally trots using the term and they're Marxists that call themselves communist so they are simultaneously frequent users and targets of the term.
CPGB had a schism over the suppressing of the hungarian colour revolution
it was a british thing specifically about the hungarian colour revolution, then it was more broadly anti-state, now liberals took it and it means "someone enough to my left that i feel insecure" or "someone to my left who is criticising western hegemony"