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
lemmy.zip was the nearest similar comm? This could have been put in an instance that is involved with the dispute, many of them have Fediverse communities.
Putting aside the irony of cross-posting a thread about the potentially ideologically inspired muting of smaller instances by Piefed to draw attention to lemmy.ml's potentially heavy-handed censorship and bias harming the growth of the Lemmy-verse - it looks less like "vitilizing" and more like fragmenting discussion.
More ironic still is that if I see one of your posts now it means that I'll probably go look at ml to see the actual discussion and hear more from the OP. Perhaps posting original content might go further to achieve your goals?
I'm deprioritizing posting to PieFed.social comms for the moment, the next nearest was PieFed.social
The Threadiverse is inherently fragmented, what one person sees from one instance could be wildly different from what another on a different one sees.
You could be a ani.social user and think you're participating with .ml, but you're actually not because .ml defederated ani.social...for reasons apparently. Or maybe a user is on one of many instances that defed hex and grad or even one that does the whole triad. Or perhaps a user got tired of them and blocked the instance themselves or a boycott participating user. Or one of many many people banned in some form or another. (I could go on forever lol)
I do that too with heavy frequency, usually from my lemy.lol account these days because now that it's an admin account, it's been removed from the crossposting rotation.
Hell, some of the things Ive crossposted I genuinely enjoyed and started posting it on my own, like !gunnerkrigg@lemmy.cafe (one day your cross-posting and the next you're starting at chapter 1 of a 101 chapter comic series ๐ญ) or The Devils Panties webcomic I post on !comics@lemmy.blahaj.zone