the funny thing is that the list was populated through an AI dragnet, so many people who were on that list (like myself) not only had never heard of this guy, but never even used that instance of the fediverse. It was based purely on post history and keywords, not personal interactions. That's why everyone on it was wearing inclusion as kind of "Badge of Honor" because it meant we were the types of people that would tick off a fascist.
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2026
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Long story short:
A snowflake created a frontend for lemmy in which they added a hidden blacklist of communities, people and even words that were shadowbanned for everyone using it without informing first, so if you used it, you'd be seeing a censored version of the fediverse based solely on one person's opinion about what you should be seeing there.
Some smart people discovered this and the community didn't take it too well for how it was made (in particular, how it was not optional but forced on the user).
The dev of the frontend wasn't happy about it and ragequitted with a letter in which they basically say that we are all mad here (except them) and that the fediverse can't be saved because we are all pissed about this (as if they were our one and only saviour or some crap).
Edit: forgot to add: of course, the people and communities targeted on the ban were, coincidentally, lgbtq or allies and you know, anything that would piss a fascist.
Don't forget they also have some code that tried to ddos db0 instance as well for anyone visiting it the rant page.
Yes
For anybody who doesn't know what a front end is, the job of the front end is generally to take data from the back end and present it to the user. So for the fediverse, a front end might be the web page or app. The back end is the actual instance where you made your user.
Lots of front ends do filtering, but at the explicit instruction of the user. It's better to do it on the back end if you can because it's wasteful to send data to the front end only to throw it away. But there is a place for front end filtering, just not in secret.
So in this case, a person who used tesseract as well as, say, a lemmy web page interface, would probably expect to see the same data in both places, but the tesseract front end would actually be hiding a lot of stuff.
I wonder if I was on the list
I'm sure a link will pop up in the comments somewhere.
Okay. It sounded like he sucked but I'm glad I now know how much.
Does this have something to do with the OCR software?
No, thank goodness.
What is Tesseract?
Tesseract was a free and open source frontend to Lemmy. Basically, the logic of your instance is handled by Lemmy, but you can replace the look of it, or even give your users multiple options, by adding a frontend.
Key here is that it is reasonable to expect a frontend to present the information from the backend correctly and completely. If you want to filter out communities or people, you would do this by joining the right instance, changing the settings in your client, blocking people you don't like, and subscribing to communities you do like.
And if he really wanted to have a filter in his frontend, it should have been opt-in, not opt-out.
So once db0 (admin of Lemmy.dbzer0.com, who the dev previously clashed with [1]) found and exposed the existence of this filter, which is practically a secret blacklist of every user the dev found annoying.
We've been clowning on the dev ever since.
As an addendum, the dev crashed out and seemingly closed his instance (dubvee DOT org), leaving a goodbye rant. All well and good, but he embedded a bit of JavaScript that basically queries lemmy.dbzer0.com 1500 times whenever you open dubvee! Hence why I'm not putting the dubvee URL, and please don't go there at least for your own safety.
What is the list?
The list is an obfuscated blacklist. Now if he just blocked lots of people from dubvee, we wouldn't bat an eye. However, he added a practically secret blacklist of users and instances (full transparency: both my instance and my username were both blocked, I'm pretty sure my instance is the "instance-that-will-not-be-named" in his rant). Like it's open source so you literally can find it, but you had to query his server to get it I think.
The developer claimed that this was to "save" the Fediverse from "toxicity". And yeah, obviously, there were some pretty toxic users on that list. But honestly...it was really just people who were active and ever posted anything to the left or right of Reagan, although it was dominated by leftists. In particular, a few trans instances were banned.
Why do people want to be on it?
Because it's really really funny 😆
[1] So my home instance (Anarchist Nexus) is part of the Anarchist Flotilla with dbzer0, basically we roll together and we share admins. One of the admins on Anarchist Nexus put "Death to Zionists" in their display name. Unfortunately for the turbolibs at Lemmy.world, this was too unfathomably based for them, so they threatened to defederate from Anarchist Nexus. Plus, a lot of politically outspoken users come from the Nexus and dbzer0, i.e. we were some of the exact people the Tesseract dev wanted to "save" the Fediverse from.
Not just that, but he also blacklisted a lot of instances that were not batshit insane^1^ enough. Lots of users were even included. He went so far to put up individual regex blocks against thousands of users, me included 😂
It's practically a badge of honour if you're on that list. It tells you that you're too chill for hatred.
^1^ The opposite of sane, such as 'buying' a Steam game while it's not on sale, giving the already rich more money, or opposing LGBTQ+ rights while being found at a gay orgy (only illegal because of the noise) and escaping by pipe. See also: József Szájer.)
Also targeted the LGBT+ community for having the audacity to be willing to talk shit right back to the people who want to kill us.
Literally targeted the admin of Blahaj, and blamed them not "policing" their community more. What a joke.
Wow, what a little bitchbaby they were.
Fortunately, they were too unstable to be competent to get their political ends.
We'd be fucked if there were competent fascists. Fortunately, being fascist generally means you're short on competency and make up for it with strongmanism.
Yeah me too, my instance got put on there and I personally earned a regex 😆
I made the list so proud and not surprised sure I am on a lot of lists.
Double plus good!
I'm so confused, I never posted anything controversial, popular, or interesting. Why did they add me?
they think you are gay.
propogaynda
Maybe you offended him by using an emoji or talking about the police. (Both real blocklist items)
I haven't used emojis but now that you mention it it sounds like a good idea 🤠
Well damn. That guy sucks.
it's a ban/censor list and folks are mad they aren't on it because it means they aren't important enough in the fediverse to be banned.
It's an alternative skin/user interface that fediverse instances can offer users. It turns out to have an internal blocklist of instances, communities, users, and keywords that it will silently hide. Some (e.g. child abuse) are understandable. Others (e.g. specific usernames) are less so.
Some people are upset they are on the list; some that they are not on the list. But most are upset that a list exists in the first place.
We’re not upset that some guy has a block list, or even that he was sharing it.
We’re upset that he did everything possible to hide that he was pushing his block list on unsuspecting users.
That’s just straight malware, and when confronted, he resorted to vandalism.
I'm loving that people want to be on this guy's list. He sounds like a bit of a child.
Is there a listing of the list? I want to see if I made it.
The tesseract code repository is no longer public, but someone else made a copy of the blacklist file: https://drive.proton.me/urls/F12YB7W52C#27AP8fGZ2xdp
Damn. I'm sad that I didn't make it.
Did anyone notice that they filtered "fucks kids", "Epstein class", and "zionists murderers"? This dev could be an agent. The list had so much on it that I can't even imagine how watered down that viewing must be.
This is hilarious. I had no idea any of this was goin on til just now, and I'm apparently also on the list. No idea what I might have done to annoy this person lmao
Boo. Not on there. I feel left out.
Ah you're not alone... bummer.
You'd think my rfk junior impersonations would mean something but nooooo...
No standards these people. Such a shame.
Yesssss I'm there
Fuckheads don't like me <3
Hmm.. I guess I'm a normie. I shall inform my wife.