Bye
You crazies won and proved me wrong. The fediverse isn't worth saving after all.
Over the course of the last several days, I have received a constant stream of harassing messages, death threats, and threats of doxxing over DM, Matrix, Github, and Codeberg. All of it instigated and eggged on by another instance's top admin. This is unacceptable for all of the reasons in the world, and while I won't give you the personal satisfaction of having won, you've definitely proven me wrong about the fediverse being something that even can be saved from itself.
Even people around here I'd interacted with positively for years and had grown to respect because they seemed level headed and above the immature and sociopathic bullshit that dominates this platform showed their true selves. That completely shattered any and all illusions I had that this place has a hidden core of users that I should try to make more visible amongst all the rage, rage baiting, propaganda, harassment, rumor mongering, trolls, conspiracies, purity testing, and violent rhetoric.
Like many of the rational people before me who called this place home, I'm done with this place.
I tried to carve out a space where those people and other rougher edges were not drowning out niche communities and hobbies and where people who choose to use the platform to harass others were also out of sight, out of mind. Apparently only three people who aren't me actually want a place that's not just a circle-jerk of rage and hate. Thus sayeth the mob.
Then you have entire instances whose admins call for the death of others, harass other users, and lead harassment, brigading, and DARVO campaigns against those who dare call out their bullshit or decide to disassociate themselves and their work from them.
Lemmy.World was so close to doing the right thing after instance-that-will-not-be named's admins were calling for the death of LW's admins while spreading rumours and labeling others in such a way that painted them as targets for murder. All of that, mind you, with absoultey no evidence other than specuation and their own cooked-up conspiracies about modlog actions or taking and twisting things wildly out of context to fit their made-up narratives so they had someone to say they 'caught' and should be killed.
.world was on the precipice of doing the right thing and disaccociating themselves from that psychotic shit show, but silently dropped the issue and carried on as usual after wringing their hands for maybe two weeks.
"We have to worry about the optics or the politics of it." they probably said.
Bullshit.
I'm one person and have held my fucking ground, mostly with dignity and grace, in the heat of my own shitstorm of trying to disaccociate from the extremist elements of the fediverse. If I can stand up for what's right and deal with the blowback, so can you.
Fuck lemmy world's admin team for condoning that behavior and letting the human skidmark db0 DARVO his way out of the situation while brigading with his army of malcontents whom he wields like a cult leader. He knows exactly what he is doing, and you all continue to allow him to get away with it.
Nah, fuck this whole place. I've let too many things fall by the wayside IRL because of dealing with all this fediverse bullshit and trying to give it the slightest bit of polish both visually and atmospherically. Mythbusters may have proven that you can, in fact, polish a turd, but at the end of the day, it's still a shiny ball of shit.
For the few people left who didn't turn out to be psychotic, I'll think of you from time to time when recalling something you've posted or commented that genuinely made me laugh, made me think, or otherwise put a smile on my face or in my heart.
Everyone else, though, enjoy your toxic, xenophobic, knee-jerk-to-violence, purity-testing, and harassing-anyone-who-doesn't-fall-in-line cess pit. One day you, too, will do or say something that doesn't toe the line and you'll be right where I am.
P.S. Rimu, you owe me a beer. No one is talking about the Piefed vote quotas anymore, so you're welcome.
EDIT: forgot to add:
EDIT2:
Removed the link to the original message because the douche included a Javascript on the page to DDOS Dbzero0
You can call it that if you prefer, does it make a difference? As the saying goes, "first they come for tankies...". Moreover, the blocklist covers pretty much the entire political spectrum, except exactly Rimu's beliefs (classic liberal, strongly pro-state, anti-Brexit, etc. etc.). Like, I invite people to just follow the link you gracefully provided and explore for themselves. It's not just Nazis or transphobes, it is all things left and right, WikiLeaks (without a stated reason) and more.
Last time I checked, the interface doesn't allow to just remove the whole blocklist in a click of a button. Removing 4000+ entries one by one is a very, very questionable endeavor. Moreover, such things must be opt-in, not opt-out. Does ~~Microsoft~~ Rimu understand consent?
I agree with you that people should take a look at the block list for themselves. Personally, I have no issue with anything on there being blocked by default. You obviously do. We are never going to agree on that.
That doesn't matter. It's still not the same thing, and it is NOT Rimu forcing his political views on unsuspecting users on the fediverse. You are ignoring the target of the two lists.
Tesseract: Targets unsuspecting users. List is hidden. It's applied blindly to every user of every instance, in secret, and is truely not disableable. It was designed to be secret, which is why it presented as a network error, and was so heavily obfuscated.
Piefed: Targets instance admins. List is open source. Is applied ONCE when the instance is set up, and is EASILY disabled. I'm sorry but if your admin cannot run a simple SQL command
DELETE FROM domain, then they have no business managing a public facing instance. The same goes for them not checking the default values that are configured by set up scripts, which is ultimately all this is.When you pick an instance, you are accepting that instance's political leanings whether you like it or not. Even if your admin decides nothing is taboo, everything is unblocked, go ham: 1st - that's free speech absolutism, which is a political stance, 2nd - enjoy your cesspit. It should be part of your research when choosing an instance, as this is the point that you are opting-in
I chose piefed.social knowing that Rimu and I are largely politically aligned, and did so because I was tired of the shit that my old instance was allowing. You're making it sound like he's quietly silencing voices he doesn't like, when in reality, all he's doing is giving instance admins a jumping off point to cut out the worst of the extremism and propaganda from both ends of the political spectrum. I'll say it again for the people in the back. There is nothing underhanded in what Rimu is doing, it is NOT AT ALL comparable to the Tesseract situation, and suggesting that it is, is disingenuous.
Most people found out about the blocklists existence when shit has already hit the fan, and Rimu got to stand his ground. In this sense, it was the same rude awakening.
My point (and largely that of Lemmy) is not that filter lists are bad. Plenty of instances benefit from them, whether it's a safe space or just something tailored to make your experience better. The point is, they must be applied on the instance and/or user level. Not some messiah dev who decides what all PieFed instances serve to their users, especially not when such dev simply uses it to project his political opinions on a larger part of the Fediverse. People manipulating public opinion and cutting their access to information is everything Fediverse stands against, and this is why it caused such a backlash.
PieFed already did offer user choice: I remember registering to one of the instances (piefed.zip if I recall correctly) and being offered, as a user, to remove things like Musk and Trump posts etc. This is a good approach, as it empowers the user to tailor their feed. But what choice does user have now, when major instances have this baked in list? None.
It's also an absolutely unnecessary and unwelcome headache for admins. Instead of opting in to whatever admins deem essential, they have to clear the thing of whatever Rimu's up to next. Standing up for this mess is like saying "Microsoft ain't that bad, you can remove most of the telemetry and forced apps by clicking switches here, here, and here, and changing these registry keys". You shouldn't have to jump through these hoops in the first place, this is hostile development.
You aligning with Rimu politically contributes significantly to the tolerance of such behavior, because it doesn't largely affect you...yet. But consider this: plenty of people who want to make this place and the world at large better are being shut up by the dev who thinks he knows better. He uses his position as a developer to make choices for all PieFed users. Instead of giving admins the choice, he hardcodes his personal choices (not only blocklists, but also vote limiting and other things that are not as easily removed) into software used by thousands of people, many of which disagree. Does this align with you?
I can only speak for myself, but no, I knew about it when I signed up. You'll notice that most of the fediverse is talking about Tesseract, not piefed. That's because most people that look into the piefed thing, largely go "Eh, not actually that big a deal."
Thankfully, this isn't at all what is happening. This is where you're being disingenuous. You either grossly misunderstanding, or maliciously misrepresenting what is actually happening, and what that block list represents. It is a prefilled set of defaults. Nothing more.
The same one they've always had, the single greatest thing about the fediverse is and always has been: There is always another instance. There are several spin offs of piefed, kbin, lemmy, and you can even use things like Mastodon if you like. You do not need to use piefed. No one is forcing you. You have choice.
No, it's not. I have already said that it is a sane (to most people) starting point for admins that don't want to house extremism.
Its a 3 word SQL query. Let's just be realistic about how hostile it actually is, but even so, we're not talking about targeted advertising here. It's only hostile if you happen to want content that is in the default block list, which, again, is open and available. So understand that the following statement is directed at people that want the specific content from the list as it stands today, allowed on their instances, en masse. A) fuck you. B) I'm perfectly happy being hostile to those types. See A).
On the contrary, I am on piefed.social, so I am subject to it now. I find it makes for a much more pleasant fediverse experience. If I am ever negatively affected, by trying to post to something on the block list: First off, it's pretty obvious why my content is being blocked, unlike tesseract, and if I REALLY disagree with it, I would have several options for recourse. Again, the list is open source. Find something on there that shouldn't be? Open a ticket and make a case. Doesn't go your way, and you truely believe you're being censored? Like I said, there is always another instance.
NOTHING on that list makes the world a better place. NOBODY is being shut up by Rimu. As for the other stuff, yes, obviously that aligns with me, otherwise I wouldn't still be on piefed. The thing is, you are not owed a say in how his software is developed. How he runs his instance, and what he decides to include in the software that runs that instance, is really up to him. He has graciously put the sourcecode up so you can make your own copy where YOUR word is law, but you are trying to villify him for putting up a fence around his home, because you feel some kind of way about not being allowed to piss on his lawn.
I feel like we're not really getting anywhere here, so I'm going to suggest we agree to disagree. I don't think there's anything on that list that doesn't deserve to be there, and I don't think it's in any way being forced on anyone. I think it's a largely benign, and helpful preset to make setting up a nice instance a little bit less onerous. You very clearly disagree. That's your right. Godspeed
Only because Tesseract drama is more recent. People were showing their anger all over the place when both blocklists and vote limits were implemented. A drama there was arguably bigger than the current one.
Defaults is something that is easily changed through the same avenue as all the other settings, and comes from technical necessity. This is a deliberate attempt to manipulate visibility of content on the Fediverse, strongarming the dev position.
For all I know, there is exactly one PieFed instance cleared of this, quokk.au. For that, they had to fork the project, because not all of the changes are as easily reversed as the blocklist. For ideological reasons, plenty of users would rather avoid it, and so boom - they're out of options. Most PieFed instances wouldn't be able to maintain a forked project by themselves.
Did you consider the Fediverse demographic? I wouldn't say most people here necessarily share Rimu's points, and his attempts to bulldoze it in favor of his views are rightfully seen as a deliberate attack. He uses his power to project his view on a community which, at large, doesn't stand for the same values.
You still try to build equality between your (and Rimu's) views and sanity. Plenty here would disagree.
Which only admins can manage. And let's not forget the blocklist is not the only controversial decision. As I already mentioned, some require forking the project outright, and it's a giant mess. Admins do not know what to expect of Rimu next, either.
And this is the gist of it that I was trying to highlight to you. As long as you align in views with Rimu, you don't see it as that much of a problem. But remember this can be turned against you the second you don't agree on something. Shutting people up always ends up poorly, especially for those supporting it. Don't be surprised when it happens.
And that's why such list should exist. The problematic difference is not the existence of the blocklist, it's the fact it's forced upon everyone. A perfect option is making a block list opt-in on a user level. You want to cut out whatever you find unpleasant about the Fediverse? Power to you, here's a list, just agree to use it and enjoy the same amazing experience. But if you want to see something Rimu doesn't approve of, you'd rather be able to. Let's not willfully give up user freedom to the whims of random people.
That's a...heavily opinionated take. To provide a politically neutral example, how did WikiLeaks make it into the list? Did it not do any good, forcing accountability and opening up human rights violations, genocide, and more? There's so much more to unpack about the list, but it will inevitably result in us going through polarizing political opinions, and, as you mentioned, it won't get us anywhere.
And if there is one, single take I want you to carry from this conversation: supporting censorship and giving someone to decide what other people can see always ends up very badly, even if that censorship (for now) aligns with your views. People fall for this trap over and over, and never seem to learn.
Farewell.