Excuse me while I go donate even more money to PieFed
PieFed dev here.
The screenshotted post is very misleading. As you’d expect from a hexbearian. It is not a baked-in ban.
Hexbear is mentioned in the PieFed source code, as an initial default value for the defederation list. That list is quite long and includes various instances that have been a source of trolls, CSAM and spam in the past (mostly Mastodon instances). As part of the normal setup process it is assumed that instance admins will review that list and alter it as they see fit. They can change it any time by going to instance.tld/admin/federation.
Do not take anything a hexbearian says at face value.
That’s exactly what this is, an initial defed list. Even the way they present this is disingenous as fuck, calling it a “one way federation, silencing our voices” or some other weird phrasing, making it sound like some underhanded/hidden hardcoded piece just for them, when it’s just a boring-ass defederation with one instance among many others. How difficult is it to say “piefed software defederates hexbear by default”? Everyone knows what that fucking means!
I honestly don’t understand why everything has to be taken so goddamn uncharitably by the regulars on that instance. It blows my mind how they manage to always act in bad faith. Always.
I honestly don’t understand why everything has to be taken so goddamn uncharitably by the regulars on that instance. It blows my mind how they manage to always act in bad faith. Always.
It’s pretty straightforward, imo, they built a feedback loop into their instance culture that encouraged social dopamine junkies to participate in toxic behaviors, valuing things like “dunking”, othering, and dehumanizing the out group (non-hexies) over things like factuality, good faith, and not being dicks.
Thank you for jumping in.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but this also wouldn’t mean “one way federation” right? There would just be no synching at all.
I’m not sure what they mean by that. But v1.2, to be released very soon, has strengthened the effectiveness of defederation so pretty soon hexbear will see even less PieFed content. They’ll twist that into something bad too.
They defederated now anyway
I assume if you are on instance A and post something on instance B, your instance doesn’t federate with hexbear but instance B does, then you will not see the comments from the hexbear user through your instance? Not certain if that is how it works or not though.
Maybe you should bake it in then. Maybe you are not going far enough…
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That’s not at all what the above comment says.
It’s crazy how that happened. Just…fully read something different.
Sometimes I think even with telepathy people would find a way to miscommunicate.
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When you read worse than ChatGPT 3.5
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we need a fediverse-wide boycott of hexbear
And lemmyml
less so but yeah they’re pretty toxic
Nah lemmyml is quite valuable. Mayhaps you thinkest of grad.
I wouldn’t go that far. If everyone moved off of lemmyml people would be forced to find different communities or create new ones.
Go big or go home
Not sure I dig baking it into the code, that starts walking into the broken by design space. Feasibly the tankies developing Lemmy could do the same to any instance not painted the right shade of red.
I might propose instead a step in setup, or on demand, to select major instances to allow/deny federation from with a description of them. Impossible to keep a list of every new instance up to date, but catching the major hubs shouldn’t be impossible.
Edit: For all those who replied along the lines of it being optional not a hard coded block, point noted. I should expect no less misleading a post from a pool of people prone to leaving out vital facts.
My understanding as it being an opt-out default defederation is still a bit grating since I tend to think of software as a neutral tool rather than promoting specific ideals, but it’s far better than a fixed in state and does serve some purpose to shield new users from some of the most egregiously bad actors.
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Sane defaults make self-hosting approachable.
I think it would be amazing if lemmyml blocked everyone
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I might propose instead a step in setup, or on demand, to select major instances to allow/deny federation from
This is exactly how it works. I started a PieFed instance and made the decision (during setup) to trim the defederation list down to none. Users can block on the account level.
One of the main reasons I dont self host anything from the fediverse is because I dont want to monitor for abusive material.
Seems like the defed list is mostly known sources of abusive imagery.
Hello,
Just to confirm, what did you exactly have to do to trim the defederation list during setup? Did you just use instance.tld/instances or did you do it differently?
If I remember correctly, I was presented with a text box pre-populated with the list of bad guys. I just selected them all with Ctrl-A and hit delete.
Thank you!
I’m on my computer now, so I’ll type out some more detail if you’re interested. To reiterate, I’m just going off memory and it was two weeks ago so I could very well be making stuff up…
The pre-filled input box asked for each blocked instance to go on a new line, so:
lemmy.world lemmy.ml lemmygrad.ml hexbear.net lemmy.zip piefed.social etc...I deleted all of the defaults and that was it. I’ll put a screenshot of the settings page that’s available to admins below:
Even better, thanks
Agreed on the risk of having baked-in bans, though alternatively, maybe using the already available tool, per-instance defederation would be better. Or also as Lemmy allows, users defederating from instances they’d rather avoid.
Or also as Lemmy allows, users defederating from instances they’d rather avoid.
Lemmy does not do this, the devs implemented an incredibly broken block system that is nothing more than mute. Suspected to be done this way intentionally.
On an instance level, it does not block an instances’ users at all
On a per-user level, blocked users can still fully interact with your comments and posts, you just can’t see it. What’s more damning is that ActivityPubs spec’d block does do a proper block, but dessalines chose to roll their own broken system.
In both cases, it’s akin to this “one-way” federation they bring up.
The only true way to block an instance, is for an instance admin to fully defederate.
On a per-user level, blocked users can still fully interact with your comments and posts, you just can’t see it.
What’s wrong with that? The alternative is how Reddit lets spam bots and misinformation block the replies calling them out.
While there are certainly some cons, block should mean block. If user A blocks user B, they should not be able to see each other, period
That makes sense on a closed forum like Facebook or Instagram where its your own page and you can block people from seeing it, but I don’t know if you should be allowed to post misinformation or spam or snake oil on a public forum and then prevent that public from seeing anything in the comments that might contradict you. The room for abuse outweighs the potential benefits in my view.
post misinformation or spam or snake oil on a public forum and then prevent that public from seeing anything in the comments that might contradict you
That’s what instance admins and comm mods are for
Anything less than full blocking leaves a much bigger room for harassment.
If a bad faith user has blocked people who might be critical of their misinformation or poor behaviour, there’d be no-one to alert the moderators.
Someone tested the consequences of this type of blocking on Reddit.
The cons are pretty bad imo. It’s common on Reddit now for people to get into an argument, reply and then immediately block to prevent a response and make it look like that person didn’t care to respond. If someone is a poweruser and responsible for a meaningful portion of posts and spawned comment threads in a community, they can use the block function to strategically limit the ability of certain other users to participate, since a blocked person can not only not reply to them but also can’t reply to anyone else further down a thread. This effect is worse in smaller subs, it’s basically soft moderation powers granted just by blocking and writing things that generate engagement. And when this is happening, by its nature it is hard to even tell it’s happening.
Separating the communities from the users makes sense in some contexts, like blocking all of the communities of a NSFW type instance without blocking all their users. But there should be a additional option for users to block all the users of an instance without needing to do each one individually.
Actually, the ap spec warns servers not to deliver blocks to other servers, since those could be used to detect who blocked who. This was ignored by mastodon.
Pixelfed had the same blocking behavior as Lemmy.I dunno if you were talking about instance block, but a much more functional one has been merged and will ship with Lemmy 1.0.
You might want to take a look at this comment from a dev
It’s just a default block on grad and hex when creating a new instance which can be toggled off. Keep coming crying with your ALTs Tankies no one wants to deal with your incessant propaganda.
Fediverse wide
Do they think they have influence beyond the ML instances?
think
There is the error in the logic.
It’s exhausting wasting effort on those that put none in.
Based.
The only thing better than this was Nutomic whining that he needs more donations to feed his family (he literally said this) but absolutely refusing to just ask Dessalines to chill the fuck out with the tankie censorship shit.
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I mean I think that is a bad and unhealthy idea. If piefed.social, world or a particular instance wants to set it up that way then go ahead, sure, but I do think it should be up to the admin using the software to decide which servers this should or shouldn’t apply to rather than what sounds like an opt-out scheme. I mean sure go ahead, code how you like, who am I to judge, but I’m only saying it in consideration of best practices.
If HB runs into the silly issue again that almost lost them their domain (and temporarily switched to chapo.chat), this code will be a maintenance burden just because of the developer’s specific grudge.
I’m saying this as a user happy about the fact that my instance defederated hexbear and lemmygrad, there are cool communities there, but they are an insufferable bunch.
I believe they further clarified that there are specific default filter sets that can be loaded when a new piefed instance is created, not that they are literally removed in code.
Here’s the comments discussing it:
centrist extremists
can’t make that shit up…
Those are the liberals (the definition of a centrist imo, as opposed to a progressive who is the first notch on the left) who will gladly work across the aisle with a fascist to preserve democracy.
I actually lol-ed at that
If I don’t make it back, tell my wife… Hello.
It’s up there with vibe learning
Haha based as fuck.
Why bother with the 1 way federation, though?
So your users can go on their instance, I guess? That’s not a great reason. Cut them off or don’t.
Agreed, there is no good reason for a one way federation with a trash instance.
Even if the idea is that they have communities that aren’t horrible, the taint is strong enough that the same communities should just be promoted on non/less shitty instances.
I think it’s the other way around, actually. It sounds like hex users are actually receiving posts from outside but it’s their own content that is being blocked
IMO, it’s not great regardless of which direction it’s going. Fuck ML’ers, but it isn’t really necessary to create one-way engagement with them.
If they decided to block the other direction, I’d be fine with that.
What gets me is that their users are so smug. It’s really off-putting.
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That’s also how Lemmy defederation and user blocking works FYI so it’s not unique to PieFed
That’s also exactly how dessalines built Lemmy’s “block” system for both users and instance blocks
I remember way back when world was still federated with most of the triad. Hexbear honestly has no one but themselves to blame. With nothing of value to offer. But cycles of revenge and retribution are hardly helpful.
They got their asses rightfully kicked to the curb for brigading. I have zero sympathy for them in this situation. But this is still disappointing behavior on the part of @rimu@piefed.social and makes me a bit more reluctant to recommended piefed to others etc. Even though .world outright blocks hex anyways. I hope it gets addressed sooner rather than later. Because I “REALLY” like the experience so far on piefed. And would like to see it prosper. Even though this will be a bit of a blemish on the project. That’s nothing compared to Lemmy and its devs.
Have a dialogue front and center to opt in to blocking the whole triad when setting up the software. Nothing wrong with that at all. But yeah, please don’t stirr up the dumbass’s nest. They’re better off being irrelevant and largely ignored. Even if it’s funny ironically for this to happen to them. It’s just more pointless drama.
Example of two Piefed instances that currently federate hexbear:
- https://piefed.zip/instances?page=9&filter=federated&search=
- https://piefed.au/instances?page=6&filter=federated&search=
- https://anarchist.nexus/instances?page=4&filter=federated&search= , which is related to https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/, also federated with hexbear
List of Piefed instances that currently defederate hexbear:
- https://piefed.blahaj.zone/ , the same way https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/ does
- https://piefed.world/, the same way https://lemmy.world/ does
- https://piefed.ca/, the same way https://lemmy.ca/ does
- https://feddit.online/, the same way https://fedia.io/ does (by the way, Fedia isn’t a software, it’s called Mbin, and doesn’t have such code, so not sure why you’re including them into your title)
- https://quokk.au/, it used to be the same when it was still a Lemmy instance
- https://piefed.europe.pub/, the same way https://europe.pub/ does
https://piefed.fediverse.observer/list
As you can see, instances defederating hexbear are instances managed by teams which were going to do so anyway, as they already did on Lemmy.
Instances who want to federate know how to do so, there are three examples.
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I can’t see any content from Hexbear looking from Piefed.social. So how would I go about harassing hexbear users?
And to me that’s fucking hilarious. Those slimy little trolls will finally get a taste of their own medicine.
Fuck Hexbear, and fuck tankies. They’ve tortured and harassed me for pointing out their hypocrisy. I wish them the absolute worst.
How do they harass users or communities they can’t see?
the one-way federation isn’t a block, it’s encouragement for users of piefed to go and harass hexbear out of revenge
This is exactly how defederation works on Lemmy itself, until the other instance also defederates to complete the circuit
this is nothing more than @rimu@piefed.social weaponizing the platform,
You mean like Lemmy devs weaponize Lemmy? Don’t you find it the slightest bit odd that all the features that could be used against them - blocking, robust voting systems, robust modlog, good mod tools - are conveniently implemented poorly, not implemented at all or outright “downgraded”?
but it should be our choice, not the choice of an admin from another instance.
How does an admin of another instance make that choice for you? If instance A starts going crazy on the blocklist, then Instance B can choose to no longer subscribe to As blocklist
Nah.
I have this weird feeling that piefed and world are corporate try to go back to centralised social media. Just paranoid.
maybe a fork is possible. blocking hexbear is one thing, but it should be our choice, not the choice of an admin from another instance
Piefed.zip managed to federate just fine
By becoming paternalistic, the engine starts becoming what it criticizes. It’s better if users themselves can choose what they want / don’t want to see.
If a user wants to see that, they are free to make an account on the triad themselves, admins should not have to platform their toxicity and misinformation.
And it’s also toxic to user uptake in general, a Threadiverse veteran will know what to block, a brand new user on the cusp of breaking from Big Tech social media won’t. They’ll see that crap and bail, then go on to talk about how they “tried that threadiverse stuff and found a whole bunch of pro-Russia/DPRK simps”
Still, baked into the engine, it doesn’t have a healthy prospect. If someone ill intended is involved, he/she can use such an instance as a distraction to set a precedent and narrow further and further what people can and can’t see. And when those that would previously applause it notice the problem, it has the risk of being too late.
At the end of the day though. It isn’t the instances themselves which are actually the problem. Rather the people on them. We can rightfully rail against them all day long as much as we want. And they do give us plenty daily to point out all their flaws.
It also won’t change the fact that many of them can and already have set up shop on other servers as well. Even if you blocked every domain ending in ML. That type isn’t going away. If anything those instances do quite a bit to contain/expose them.
The problem with defaulting a software to cut them off. Is akin to those trying to legislate morality. When morality is legislated, no one is moral. Because there is no choice or consent. Likewise a “boycott” entered into without knowledge and consent, isn’t really a “boycott”. Can we beat them by becoming like them? I’m not so sure.
Example of two Piefed instances that currently federate hexbear:
- https://piefed.zip/instances?page=9&filter=federated&search=
- https://piefed.au/instances?page=6&filter=federated&search=
- https://anarchist.nexus/instances?page=4&filter=federated&search= , which is related to https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/, also federated with hexbear
List of Piefed instances that currently defederate hexbear:
- https://piefed.blahaj.zone/ , the same way https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/ does
- https://piefed.world/, the same way https://lemmy.world/ does
- https://piefed.ca/, the same way https://lemmy.ca/ does
- https://feddit.online/, the same way https://fedia.io/ does (by the way, Fedia isn’t a software, it’s called Mbin, and doesn’t have such code, so not sure why you’re including them into your title)
- https://quokk.au/, it used to be the same when it was still a Lemmy instance
- https://piefed.europe.pub/, the same way https://europe.pub/ does
https://piefed.fediverse.observer/list
As you can see, instances defederating hexbear are instances managed by teams which were going to do so anyway, as they already did on Lemmy.
Instances who want to federate know how to do so, there are three examples.
I think that is only partially true
Social media tends toward extremes and it takes man hours to do moderation. Instead of continuously banning hexbear users it would be better to just ban the instance.
I don’t like that, even as a person who chose my instance because it defederated from them.
From my understanding, it’s just a switch that defaults to “On” an instance admin can toggle off during setup or later
Yes, that’s right.
The screenshot characterizes it as a hardcoded thing, implying that it cannot be altered through the UI. This is not the case.
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This is incorrect as stated in a comment below
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All of this is incorrect.
http://piefed.social/comment/6970001
Hexbear and lemmygrad will always be blocked and PieFed is coded to block them by default on all new instances (admins can change it). No plans to defederate lemmy.ml as I’ve built mod tools that help me find the most odious users & banned them and now it’s tolerable. lemy.lol is blocked because of it’s fascist logo. That’s about it.
(admins can change it).
If you can’t toggle it, then your setup is busted in some way
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Gonna maybe go back and note that in your previous initial response so you’re not misleading people with your misinformation?
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You lost the chance to slowly convert into zalgo text as this progressed
It just works.
I don’t follow this meme terribly well as I don’t know the context.
I hate to learn that there is trouble in the social media that has saved me from corporatocracy and technocracy bullying.
I don’t know a hexbear from a hex
Am I missing something? Aside from the “baked in” claim, how is this different from defeds on Lemmy? It’s always one way, ie the instance that defeds can’t see content from the other instance, but the target instance can still see them.
It is indeed the same, some comments in that thread make it look like some people discovered defederation today
Ok, that’s what I thought. Which is funny because I learned how it works after learning that hex admins (generally) defed mutually to avoid a one way issue, exactly like they’re freaking out about here.
Blocking an instance in lemmy, just stops direct communication between the two instances. However it does not stop you from seeing their comments or posts on third instances.
So for example you would be able to read this comment, even if lemmy.ca would have blocked slrpnk.net, because we are on sh.itjust.works. In Piefed you would not.
I’m pretty sure that’s not how it works. Even on communities from another instance, I don’t see anything from defederated users.
*A quick rough search and I found this post (https://lemmy.ca/post/49536847) (apologies for the content, it’s just an example). It’s absolutely flooded with hex users “contributions”, but I see none of that.
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Hi antiyank! Back with another fresh troll account I see lol
Nothin but a lil troll
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Account created 10 minutes ago
Checks out
basically forced your political opinions on naive actors
Kinda like how the lemmy devs ban people from communities they don’t even run for having different political opinions?
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Oh, it’s rage bait
Not even ragebait, just a particularly insane and deranged individual with thousands of accounts.
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