According to Rimu Atkinson, the main developer of PieFed, all PieFed instances come with a 3000-long block list of resources that cannot be linked to. These include all sorts of right-wing outlets. There is no easy opt-out, forcing existing instances to follow the blocklist.
The flagship PieFed instance also rolled out a feature marking various other sorts of outlets - among them, resources considered AI slop and Marxist outlets. These are specific to piefed.social.
Related discussion: https://piefed.social/comment/11254679
Why YSK: Many users have hard time choosing between Lemmy, PieFed, and Kbin/Mbin. Users that prefer a more curated and politically uniform experience might prefer PieFed over the alternatives. Users that are right-wing, Marxist, or generally concerned about global censorship of the Fedi-/Threadiverse, might opt for other options instead.
Note: The post is only meant to inform users of the potentially important differences between Threadiverse platforms. Any ideologically charged discussions are better left in the respective topic.
It was only about 15 years ago that censorship was an extreme taboo on the internet. I miss those times deeply.
ACTUALLY IT’S ABOUT ETHICS IN GAMING JOURNALISM
Yeah… I don’t miss it the slightest. It was so bad that Breadtube came to be in reaction to it.
It isn’t censorship though? Just as much as people have the right to speak, others have the right to not have to listen. The beauty of the fediverse is that literally everyone has the right to say what they want, you can join a new instance or make your own but if you start saying stuff that people don’t want to listen to then they can’t be forced to listen.
This isn’t an instance with a block list though. He’s putting it in the software the instance runs, without an opt-out option (besides forking).
So what? Its open source software and subject to what the developer wants. Don’t like it then fork it, remove the offending blocks and run your own, literally exactly the same freedoms offered. There is absolutely nothing wrong with not wanting to platform people.
There isn’t a problem, until it’s blocking what you want. I don’t trust all people. If all the users are informed, then fine. This isn’t that. This is trying to by tricky about it. It’s an attempt to control information that he doesn’t like (including leftist information) without clearly saying what’s happening. That’s not OK. It’s fine if you consent. It’s shady trying to sneak it through.
I still can’t find a reason to say it is censorship or sneaky. Isnt the point that it highlights the sources? In which case it isn’t really hiding it. And if you decide you don’t like it then just leave and go elsewhere. I don’t really see a reason why a creator of something has a requirement to be apolitical or make their feelings known. People complain a lot about .ml and lemmy’s creator. Never understood why, nobody is forcing you to participate and stay instead of going elsewhere - and I say that as somebody who was on .ml during the exodus then saw everyone defederating.
I guess i very much see it as creative freedom, it isn’t doing anything malicious and my understanding is that it does expose these blocks to the user when encountered?
Here’s a question: how many users do you think are aware of this? Were you aware of this before the post? If the answer to those is not very high and/or no, it’s not being forward with what it’s doing. If the creator sees it as a feature users would like, and not trying to be sneaky, why wouldn’t they proudly display it?
I don’t use piefed so no, of course I didn’t know or have seen it. And it doesn’t need to be malicious, i would have zero issues morally in suppressing or warning about links to stormfront or infowars and would think nothing of it - the line that somebody draws for themselves is personal and it seems the person making piefed has decided what they think is appropriate for them and their userbase.
censorship is when the state does it. Not when individual people decide to program their own open source project in a specific way.
I miss when fascists stayed on stormfront and left everyone else the fuck alone; and if they ventured outside, everyone hated them until they left.
We made the internet too easy to use…
I mean, we could fuck off to tor and see what boards they have there. I don’t want to be used as an exit node for random highly illegal bullshit
There is no easy opt-out, forcing existing instances to follow the blocklist.
Totally good-faith summary. Great work.
Thanks for the hint, I am gonna update my DNS to block the sites from the list as well.
Users that are right-wing, Marxist, or generally concerned about global censorship of the Fedi-/Threadiverse, might opt for other options instead.
Based. Fuck accelerationists and fuck nazis.
And you know what, censorship is a problem. But at the moment, the choking permeation of authoritarians is worse, and the authoritarians could use some of their own fucking medicine for a bit until shit calms down.
I’m glad you approve of the world as it is right now and hate anything that makes positive change, but leave that to your little echo chamber known as THE ENTIRE PUBLIC INTERNET, and maybe don’t invade left wing spaces with it?
as soon as the authoritarians leave the left wing spaces, sure.
Define authoritarian in any way that includes what you have been brainwashed to believe is an ‘authoritarian’ country, but excludes any country you believe isn’t authoritarian.
Marxists are not “accelerationists” btw.
🥸 : Hello fellow leftists in democratic countries with increasing support for fascist aligned parties. Let’s all demonize and vote against the current center left candidates who are the most likely to beat back the authoritarians! Please ignore that I am in no way attempting to engage in any grassroots empowerment of third parties and their eventual path towards replacing the not ideal center left party in your country. Also, my preferred Marxist Lenninist Communist Theorist Authoritarian Left party recieved 4 votes out of a possible trillion last election, but I have a good feeling about this election! Please ignore that my IP address is from Timbuktu, Minsk or Guangdong, and that I get paid to post here 10 hours a day by the FSB/CCP/something else. Only when the current mainstream party is gone, can we replace it with my own hyperspecfic vision of society rebuilt from the ground up on the ashes of the current society. Don’t worry about feeding yourself during this horrible violent phase of our lives, it is necessary to move onto FULLY AUTOMATED LUXURY SPACE COMMUNISM.
Anyone who disagrees is a hyperzionist child eater.
You’re an enlightened centrist, who the fuck cares about your lazy copypasta.
your mum loves it and I’m not a centrist.
You’re against everyone progressive, and supposedly against anyone right-wing despite spending hundreds of comments defending the right…
the authoritarians could use some of their own fucking medicine for a bit
Funny how often this is the way it goes. Almost as if the label of “authoritarian” is essentially meaningless.
Other than the suppression of right-wing, counter-revolutionary views and movements (which you seem to approve of), what exactly is your problem with Marxism?
Marxists are not “accelerationists” btw.
Funny how often this is the way it goes. Almost as if the label of “authoritarian” is essentially meaningless.
Other than the suppression of right-wing, counter-revolutionary views and movements (which you seem to approve of), what exactly is your problem with Marxism?
Marxists are not “accelerationists” btw.
🥸 : Hello fellow leftists in democratic countries with increasing support for fascist aligned parties. Let’s all demonize and vote against the current center left candidates who are the most likely to beat back the authoritarians! Please ignore that I am in no way attempting to engage in any grassroots empowerment of third parties and their eventual path towards replacing the not ideal center left party in your country. Also, my preferred Marxist Lenninist Communist Theorist Authoritarian Left party recieved 4 votes out of a possible trillion last election, but I have a good feeling about this election! Please ignore that my IP address is from Timbuktu, Minsk or Guangdong, and that I get paid to post here 10 hours a day by the FSB/CCP/something else. Only when the current mainstream party is gone, can we replace it with my own hyperspecfic vision of society rebuilt from the ground up on the ashes of the current society. Don’t worry about feeding yourself during this horrible violent phase of our lives, it is necessary to move onto FULLY AUTOMATED LUXURY SPACE COMMUNISM.
Anyone who disagrees is a hyperzionist child eater.
Right-wingers: I think we should spread hate speech towards minorities
Marxists: Fuck that, you shouldn’t be allowed to do that, we shouldn’t be tolerant of intolerance
Liberals/you: How dare you evil Marxists be intolerant and suppress free speech, you shouldn’t be allowed to spread those ideas
I should be the one posting about the “Paradox of Tolerance,” because you clearly don’t understand it.
The rest of your comment is just unhinged conspiracy theory shit.
you: How dare you evil Marxists be intolerant and suppress free speech, you shouldn’t be allowed to spread those ideas
Literally where did that come from? That completely opposes the entire content of their post.
The part where they’re arguing for Marxists to be censored so that “authoritarians” get a taste of “their own” medicine.
The rest of your comment is just unhinged conspiracy theory shit.
I’d comment about that’s how .ml operates, but that’s where you’re posting from, so we all know what’s up.
Is there any possible evidence that could falsify your belief that I’m secretly a foreign agent?
Is there any reason to believe that the FSB/CCP have a greater influence over English language discussions than the NSA does? How do I know you’re not getting paid off by them?
But what’s the point in trying to reason with a conspiracy theorist? Your beliefs have no basis on either evidence or reason so there’s no way to change them that way, any more than you could a flat-earther’s.
I don’t give a shit, I said my piece.
We really need an alternative to Lemmy and piefed for the threadiverse.
So join a different instance or deploy your own server. We don’t need a third alternative. All are interconnected via ActivityPub, so you can choose what blocks you want, who you want to federate with, etc.
If you’re choosing to sign up on someone’s instance you’re choosing to agree to how they’re managing it.
That’s frankly why I like Lemmy.zip, the only time they’ve defederated is for a technical issue was was causing the servers to crash. Beyond that, I’m treated like an adult capable of making my own choices of which instances I want to block or interact with.
Since you proclaim to be a Leftist, what’s wrong with Lemmy?
People are not children who need child locks put on their internet.
Except it seems like we do since these platforms have propagandized an entire generation towards far right ideologies.
Mbin exists, but it never seems to get as much attention :/
Neither Lemmy nor PieFed puts locks on anything, other than what an instance’s admins choose to put on them. One might try to argue that PieFed’s optional default blocklist is a bridge too far, but that’s about it.
what are the differences? i signed up with this instance but am still learning.
Piefed is a fork of Lemmy I believe, and has a bit more features, but by and large the two are the same. Just different interfaces overall, and some different communities.
Piefed isn’t a fork of Lemmy, it’s completely independent code. They just speak the same language.
so they’re both hosts that serve and share content using the same protocol?
Yes they are completely different front and backends but they use the same protocol (ActivityPub).
Same backend, different frontend
gotcha. thx.
No they are different backends, they just use the same protocol.
Teseraract, Photon, and Mlmym are different frontends for Lemmy.
PieFed has completely separate frontend and backend code from Lemmy’s code.
the list for the curious. I don’t mind if rimu wants to maintain a default blocklist, if I maintained my own fediverse app I would probably make something similar, based on my own preferences, to cut down on the mod work. If you want your piefed instance to allow botfarm produce, disable the blocklist or just fork it and live your dream.
For those who really like the idea of blocking the sites on that list, the linked github repo also has it formatted for pihole and the like.
Dang I gotta show Rimu the American owned Canadian blight known as Post Media. Everything they own should be on there.
I scrolled the list until about the P, at which point I accidentally tapped on the top portion of my screen and went all the way back up.
Notably the block list includes Harry Potter affiliated sites, Fox News, and Info Wars.
Everything else pretty much just looks like slop or are sources I’ve NEVER heard of. Some were local papers, I think? But none that I would have recognized immediately.
This really seems like a mountain made out of a molehill.
Pravada’s domains were on there which is one I was looking for. I didn’t see South China Morning Post on the list, which is unfortunate; otherwise though, I think it’s a solid list.
It will be an absolute nightmare keeping it up, given how quickly bad-faith actors are setting up fake local and regional news outlets.
It’s a molehill that’s threatening to become a mountain. I wouldn’t trust I always agree with this person.
Why block InfoWars? Tim Heidecker is a treasure.
/s
There are tons of spam factories that pose as local newspapers. The first one that comes to mind is the Denver Guardian, which gained brief notoriety during Trump’s rise to power. But there are a million of them, probably literally. They are easy to make and they are easy to launder through social media bot networks.
most of those fake local ‘news’ farms are spouting far-right or extremist views.
Yeah, I saw some sources for a city local to me, but they didn’t match for our actual local paper or papers.
Which was weird.
That explains a lot.
This really seems like a mountain made out of a molehill.
unless you are interested in spreading the same kind of ideas that are on those sites, like IDK, CCP propaganda, or far right deals, or transphobia.
The fact that it includes wikileaks tells me everything I need to know.
Remember when they didn’t release the rnc emails they hacked, but did release the dnc’s? Tell me why that is you think. Be honest with yourself.
No I don’t, would you mind linking a citation on this claim?
When did the definition of misinformation expand to include saying true things? Should we block the Epstein files from being posted because only part of them has been released?
It enters the realm of mis-, even disinformation when true statements that contradict a narrative are actively repressed.
Selective truth can easily be a lie.
What is and isn’t selective depends on your perspective. You’re moving into the question of what counts as relevant and important, which is inherently ideological.
If country A launches a missile at country B, then it’s probably relevant if country B launched a missile yesterday, which would frame country A as retaliating. But if country A launched a missile a week ago, do you also include that? What about actions from a year or more ago? What about inflammatory rhetoric, or broken promises? What about differences in military might, or economic interests like oil?
Every source has to make decisions about what to include and what not to include, and there’s no objective basis to do so. To try to apply the label of “misinformation” in that context is just censoring narratives and perspectives that are out of line with your own.
I could easily point out the biased reporting of The New York Times on various issues like Palestine or trans people (which in several cases have gone into overt misinformation). But I’d rather be able to see and discuss that source while understanding what it’s biases are, rather than writing it off completely and potentially missing out on actual information. You don’t just block every source you disagree with.
Sometimes I feel like liberals fundamentally misunderstand how sources work, sorting them into “good” or “bad” and leaving no room for nuance. Sources can be reliable about one thing but not another, and there’s no such thing as a source with no bias.
I notice you didn’t answer the question.
I notice you haven’t apologized for removing the people calling out bad faith users on .world but didn’t remove the people spreading misinfo about the people calling out bad faith users.
Because it doesn’t matter.
A source that provides exclusive, true information about politicians, but that also has a political bias, is not something that should be blocked outright as though it were misinformation. Otherwise you’d have to block just about every source.
I mean, hell. I sometimes watch John Oliver despite disagreeing with some of his politics and considering him to present a biased or incomplete picture of certain subjects, because I sometimes learn about true things I would not have otherwise been informed about. I’ll criticize him, but I’m not going to call for him to be blocked, especially not in the code like this.
At a certain point, you’re just censoring proven facts, just on the basis of who said them.
Yes, because Fox News is known for their facts. (No one mention the court case.)
Who was talking about Fox News? I thought we were discussing WikiLeaks.
Any source on this?
That it recognizes Russian state media as Conservative disinformation and propaganda? Yeah, me too.
Who is rimu
He’s the maintainer for piefed.
Why does he post on powertrippingbastards or is that a different rimu
Dunno. I think it’s the same guy.
At this point, the difference between right wing and left wing polititics is simply that right wing politics is all about a single strong fascist billionaire leader who makes sure only his buddies get richer, and left wing politics is that we all have a nice life.
Many people actually prefer nthe former because only the former supports selfishness, and discrimination on race, sexuality, and whatnot, while the latter doesn’t.
That literally nis the difference between the two. If you are rightwing, I will presume you’re racist, sexist, and selfish.
This is should be considered an utterly absurd sentiment; and for the sake of fairness and good will no leftist should ever condone having this sort of perspective.
Which is why it hurts me so fucking bad to agree. Modern rightwing is utterly broken and evil. It feeds off of primitive instincts, unsuppressed intrusive thoughts, greed and prejudice.
“We may disagree with eachother, but at the end of they day, what we all really want is what’s best for our country”.
What the fuck happened that this adage has been completely nullified globally
I might recommend a game called 1000xResist
Sometimes, the whale is too big to fit in the backpack. You can’t take everything with you. Keep this in mind when you reach the ending.
While we want everyone to have decent lives we have to reckon with the fact that there are people, even if they are provided everything that they need to have a decent and happy life, they will still choose to harm others around them to get ahead.
We call them billionaires.
And I believe that when faced with complex problems and fears, studies have shown around 30% of people will flock to authoritarianism. They crave not having to face ambiguity and a simple answer to complex problems they wish to hide from. Even if those answers are lies.
My solution: make blocklists subscription-based. I don’t mean for money, though like most of the Fediverse, donations would be accepted.
What I mean is, there’d be an independent site that maintains a list of everything that could be blocked with keywords that specify why you might want to block it. People who run instances can make a custom, dynamic block list based on keywords that they want to block.
Say we have a tag, “paedo shit.” I suppose most people would want to block that.
But say we also have a tag, “Zionist.” So some instance would block that. Others wouldn’t.
Now say you’re running some site, you go to this site and see you’re flagged as Zionist. You don’t think you are, so you contest it with your reasoning. This opens a thread and anyone can comment on it.
Now when you go to block all “Zionist” sources, you have an option to also include all “contested” sources as well. If you say yes, it doesn’t matter what they say. You’re taking the source repository at their word. If you say no, you are presented with the sources that have contested it, and you can read the threads, and add or exclude them as you like.
How is this a bad plan? (In the words of my boy Luis Guzman from The Count of Monte Cristo (2002, Kevin Reynolds))
sounds like exactly what piefied did, they provide a default set of sites and you’re free to adjust them on your instance as you feel.
Adding a check for the latests posts and the one flagged and see if any of those are blacklisted would mark the instance as not reliable. If 24 hours later the links aren’t down it gets an automatic block.
Please don’t. A left-wing echo chamber is as bad as a right wing echo chamber.
In case you haven’t already noticed. This place is so much of a left wing echochamber that the different shades of liberals and progressive are constantly at odds with each other. I’ll probably be permabanned from another instance for even mentioning it.
Sadly true
The right is the party of white supremacy and child rape, so I’m happy not to see any material ignoring/defending/enabling that.
also the propaganda is annoying, but they arnt that big of a prescence on lemmy though.
It’s not just right-wing though, also thegrayzone.com and wikileaks.org get blocked
… In the US. We’re not all from there. I’m decidedly left-wing, but censorship-by-default is a bad stance.
are better left
O.o
I can only imagine the person coming up with this idea
Given that many “right-wing” sites are full of lies, bigotry, and hate, I think I’m quite fine with this.
There is no easy opt-out
How so?
The only UI option to do so is to manually remove every single domain, one by one.
Removing all of them requires:
- Figuring out the list exists in the first place, and it’s primarily right-wing resources
- Manually figuring out the position of the list in the database and removing all the entries
This was done intentionally (again, according to Rimu himself) as an ideological step. According to him, software must be ideological, and he doesn’t like his software being used for any purposes that could help the right wing.
I guess this sums up Rimu’s position pretty well,
That’s how Mastodon gets forked into Truth Social.
I understand the sentiment, but as long as any project is FLOSS this is a risk. They can just fork and remove the list. It’s sort of like the “security through obscurity” mentality. It’s not actually doing anything to prevent motivated fascists from forking PieFed and removing that. It’s just making it marginally less convenient for them to do so.
Not a good look. I can empathize with not wanting right wing propaganda machines to profit from your work but it should at least be opt in and not curated by a single person.
