According to Rimu, 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.
I need to tack on a moderator blurb to this post. I received a report from Rimu that this post doxxed them. While it does appear the original post contained Rimu’s full name, I do not believe this qualifies as doxxing.
While posting someone’s full name typically would be, Rimu has completely subverted their own expectation of privacy by publicly linking their full name with their development work on Piefed. Their username is even their real first name. I do not believe you can doxx someone who already did it to themselves.
This information is publicly available, and it was made so by Rimu themselves.
Not only is this not doxxing but under these circumstances it smacks of a half hearted attempt at censorship. Rimu made themselves a public figure. You cannot post their address, or other personal information, but their name is fair game by their own choice.
Indeed, removing his full name is more of a good faith act. I don’t think much is to be achieved by leaving it anyway, so if someone is so discomforted by it that they ask for the removal - alright, I will. After all, we all need to remain good neighbors around here.
But, as you said, leaving your full name out in public and then trying to make it never see the light on the Threadiverse specifically is very inconsistent, and will likely fail at some point.
Can’t disrupt the liberal echo chambers. They are trying to turn a communist creation into Reddit.
oh look, it’s the scumbag I was referring to in my comment. I’ll post it again to your face so you can have something to waste time on
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.
You will be the very poster child of why we say scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds.
It would be your support of the oligarchy and the systems that it breeds that is defending and propping up fascism
Anyone who disagrees is a hyperzionist child eater.
you’re not beating the allegations
You are struggling so hard
well at least I’m not pissing off the people that should be allying with me and acting to empower those who hate me.
also, your mum struggles to fit my fat cock in her arse
Well, there’s your confusion, liberals are not allies to the left, liberals are allies to conservatives. We are not even close in goals.
No one cares about your tiny incel cock
that’s right comrade, who cares about civil liberties? Let’s assist the further and further right party until we reach true communism!
This coupled with seeing “liberal” used as pejorative every day on this site is kinda wild.
It’s what happens when you step out of the west and into any country that are the victims of the west, which is around 176 countries.
Why wouldn’t a site that isn’t slanted towards coddling western children like liberals and neoliberals be more reflective of the actual majority opinion in the world?
You come across very rude, in case no one has told you yet. You should be more aware of that.
Bold claim from someone denying US participation in genocide. Misinformation is kinda your forte isn’t it?
I know the size of this community, it is statistically improbable. But go on, make your claim.
Feel free to report it. Vote manipulation is against lemmy.world’s rules and the moderators can see the ip’s.
It would be a quick instance ban.
Do it, you genocidal cunt.
You’re assuming I care enough to. I got plenty of ratio’d comments. I’m not tore up about it. But I do think you’re guilty of it.
I absolutely am using it as a pejorative.
And you are a bad person.
A liberal calling me a bad person is like Ronald Reagan calling me a radical.
🪞
It’s interesting that a developer thinks they have authority over other people’s instances, while using it to block authoritarian discourse (both right wing and m-l).
What part of having a blocklist for your own instance is asserting authority over other instances?
It’s not for one instance. PieFed’s block list can only be edited by changing the source code. I’m more than in favor if giving instance owners control over their server. If said list was just a default, easily editable from the user (admin) interface, that would be OK. But as it is, it’s an attempt to exert control over other people’s servers, no ifs or buts about it.
citation needed. no one has provided evidence of that and i highly doubt it simply due to the multiple claims by individuals here crying foul claiming multiple versions of how that block list is stored. not to mention, you know, it’d need to be updated periodically.
The commenter is a bit confused. There are two distinct things at play.
This post is about the domain blocklist, which is not mandatory on install—though most new instances choose it—and can be removed by an admin with either the patience or the database skill to remove it.
The other thing at play is the hard-coded list of banned fediverse instances, which are automatically added to the federation blocklist on new instances. These can also be removed by an admin. The list contains far-right & outright fascist instances, threads.com, and two socialist instances: Hexbear & Lemmygrad.
[Edited to fix link.]
smile I assume most of the individuals crying foul here are just generally confused about many things.
we know “tankies” and conservatives cry about being silenced, about not able to produce misinformation and disinformation.
Here is the user interface for unblocking:
Oh, nice! It’s good to see progress. So this line from OP:
there is no easy opt-out
Is outdated? All 3k+ addresses can be removed from this interface?
If they want to click 3000 buttons, yes. These buttons are not new functionality, it’s been like that since the beginning.
Easier just to empty the relevant database table! It’s called ‘domain’ if anyone in the future finds this.
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.
i know right, tankies love to say they are being censored like CONSERVATIVES, but they would censor you in return without a single thought.
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.
Since you proclaim to be a Leftist, what’s wrong with Lemmy?
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.
Mbin exists, but it never seems to get as much attention :/
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?
Same backend, different frontend
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.
gotcha. thx.
Yes they are completely different front and backends but they use the same protocol (ActivityPub).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Why block InfoWars? Tim Heidecker is a treasure.
/s
It’s a molehill that’s threatening to become a mountain. I wouldn’t trust I always agree with this person.
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.
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.
The fact that it includes wikileaks tells me everything I need to know.
That it recognizes Russian state media as Conservative disinformation and propaganda? Yeah, me too.
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.
Any source on this?
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.
No I don’t, would you mind linking a citation on this claim?
Dang I gotta show Rimu the American owned Canadian blight known as Post Media. Everything they own should be on there.
Given that many “right-wing” sites are full of lies, bigotry, and hate, I think I’m quite fine with this.
My main issue with this actually is its controlled at the instance level. I actually have said I am fine with a default block list as long as it can be changed later. Its understandable that someone having an instance would want a good default experience form their perspective and I can even see it at the code level in this case. I have a few caveats though that make it troublesome for me. One it should be highly advertised or easy to peruse and change. Bigger though is as a user I want as much as possible to be controllable at the user level. So I want to be able to reverse this for myself. I completely understand defederation for legal reasons and the ideal instance for me would deferederat based on that, but I would completely appreciate a default block list for my user that I could then go through and revers if I cared to. I was actually aware of this and do intend to get off my tuckus and move instances because I can’t control the blocks but Im lazy and honestly I have no real incentive to unblock any of these but rather on philosophical grounds want the ability to do so. Im kinda hoping the software will evolve to allow a more direct user control like that before I move but its been awhile and I sorta doubt at this point that is going to happen.
I’m starting to think these are deliberate attempts to start a fediverse flame war.
Piefed has an easily lifted block on right wing propoganda, boohoo. Oh no, piefed called a Marxist-Lenninist website Marxist-Lenninist, how can I turn this into drama somehow
John Lennin
‘easily lifted’ isn’t really easily lifted, and a platform technology shouldn’t be the one implementing blocks. Individual hosts using that technology should be the one to implement blocks.
PieFed is already derivative technology at best, made by a bunch of redditors that didn’t like being called right wing for supporting and endorsing genocide. Let’s not try to pretend it’s okay they want their echo chamber enforced at the platform level like reddit and twitter and facebook already do. The entire fucking internet already caters to you people.
How is emptying a database table not easy? If you’re hosting your own public forum that should be child’s play.
… supporting and endorsing genocide. … The entire fucking internet already caters to you people.
This is what I’m upset about. Why does every minor fediverse problem have to devolve into “us vs them (and they’re definitely nazis btw)”? Piefed doesn’t control the entire fediverse platform. If you want propoganda in your feed you can join an instance that allows it. And if you’re going to accuse people of supporting genocide bring some fucking proof.
Not everyone on the fediverse is a free speech absolutist and that’s fine. Having blocklists doesn’t make an instance equal to the corporate hellscae of facebook and reddit. Be upset about things that matter please
Type rimiru into any search engine that crawls lemmy. Any of them. They weren’t always a piefed user, and even their recent posts from their piefed.social account trying to rag on /0 users have plenty of evidence posted in response of their support of nazis.
And yes, I am upset that the nazi version of lemmy written by a nazi because for some reason Jewish nazis get a fucking pass in liberal spaces despite having the longest running holocaust in world history so far decides to try to be the arbiter of truth in their little nazi Activitypub technology.
That is a valid reason to be upset. It normalizes whatever they deem as offensive as being blocked by users of PieFed technology, because who the fuck is going to go through several thousand entries to actually audit their work? No one.
So the technology is all or nothing. What looks good to an instance host choosing PieFed over lemmy or m/kbin? All. Because they’re not going to spend the days it would take for an independent audit of what this particular nazi thinks is unacceptable, and because ‘nothing, build it yourself,’ would also take days.
So yes, I will compare the little nazi tech you’ve chosen to be participant to to the nazi tech used by facebook (marks and sells data on palestinians to israel) and reddit (u/spez, also the term zionazi gets you site-wide permabanned). If you dislike that, choose better.
I’ve been searching for 30 minutes and couldn’t find what you’re talking about. Can the burden of proof lie with the accuser please?
The right is the party of white supremacy and child rape, so I’m happy not to see any material ignoring/defending/enabling that.
It’s not just right-wing though, also thegrayzone.com and wikileaks.org get blocked
Piefed is also blocking left-aligned Fediverse instances, so it’s worth to being mindful. The dev has a previous history on applying CCP-inspired shadow profiles / “social credit”, as well as some underhanded editorializing of other people’s posts at the view stage (if not earlier). Honestly I thought from previous interactions he had learned better, but oh well, there’s always room for disappointment.
… In the US. We’re not all from there. I’m decidedly left-wing, but censorship-by-default is a bad stance.
also the propaganda is annoying, but they arnt that big of a prescence on lemmy though.
The right wing has ass fucked the entire world into the ground, I say good riddance.
Yeah but, know your enemy and all that
We know the enemy.
We know every unoriginal comment, trick, and bullshit they do, because they have repeated them over and over again for decades.
We don’t have to keep giving them the false legitimacy of equal time or attention.
We don’t have to keep giving them the false legitimacy of equal time or attention.
If I want to point something out that a shithole site is promoting, I don’t need admin to put up a baby gate so I can’t talk about it. I don’t know how that relates to legitimizing anything.
You can literally just say :shitholesite said “very evil shit”. No need to feed clicks to their website.
Sounds like what a right-wing dipshit would say.
How so? Do we even have cons on lemmy?
The gatekeeping is to take away a cornerstone of misinformation. If brigading and manipulation didn’t work the world wouldn’t be in the state it is today. I run into conservatives frequently, even the question is disingenuous.
I don’t trust you as the “misinformation decider”, heaven forbid.
So I want to link to things idiots on reddit r/con are saying to point out a trend in right wing media, and that makes it spreading disinfo?
I tried initially and it was too opinionated for me so I switched out. Turns out it’s even more opinionated than I’d expected.
Oh no, so when I eventually set up my own piefed instance, I’ll have to spend ten more minutes then initially expected? That’s awful.
You’re going to go through several thousands of links in ten minutes all to… maybe have a slightly less reddit like experience?
It takes you more than 10 minutes to run a db transaction?
…Do you think that is auditing a list?
Do you know what auditing is?
No, the physical action of removing things you already know from a list that may or may not include them is not the problem. No one has claimed it is.
What is the problem is going through the list, thousands of entries, and finding out if they’re accurate to what has been claimed. That take going to every single site you don’t necessarily recognize, which for a list of thousands will be thousands, and doing even the bare minimum of research.
Why would you audit the list? Just remove it lol
Cool, now you can be spammed by scam sites. Since its the same list.
So you’re starting from zero. Congrats. Hope your instance is never, ever actually populated otherwise your entire experience hosting the instance will be spent doing moderation.
Lmao okay, so how would you have it handled then?
Blocklist? Dystopian.
No blocklist? Spam city.
Enlighten us.
Don’t offer it by default. Offer a feature. Then, separately entirely from the project, offer a block list or set of block lists. Have that extra step.
Nearly all software users, and yes especially self-hosting server admins, use default settings. By declaring yourself as the arbiter of all things bad and including it by default, you have changed your software from a neutral party, to one that is the arbiter of truth that requires effort to turn off, and that’s not something most are going to do.
Thus whatever you say becomes the majority opinion. This isn’t a new or surprising opinion btw, it’s the literal reason the DMCA has section 230 in the US, and all countries have something similar for platforms, scientific journals, and news organizations.
It was only about 15 years ago that censorship was an extreme taboo on the internet. I miss those times deeply.
censorship is when the state does it. Not when individual people decide to program their own open source project in a specific way.
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.
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
Lol @ politically uniform experience
I don’t need to agree with the sites to know this isn’t a good idea. The list is full of junk but it also has sites like fox news.
Should be an opt in.
The list is full of junk but it also has sites like fox news.
but then again, you repeat yourself
Okay yeah it’s junk but this is just division
you dont think someone posting about how fox news is reporting on something could be relevant? simply linking to an article is not always the poster agreeing with the reporting.
you dont think someone posting about how fox news is reporting on something could be relevant?
that’s right. If you want to or not, you are propagating the misinformation and helping them by giving them more exposure for their stats, more data for them to sell and more money for them to gain through ads.
EDIT : What is there to learn from a misinformation link? Everyone knows its misinformation.
The list is full of junk but it also has sites like fox news.
🤔
Yeah, I stand by what I said lol
That Fox News isn’t junk? Have you been living under a rock for 40 years?
Fox news argued in court that they’re fictional entertainment and no reasonable person would take their reporting seriously.
I get that, but we can’t play the free speech for me, not for thee game
Free Speech means the government shouldn’t prosecute people for their speech, that’s all its ever meant. It doesn’t mean non-government places must allow Nazis to say their piece on your platform. That just turns places into Nazi bars.
This isn’t allowing them on a platform, this is disallowing platforms to choose whether to allow them on a platform based on the opinions of a guy that has endorsed genocide and child rape.
this is disallowing platforms to choose whether to allow them on a platform
The block list is editable by any admin, and the sysadmin can delete the block list entirely.
based on the opinions of a guy that has endorsed genocide and child rape.
Uhh, gonna need a source for that one, Chief.
The block list is editable by any admin, and the sysadmin can delete the block list entirely.
So your choice is trust the genocide guy, spend WEEKS vetting a giant list that is mostly filled with dead links, or have no blocklist?
Gee wilkers I wonder which one most will pick.
