cross-posted from: https://quokk.au/c/fediverse/p/887450/piefed-flagship-instance-shadowbanning-instances-from-discoverability-other-questionable-upd
This morning while checking if Quokk.au’s new instance logo was federated out, I discovered that overnight we had been shadowbanned from the PieFed.Social Instance Chooser (This is a tool to help spread out users across the platform and help avoid funnelling users into the largest.)
Knowing that Rimu was happy to explain, I just asked for some clarification as we were visible on every other PieFed instance except his.
Apparently for ’ obvious reasons ', of which I can only assume is our left leaning anarchist/pro-trans stance we were chosen not be advertised on the PieFed flagship instance and first point of contact for many potential new users. Seeing as a large portion of our new users found us via this method, it will have a tangible effect on a small instance such as ours.
This was a pretty sad sight to see, and reflects the sort of petty drama that is emanating from the PieFed project lately. It’s now the third such move to discredit and harm left leaning instances by PieFed’s lead developer. This also shows a trend towards autocratic unilateral decision-making on Piefed.social, of which is starting to be run as a personal fiefdom without consulting the team or users.
I must commend Lemmy.ml for remaining neutral and not letting its own political leanings influence join-lemmy.org, while simultaneously condemn PieFed.social for this immature move that is harmful to the health of the Fediverse.
Following this exchange, Rimu announced a new update to PieFed allowing for some rather concerning things.
- Modlog: Reason for the action is only shown from trusted instances, so abusive mods won’t have an audience. Admins can still see the reason though. Which instances are trusted is set in the admin UI.
This feature means problematic users can now go undetected, and will harm moderators ability to view their past moderation history. For example PieFed.social runs a ‘trusted’ list of only 34 instances, meaning any mod action taken by any of the hundreds of instances outside of this will not show up. So for example if Quokk.au was to ban a user for transphobia (our most common ban), this will not be reflected for piefed.social users potentially leading towards more hate speech on the Fediverse.
- Instance silencing similar to Mastodon. A silenced instance is not defederated from but their posts do not show in the Popular or All feeds and their communities are not shown in Starter packs aka Topics. Their communities can still be found in the communities list and joined in the normal way. Once joined, posts in there show up in the subscribed feed as usual.
This is another way to shadowban instances and not ‘advertise’ them. Surely if an instance is problematic enough that a defederation would be in order rather than this reddit-like move.
As someone who doesn’t follow stuff like this why should I care? It all seems like drama for the sake of people getting to cosplay as people with authority.
Piefed is trying to be the next reddit with all the worst parts of reddit amplified in the fediverse but is being hostile towards others in the fediverse and occasionally does things that breaks the protocol fediverse uses.
Main dev now fully going hostile towards other piefed instances
Rimu != PieFed
You can tell because one is a person, the other is software.
And while we are at it, https://piefed.social/ is neither - it is an instance, like https://quokk.au/ is an instance, both of which run the PieFed software.
Your agenda is not supported by facts. There are definitely problems that need solving, though this post helps solve none of them.
If you want to help, stick with the facts, they will work better than emotional appeals, if the goal is truly to improve things on the Threadiverse/Fediverse.
Right, and so just to step past the obtuseness and sticking to a fact:
Rimu is the developer of Piefed.
If we’re at the point it is important to clarify “person v software”, the person developer can be associated with the developed software.
And if this is, in fact, a call to compartmentalize and separate devs from software, and furthermore from how they operate their instances… Yes, that would be a nice change for Lemmy and Piefed alike for discourse on this matter.
Will it happen? Well, developers and instance admins can continue crashing out, or… maybe stop.
That seems like something that is very reasonably within the discretion of an instance admin to do. Also pretty neat feature. Not a de-federation so you can still interact with users from that instance, but it doesn’t push your own users into communities on problem instances.
More choices = better imho.
Agree and I probably wouldn’t want to be on an instance that uses it to heavily. Still think it’s a good option to have for people that want to run a more curated instance.
It is funny how all the biggest crybullies on Fedi have all gathered around to demonstrate exactly the behaviour they’re being silenced for.
“Why would rimu silence me, all I do is things like lie about him being an anti-left transphobe!?”
Out of curiousity, I took a look at your modlog:
- Trolling
- Ban evasion
- Misgendering
Wow.
Please get mental health.
Misgendering
Thank Grail for that one
Wow, now you’re being ableist too? Yikes.
The nerve of you to act like you care when you engage in that yourself.
Lashing out and attacking everyone doesn’t help anyone, especially not yourself.
Also please don’t joke about ableism.
I’m not joking. You used mental illness as a way of insulting me.
You used mental illness as a way of insulting me.
I’m not insulting you, it’s honest concern based on all interactions with you.
Non-responsive. Typical.
I find it hilarious that this was originally posted on Lemmy.ml, an instance where mods ban you for saying anything bad about China.
Second, a feature of piefed is curating a more positive feed so you don’t have to see all the political hatred.
This is a feature not a bug.
The amount of disinformation here should not be nearly as shocking to people as it seems to be. e.g. the non-conditional title statement of this post, even if its text walks the situation back a bit, is now being called “de-escalation”? Or the GIANT letters calling for the immediate defederation of Lemmy’s most popular instance in this comment? These are the very epitome of escalation.
And as for AI moderation, see this comment, where the AI output went entirely unreviewed by any kind of intelligence, and iirc the moderation reason stated was also written entirely by AI? Every single time I have chased down the accusations to find the real story, I become more and more disappointed in certain Lemmy instances that are now expanding the influence of hexbear, Lemmygrad, and lemmy.ml.
If they want to cut themselves off from the rest of the Threadiverse by defederating not only Lemmy.world but also every single PieFed instance, regardless of the stance of the admin team (in one of the multiple calls for defederation, click on the username of the commentor and read the statement), then at this point I am no longer against that outcome. It will create an echo chamber for them, but they do not seem to be listening anyway, and increasingly I find myself not listening to their incel-based arguments anymore either (where they must be free to do whatever they please but everyone else owes them something, somehow).
Edit: even the title of this very post screams disinformation - like how is this “Shadowbanning Instances from Discoverability”, when instead it is plainly simply a banning? If it were a shadow-ban, then it would still appear to the end-user to not be a ban, but then to everyone else it would be handled differently. Instead, it is an even ban, always looking the same way to everyone. Calling it a “shadowban” is a fallacy that appeals to emotion, rather than explaining the situation logically. i.e. it is clickbait, presenting a false front in order to entice people to read it, but when the details become understood the term is seen to be the polar opposite of what it attempted to portray. This is not what I hoped to get out of the Threadiverse, personally. I came here to get away from the right-wing Reddit, not find another Reddit 2.0, moar tankie drama version.
Why are you repeatedly spreading disinformation?
The very first paragraph of your link proves that this is not a call to defederate LW.
Note: Judging by the comments, a lot of people are obviously not reading the post and are instead assuming we are calling for defederation of lemmy.world. That is not the case, and in fact the opposite is true. LW already temporarily defederated anarchist.nexus once, and the evidence suggests Mr Kaplan is now pushing for full defederation of all the FAF instances. We are trying to build a coalition of instances that will agree to defederate from lemmy.world IF Kaplan goes ahead with the defederation. Apologies if you weren’t aware of the context.
Since you seem to have issues with reading comprehension, I will simply repeat myself:
the non-conditional title statement of this post, even if its text walks the situation back a bit, is now being called “de-escalation”?
(emphasis added)
Even that is dishonest disinformation
The title is “Join the Pledge to boycott lemmy.world!” it is not “Boycott lemmy.world!”
Nothing is walked back because the title is clear in what it calls for and what it doesn’t.
During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. […] A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.
From Parenti.
This has been the old playbook. If you are willing to make concessions these are merely ruses to placate the situation but if you are looking to defend yourself from threats of defederation then this is an escalation. At the end of the day we tankies are just looking to troll the upstanding germans and anglos because … putinbots or whatever.
And you made the cardinal sin of not going along with the US imperial program, hence you’re a tankie. You’re allowed to grumble about it, you’re allowed to disagree with how it’s done, but at the end of the day you will toe the line and you will not take the side of the designated enemies.
how is this “Shadowbanning Instances from Discoverability”, when instead it is plainly simply a banning?
Instead, it is an even ban, always looking the same way to everyone.
if you’re on the banned instances you see your posts, but then they never get the replies that they should, because they are hidden from the feed, despite being ‘federated’. sounds like a shadowban to me.
authlib.social actively attempting to re-create the worst aspects of reddit
I came here to get away from the right-wing Reddit, not find another Reddit 2.0
But that’s what piefed is?
Its pretty obvious to anyone that these instances are problem instances. I dont know why people are muddying the water arguing over the minor details and its insane to try paint it as if the reason is their left leaning protrans views. They are problem instances and quieting their notifications is fine if thats the action the admin wants to take. The other option is defederate.
Which do you think are the problem ones?
I dont think, I know these are problem instances.
Why are they bad?
I dont think, I know
the libs mantra
I’m not gonna get into this one, but as a rule, if you’re on one of the default instances for a given fediverse service, such as mastodon.social, you should be using it to actively shop for a smaller instance more closely aligned with your interests.
and those users won’t find these instances since they’ve been silenced
one of the first things i learned about the fediverse (lemmy specifically) when looking for reddit alternatives is that it’s best to look for instances with 100-200 users instead of thousands, and definitely not tens of thousands. that’s what keeps it decentralized
am i a bad citizen :((
I personally like being on a fairly large instance though, it guarantees reliability and trust to an extent
You are not a bad citizen. Just follows yours fellings and needs. But also check how many admin take care of the server and the way they moderate and you will be good :)
i won’t say you’re a bad citizen, but you’re commenting in a post about people on a huge instance being subjected to the whims of apparently one person who’s doing dodgy shit because they’re the one in control of the instance.
i’ve been on small instances for years (piefed.zip, lemmy.zip) and never had problems with reliability. or crappy actions taken by the admin
oh i mean lemmy.zip is a pretty big instance imo, I think it’s barely smaller than shit
well, if shady things start happening on .zip, i’ll switch to a smaller instance. easy
guarantees trust
lol
Most of this stuff is functionally over my head, but an instance leaving out others from it’s ‘picker’ for whatever reasons seems like a Fediverse working in healthy fashion. That is, with individual instances getting to choose their own policy, exactly as you’d expect, and want.
If this stuff is really the worst that you can complain about in terms of PF.S, then I think you’ve had a pretty good day. By contrast, other stuff I could mention on the Lemmy.ml side (etc) are far more concerning to me.
The “obvious reasons” come from the drama I tried to summarize in this comment: https://lemmy.ml/post/47022286/25575766
If we go down to the core of the issue, there’s a fundamental disagreement between some instances on a niche use case: can the modlog be used for permanent slander, without giving people the option to reply?
Dbzer0, quokk.au and anarchist.nexus instance admins didn’t see the value in allowing admins to act on other instances modlogs. Rimu and other people in the Piefed staff were interested in this, hence the new feature regarding the modlog.
There was some additional tension between Quokk.au admins and Rimu on the way he handled the AI moderation disclosure, leading to a quokk.au admin leaving the channel.
Now remember that all of this only affects Piefed.social. I’ve been a Piefed.zip user for 11 months now, and that’s the instance I recommend to everyone. Even from a federation perspective, Piefed.zip doesn’t defederate from for instance hexbear or lemmygrad (but the Piefed instance blocking is an actual blocking compared to Lemmy’s incomplete one).
Switching between Piefed instances is as easy as it can be.
Some people will see these decisions for Piefed.social and the new Piefed feature as “drama”, but they seem to be a way to deal with what triggered the drama in the first place (slander in modlogs)
Rimu on the way he handled the AI moderation disclosure
Fuck this NYT speak, call it what it is: he lied about it. There was no AI moderation and he knew it.[1] Stop implying it was true. The issue wasn’t “ThE wAy He HaNdLeD” it’s that he spread defamatory falsehoods. There was an AI summary of some clearly rule-breaking comments linked in the modlog as the reason for a user getting banned and that’s it.
And lets not gloss over
Instance silencing similar to Mastodon. A silenced instance is not defederated from but their posts do not show in the Popular or All feeds and their communities are not shown in Starter packs aka Topics. Their communities can still be found in the communities list and joined in the normal way. Once joined, posts in there show up in the subscribed feed as usual.
which cannibalizes smaller instances as their posters are incentivized to post in the communities of the bigger instance and not their home instance since less people will see it.
Now remember that all of this only affects Piefed.social.
piefed.social isn’t just a piefed instance like others though is it? It’s the flagship instance. What it does carries more weight than what the other instances do.
Edit:
Some people will see these decisions for Piefed.social and the new Piefed feature as “drama”, but they seem to be a way to deal with what triggered the drama in the first place (slander in modlogs)
but this is only a solution for admins and their buddies that get slandered in the modlog. Us regular users that might get slandered with “stalking and harassing” for no reason still only get YPTB, which, ironically, has been silenced by piefed.social, making posts there not visible on their feed anymore.
And the guy clearly is a zionist, he puts up warnings for electronicintifada, I have not seen him be supportive of palestinians once, I mean you have a more direct connection to him I believe, go ask him what he thinks of the palestinians armed struggle against occupation.
Hi, I’m like 1000% out of the loop on all this- would you (or anyone else) be willing to give a short summary of what the ai feature in question was and what he lied or mislead people about?
I’m not on piefed.social but I’m still using a piefed based instance and would like to at least kinda sorta keep up with things. I’m sure there are also lots of other people out of the loop
Very short:
- db0 mod/admin team developed mod tool unrelated to LLMs
- they experimented putting the output of that tool into a locally running LLM but it wasn’t very good so they discarded that approach
- except for this one very obvious rule-breaker where they did link the LLM output in the ban reason
- rimu saw that one modlog and posted about “zomg ai moderation is here what do we do??”
- turns out he already had gotten confirmation that they weren’t using an LLM for moderation but he kept it silent
The slightly longer answer https://lem.lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/42253753/20358978 and also see https://lem.lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/42212552/20361800
Oof, that sucks shit, thank you very much for that context
I appreciate you! :)
By the way, for some reason those links aren’t working for me- ive not seen the Lem.lemmy part of the URLs before, are those lemmy internal links?
For some reason I can’t seem to open them in my browser or my mobile client. I may try again on my laptop at some point but I’m currently juggling stuff
I think it’s something wiht the server it’s being very slow for me atm. The lem.lemmy part is just the ui selection for blahaj, it shouldn’t be an issue but try https://piefed.social/comment/11216693 and https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/25880065
Actualy the dbzer0 link includes comments from unruffled that weren’t federated, it’s a better overview of this whole attack
Thank you! ❤️ I think my client also just doesnt handle cross instance links like at all I’m realizing, I prolly need to go open an issue about that
This whole situation sucks. I just switched to piefed cause I wasn’t in love with my last instance. Probably I’ll stay where I am for some time (and I do like the folks running my current instance, even if the .zip domain is a bad idea), but this does sour me on piefed a bit. With the .ml folks its mostly how they run their own instance, and they take ownership of their ideology. The issues folks are talking about here feels potentially like it spills out onto other people/instances more, and I don’t love that
Maybe I’ll try mbin, or at least set up a lemmy.zip account in addition to my current piefed one
You’re quite welcome. The most transpositive instences are hexbear and blahaj and dbzr0 I found.
which cannibalizes smaller instances as their posters are incentivized to post in the communities of the bigger instance and not their home instance since less people will see it.
Why would that be the case? Either you or me totally misunderstand that feature 😅
A poster usually wants to maximize their audience right? Posting in a community that got silenced will make that post not show up in the “all” feed of the silencing instance which means it won’t be as easily discovered organically. So a poster might choose to forgo the silenced instances communities in favor of communities that didn’t get silenced. Starving out the silenced instances who already are less likely to be found organically by users of the silencing instanced.
But that has nothing to do with the size of an instance of community. Rather the opposite is the case: an instance admin might decide to silence an community or instance because it is too big/busy and drowns out all the posts from smaller instances.
Or a very practical example: those Reddit and RSS repost instances. We had to defederate them because they were drowning out all organic posts and discussions. I would have rather liked to silence them though as people might want to stay subscribed to them without bothering other people on the same instance by having them pollute the federated feed.
On Mastodon it is also commonly used to temporarily silence an instance that is being abused for spam. This is much better than to defederate, as it still allows people to continue communicating with legitimate users on that instance.
Ok but this is clearly not how the guy who developed that feature is using it. He has a personal grievance with some instances and silences them. There is nothing about protecting piefed.social users from spam or reposts or other deleterious activity. “They called me a zionist so I will ban them” and lets get real here, the guy that puts a warning up for electronicintifada but not haaretz is a zionist. Here is the current silencing list of piefed.social
Lol he really went ahead and silenced every instance to the left of kissinger didn’t he?
You guys really want this to be about political ideology sooooo badly.
Their barbarous echo-chambers vs our civil debate halls
lol, at this point its better to just defederate from piefed since its controlled by a rabid neolib that codes new ways to attack other instances for wrongthink
Blaze this is just minimizing the issue along with bringing up unrelated issues while also conflating them.
Db0s comment replying to you is a better summary
We have bent over backwards to de-escalate the situation, both with L.W. and with Rimu. Our admins have stepped down. People changed their usernames. Our admins overruled our mods. Literally creating tension within our instance to maintain relations with the larger fediverse. On the other hand, rimu’s deliberate disinfo is still up to this day, without any statements from our team, or correction to their blatant lies. They’ve even blocked people calling them out, so piefed users can’t see this criticism. So don’t try to “both sides” me.
Gotta love the dip who tried quoting only blaze without the context given by others, to engage in so much for the tolerant left from Piefed.
Piefed.social immediately announced it’ll be locked because it’s the same but different as anything else posted about questionable decisions made by the dev…
No thinking outside what Rimu has decided for its users. If you stray too far you’ll be banned.
If we go down to the core of the issue, there’s a fundamental disagreement between some instances on a niche use case: can the modlog be used for permanent slander, without giving people the option to reply?
To be fair, that is more a function of the modlog technical design in Lemmy, where ban reasons cannot be changed after the fact and federated out. It is not technically possible to provide a “right of reply” or to remove the comment from the modlog in either piefed or lemmy.
What we did do is talk to the folks who banned Rimu and MrKaplan, asked them not to do it again, and reversed the bans. And the admin who was involved also stepped down from his admin role. That’s about as much as could be reasonably expected to happen, given the technical limitations. And afaik Rimu never asked to be unbanned, that was simply an act of good faith on our part.
And despite all the effort we put in to smooth things over, Rimu has consistently refused to engage in good faith with any of our admins over this, instead spreading intentional falsehoods and drama-farming over multiple posts.
These recent changes to PieFed were simply a blatant extension of his kneejerk response to the whole situation. Instead of building useful functionality like a right of reply such as we have in fediseer, his approach is just to shadow ban our instance and break proper federation of mod logs for all PieFed instances.
These actions are not designed to protect users, they are designed to protect the fragile-egos of power tripping admins who will seemingly go to any lengths to censor criticism of their actions, whether those criticisms are legitimate or not. It’s childish behavior, and demonstrates Rimu has little commitment to the wider fediverse and the principles of transparency under which it operates.
Speaking of the modlog. Rimu appears to again want to remove modlog functionality in the future. Again because only those in the know should apparently be able to see what actions are done
https://piefed.social/comment/11278899
Initially PieFed’s modlog was more locked down but people’s expectations, coming from their time on Lemmy, made me switch it to be the same as Lemmy. Sooner or later this is going to bite us in the ass. Limiting the visibility of the free-text part of the modlog kinda helps but really just papers over the cracks.
However, you don’t explain why. The extract you shared was the last part of Rimu’s comment :
But this is really a symptom of the modlog having massive fundamental design issues. For example the other day someone’s full name was in there and there was no way to remove it, across all instances, without some weird non-obvious workarounds.
This person asked us, admins to remove it. Imagine that was your full name and address. We delete it and it appears in the modlog.
We can face legal issues if we aren’t able to delete person real name.
It’s public, distributed across hundreds of servers, anyone can create a community and write to it, and it’s write-only. This has obvious abuse potential.
Yes it was related to the ban for zionism. However that’s just the tip of the iceberg…imagine a new spam bot, how will you handle it if it write in the modlog ?
I enjoy the modlog transparency. My mod action is transparent, everyone can see what we do. However there is some downside. Admins struggled to remove that person real name, that wasn’t an easy task.
So there is pro and cons about the modlog. Until now, it served its purpose and allowed users to defend themselve against mod & admin abuse. However we shouldn’t ignore the point above.
As for myself, i don’t know what is the correct answer.
- Create an option to remove your mod’s action from the modlog ? So when you delete comments with your full name, it won’t appear in the modlog ? Then anyone can hide their mod’s action from the modlog ?
- Hide the modlog and only showcase to thrusted people ?
- Create a “right to answer” ? A voting system ?
The solution isn’t simple. 😔
Edit: typo
There already is an option to purge content though? Extend that as an individual admin action for individual comments? “Hiding” a modlog action doesn’t make the data disappear (which makes it not GDPR compliant!), purging does. It also creates a modlog entry, “purged” that doesn’t reveal the data but the action. Creating accountability that content was purged with the possibility to enter why. If the concern actually was the gdpr incident the other day (which didn’t include an address dunno where that came from) the dev solution would have been to purge content have that federate, not “hide the mod entry”. I don’t believe that excuse at all.
This has been an extremely obvious flaw in the modlog concept from the very start, and has been discussed on and off for years. IMO, it exposes a much wider issue with federated forums as currently implemented, despite the aggressive defense of some vague concept of “openness.”
Blindly casting every user and mod action out into the universe in plaintext with no recall mechanism is problematic, and it will only get more problematic as the technical prowess of the average user drops. Doxxing is just the tip of the iceberg here, and I don’t think most people appreciate just how massive the social engineering attack surface actually is. Rogue instances could silently build engagement profiles on users, and then actually serve them targeted malicious content. This could be widespread, and almost impossible to detect.
This has been an extremely obvious flaw in the modlog concept from the very start, and has been discussed on and off for years. IMO, it exposes a much wider issue with federated forums as currently implemented, despite the aggressive defense of some vague concept of “openness.”
I agree with your point but would nuance it. Some part are flawed but we also saw the good side of the modlog openess, let’s not forget thay.
Otherwise the community yptb wouldn’t exist, we wouldn’t able to juge our action, user wouldn’t be able to choose their own instance and that’s terrible.
We already have lot power : seeing vote, ban, delete…and for me, the modlog counter-balance our tools. So i hope we can find something in the middle ground. :)
On mod tools, i think we need to developp other tool than than ban and delete, they are very aggresive. I hope we will see new tools that will change the way we take action.
I left out the context as it’s literally an excuse to again limit the modlog.
The solution isn’t to make it more closed off
I don’t see that way. It was very difficult for admins to remove doxxing info from the modlog.
@unruffled@anarchist.nexus wanted to remove doxxing info from an user.
Our admins, together, did their best to remove the doxing info from the modlog because it federate accross the fediverse.
Given how serious the issue was, most admins expressed the idea to have an option to remove it from the modlog.
So, it wasn’t only Rimu idea. Rimu is also a dev, so he decided to tackle on this issue.
The last one were Rimu was banned for zionism in a community. A false statement, He was so furious about this misinformation. Although admins from the FAF reverted the ban, the mod & modlog remained.
But, right now, what worry me the most isn’t thing as “rule 2” “zionism” “rude” “bot”…but a bot that spam content throught mod action.
Yes, defederating would partially solve it, but the spam would remain…
So how i see, yes the update was the direct result of this conflict between those two instances. But this conflict wasn’t the only reason, it also revealed some issues from the modlog.
Until now we used yptb, it was used to reveal mods & admins bad behaviour, Rimu benefited from it. However, we were lucky someone hasn’t exploited the modlog yet.
For me, it would be a mistake to ignore it. And yes, hidding modlog from most people also raise issue for me because that’s the keypart in self-managed organization and that a key part in limiting our power.
So i don’t know what would be the best solution. I purposed to piefed dev a “right to answer” in the modlog few week ago in our zulip chat and maybe matrix.
I 100% agree modlog abuse is something that needs to be addressed. But I’d much prefer for admins and users to be consulted about such changes, because Rimu’s currently “solution” undermines trust, breaks transparency, and breaks normal federation. That’s why one gung ho developer doing whatever he pleases can be a liability on occasion instead of an asset.
I’d like to suggest an alternative approach that could work for both Lemmy and Piefed, while maintaining normal federation.
Proposed process for “Restricting” visibility of a modlog entry:
Type 1
- Person: The originating instance admin/moderator
- Action: During admin or mod comment/post removal, enable a toggle to set the modlog entry as “Restricted”
Type 2
- Person: The originating instance admin only
- Action: If admin user, enable on/off toggle for “Restricted” flag for a modlog entry which will override any previously set flag. The updated flag status would then federate out to all federated instances.
Type 3
- Person: federated instance admins only
- Action: If admin user, enable on/off toggle for “Restricted” flag for a modlog entry which will override any previously set flag. The updated flag status would only apply to the federated instance and would not federate out.
Explanation
For type 1 scenarios, once a mod or admin at the originating instance performs a comment or post removal, they would have the option to restrict public access to the modlog entry. There should be a clear warning, “This option should be used very sparingly, and only for defamatory comments, CSAM, or personally identified information.” The default should be for “restricted” status to be off, as is the case currently. This alone would deal with a great many of these issues.
For type 2 scenarios, instance admins would be able to override the status of the “restricted” toggle for all modlog entries. That will enable admins to override the status set by mods within their own instance. If set by an admin of the originating instance, then then updated “restricted” status should federate to all federated instances. This will allow us to deal with the occasions where internal mod actions need to be overruled.
For type 3 scenarios, this allows for any instance to have the freedom to override the federated status of the modlog entry at the admin’s discretion. That allows for whistleblowing in event an instance is abusing the “Restricted” flag, and maintains the independence of each instance to make that choice for themselves. Of course, doing so may invite a defederation or other sanctions if other admins disagreed with changing the “restricted” status. So I think this is a reasonable checks-and-balances approach, which provides necessary info to federated instance admins, so we can all trust that the function is not being abused.
What I would really like is some serious engagement from the developers of PieFed and Lemmy on this issue, since it is clearly something that we would all like to see resolved as a priority item. Currently I believe the software platform itself is likely non-compliant with GDPR requests due to the current modlog implementation.
Rimu’s “solution” really fixes nothing because there is a simple and obvious workaround. A user creates an account on piefed.social or another “trusted” instance, creates a community on that instance, then weaponizes the modlog from within the trusted circle.
And in addition to not addressing the fundamental issue, the “solution” also introduces the concept of two-tiers of federation. The “trusted” instances get “first-class” federation, but anyone the admin feels are not trusted gets assigned a “second-class” version of federation, including much less visibility. That is simply shadow banning under another name, and it feels like a way too Reddit-like for comfort, imo. The user should be in full control of their own feed preferences, not the instance admin.
I also think that by default, all moderation actions and content should continue to be public as a core principle. A removal from the modlog should be the exception, not an instance-wide rule that is set at the whim of one person.
Does this not seem like a more reasonable and sane approach to take? Rimu’s approach appears to have been unilaterally decided, poorly thought out, and quite honestly just makes me want to step away from the PieFed project altogether. Why was community feedback not sought before this change was implemented? And why was Rimu’s particular implementation decided to be the best path forward for PieFed? I’d like to understand whether other developers and admins actually using PieFed are actually being consulted about these changes in advance, or are these ultimately unilateral decisions being made by one person with a short fuse?
This is a great idea, we need a public forum to discuss the fediverse development that is not only devs but also users having a voice.
When one person does something on their own without consideration into how everyone else interacts it causes huge problems. It’s one of many issues with authority types.
Thank a lot ! I need more time to understand it better. That’s the kind of concept i enjoy the most. :3
I’m saving your post for slowly reading :)
As for Rimu…he did ask for anonymous vote, scoring moderators…i also tought he would talk to Luminous on Matrix…for now it is better to wait.
I’m just a wiki editor and french translator. Sometime i suggest ideas for Piefed’s development (accessibility) or the fediverse (defederation charter, right to reply…). but that’s all. That’s just what i want to do.
There is !piefed_dev@piefed.social where you can follow piefed’s dev.
There are part i disagree with Rimu, you, MrKaplan…There are also part i agree with you three.
Honestly this is a mess, i prefer staying far from it and focusing on building my communities with people i love. I need that. Otherwise, i wouldn’t be here anymore.
Fedizen give me lot positive energy to continue. They have interesting story. :3
Anyway thank a lot for this reply :)
Not to mention that rimu’s “”“solution”“” is only available to admins who are victims of modlog abuse (which I’m not convinced is really a big problem) us regular users that might get slandered with e.g. “stalking and harassing” for no reason still only get YPTB, which, ironically, has been silenced by piefed.social, making posts there not visible on their feed anymore.
Edit: I realized it was missing an arrow.
I will quote your post since it’s worth sharing with other people (this was news to me, but I am not surprised at all)
Are we supposed to bring back the whole history every time Rimu comments anywhere?
- an anarchist.nexus admin calls for murder of Zionists in their username
- a LW admin and Rimu gets qualified as Zionists in dbzer0 community modlogs
- LW defederates anarchist.nexus
- Rimu bans that admin
- that anarchist.nexus admin changes their username and steps down as admin
- LW refederates anarchist.nexus
- Rimu asks the dbzer0 staff to act on the modlog calling him a Zionist, no action is taken, the dbzer0 staff advices him to ignore that
- Rimu discovers that a dbzer0 mod has been using a LLM for moderation. That mod has been somehow pretending to use OpenAI to upset the !fuckai crowd, actually it was a local freeware model. He posts about it.
- a dbzer0 admin reverts the ban calling Rimu a Zionist after I asked
- Rimu is still upset, doesn’t take the previous action into account and keeps the post about LLM moderation up
- You bring it up here
Really goes to show how “leftists” on the Threadiverse are committed to acting in good faith.
From the very same thread you quoted this from and then chose to ignore people giving better context: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/68457682/25935975
We have bent over backwards to de-escalate the situation, both with L.W. and with Rimu. Our admins have stepped down. People changed their usernames. Our admins overruled our mods. Literally creating tension within our instance to maintain relations with the larger fediverse. On the other hand, rimu’s deliberate disinfo is still up to this day, without any statements from our team, or correction to their blatant lies. They’ve even blocked people calling them out, so piefed users can’t see this criticism. So don’t try to “both sides” me.
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The omissions in this timeline about brigading sockpuppets and falsified nazi smears…
But to list that timeline and act as though this is out of context or unrelated to an ongoing crashout… we are reaching some Hasan’s dog collar level of bullshit.
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If you’re going for the whole history don’t forget the nazi smear by some german troll and rimu trying to paint db0 as uniquely ban-happy. Like this has been a busy 10 days or so with shots fired on the FAF day-after-day, this is not history yet but an ongoing barrage from their POV. Also
Rimu discovers that a dbzer0 mod has been using a LLM for moderation
there was no LLM moderation, and rimu knew this before making his post https://lem.lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/42212552/20361800
If you’re going to be so dishonest, at least try. Pinging the people who proved the original quote wrong so you can face the people who avoided: @ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works @mathemachristian@lemmy.blahaj.zone
Edit: he can’t read my post because Piefed has me deleted from their DB.
These are the people accusing us of trying to create a leftist authoritarian echo-chamber…
Projection once again from the fascists of Piefed.
I am fairly certain I’m ghosted from certain communities on piefed.social, but I don’t know how encompassing that is. So I don’t know if anyone on that instance can actually see what I write ever, or not, or if it’s just more targeted on a community/user blocklist level.
The moderation of piefed.social is fairly opaque, people can get banned, deleted and blocked on an instance level afaik? (Don’t quote me on this) but there is also the issue of comments being silently dropped if the commenter got blocked by the person they’re replying to which is completely intransparent afaik. Either your comment gets posted or you’re SOOL.
I got interested and checked and it’s just one community on piefed social. My comments are viewable on my instance and the instance of the user I reply to, but only that comment and only in that one community. If I view my user comments from any other instance, piefed or lemmy, those comments do not exist.
So I can’t rule out that userblock scenario, but it is interesting that my comments effectively become a public facing DM.
join-lemmy.org and piefed.social is not the same thing. One is a page about software and the other is an instance. Why shouldn’t rimu be able to run piefed.social they way they see fit?
I am not seeing any political influence at join.piefed.social. join.piefed.social even links to the instance chooser of https://nord.pub/auth/instance_chooser
Why shouldn’t rimu be able to run piefed.social they way they see fit?
What do you mean by shouldn’t? No one is stopping Rimu from coding, no one is pressing charges, clearly he is allowed to do it, and people are allowed to criticize. Honestly I am glad to learn about the weird petty gripes that seem to be being build into piefed to avoid it more generally. Further, I like learning about the ridiculous hypocrisy of the people that built a new version of lemmy because of the ‘authoritarian tankies’ that made it.
Because OP is comparing apples to oranges.
Not sure I follow.
I must commend Lemmy.ml for remaining neutral and not letting its own political leanings influence [join-lemmy.org](https://join-lemmy.org/instances), while simultaneously condemn PieFed.social for this immature move that is harmful to the health of the Fediverse.
The piefed.social instance chooser does hide them. Plus I think the larger sin is pernicious ways that bias is worked into what are otherwise painted as sensible defaults of the software.
anarchist/pro-trans stance
This sounds like you are fishing for sympathy. Do you have anything to back up the claim about opposition to a pro-trans stance?
By the fact that we have trans members who are harassed for being trans during this, yes.
Would you like to see the lists of banned users who were banned for insulting queer people during this?
Or would you like links to people claiming the transphobia to our users is the users inflicting it to themselves?
Gonna be really honest, transphobia is very important and its important that we be vigilant for it on the fediverse, and, I’m really not super convinced thats the “obvious” reasons he unlisted them
I should be very clear- he sounds like an asshole for what you’re describing. Thats not okay. That being said
The blahaj instance is still listed there. From the rest of the thread it sounds like he has tons of beef with the two instances in question for a variety of specific reasons. I don’t really follow these things but it sounds as though he is unjustified for at least some of that beef, and has generally handled some shit poorly. But the idea that this is lashing out at trans people specifically seems ill substantiated, and honestly not a very realistic explanation
Actively persecuting people and allowing harm to come to them are generally different rungs on that ladder, and it sounds like he has allowed harm to come to trans folks through failures to moderate appropriately, and has potentially participated in a level of mistreatment (again, I really dont follow these things, I’m just here to chat with folks and look at art), but unlisting entire instances because they include or advocate for trans folks would be a really big escalation
It seems there are much more likely explanations for why he defederated those instances. At most it’s possible his issues around trans folks colored his perception and made him more willing to ultimately delist them. To me it seems like this is an escalation of a different greivance with him, moreso than an escalation of his mistreatment of trans folks
I don’t think he is an avowed transphobe. More like he’s ok with looking the other way when queer users get attacked if he thinks they are too far left. Before the “AI moderation” scaremongering he put out a “these people are VERY BAN HAPPY but they are ANARCHISTS? 🤔 curious” type post which completely omitted the months long, ongoing harassment of specific, targeted queer users on those instances by alts made on other instances and the amount of bans that required.
Plus these instances have had a rough go of it these last couple weeks with people even claiming they’re faking the harassment, it’s been pretty disgusting. I’m a ping @Diva@lemmy.ml she has some more deets I believe.
i agree, i don’t think he’s an avowed transphobe, but he’s certainly got it out for leftist instances, which do happen to be very trans. my observation has been that a blind eye gets turned to bad behavior if it benefits him though, for example people promoting piefed as a place to be free from ‘degenerates’
i will say the harassment has been really gross and persistent. i’ve noticed flare-ups every time the issue of zionism on the platform + governance comes up. most recently after dbzer0 defederated feddit.org, and when .world defederated anarchist instances for banning one of their admins for zionism.
it’s a bit diabolical how piefed is constructed so that moderation for their preferred politics is opaque and targets whole instances and they try to spin the lack of transparency as a good thing by making posts about ‘see how much more other instances ban’ and now just censoring the modlog and silencing instances they don’t like.
the main theme is that anti-imperialist leftists (who are often queer/trans) are to be silenced and hidden from sight if not outright defederated. hexbear is largely non-cis/trans and is not even on that list because it’s entirely defederated (for being outspoken and communist/anarchist/antizionist). blahaj is still federated, but they’re not as outspoken on anti-imperialism at an instance level so they are ‘tolerated’.
its pretty obvious axisworld and piefed are either against or apathetic to trans rights considering that the majority of banned transphobes come from there
Don’t even get started on how many people have to be banned from blahaj for their toxic traits of “I don’t have to respect pronouns when I hate the person” and then claim Blahaj is an evil no freeze peach instance.
Ada is one of the best admins on the fediverse, I mean that genuinely and deeply.
Actual reason is that these instances have been supporting antisemitism under the cover of antizionism, frequently have calls for violence, and generally whine and cause drama in the service of advertizing their instances (see above).
Absolute bullshit.
Provide one shred of evidence this was why Rimu did what he did.
Typical Zionists try to claim antizionism is antisemitism, it’s disgusting how much they try to make antisemitism a baseless word.
Surely you have proof of this.
Yeah, I already had most of these instances in my personal blocks. I’m fine with my instance blocking them.
This is the fediverse working correctly. A Reddit-like experience where you can weed out people who behave badly.
I don’t know where people get the idea that everyone has to be exposed to everyone else’s toxicity.
That is “free speech” 101: everyone must have the ability to listen to their BS. They burn books, while you are “free” to “speak” only one among the approved talking points, which may shift over time. e.g. they routinely call for murder, even for admins of other instances, yet they are perpetually the wronged and totally innocent party, never admitting an ounce of responsibility to others, yet demanding “fair” treatment in return (which as the quotes suggest, is the epitome of unfairness actually, due to being lopsided - but somehow the righteousness of their cause justifies their zeolosness; in short, in their view their good end somehow justifies the means, and not only in terms of promoting irl murder but also in using lies over the internet).
When you see the similarities between the argumentation practices used by incels and tankies it suddenly all makes perfect sense. DOn’T yOu KnOw WhAt A nIcE mAn I aM? Watch Innuendo Studios The Alt-Right Playbook series for a treat. Their goal is not arriving at truth via means of discourse, they use toddler tactics where they want to WIN, by any means necessary. And since Might Makes Right in their view, they push as far forward as others will allow, i.e. until others expend the effort to stop them, while they refuse to stop themselves or to abide by the conventions that exist in a more polite society (which they explicitly excuse themselves from, again citing their excuses as to why you should be okay with their zeolotry, thereby gaslighting you into their worldview - as in its surely not their problem that they are lying, its everyone else’s fault for not doing as they say).
openstars getting on a soapbox about how other people are liars and toddlers but simultaneously can’t stop vomiting up disinfo and gaslighting about widely documented events.
also comparing people they disagree with on the left to incels, classic authoritarian liberal horseshoe tactics
OpenStars has been caught lying how many times this month alone? And then kept going with it?
Genuinely pathetic attempt at gaslighting from them.
I’m sorry you had to suffer our toxic defense of Palestinians and our protest of Israel’s genocide of them.
This is the fediverse working correctly. A Reddit-like experience where you can weed out people who behave badly.
lol
While it would probably be better if it was visible to both admins and mods, or at least the choice to also share with mods, but then again if the admin doesn’t consider the reports reliable there really wouldn’t be a reason for mods to take them into account.
There are a number of instances that abuse the modlog and filtering their crap out is a good approach.
Yeah, there was recently a case where somebody was doxxed in the modlog. At that moment, there really wasn’t anything that you can do about it. So, being able to have some control over modlog visibility is a way to prevent abuses like that.
But “some control over modlog visibility” is inevitably going to be abused to protect problematic mods and admins. A right of reply, or a context field added to the modlog record would be a better approach, where subsequent actions can be listed and clarified. It’s also kind of amazing he just went ahead with these changes without broad consultation with piefed users or admins, or with the wider fediverse, since it effectively break normal federation.
https://lemmy.world/comment/23688865
I’m already getting flak from snoopy (yes I’m sure you’ll have a witty response when locking the piefed.social post like the others) about how it needed to be done quickly.
And til just a name is now doxing
And til just a name is now doxing
Now you’re downplaying doxxing, you really are shameless.
Because it’s always been referred to as more information than a name.
you really are shameless.
I find this extraordinary ironic from you.
Because it’s always been referred to as more information than a name.
No it hasn’t. You’re just disgusting.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxing
Always seen it as street, dob, or info like that not just a name as so many people are using names as their users.
You’re just disgusting.
Thank you or another insult.
I was one of the first to suggest this very idea that unruffled talk about. It was in threadiverse defence chat the 23 April :
Then, later i developped the idea on Piefed zulip chat.
i also agree with unruffled about this part :
But “some control over modlog visibility” is inevitably going to be abused to protect problematic mods and admins.
That was my experience from Reddit
And last point, i’m an anarchist. I don’t read Proudhon as Libb do but i worked in self-managed collective IRL several years ago. And learned lot things, suggested ideas, voted. I was part of the core organization with seven people. So i’m not sure where we are going.
We may disagree, but both side are right. And i wouldn’t minimize the impact of having your real name exposed on internet. Some activists may face trouble with the police, harrassement…
Yes, i will lock your post like the other posts. If you read the other posts i explain why, i can’t handle a heated debate. I need to protect myself. And here is part of my answer to your earlier question when we were playing cat & mouse :
Me: […] I also manage several communities beside this one and i’m doing it during my free time. So…
You: Yes the game of sharing info, which I now see is not allowed here.
Me: Why those three posts are here ? And the comments from mia ? dbzer0 ? Everyone exposed their point of view
So, thank for your comment. Let’s call a day.
Hi Snoopy, please see my recent comment for another suggestion on how to manage the issue of modlog removals: https://anarchist.nexus/post/643502/comment/3833833
I don’t read Proudhon as Libb do
it’s probably for the best that you don’t. certainly not to read him uncritically, he was a misogynist and anti-semite. completely baffling to be telling people to ‘read proudhon’ as libb does.
I didn’t know until until dbzer0 or unruffled told us about it.
However dunno if its ideas on property are still revalants today. For example i enjoyed a lot songs from Léo Ferré but a woman told me he was mysognist…and i was unterly baffled by his comment…but its song were powerful. Maybe there is good part ? Or everything is terrible ?
There are lot books to read, and it pile up. For now i focusing on book that study fascism. It. Maybe i should try audio book but that’s harder because i’m deaf. I’m kinda jealous of hearing people, they are lucky. TT.TT
i did qualify that it’s important to read things critically; there can be things which you take away that resonate even if the source is problematic. for example his sentiment of wanting build a society where he would be eventually also be eliminated for being too right wing. generally i try not to limit myself to any one author, i’ll even read marxists for their perspective.
that said it does take time and effort though to read things critically. that’s why i point out that just straight up saying ‘read proudhon’ is not doing anyone any favors, isn’t educating people, and just looks like posturing. it also reminds me of people saying ‘read bookchin’; another guy who makes some good points, but also has a lot of issues and should really be read critically.
Maybe i should try audio book but that’s harder because i’m deaf.
i have a lot of friends who swear by audiobook, but i can’t really focus on analyzing what’s being said if it’s being read to me.
