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.
edit. Hello anyone from the piefed.social thread snoopy locked to preemptively prevent mod work. More interesting mod chose to only attack me and others outside of the piefed.social thread 🤔
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?
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.
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’.
@Cris_Citrus@piefed.zip