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.

  • clean_anion@programming.dev
    81·
    2 days ago

    All that data sharing and sh.itjust.works mods and admins still haven’t removed the links to CSAM websites that I reported and messaged them about several months ago. They aren’t directly hosting CSAM, but the fact that they ignored the requests to take down the links in question is not particularly pleasing. (not sharing details publicly for obvious reasons)

    Edit (1778443722): I messaged them on Matrix. The report was through the default reporting interface.

    • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      2 days ago

      You didn’t message me afaik.

      @imaqtpie.communick.com

      Also why does your edit have that number in parentheses?

      • thatsnomayo [he/him]@lemmy.mlB
        31·
        1 day ago

        Why did you steal the handle of a League of Legends streamer? Odd behavior. Just invent your own name. I invent like 30 a day. Practice.

        • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          5 hours ago

          Because it’s clever and I like it.

          Your handle sucks 😅. I could invent 30 mediocre usernames in a few minutes, it takes you all day?

          Assuming you upvoted yourself, @mathemachristian is like a 3/10. So good work on that one I guess. Thatsnomayo is just abysmal though

          • thatsnomayo [he/him]@lemmy.mlB
            2·
            4 hours ago

            I don’t see how it would be clever if you came up with it. Thank you for reinforcing the perception brainrot and narcissism are everywhere on these instances. You have no original thoughts.

      • clean_anion@programming.dev
        1·
        2 days ago

        That number was the timestamp (since I didn’t know whether or not time of edit is federated) and if you want, I can directly message you on Lemmy (since I deleted my Matrix account). I am creating a matrix account to message you.

            • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works
              6·
              2 days ago

              I didn’t receive it. I’m going to send you a message and maybe you can respond to me more easily.

              Edit: Ok nvm I see it. I thought you sent it on Lemmy, I see it on Matrix.

              I removed those posts. But I am reluctant to follow the Tor links to verify that they are what you claim, for obvious reasons. I’ll take your word for it.

              • InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works
                2·
                2 days ago

                Assuming that’s the 2 recently removed posts in the modlog, I’ll check if I can see what happened to those reports.

                The post themselves were to our “test” community and first seemed to me like they were just random strings, but from the context I’m reading they might have been part of some onion link?