tesseract/src/lib/blacklists.ts at main · asimons04/tesseract
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I discovered this after upgrading our instance yesterday, which also upgraded all frontends to their latest versions as well. After I did, our Tesseract frontend stopped working and I noticed immediately as it’s been my primary for a while. Initially I thought it was an API version mismatch, but no, it was much worse.

Someone pointed out that the developer of the frontend added an explicit hidden and unmodifiably blacklist which includes any and all instances to the left of Kissinger. There’s a commit which also explains their specious reasoning about our instance specifically, as it seems we’ve been on their shit list for a bit longer than that.

This instance and its admin staff encourages identity politics, groupthink, mob mentality, and extremist solutions to societal problems. Users who advocate violence are not moderated so long as the admins agree with the target. Caution and critical thinking are advised when interacting with this instance or its users.

When you use tesseract to connect to one blacklisted such instance , you just get a message informing you that Tesseract is “incompatible with that instance” which leads one to think of a technical issue, like an API mismatch, rather than the dev being an opinionated coward.

Isn’t it funny how all the software developed by turbolibs, like Piefed and Tesseract, end up with hidden control mechanisms from developers who think they know better than everyone else? That they don’t just think they deserve to tell you what you should think, but they should manipulate you to think it? Isn’t it funny how libs go on about how bad it is to support lemmy due to the ideology of the devs behind it, and yet lemmy has 0 opinions as a software? It does make one think…

Anyway, I forked - it as one does - and disabled the blacklist, but since this is a massively ideologically compromised software, I’ll doubt I’ll keep this frontend up after Lemmy 1.0. I think we’ll bring up mlmym again now that someone’s maintaining it again.

      • Arcanepotato@crazypeople.onlineEnglish
        11·
        1 day ago

        I’m not asking about the instances, I’m asking about the word. The wiki doesn’t really help:

        Tankie is a pejorative label generally applied to authoritarian communists, especially those who support or defend acts of repression by such regimes, their allies, or deny the occurrence of the events thereof.

        Okay, so an insulting way to refer to an authoritarian communist. What makes them authoritarian? I see this word being used by people who support the police. Are the police (as an institution) not authoritarian? So what does authoritarian mean?

        More specifically, the term has been applied to those who express support for one-party Marxist–Leninist socialist republics, whether contemporary or historical. It has a history of being used by some anti-authoritarian leftists, anarchists, democratic socialists, and reformists to denounce Stalinism, although the term has seen increasing use by liberal and right‐wing factions as well.[5][4]

        Okay, so only Marxist–Leninist or Stalinists?

        The term “tankie” was originally used by dissident Marxist–Leninists to describe members of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) who followed the party line of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). Specifically, it was used to distinguish party members who spoke out in defence of the Soviet use of tanks to suppress the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 and the 1968 Prague Spring, or who more broadly adhered to pro-Soviet positions.[6][7]

        Okay, so ML or Stalinists who are pro-soviet.

        The term has been extended to describe people who endorse, defend, or deny the actions of communist leaders such as Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. In recent times, the term has been used across the political spectrum and in a geopolitical context to accuse individuals of having a bias in favour of current anti-Western authoritarian states; Belarus, Cuba, China,[8][9] Iran,[10] Nicaragua, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela serve as prevalent examples.

        Uh…those are all very different.

        Maybe it’s easier for me to ask what’s an acceptable communist?

        • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
          1·
          1 day ago

          If this wiki page doesn’t help you understand the term tankie I don’t think I can do better. It’s basically people who support authoritarian communism including denying or supporting their crimes like the Tiananmen Square massacre and similar. As the last part explains, sometimes the relationship to Marxism gets lost as they focus on anti-Western or anti-American positions, such as defending Islamist Iran and other Islamist movements that share very little with Marxism and the left.

          I don’t know if it’s possible, but I would guess democracy based communism with no human rights abuse. Maybe that’s better called social democracy or democratic socialism. For example, in Europe many former Soviet communism supporters lost their faith when they progressively learned about Stalinism crimes and founded what’s called “Socialist” parties as opposed to “Communist” (ex: French or Spanish socialist parties). In English, they are usually called social democrats, close to people like Bernie Sanders, I think.

          • Arcanepotato@crazypeople.onlineEnglish
            1·
            1 day ago

            I don’t think you understood my response. The wiki doesn’t help because there is no common thread between the groups listed, and they aren’t all comunist. Like, iran? The article goes on to talk about modern russia. That’s not communist either. The only thing I can find in common is that they are not “western”.

            I don’t know if it’s possible, but I would guess democracy based communism with no human rights abuse. Maybe that’s better called social democracy or democratic socialism.

            For example, in Europe many former Soviet communism supporters lost their faith when they progressively learned about Stalinism crimes and founded what’s called “Socialist” parties as opposed to “Communist” (ex: French or Spanish socialist parties).

            Socialism is such a broad term it’s almost meaningless without qualifiers. Social democracy is also extremely different from democratic socialism. Social democracy wants to reform capitalism to reduce its harm whereas democratic socialists want a socialist society (i.e. no capitalism) but without the own party system and more democratic decision making.

            Help me understand the term Tankie as anything other than an insult towards someone who thinks the capitalists and imperialists are bad, actually. Are their human rights abuses less horrific than any other?

            • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
              1·
              1 day ago

              The wiki doesn’t help because there is no common thread between the groups listed, and they aren’t all comunist. Like, iran? The article goes on to talk about modern russia. That’s not communist either. The only thing I can find in common is that they are not “western”.

              I think it implies a sort of connection in this way: Marxism -> opposition to capitalism -> opposition to countries championing capitalism such as the USA -> defending organizations who oppose USA -> defending Islamist organizations or current Russia.

              I have observed those thoughts combined within instances that claim to be Marxist on Lemmy. Have you not?

              I believe all human rights abuse are bad whatever the ideology or absence of it. But maybe it’s even more depressing when it comes from an ideology base that claims to be in favor of the oppressed people. It’s also most visible from the leftist side here, because far right instances are more unanimously ostracized. I never saw them in my feed personally, probably due to admins early filtering.

              • Arcanepotato@crazypeople.onlineEnglish
                1·
                1 day ago

                I have observed those thoughts combined within instances that claim to be Marxist on Lemmy. Have you not?

                I would say I have observed the following from individual users:

                Marxism -> opposition to capitalism -> opposition to countries championing capitalism such as the USA -> defending organizations who oppose USA -> defending Islamist organizations or current Russia.

                I think the Hexbear code of conduct explains why I feel the last price is missing. I’ll quote them instead of trying to paraphrase:

                “Critical Support” means that while we may not agree with every policy of a country that is being targeted by the US Empire, we support them in their struggle to remain independent.

                Being anti USA doesn’t mean you are on board with all the opinions of all the other opponents or that you are defending them. Personally, I sure am hoping we are watching the collapse of Team America World Police as a result of their involvement in the middle east but that’s where my opinion ends. I don’t know anything about the groups opposing them apart from what I read in western media which is as good as useless, so the idea that I would defend them is pretty absurd. Defend them about what? To whom? (I’m also not ML btw so maybe I shouldn’t be using myself as an example?). USA = bad does not mean another state is good. But I have found people assume that when I wish for the end of the US that I would support another authoritarian and/or imperialist regime in its place which is not accurate.

                (Footnote: I’m assuming you don’t mean all Islamic groups/nations when you said “Islamic organizations” but only the ones who are in opposition to the USA. )

                Anyways, this has gotten very off topic. Your connection list was helpful in answering my question. Whether or not I think there are instances that meet this isn’t really relevant.

                • oce 🐆@jlai.lu
                  1·
                  1 day ago

                  I’m just glad we could have a conversation about this without one calling the other fascist as it happens too often here.