• Cypressed@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    8·
    2 days ago

    making a list of undesirables to disenfranchise is a rather alarmingly faschy thing to do >.>; just sayin’…

    i’ve been mulling it over and it creeps me out more and more. all too easily, a misplaced sense of self-importance in a principal administrative figure can spoil like milk forgotten in a hot car. I’ve seen this sort of thing happen PERSONALLY.

    Someone I had known became the big fish in their small pond. They began systematically ejecting and excommunicating anyone who didn’t agree with them. Eventually the only people left in their circle were exclusively yes-men who did not DARE to challenge or question anything–lest they were to dispose of said yes-men too. Yes-men incentivized to say ‘yes’ to, and thereby condone, and then encourage, increasingly outrageous and deranged impulses.

    The first domino has fallen over and struck the second, which is now tilting past any point of equilibrium. For a while longer, everything will be fine; the people who ingratiate themselves will be selectively immune from the same criticisms that get others blanket-‘disappeared’… so hey, one might enjoy using that frontend for now…

    …but I implore mindfulness and wariness. Very seldom do I see someone cross the first line without crossing the rest of them eventually. It’s not impossible, but it’s far from common. Anyone still using that frontend, if they start seeing “a certain kind of person” being bolstered exceptionally at the expense of everyone else, it’s time to bail.

    While it’s not my place to dictate what the tesseract dev does, I do recall reading that they specifically were feeling dissatisfied with the work, and disappointed by the way their users were acting, and had been considering abandoning the project. While I can’t speak for this developer, obviously, I can’t help but imagine myself in their position… and on that basis I for one believe I would have sooner relinquished the project and walked away entirely rather than see myself turn it into a tool of targeted harassment and marginalization With A Cheerful Coat Of Paint.

    …

    it’s just setting off my alarm bells real bad. This looks too much like other abusive shit i’ve been through over the decades.

    but eh. maybe i’m just paranoid… grain of salt, mileage may vary, et cetera.

  • audaxdreik@pawb.socialEnglish
    392·
    3 days ago

    I just want Lemmy to have a better, more wholesome, and welcoming experience for new users, as such I’ve decided to block the things I think we can all agree are bad:

    • Calls for violence
    • Politics
    • Sex
    • Nu metal
    • People who put egg in potato salad
    • Jerry (all of them)
      • ExtremeDullard@piefed.socialEnglish
        73·
        4 days ago

        Well, I quickly read through that list and I’ll say this: considering the insane amount of stuff that gets silently filtered out, whoever views Lemmy through that thing must think it’s pretty quiet 🙂

        • Carl@anarchist.nexusEnglish
          85·
          4 days ago

          And that’s a large part of the issue. The frontend doesn’t actually disclose this blocklist at all. In fact, it actively takes steps to obfuscate things and make it appear as if the blocklist doesn’t exist at all.

          For example, attempting to view a blocked instance shows a generic network error, rather than a “this instance is being blocked by your frontend” error. And blocked users aren’t simply flagged and/or collapsed. They’re entirely hidden, as if they don’t exist at all. So someone using this as their primary frontend wouldn’t even know that they’re missing entire posts and/or comment chains, because anything from the blocked users is simply gone.

          Additionally, the blocklist is downloaded (in plaintext, over http) when the frontend is booted, so it’s not a file that gets updated with the git version updates. Meaning the dev can silently update it even if users haven’t pulled new versions. Simply rebooting your frontend would be enough to pull an updated blocklist. This gives the dev an extreme amount of censorship power, because they can effectively change users’ configs without any action on the users’ part.

          It was only originally discovered because the admin for db0 used the frontend. And notably, db0 is on the block list. They were previously using an old version of the frontend that didn’t include the hidden blocklist yet. They updated their Lemmy stack a little while ago, and suddenly their entire frontend was broken (the entire feed was completely empty) and showing a generic version incompatibility error.

          After lots of troubleshooting, the db0 admin eventually discovered that the frontend was downloading a hidden blocklist and automatically blocking the instance that it was running on. Because when they updated their stack, the new version of Tesseract included the secret blocklist. So it downloaded the blocklist when it booted up, found that db0 was on the list, and silently hid every single post because they were all from a blocked instance. This resulted in a completely empty feed.

          • chilicheeselies@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            2 days ago

            Oh that’s mental. I didn’t realize it was that bad. Something new to worry about scanning for when using open source!

          • halcyoncmdr@piefed.socialEnglish
            22·
            4 days ago

            Considering the amount of effort put into the blocklist by the Tesseract dev to keep it hidden, you would think they would have included an exception if it was running on a blocked instance to help keep it hidden.

            • 4am@lemmy.zipEnglish
              14·
              4 days ago

              Don’t give them ideas, it’ll be harder to find the next one.

              I guess the lesson here is “compile from the source repo and code review before you install a new frontend”

        • Girl Named ZERO (she/her)@piefed.zeromedia.vipEnglish
          105·
          4 days ago

          Yup, and this is just speculation, but I guess it’s supposed to be an anti-spam thing, but it targets a lot of people/communities/instances that post actually good content

          • Brkdncr@lemmy.worldEnglish
            40·
            4 days ago

            It’s not anti spam at this point. No one obfuscates something that much for antispam.

            • T156@lemmy.worldEnglish
              15·
              4 days ago

              It’s also a weird place for anti-spam, to have it be client side. That should be done on the server, rather than the various clients handling it.

          • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            10·
            3 days ago

            but I guess it’s supposed to be an anti-spam thing

            Oh my God, I swear some people will just never get it.

            No dude, this isn’t just someone trying to block spam, this is ideologically targeted to silently remove specific viewpoints from people who use the stylesheet without disclosing that they’re doing that.

            This obviously has nothing to do with spam. Keep giving people like this the benefit of the doubt, and see where it leads us.

            Edit: I just saw your pfp… Were you aware that this blocked the entirety of Blahaj? The de facto trans instance?

            Try justifying that as anti-spam.

          • Signtist@bookwyr.meEnglish
            12·
            4 days ago

            I’m on the list and I’ve never even posted anything. I do comment a decent amount, though, but I wouldn’t consider any of it to be spam.

            • 4am@lemmy.zipEnglish
              9·
              4 days ago

              Did you ever talk shit about billionaires or crypto? Make any anti-AI posts?

              • Signtist@bookwyr.meEnglish
                3·
                3 days ago

                Yeah, I’m pretty unabashedly anti-capitalist, so I’m not surprised I ruffled some feathers. I was just pointing out that the idea that this was just a spam filter taken too far doesn’t really hold up.

          • FundMECFS@piefed.zipEnglish
            62·
            3 days ago

            I don’t think it’s anti-spam. It looks pretty much like a personal blocklist, it blocks a lot of users that have political views that the tess dev doesn’t agree with. It blocks political keywords often used by certain ideologies that I guess the dev doesn’t agree with, for example, no ones blocking “neoliberal” as a keyword because of spam.

            This looks entirely like a personal blocklist which is completely fine, but secretly adding it to the frontend is v dubious…

            It’s a shame I think the dev is a good person from the convos I’ve had with them, but this crosses a bit of a line…

  • BigPotato@lemmy.worldEnglish
    23·
    3 days ago

    Feeling offended now, going back through my comment history and thinking “Why did that not get me on there?” Am I too tame?

    It’s probably because I spend 60% of my time on here overthinking and eventually deleting my posts before posting them…

    And 30% writing the posts that never get posted.

  • Apeman42@lemmy.worldEnglish
    70·
    4 days ago

    Wow, this dev must be an absolute chud, in which case I’m honored to have triggered them so. Tongue punch my fartbox, loser.

  • Wren@lemmy.todayEnglish
    47·
    4 days ago

    I post leftist, feminist, gay shit all the time and didn’t get blocked. They just shadowbanned my news coms. This is outrageous.

  • cheeseburger@lemmy.caEnglish
    50·
    4 days ago

    There’s a user regex section for people across multiple instances, so:

    “^cheeseburger$”,

    I guess that means all my accounts are covered 😄, but why? Who the fuck am I to this fool? What an absolute clown.

  • hitstun@feddit.onlineEnglish
    25·
    4 days ago

    “^hierophante”,
    “^HistoryLOL”,
    “^hitstun$”,
    “^holyclergy$”,
    “^HomeInvasion$”,
    Oh, so that’s why I can’t find my own posts in Tesseract. I’m surprised they didn’t block my whole community.

    • Malyca@lemmy.zipEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      I’m new and I’m on it IDK. Maybe just participating in certain posts is enough?