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.

  • HuntressHimbo@lemmy.zip
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    4 months ago

    Pretty awful changes. Doubt I’ll ever be moving to Piefed and unless it has a pretty substantial course correction gonna end up giving side eye to anyone promoting it

      • davel@lemmy.ml
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        4 months ago

        To EEE the threadiverse, thus protecting the innocent minds of the imperial core labor aristocracy from exposure to wrongthink?

    • mathemachristian [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      4 months ago

      There is no “correction” necessary, this was the plan all along. Piefed’s main selling point always was, “lemmy but anti-tankie”. All those little QoL features that got added at breakneckspeed and with little forethought were to make it easier and more compelling to switch, but I bet the number 1 thing among people that choose piefed over lemmy is that they hate the politics of the lemmy devs (which they don’t put into their software) and want the anti-tankie software that bakes it’s bias into it’s code. A lot of “har har fuck those tankies we like their platform but hate them.”

  • iByteABit@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    It’s always very interesting to see the imperialist type of “leftist” always punch left harder than they punch right. Almost as if that’s their actual intended purpose all along…

  • Die4Ever@retrolemmy.com
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    3 months ago

    I kinda wish developers would not host their own flagship/open instance, but I know it makes testing and development much easier

  • mathemachristian[he]@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    Yeah rimu is hellbent in his crusade against memes and defense of us imperialism. His “q-anon” blocklist contains leftist sites like grayzone as well as sites like wikileaks.org. He has warnings on his instance for sites like electronicintifada and peoplesdispatch. He put out a hit piece on bans from db0 like a week ago, days after a troll made a fake screenshot accusing some db0 admin of being an undercover nazi, then made his “LLM moderation” scarepost even though he knew that there was none because he asked about it before, blocked db0 the user so none of his posts show up on piefed.social (or federate if the post is in a community of piefed.social) and at this point I’d really ask if you all want to keep with software whos designer is openly hostile to you, be part of his network and introduce people to it. All of this right after MrKaplans knee-jerk defederation. Like it’s been a busy two weeks of hostilities from the liberal side of the lemmy/piefed fediverse mainly from rimu who has been very open I must say about being on an anti-tankie crusade and doing everything in his power to make “his software” hostile for people whose ideology he doesn’t like. And very much not open about how he intends to achieve this.

    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 just cannibalising smaller instances. When their communities can’t be as easily discovered the conversations naturally will be on the bigger instances and posters will naturally fluctuate towards the bigger instances so their posts can be seen. I bet you all are “silenced” as well.

    reposted from my hexbear account for more visibility

  • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    4 months ago

    I actually like having a second order of downgrading an instance over pure defederation. For example it would be really cool to mark instances from which to accept downvotes. Etc

    • Luminous5481 "Enemy of the State"@anarchist.nexus
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      4 months ago

      something like that already exists in piefed, in that it can be set that only trusted instances can downvote. all my comms are set to ignore downvotes from anywhere that isn’t on the AN trusted list.

      they can still downvote locally, it just doesn’t federate.

  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    Serious question, why do people even bother with piefed at this point. Also, I’m not really against libs creating their own bubble if that means they stop being obnoxious all across the fediverse.

  • kopasu22@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    Quokk.au is a left-leaning instance? Never got that impression. I feel like I’ve seen as many Israel-simping zionists from there as on .world.

    • 𝙈𝙞𝙖@quokk.auOP
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      4 months ago

      Please name one?

      I’ve seen many report about our users for saying Israel should not exist etc, I’ve never seen anything in favour of Israel.

      Also Zionists and Nazis aren’t allowed on here.

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        I haven’t seen Zionists, but I have seen Nazi apologia as a way of “critiquing” the Soviets. It wasn’t “Nazis good,” but quokk.au users (2 that I can remember) minimized Nazis lynching Jews and communists as “student protests” crushed by the Soviets, which is just historical revisionism.

          • lumpenproletariat@quokk.au
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            3 months ago

            And you harbour genocide deniers and transphobic devs.

            Sorry I’m not banning all users for simply being Libs. If you want to refute the articles they post, do so. It’s mostly an open forum for people to engage with if you’re not a *phobe, racist, misogynist, or genocide denier.

            • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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              3 months ago

              Better ban yourself, unless you think “White Genocide” in South Africa is a real thing. The west often uses atrocity propaganda to discredit its enemies, such as claiming Hamas wants to “kill all Jews.”

              • lumpenproletariat@quokk.au
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                3 months ago

                Is this like the Tankie “gotcha”, some right wing drivel therefore everything else we don’t like must be false.

                • davel@lemmy.ml
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                  3 months ago

                  “Genocide denial” is a liberal “gotcha” 🤷 Maybe stop acting like a lib on an ostensibly anarchist instance.

        • lumpenproletariat@quokk.au
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          3 months ago

          Lol the chief propagandist with his walls of text about how everything is a CIA colour revolution. Yeah mate, trust your sources so much 🤣

          • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            3 months ago

            Anything not done by Mao and Stalin was a color revolution, including anarchist revolutions, and other Marxist revolutions. Trotsky went from Lenin’s pick to color revolutionist overnight. So odd he went from trusted to CIA plant.

            And their citations will be a wiki they made because the woke mods of Wikipedia wouldn’t allow a self hosted blog post, and books that have publicly called out historical inaccuracies, called Conservapedia. Oh sorry, Prolewiki. Very different things.

            Maybe if the USSR didn’t pretend to be one thing and then do the opposite, while people say it’s the shining example of the thing it pretended to be. Queers are also color revolution.

            • CriticalResist@lemmy.ml
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              3 months ago

              Trotsky was never trusted or “Lenin’s pick”. Lenin’s pick is meaningless, unless you believe that Lenin was a literal demigod dictator who could just say “I choose you” like Ash Ketchum chooses a pokemon and the CPSU central committee would make it so. This is contrary to any modern reading of western ‘Sovietology’ as they call it who recognize that Lenin did not have all powers unto himself, and is not how you can run a state in the modern age anyway.

              You seem to be confusing two different groups when you say ‘Lenin’s pick to color revolutionist overnight’. One part (trotskyists) uphold him as this savant thinker who would have led the USSR to its gilded age and avoided the 1991 overthrow/breakup - which is a huge “what if history happened differently” LARP, because we inherit the history that happened, not the one that we wish happened - and another part (literally everyone who is not a trotskyist) considers him a clear individualist who was trying to split the party if not coup the government entirely, which is contrary to democratic centralism and rightfully got him kicked out. From there, those that delve into Trotsky’s actions in the party prior to his membership being revoked in 1926 realize that he was always a huge individualist who would have made the deeds attributed to Stalin look like a walk in the park in comparison. He was the type of guy who wanted to shoot soldiers just because they rubbed his fragile ego the wrong way when he was Commissar of the Red Army.

              It’s a good thing he got purged and exiled (twice), exactly because he would not stop trying to split the party even after consequences came and he became dangerous to the whole of the USSR’s project. By that point everyone in the CPSU was fed up of his shit and wanted him gone.

              His idea of permanent revolution, for those that actually looked into it, made no sense and would have completely destroyed the nascent USSR because it relied on the German workers succeeding at their revolution (which they didn’t, as we know) and then coming to help the USSR to oppress the peasantry. It was never a real thing.

              Secondly you say that our citations will be a wiki we made because the ‘woke’ mods of Wikipedia (not sure what you mean by woke and why you felt like you had to include this dogwhistle but okay) wouldn’t allow a ‘self-hosted blog post’ as a citation.

              There is a contradiction in your words however. You recognize that wikis are not infallible, because as per your claim Conservapedia and ProleWiki are problematic in how they operate. So that means Wikipedia is not infallible either, by definition. Yet you don’t extend this criticism to it, which prompts one to ask: what makes it infallible? The fact that it has a lot of people editing it? But how does that translate to policy exactly - Might makes right? Everyone on Wikipedia somehow reaches the correct, objective conclusion through the struggle of their conflicting ideas, whereas any niche wiki is immediately a groupthink project that allows no deviation?

              Or is it that getting US government money to make it the de facto ‘people’s encyclopedia’ to the world makes it instantly better than other, grassroot projects? The bigger cohort is automatically the correct one?

              Clearly that is what you believe, since you directly oppose the de facto hegemonic wiki against two smaller, niche wikis. To you, it’s a David vs. Goliath thing, when in fact these projects just coexist on the wider internet with almost no overlap aside from uncovering some of the same contradictions that all wiki projects (and even online collective projects such as software repos) eventually get into.

              Or maybe you know the internal workings of Wikipedia because you’ve actually investigated the question and can point to something more specific. Because I have, personally. And I can tell you for over 7 years a teenager from the US was defacing the Scots Wikipedia with fake words and stereotypical accents, and it wasn’t caught for that span of time. 90% of the editors on Wikipedia are men, and women have found it very hard for over 20 years to even get accepted into Wikipedia, and continue to face sexism and harassment over their participation on Wikipedia. A sizeable chunk of editors are western (white) men. The most prolific editor is clearly a sockpuppet who makes mostly pro-war edits (Stephen Cross), manufacturing consent for war, and is active from 7AM to 7PM every day, every holidays, without ever any break. Someone with enough pull (who is liked by the community admins, in other words) will automatically win edit arguments over a newer user, regardless of whether the newer user is actually correct. Wikipedia doesn’t consider what Belgium did in the Congo a genocide because a user who named himself after his Belgian military General family member thinks it wasn’t a genocide. That’s it, that’s their entire reason for not calling it a genocide: some Belgian guy thinks it wasn’t one.

              There is ample academic evidence and papers that what Belgium did in the Congo was a genocide. But, Wikipedia decided to side with the long-time editor and that was that. It’s now considered a settled topic and nobody is allowed to claim that what happened in the Congo was a genocide anymore, or they will get banned from editing. Doesn’t sound like all of their conflicting points of view somehow synthesize into the correct conclusion to me.

              Yes, the ‘neutral point of view’ and ‘no primary sources’ policies have some upsides. They also have a lot of downsides. You are essentially implying that something is only real and actually happened if it was published in a ‘trusted’ source, such as an academic journal or famous newspaper. But the Jeju Island Massacre, for example, was not publicized or had a name for decades until someone did the research in the 90s. Yet the locals on Jeju Island knew what had transpired in their homes in 1949. Should their stories not be relayed or considered because they are primary sources, and no second-party has written about it yet? That’s what Wikipedia would do, by policy. If wikipedia had existed in the 80s, they would have essentially said “the Jeju Island Massacre did not happen because no third-party has written about it, and you can’t quote survivors of the massacre because they’re not reliable”. That’s what you are defending here when you defend Wikipedia so shoddily.

              Does this strike you as sensible policies to have? And do you think this could be used to immediately silence non-Western victims of western acts?

              Queers are also color revolution.

              Nobody is saying that and you know it.

                • mathemachristian[he]@lemmy.ml
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                  3 months ago

                  like come on why do I only ever see you respond to these well laid out and good faith arguments with dismissive snark?? I’m gonna say this openly it were these in-depth arguments for claims I considered “ridiculous” and “obviously false” that radicalised me. Not the snarky dismissals and cool slogans. “It’s socialism or barbarism” sounds like some hyperbolic sloganeering, “they don’t mean that literally surely and I agree with the general gist” is what I thought before I went on being the same redditor liberal that would’ve blended in nicely at feddit.org. But when you actually read Rosa Luxemburg you gain a whole new understanding of the world and suddenly you’re chanting it as well .

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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            3 months ago

            Not everything is a counterrevolution nor CIA, but for clarity, you’re choosing not to trust communists or westerners. This is what you called “student protest:”

            The Hungarian revolt in 1956 was infested with anti-semitic pograms. MI6 funded, supplied, and trained the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries. These counter-revolutionaries were allied with fascists who were lynching Jewish people and Communists. The Truth About Hungary by Herbert Aptheker heavily relies on citing western sources like the New York Times. Aptheker backs up his claims heavily.

            "The special correspondent of the Yugoslav paper, Politika, (Nov. 13, 1956) describing the events of those days, said that the homes of Communists were marked with a white cross and those of Jews with a black cross, to serve as signs for the extermination squads. “There is no longer any room for doubt,” said the Yugoslav reporter, “it is an example of classic Hungarian fascism and of White Terror. The information,” continued this writer, “coming from the provinces tells how in certain places Communists were having their eyes put out, their ears cut off, and that they were being killed in the most terrible ways.”

            “But the forces of reaction were rapidly consolidating their power and pushing forward on the top levels, while in the streets the blood of scores of massacred Communists, Jews, and progressives was flowing.”

            “Some of the reports reaching Warsaw from Budapest today caused considerable concern. These reports told of massacres of Communists and Jews by what were described as 'Fascist elements’ …” (N.Y. Times, Nov. 1. 1956)

            “The evidence is conclusive that the entry of Soviet troops into Budapest stopped the execution of scores, perhaps thousands of Jews, for by the end of October and early November, anti-Semtic pogroms - hallmark of unbridled fascistic terror - were making their appearance, after an absence of some ten years, within Hungary.”

            "A correspondent of the Israeli newspaper Maariv (Tel Aviv) reported:

            During the uprising a number of former Nazis were released from prison and other former Nazis came to Hungary from Salzburg . . . I met them at the border . . . I saw anti-Semitic posters in Budapest . . . On the walls, street lights, streetcars, you saw inscriptions reading: “Down with Jew Gero!” “Down with Jew Rakosi!” or just simply “down with the Jews!”

            Leading rabbinical circles in New York received a cable early in November from corresponding circles in Vienna that “Jewish blood is being shed by the rebels in Hungary.” Very much later-in February, 1957-the World Jewish Congress reported that “anti-Semitic excesses occurred in more than twenty villages and smaller provincial towns during the October-November revolt.” This occurred, according to this very conservative body, because “fascist and anti-Semitic groups had apparently seized the opportunity, presented by the absence of a central authority, to come to the surface.” Many among the Jewish refugees from Hungary, the report continued, had fled from this anti-Semitic pogrom-like atmosphere (N.Y. Times, Feb. 15, 1957). This confirmed the earlier report made by the British Rabbi, R. Pozner, who, after touring refugee camps, declared that “the majority of Jews who left Hungary did so for fear of the Hungarians and not the Russians.” The Paris Jewish newspaper, Naye Presse, asserted that Jewish refugees in France claimed quite generally that Soviet soldiers had saved their lives."

            So, the New York Times, Maariv, Politika, The Independent, Naye Presse, Herbert Aptheker, and more all agree on the general fact that Nazis were let out of prison during the riots, and that said rioters were lynching Jews and communists. These certainly can’t all be said to be of the same political background. You let your bone to pick with the soviets get in the way of how you view history, which results in Nazi apologia.

      • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        3 months ago

        It’s honestly nice that the worst thing on Quokk is someone who doesn’t tolerate weirdos and Hexbear wants you to ban them for that. The examples from Cowbee and Devel is nothing compared to other instances (including their own).

        • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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          3 months ago

          I’m not trying to make a hit piece on quokk.au, I defended them in a top level comment. I think it’s pretty obvious that Rimu is attacking anyone on the left, and as such that impacts everyone on the left. It’s a pretty clear-cut case where left unity makes sense, and I don’t think that’s controversial.

          That all being said, I do think Nazi apologia is pretty terrible, and some prominent moderators on quokk.au are absolutely guilty of that. I have no problems with the average quokk.au user, but I do take issue with people that insist, against all credible evidence, that the Hungarian counter-revolt was merely a student protest brutally crushed by the evil Red Army.

          This narrative is convenient if one wants to portray Marxists as necessarily brutal and evil, but it doesn’t measure up to reality, and in doing so it trivializes the Holocaust, as the pograms in 1956 were a direct continuation of Hungarian participation in the Holocaust.

          Then, there’s the accusation that the only sources provided are from small indie wikis. There’s a few problems here, though. The first is that, for this specific claim, I gave a source citing the New York Times, Maariv, Politika, The Independent, Naye Presse, and more. This is a wide variety of pro-communist and anti-communist journalism. The second is that even if a wiki is small and made as a direct counter to standard liberal framing, this does not mean the sources cited are inherently worthless. The third is that usually people do not cite Prolewiki itself, Prolewiki is linked more for understanding a concept or for the library aspect of it, not as a source for a claim.

          To return, I think quokk.au is fine, except for the fact that some prominent moderators are perfectly happy to downplay Nazi repressions in order to get a cheap rhetorical win over Marxists. The users usually aren’t guilty, but the ones who are absolutely are. I don’t think Nazi apologia should be levied against everyone on quokk.au, but the Nazi apologists on quokk.au aren’t just wholesome and innocent. It’s an important issue.

  • Vegafjord oakframer@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    Fediverse are hives of benevolent dictators. The dictators must do what they feel is right for the hive.

    The hives assumes dictatorship.

    If we want this to change, we need to demand hives that are built with democratic control in mind.

    • 𝙈𝙞𝙖@quokk.auOP
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      4 months ago

      Unfortunately as >75% of all new members joined us from there it’s effectively killed off instance growth. Will have to do a lot of campaigning to get any visibility now.

        • Pinto, the Bean@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          I wonder which admin this an alt of. Logged on only recently during this whole Piefed situation, to smear the instances targeted by Piefed 's dev.

          Edit: I may be wrong and confusing it for another Kirk account.

  • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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    3 months ago

    Entirely unsurprising. When you wonder why someone would develop an alternative to Lemmy, rather than work within it, and then you see Rimu’s deplorable views and attitudes towards leftists, it’s clear: Piefed has always been developed to cultivate liberalism through coercive means. Lemmy is developed along communist principles out of a sheer belief that doing so and sticking to principles is the best way to create a platform for not just communists, but everyone. Pieces is developed along liberal, anti-leftist lines as an act of ideological warfare itself, resorting to implementing social credit scores and other manipulative means to try to force its own viewpoint.

    In other words, the Lemmy devs believe sticking to principles is the best path forward, whereas Rimu doesn’t trust liberalism’s own principles and is fine to “play dirty.”

    • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      Very well put, the fact that they have to go to such length to lock people into their bubble shows that deep down they know their ideology has no staying power, and can only be sustained through coercive measures.

      In terms of developing an alternative, I don’t really see that of itself as a negative necessarily though. You might want to just play around to learn how this stuff works, use a different technology stack, or try out some new ideas in terms of UX. The real issue in my opinion is with all the dark patterns in piefed.

      • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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        3 months ago

        Yea, the part about developing an alternative itself is more as it relates to Rimu’s stated goals. The alternative isn’t the problem, it’s the drive that has already been stated by Rimu behind the alternative that determines the reactionary nature of this particular alternative, not alternatives in general.

    • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 months ago

      Entirely unsurprising. When you wonder why someone would develop an alternative to Lemmy, rather than work within it, and then you see Rimu’s deplorable views and attitudes towards leftists, it’s clear:

      Honestly that’s not necessary. I can absolutely see someone wanting to work with Python instead of Rust.