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.

  • Stamets@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 hour ago

    It is kind of amusing to me how often these people who run their own instances force other people to accept their own ideology.

    Admiral Patrick has ruined all credibility and has proven that he doesn’t add value to the fediverse. He actively detracts from it by shaping instances other than his own into his own image. Without their consent.

    I’m not saying this because I’m on that user list (fucking lol) but because it’s just pathetic. Rimu is doing the same thing on Piefed, Kaplan tried to do something similar by pressuring other instances to blacklist Dbzer0… Meanwhile the Flotilla seems to be the only ones willing to be completely transparent about what is going on and actually have their users decide.

    And for Admiral Patrick, considering the dipshit seems to love Star Trek so much, let me remind you of what someone far better than you once said who you seem to admire.

    With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.

    I’m adding on my own quote.

    Fuck you.

  • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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    4 hours ago

    If they could hid a blacklist I wonder if they also could hide a coin miner or a backdoor.

    With this, the author has forever ruined their own credibility.

  • I really hope you don’t get rid of tesseract completely. It’s a very useful tool when moderating and I haven’t found anything with a similar feature set. This dev sucks as a person for doing something this stupid and reactive.

    Edit: Apparenly he’s also blocking trans friendly instances too. What a transphobic piece of shit!

  • Jankatarch@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    Why the fuck are trans-friendly instances blocked too?? They just make wholesome memes and once in a while come over to comment “:3”

    • Abyssian@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      I blocked a lot of them because I’m not a fan of seeing the same shit page after page. For instance the flood of selfies recently.

      But deciding what a user does and doesn’t want on their feed should be the user’s decision, not some sneaky hidden bullshit pulled by the world’s lamest dev.

    • Draconic NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      19 hours ago

      I agree. People who do this are emotionally compromised and in my opinion can’t be trusted when writing code. There was a different developer who through similar political convictions made his software wipe PCs that were in Russia or Belarus. Maybe that seems more extreme but it comes from the same politically charged and emotionally compromised place.

  • Allero@lemmy.today
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    1 day ago

    You don’t understand! Freedom of speech is only good when it’s freedom of their speech!

    But seriously, this recent shift of project leads deciding what users should and shouldn’t see is concerning. And honestly, I could give them the benefit of the doubt if they added it as some sort of opt-in list. But no.

    They will force their narrative down the users’ throats.

    I might not always agree with db0, the Anarchist Flotilla, or the “Tankie Triad”. But whatever shakes Lemmy right now, consider me an ally. Whatever these egocentric folks attempt to create, it is everything Lemmy was created to replace.

    Also, that’s a lovely list they made of places to follow.

  • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 day ago

    Fuck me…

    ugggggghhhhhh

    Our ‘liberals’ aren’t liberal.

    That comment you highlighted just reads like a jordanlund modlog defending genocide by way of banning someone who says ‘genociders should die instead, actually’.

    They can’t help themselves from being elitists.

    Its like they’re hardwired, they’re so incredibly insecure that they front this moral superiority god complex, and anything that challenges the actual logic of that morality is fundamentally evil… because they can’t be wrong.

    These people are confused… they’re reactionary conservatives, they’re wannabe politicos/consultants… literal thought police, frame keepers of the overton window.

    • Bane_Killgrind@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      16 hours ago

      I don’t really know who Jordan Lund is or what he’s about, my first thought was Jordan Peterson who I think is a pretty unhinged UofT professor, someone cut together this rant about “rat desire” from that guy, it’s quite funny with or without context. I just looked up if that was the same Jordan, and the only rat related Lund is a Zoe Lund, https://www.zoelund.com/lund/rats/rats.html

      Anyway I keep seeing their names pop up and I have no real context for what they are about, and looking at Google results it’s just some whitewashed stuff about J Lund doing Shakespeare.

      So what is up with that guy?

      • AzuranAurora@piefed.ca
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        15 hours ago

        Think of your stereotypical power-tripping Reddit mod, in both behaviour and appearance. That’s Jordan. He is a moderator of several lemmy.world communities and never faces any consequences for being a PTB since he has the backing of LW’s admin team.

          • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            13 hours ago

            Yeah that’s not… the same guy, no.

            I am genuienly amused that you are this curious about him. Sorry I was a bit grumpy earlier.

            Because I care about you…

            ... be warned, he literally is the perfect visual stereotype of a neckbeard

            https://www.opb.org/news/series/racenw/race-northwest-united-states-jordan-lund-portland/

            Hilary stan, actively worked against Bernie when it could have helped him, then decided Bernie was neat after there was no realistic chance he could be Presidenr.

            Cares more about his neighborhood being quiet than the lives of black people, thinks protests should only be held in areas designated and pre planned by the authorities.

            Is seemingly unaware that … the reason Portland doesn’t have much black population these days is because I5 got built directly through the neighborhood they lived in, and everywhere else in Portland was redlined, so they had to leave, they weren’t welcome anymore.

            But that doesn’t matter to him, because he works in tech, and that’s all ancient history.

            What he notices… is anti-male bias. Surely its simply because he kept incorrectly calling his trillby a fedora, for a while.

            On that note… If I can websearch this in 2 seconds… whatever, mods remove this if this is too much:

            https://www.stackforce.co/talent/6a5dfa305b4c16902e24eed9

            Yeah he ran a betting website for a while…

            Then went to work for Adobe Marketo, for a decade.

            You know… advertisements. Social Media. How to convince people they should subscribe to something, maybe even how to moderate something like a Reddit community, maybe. Who knows!

            Now he’s retired and owns a book store, aw, how Portland.

            In summary, he’s got 10+ years of corporate social media management under his belt, is painfully white, thus ridden with misplaced white guilt, and a Hilary Clinton style Zionist.

            There. Because you asked.

            • Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
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              8 hours ago

              be warned, he literally is the perfect visual stereotype of a neckbeard

              He’s the WoW guy from South Park?

  • oats@piefed.zip
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    1 day ago

    The commit history of that file (not naming it denylist is telling enough, tbh) is hilarious!

    Shadowbanning users in the client, telling users they are subscribed to the wrong communities, it has everything lol

  • Arthur Besse@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    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.

    As of that commit (April 29) the instance blacklist didn’t even include lemmy.ml !

    confused travolta meme, no text, transparent background

    … but i see a month later they added us in this commit, while removing a large list of specific users and communities which they were also previously hiding content from.