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.

edit. Hello anyone from the piefed.social thread snoopy locked to preemptively prevent mod work. More interesting mod chose to only attack me and others outside of the piefed.social thread 🤔

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[–] remon@ani.social 4 points 21 hours ago (2 children)

That seems like something that is very reasonably within the discretion of an instance admin to do. Also pretty neat feature. Not a de-federation so you can still interact with users from that instance, but it doesn't push your own users into communities on problem instances.

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[–] anon_8675309@lemmy.world 4 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

As someone who doesn’t follow stuff like this why should I care? It all seems like drama for the sake of people getting to cosplay as people with authority.

[–] Goferking0@ttrpg.network 9 points 22 hours ago (15 children)

Piefed is trying to be the next reddit with all the worst parts of reddit amplified in the fediverse but is being hostile towards others in the fediverse and occasionally does things that breaks the protocol fediverse uses.

Main dev now fully going hostile towards other piefed instances

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[–] null@piefed.nullspace.lol 4 points 1 day ago (22 children)

It is funny how all the biggest crybullies on Fedi have all gathered around to demonstrate exactly the behaviour they're being silenced for.

"Why would rimu silence me, all I do is things like lie about him being an anti-left transphobe!?"

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[–] CombatWombat@feddit.online 35 points 1 day ago (9 children)

I'm not gonna get into this one, but as a rule, if you're on one of the default instances for a given fediverse service, such as mastodon.social, you should be using it to actively shop for a smaller instance more closely aligned with your interests.

[–] mathemachristian@lemmy.blahaj.zone 24 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

and those users won't find these instances since they've been silenced

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[–] Blaze@piefed.zip 18 points 1 day ago (25 children)

The "obvious reasons" come from the drama I tried to summarize in this comment: https://lemmy.ml/post/47022286/25575766

If we go down to the core of the issue, there's a fundamental disagreement between some instances on a niche use case: can the modlog be used for permanent slander, without giving people the option to reply?

Dbzer0, quokk.au and anarchist.nexus instance admins didn't see the value in allowing admins to act on other instances modlogs. Rimu and other people in the Piefed staff were interested in this, hence the new feature regarding the modlog.

There was some additional tension between Quokk.au admins and Rimu on the way he handled the AI moderation disclosure, leading to a quokk.au admin leaving the channel.

Now remember that all of this only affects Piefed.social. I've been a Piefed.zip user for 11 months now, and that's the instance I recommend to everyone. Even from a federation perspective, Piefed.zip doesn't defederate from for instance hexbear or lemmygrad (but the Piefed instance blocking is an actual blocking compared to Lemmy's incomplete one).

Switching between Piefed instances is as easy as it can be.

Some people will see these decisions for Piefed.social and the new Piefed feature as "drama", but they seem to be a way to deal with what triggered the drama in the first place (slander in modlogs)

[–] mathemachristian@lemmy.blahaj.zone 22 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (15 children)

Rimu on the way he handled the AI moderation disclosure

Fuck this NYT speak, call it what it is: he lied about it. There was no AI moderation and he knew it.^[https://lem.lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/42212552/20361800] Stop implying it was true. The issue wasn't "ThE wAy He HaNdLeD" it's that he spread defamatory falsehoods. There was an AI summary of some clearly rule-breaking comments linked in the modlog as the reason for a user getting banned and that's it.

And lets not gloss over

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.

which cannibalizes smaller instances as their posters are incentivized to post in the communities of the bigger instance and not their home instance since less people will see it.

Now remember that all of this only affects Piefed.social.

piefed.social isn't just a piefed instance like others though is it? It's the flagship instance. What it does carries more weight than what the other instances do.

Edit:

Some people will see these decisions for Piefed.social and the new Piefed feature as “drama”, but they seem to be a way to deal with what triggered the drama in the first place (slander in modlogs)

but this is only a solution for admins and their buddies that get slandered in the modlog. Us regular users that might get slandered with "stalking and harassing" for no reason still only get YPTB, which, ironically, has been silenced by piefed.social, making posts there not visible on their feed anymore.

And the guy clearly is a zionist, he puts up warnings for electronicintifada, I have not seen him be supportive of palestinians once, I mean you have a more direct connection to him I believe, go ask him what he thinks of the palestinians armed struggle against occupation.

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[–] Goferking0@ttrpg.network 18 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Blaze this is just minimizing the issue along with bringing up unrelated issues while also conflating them.

Db0s comment replying to you is a better summary

We have bent over backwards to de-escalate the situation, both with L.W. and with Rimu. Our admins have stepped down. People changed their usernames. Our admins overruled our mods. Literally creating tension within our instance to maintain relations with the larger fediverse. On the other hand, rimu's deliberate disinfo is still up to this day, without any statements from our team, or correction to their blatant lies. They've even blocked people calling them out, so piefed users can't see this criticism. So don't try to "both sides" me.

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