According to Rimu Atkinson, the main developer of PieFed, all PieFed instances come with a 3000-long block list of resources that cannot be linked to. These include all sorts of right-wing outlets. There is no easy opt-out, forcing existing instances to follow the blocklist.
The flagship PieFed instance also rolled out a feature marking various other sorts of outlets - among them, resources considered AI slop and Marxist outlets. These are specific to piefed.social.
Related discussion: https://piefed.social/comment/11254679
Why YSK: Many users have hard time choosing between Lemmy, PieFed, and Kbin/Mbin. Users that prefer a more curated and politically uniform experience might prefer PieFed over the alternatives. Users that are right-wing, Marxist, or generally concerned about global censorship of the Fedi-/Threadiverse, might opt for other options instead.
Note: The post is only meant to inform users of the potentially important differences between Threadiverse platforms. Any ideologically charged discussions are better left in the respective topic.
https://github.com/rimu/no-qanon/blob/master/domains.txt includes… wikileaks.org 🤦
afaik WikiLeaks still enjoys a spotless accuracy record and obviously has never promoted QAnon.
The fact that some QAnon promoters have themselves cited some WikiLeaks publications is, in my opinion at least, not a reason to prohibit linking to WikiLeaks (a site which hasn’t published anything new recently but continues to host a massive archive of public interest documents).
Assange cozyed up to Trump during his first presidency (despite, you know, the assassination attempts by the US).
Additionally while Wikileaks has never published any proven false information, they have left out information on purpose. During the 2016 election Wikileaks received information on both Clinton and Trump, but primarily published information making Clinton look worse while not publishing information they received on Trump and the republican party.
This editorializing is why they’ve fallen out of favor over the last decade, again despite not publishing anything known to be false; they chose to withhold information.
they chose to withhold information
citation needed
It was only about 15 years ago that censorship was an extreme taboo on the internet. I miss those times deeply.
I miss when fascists stayed on stormfront and left everyone else the fuck alone; and if they ventured outside, everyone hated them until they left.
I’m starting to think these are deliberate attempts to start a fediverse flame war.
Piefed has an easily lifted block on right wing propoganda, boohoo. Oh no, piefed called a Marxist-Lenninist website Marxist-Lenninist, how can I turn this into drama somehow
‘easily lifted’ isn’t really easily lifted, and a platform technology shouldn’t be the one implementing blocks. Individual hosts using that technology should be the one to implement blocks.
PieFed is already derivative technology at best, made by a bunch of redditors that didn’t like being called right wing for supporting and endorsing genocide. Let’s not try to pretend it’s okay they want their echo chamber enforced at the platform level like reddit and twitter and facebook already do. The entire fucking internet already caters to you people.
My main issue with this actually is its controlled at the instance level. I actually have said I am fine with a default block list as long as it can be changed later. Its understandable that someone having an instance would want a good default experience form their perspective and I can even see it at the code level in this case. I have a few caveats though that make it troublesome for me. One it should be highly advertised or easy to peruse and change. Bigger though is as a user I want as much as possible to be controllable at the user level. So I want to be able to reverse this for myself. I completely understand defederation for legal reasons and the ideal instance for me would deferederat based on that, but I would completely appreciate a default block list for my user that I could then go through and revers if I cared to. I was actually aware of this and do intend to get off my tuckus and move instances because I can’t control the blocks but Im lazy and honestly I have no real incentive to unblock any of these but rather on philosophical grounds want the ability to do so. Im kinda hoping the software will evolve to allow a more direct user control like that before I move but its been awhile and I sorta doubt at this point that is going to happen.
Given that many “right-wing” sites are full of lies, bigotry, and hate, I think I’m quite fine with this.
Funny, I blocked your positivity comm because I kept seeing right wing astro turfers posting in your comms as a way to call out serial down voters and do more trolling than positivity. It’s no surprise we take different approaches to moderation.
I joined piefed to have a healthier experience with my social media and go figure removing a lot of right wing bullshit does wonders!
Users that are right-wing, Marxist, or generally concerned about global censorship of the Fedi-/Threadiverse, might opt for other options instead.
Based. Fuck accelerationists and fuck nazis.
And you know what, censorship is a problem. But at the moment, the choking permeation of authoritarians is worse, and the authoritarians could use some of their own fucking medicine for a bit until shit calms down.
I’m glad you approve of the world as it is right now and hate anything that makes positive change, but leave that to your little echo chamber known as THE ENTIRE PUBLIC INTERNET, and maybe don’t invade left wing spaces with it?
as soon as the authoritarians leave the left wing spaces, sure.
the authoritarians could use some of their own fucking medicine for a bit
Funny how often this is the way it goes. Almost as if the label of “authoritarian” is essentially meaningless.
Other than the suppression of right-wing, counter-revolutionary views and movements (which you seem to approve of), what exactly is your problem with Marxism?
Marxists are not “accelerationists” btw.
Funny how often this is the way it goes. Almost as if the label of “authoritarian” is essentially meaningless.
Other than the suppression of right-wing, counter-revolutionary views and movements (which you seem to approve of), what exactly is your problem with Marxism?
Marxists are not “accelerationists” btw.
🥸 : Hello fellow leftists in democratic countries with increasing support for fascist aligned parties. Let’s all demonize and vote against the current center left candidates who are the most likely to beat back the authoritarians! Please ignore that I am in no way attempting to engage in any grassroots empowerment of third parties and their eventual path towards replacing the not ideal center left party in your country. Also, my preferred Marxist Lenninist Communist Theorist Authoritarian Left party recieved 4 votes out of a possible trillion last election, but I have a good feeling about this election! Please ignore that my IP address is from Timbuktu, Minsk or Guangdong, and that I get paid to post here 10 hours a day by the FSB/CCP/something else. Only when the current mainstream party is gone, can we replace it with my own hyperspecfic vision of society rebuilt from the ground up on the ashes of the current society. Don’t worry about feeding yourself during this horrible violent phase of our lives, it is necessary to move onto FULLY AUTOMATED LUXURY SPACE COMMUNISM.
Anyone who disagrees is a hyperzionist child eater.
Right-wingers: I think we should spread hate speech towards minorities
Marxists: Fuck that, you shouldn’t be allowed to do that, we shouldn’t be tolerant of intolerance
Liberals/you: How dare you evil Marxists be intolerant and suppress free speech, you shouldn’t be allowed to spread those ideas
I should be the one posting about the “Paradox of Tolerance,” because you clearly don’t understand it.
The rest of your comment is just unhinged conspiracy theory shit.
you: How dare you evil Marxists be intolerant and suppress free speech, you shouldn’t be allowed to spread those ideas
Literally where did that come from? That completely opposes the entire content of their post.
The part where they’re arguing for Marxists to be censored so that “authoritarians” get a taste of “their own” medicine.
The rest of your comment is just unhinged conspiracy theory shit.
I’d comment about that’s how .ml operates, but that’s where you’re posting from, so we all know what’s up.
Is there any possible evidence that could falsify your belief that I’m secretly a foreign agent?
Is there any reason to believe that the FSB/CCP have a greater influence over English language discussions than the NSA does? How do I know you’re not getting paid off by them?
But what’s the point in trying to reason with a conspiracy theorist? Your beliefs have no basis on either evidence or reason so there’s no way to change them that way, any more than you could a flat-earther’s.
I don’t give a shit, I said my piece.
I don’t need to agree with the sites to know this isn’t a good idea. The list is full of junk but it also has sites like fox news.
Should be an opt in.
Fox news argued in court that they’re fictional entertainment and no reasonable person would take their reporting seriously.
I get that, but we can’t play the free speech for me, not for thee game
Free Speech means the government shouldn’t prosecute people for their speech, that’s all its ever meant. It doesn’t mean non-government places must allow Nazis to say their piece on your platform. That just turns places into Nazi bars.
This isn’t allowing them on a platform, this is disallowing platforms to choose whether to allow them on a platform based on the opinions of a guy that has endorsed genocide and child rape.
The list is full of junk but it also has sites like fox news.
🤔
Yeah, I stand by what I said lol
The list is full of junk but it also has sites like fox news.
but then again, you repeat yourself
you dont think someone posting about how fox news is reporting on something could be relevant? simply linking to an article is not always the poster agreeing with the reporting.
you dont think someone posting about how fox news is reporting on something could be relevant?
that’s right. If you want to or not, you are propagating the misinformation and helping them by giving them more exposure for their stats, more data for them to sell and more money for them to gain through ads.
EDIT : What is there to learn from a misinformation link? Everyone knows its misinformation.
Okay yeah it’s junk but this is just division
the list for the curious. I don’t mind if rimu wants to maintain a default blocklist, if I maintained my own fediverse app I would probably make something similar, based on my own preferences, to cut down on the mod work. If you want your piefed instance to allow botfarm produce, disable the blocklist or just fork it and live your dream.
For those who really like the idea of blocking the sites on that list, the linked github repo also has it formatted for pihole and the like.
I scrolled the list until about the P, at which point I accidentally tapped on the top portion of my screen and went all the way back up.
Notably the block list includes Harry Potter affiliated sites, Fox News, and Info Wars.
Everything else pretty much just looks like slop or are sources I’ve NEVER heard of. Some were local papers, I think? But none that I would have recognized immediately.
This really seems like a mountain made out of a molehill.
Why block InfoWars? Tim Heidecker is a treasure.
/s
This really seems like a mountain made out of a molehill.
unless you are interested in spreading the same kind of ideas that are on those sites, like IDK, CCP propaganda, or far right deals, or transphobia.
There are tons of spam factories that pose as local newspapers. The first one that comes to mind is the Denver Guardian, which gained brief notoriety during Trump’s rise to power. But there are a million of them, probably literally. They are easy to make and they are easy to launder through social media bot networks.
Yeah, I saw some sources for a city local to me, but they didn’t match for our actual local paper or papers.
Which was weird.
That explains a lot.
Pravada’s domains were on there which is one I was looking for. I didn’t see South China Morning Post on the list, which is unfortunate; otherwise though, I think it’s a solid list.
It will be an absolute nightmare keeping it up, given how quickly bad-faith actors are setting up fake local and regional news outlets.
The fact that it includes wikileaks tells me everything I need to know.
Remember when they didn’t release the rnc emails they hacked, but did release the dnc’s? Tell me why that is you think. Be honest with yourself.
When did the definition of misinformation expand to include saying true things? Should we block the Epstein files from being posted because only part of them has been released?
That it recognizes Russian state media as Conservative disinformation and propaganda? Yeah, me too.
Can’t disrupt the liberal echo chambers. They are trying to turn a communist creation into Reddit.
oh look, it’s the scumbag I was referring to in my comment. I’ll post it again to your face so you can have something to waste time on
Other than the suppression of right-wing, counter-revolutionary views and movements (which you seem to approve of), what exactly is your problem with Marxism?
Marxists are not “accelerationists” btw.
🥸 : Hello fellow leftists in democratic countries with increasing support for fascist aligned parties. Let’s all demonize and vote against the current center left candidates who are the most likely to beat back the authoritarians! Please ignore that I am in no way attempting to engage in any grassroots empowerment of third parties and their eventual path towards replacing the not ideal center left party in your country. Also, my preferred Marxist Lenninist Communist Theorist Authoritarian Left party recieved 4 votes out of a possible trillion last election, but I have a good feeling about this election! Please ignore that my IP address is from Timbuktu, Minsk or Guangdong, and that I get paid to post here 10 hours a day by the FSB/CCP/something else. Only when the current mainstream party is gone, can we replace it with my own hyperspecfic vision of society rebuilt from the ground up on the ashes of the current society. Don’t worry about feeding yourself during this horrible violent phase of our lives, it is necessary to move onto FULLY AUTOMATED LUXURY SPACE COMMUNISM.
Anyone who disagrees is a hyperzionist child eater.
This coupled with seeing “liberal” used as pejorative every day on this site is kinda wild.
It’s what happens when you step out of the west and into any country that are the victims of the west, which is around 176 countries.
Why wouldn’t a site that isn’t slanted towards coddling western children like liberals and neoliberals be more reflective of the actual majority opinion in the world?
If this is the most mainstream of websites being blocked I think I’m ok, piefed is still great software even with these sites included in a linking block
Wonder if they’ll unblock Infowars, now that it’s The Onion.
because software requires maintenance, maintenance requires time, and the onion only got their hands on infowars very recently.
Why is info wars still there? Wasn’t it taken over by tim.
are better left
O.o
I tried initially and it was too opinionated for me so I switched out. Turns out it’s even more opinionated than I’d expected.
goddamnit goddamnit goddamnit
Why does every fediverse reddit clone have to pull this shit? Like that blocklist isn’t horrible - now - but what if the dude pulls a fetterman and next year he is blocking shit you agree with? Politically motivated censorship is the type of thing many people are trying to get away from.
piefed already blocks by default lemmy.ml, hexbear, and lemmygrad. lol … it’s just a lib echo chamber.
Piefed.social is federated with Lemmy.ml, AFAIK.
This is why open source is so important. If the dev goes crazy and blocks all sorts of stuff the community can fork the code and remove the block list, while still remaining interoperable with Lemmy, other Piefeds, Mbin.
That’s way different to say Facebook where they fight to the death to stop you using an app that isn’t their official one.
Thats a fair and reasonable take
but what if the dude pulls a fetterman and next year he is blocking shit you agree with?
Then go to a different site…? What’s the actual problem here?
Switching sites is annoying? I’m sure you are aware of that though…
Only mildly. At least on Lemmy, I haven’t used piefed. The import/export went really well when lemm.ee shut down. And luckily there was an instance with a similar stance (lemmy.zip) to letting you decide what you want blocked.
Why does every fediverse reddit clone have to pull this shit?
People want to live in Echo Chambers.
Politically motivated censorship is the type of thing many people are trying to get away from.
Nah, most of 'em just want to be the ones doing the censoring.
Sounds like the liberals they are trying to appease
what if the dude pulls a fetterman and next year he is blocking shit you agree with?
Then you move to another instance.
This says its all piefed instances
Any piefed instance can empty the list of right-wing sites, either as a whole or on a case-by-case basis. Source: https://piefed.social/comment/11254679
Thats good to know - but the fact the thread you link to shows some sites get a big WARNING COMMUNISM DETECTED doesn’t make me feel much better XD
I would much rather it be something people have to opt into. But as long as it’s something they can opt out of it isn’t the most egregious thing.
blocking trash sites on your own instance, and providing default settings is perfectly reasonable.
If you can’t opt out as an instance its a bit more than “default settings” imo
And my whole issue is not wanting too wide a net being labeled under “trash sites” I hate Fox News and Infowars but I also hate them being hidden from me with no way to get around that besides switching from piefed to a different service. Who is to say what the next trash site will be? Spam is one thing but I don’t need a net nanny.
who can’t opt out? just use a different instance if you dont like an instances setting. no one owes you anything. or run your own and just change the setting.
“Changing the setting” would involve forking the codebase, as it’s hardcoded iirc
Just make a different account on a different instance, nothing is stopping you.
What? You mean lemmy? I have one. If you mean a different piefed instance, that’s what I was saying, you’d need to fork the pyfedi repo to remove the list, it’s on every instrnce of piefed
Make your own and opt out or use lemmy since you’re complaining specifically about the features that differentiate piefed. Like this is a seriously dumb complaint. Like why would you want active disinformation sources? What benefit does that provide to discourse? Or do you just want disinformation to be disseminated? It’s not a matter of fuckin opinion, these sites propagate actual fake news and that’s their primary purpose. Fox news literally argued in court they’re purely entertainment, like the onion.
The original post we are commenting on stated instances could not opt out. Or at least I thought it did, I don’t know how to check edit history. I’m now aware thats untrue.
Blocking known disinfo sources is not politically motivated censorship, it’s reality motivated censorship.
Lol @ politically uniform experience
