The UI is separate from the backend regardless. You can swap out Lemmy’s frontend with like a dozen others.
Most of Piefed’s features could have been implemented with an alternate frontend for Lemmy, but they don’t do that because the real primary goal of the project is to coopt and destroy the only corner of the internet where communists have any sense of sovereignty.
Obviously not stated out loud, but I wager the intention is to mirror the Lemmy API closely at first while flooding Lemmy with rabid, astroturfed anti-communist propaganda, convince enough users to migrate to Piefed, then start to introduce API incompatibilities so that interop doesn’t work as well for Lemmy users.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the project originated as an op in response to a libre, communist led social network appearing.
This is an incredible thread. This is the kind of ‘fast-and-loose’ nonsense that really lives at the heart of PieFed. Most people’s complaints about Lemmy have nothing to do with the software. The software does exactly what it says it does, and it does it in a very stable way. PieFed however, will suddenly add code to remove the Unicode Þ from comments because the repo maintainer things a user is being annoying. Why do would anyone want to hitch their wagon to such a thing?
the real primary goal of the project is to coopt and destroy the only corner of the internet where communists have any sense of sovereignty.
If more lemmy users, mods, and of course the devs are made aware that this is the piefed goal using the strategy you just described (and I very much agree with you that it is), is there anything in particular that can be done to try to counter it? Other than spread awareness, of course.
There is, quite literally, zerodirect evidence of what I posited. Evidence exists, sure, but only by understanding the context around the behavior patterns of the devs and the swarm of very dedicated Piefed missionairies. There is no smoking gun of them directly saying that the primary purpose of their software is to degrade the commons in order to deny “tankies” a space where they can talk mostly amongst themselves, nor will there likely ever be.
Given radlibism and anti-tankie hysteria is universally socially rewarded for aiding the empire in isolating and crushing its enemies, don’t let them dictate the terms of engagement by framing of discussion in terms of whether tankies are “evil red fash” or not. Any dissenting opinion you express thereafter will be dismissed as “authoritarian apologist” and trigger bystanders’ cognitive dissonance by making this a repeat of every insufferable “tankie vs. anti-authoritarian” debate. You cannot convince the rabid cold warriors that their tragedy of the commons / EEE behavior is politically detrimental to the entire left during a period of rapidly encroaching fascism because they hate us more than fascists, and yearn for our destruction. Us being hunted down like dogs would be preferable to us having our own sovereign, but isolated platform broadly deferated from liberal instances.
Call into question their trustworthiness, their intentions, their development practices, their ability to play well with others, and specific objectionable lines of code.
Be level-headed, objective, and non-ideological in your critiques. That way, when they inevitably derail discussion with their political screeds, they (rightfully) seem like a weirdo, and you have shown yourself to be the reasonable party.
Ask them why they should be trusted to be good stewards of their power over the ecosystem, especially given how many lines of code are simply baking in moderation of whatever pattern the main dev finds annoying. The devs are actively attempting to use their position as a platform developer to impose their whims over discussion at large…exactly their rationale why tankies shouldn’t be trusted with developing the fediverse! Channel their fearmongering into seemingly apolitical scrutiny into their existing behavior.
IMO the best way to counter the shilling is by criticizing the project on technical grounds.
Piefed is a sloppy, poorly thought out pile of staples and hot glue haphazardly developed in pursuit of a bulleted list of (poorly implemented) features that they can cite when trying to one-up Lemmy.
Most of their actual “features” are implementing some frontend enhancement, often as an API change incompatible with the broader fediverse. They are making their software less compatible, adding technical debt for one-off features, and putting in virtually no effort to implement things in a responsible, future-cognizant way.
Given they reimplemented a Rust backend in Python, just to facilitate
If architecture for their own project is an afterthought:
why would you want to give them more sway over the trajectory of the entire ecosystem?
why would you want to administer a server with little consideration for standards, compatibility, and API stability?
why would you want to worry about integrating your project with a backend that doesn’t bother adhering to community developed FEPs?
why would you want to join a server that is less interoperable with other server types than others? is it worth not having the entire context not render properly on other platforms?
Without getting into ideological grounds, this is enough to turn off software devs, sysadmins, self hosters, and end users…as well as those of neighboring projects. Enough to make even their fellow ideologues more apprehensive to choose PF over Lemmy.
Anyone who has any interest in proper software engineering, code quality, or long term maintenance would find Piefed’s development to be appauling. If these people knew the piss poor quality of the dev team’s practices, they would be self-motivated to counter the 24/7 shilling by the Piefed devs and its stans. There will be no shortage of opportunities to point these things out.
Maybe some instances can be de-federated if it’s shown over time that they exist specifically for that purpose, but on a platform level I don’t think anything can be done, not without messing up the core feature of it at least which is decentralization through ActivityPub.
It’s inevitable that it will happen as popularity increases and certain organizations become aware of it, it will have to be a constant struggle unfortunately, similar to socialist states existing alongside aggressive capitalist ones.
The UI is separate from the backend regardless. You can swap out Lemmy’s frontend with like a dozen others.
Most of Piefed’s features could have been implemented with an alternate frontend for Lemmy, but they don’t do that because the real primary goal of the project is to coopt and destroy the only corner of the internet where communists have any sense of sovereignty.
Obviously not stated out loud, but I wager the intention is to mirror the Lemmy API closely at first while flooding Lemmy with rabid, astroturfed anti-communist propaganda, convince enough users to migrate to Piefed, then start to introduce API incompatibilities so that interop doesn’t work as well for Lemmy users.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the project originated as an op in response to a libre, communist led social network appearing.
It’s the classic Microsoft “triple E” strategy that has been used against libre historically:
Embrace (interoperable)
Extend (new features)
Extinguish (fork the protocols to break interoperability)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace%2C_extend%2C_and_extinguish
You’re right, I hadn’t considered that this was part of a strategy like this. I rescind what I said; piefed delenda est.
Idk they get awfully close sometimes with the “tankie triad” conspiracies.
And being proud of the terrible method to block 4chan images, and for punishing those who don’t want to act exactly like they want
They’re already fucking with the ActivityPub protocol.
how so?
https://lemmy.world/comment/21179968
This is an incredible thread. This is the kind of ‘fast-and-loose’ nonsense that really lives at the heart of PieFed. Most people’s complaints about Lemmy have nothing to do with the software. The software does exactly what it says it does, and it does it in a very stable way. PieFed however, will suddenly add code to remove the Unicode Þ from comments because the repo maintainer things a user is being annoying. Why do would anyone want to hitch their wagon to such a thing?
Well we need to go back to the red scare
Naturally! Otherwise, we’ll never get to the Fallout future where people call us Pinko’s again and Canada finally becomes the Big 51.
lol @[email protected] you see this?
I have seen it.
If more lemmy users, mods, and of course the devs are made aware that this is the piefed goal using the strategy you just described (and I very much agree with you that it is), is there anything in particular that can be done to try to counter it? Other than spread awareness, of course.
There is, quite literally, zero direct evidence of what I posited. Evidence exists, sure, but only by understanding the context around the behavior patterns of the devs and the swarm of very dedicated Piefed missionairies. There is no smoking gun of them directly saying that the primary purpose of their software is to degrade the commons in order to deny “tankies” a space where they can talk mostly amongst themselves, nor will there likely ever be.
Given radlibism and anti-tankie hysteria is universally socially rewarded for aiding the empire in isolating and crushing its enemies, don’t let them dictate the terms of engagement by framing of discussion in terms of whether tankies are “evil red fash” or not. Any dissenting opinion you express thereafter will be dismissed as “authoritarian apologist” and trigger bystanders’ cognitive dissonance by making this a repeat of every insufferable “tankie vs. anti-authoritarian” debate. You cannot convince the rabid cold warriors that their tragedy of the commons / EEE behavior is politically detrimental to the entire left during a period of rapidly encroaching fascism because they hate us more than fascists, and yearn for our destruction. Us being hunted down like dogs would be preferable to us having our own sovereign, but isolated platform broadly deferated from liberal instances.
Call into question their trustworthiness, their intentions, their development practices, their ability to play well with others, and specific objectionable lines of code.
Be level-headed, objective, and non-ideological in your critiques. That way, when they inevitably derail discussion with their political screeds, they (rightfully) seem like a weirdo, and you have shown yourself to be the reasonable party.
Ask them why they should be trusted to be good stewards of their power over the ecosystem, especially given how many lines of code are simply baking in moderation of whatever pattern the main dev finds annoying. The devs are actively attempting to use their position as a platform developer to impose their whims over discussion at large…exactly their rationale why tankies shouldn’t be trusted with developing the fediverse! Channel their fearmongering into seemingly apolitical scrutiny into their existing behavior.
IMO the best way to counter the shilling is by criticizing the project on technical grounds.
Piefed is a sloppy, poorly thought out pile of staples and hot glue haphazardly developed in pursuit of a bulleted list of (poorly implemented) features that they can cite when trying to one-up Lemmy.
Most of their actual “features” are implementing some frontend enhancement, often as an API change incompatible with the broader fediverse. They are making their software less compatible, adding technical debt for one-off features, and putting in virtually no effort to implement things in a responsible, future-cognizant way.
Given they reimplemented a Rust backend in Python, just to facilitate
If architecture for their own project is an afterthought:
Without getting into ideological grounds, this is enough to turn off software devs, sysadmins, self hosters, and end users…as well as those of neighboring projects. Enough to make even their fellow ideologues more apprehensive to choose PF over Lemmy.
Anyone who has any interest in proper software engineering, code quality, or long term maintenance would find Piefed’s development to be appauling. If these people knew the piss poor quality of the dev team’s practices, they would be self-motivated to counter the 24/7 shilling by the Piefed devs and its stans. There will be no shortage of opportunities to point these things out.
Maybe some instances can be de-federated if it’s shown over time that they exist specifically for that purpose, but on a platform level I don’t think anything can be done, not without messing up the core feature of it at least which is decentralization through ActivityPub.
It’s inevitable that it will happen as popularity increases and certain organizations become aware of it, it will have to be a constant struggle unfortunately, similar to socialist states existing alongside aggressive capitalist ones.
Great take, I hadn’t thought of it like that but it makes perfect sense and explains certain behaviors in a certain thread
And why there’s always at least one piefed account saying it’s okay, you can just turn it off or well how else would you deal with trolls/bots?