• Victor@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    I don’t get it. Is this some personal vendetta the dev has? Have they really been in this many internet arguments? Where did this list come about and why?

    • neuracnu@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      1 day ago

      Here’s their full explanation: https://lemmy.world/post/49817942

      It’s pretty long and includes some insightful details about implementation (making the blocklist’s usage at the discretion of the instance admin though not transparent of its contents and defaulting it to enabled) but this quote boils down the underlying sentiment pretty well:

      “These are all rough edges of the threadiverse which I am attempting to round off so we might actually be able to retain some level headed people instead of scraping the bottom of the barrel by being a dumping ground for people rejected by civil society."

      When you examine the list, by and large, it’s pretty reasonable. Lots of false news, state propaganda, spammers, etc. But also the entire lemmy.blahaj.zone instance (where many of lemmy’s trans denizens call home). We’re included in what the lead developer describes as “bottom of the barrel” “people rejected by civil society.”

      Though I do fear the backlash. You’ve got a bunch of malicious spammers, hate-mongers and blackhat state actors who now have an open window to cause a lot of harm (harassment & general sowing of discontent) with the convenient smoke screen of upset trans folks who it can be blamed on.

      • blartcap_@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 hour ago

        You’re assuming his apologia is not disingenuous. The notes he added in the commit messages and the extent to which he blocked users who were indirectly implicated in his accusations don’t line up with his explanations.

        There’s also the fact that much of it is caught under a very broad net of “promoting violence” without any examples provided of what constitutes such a thing. He used that exact explanation to justify banning blahaj.zone, where he said that some users did so and the admins did not act on it, which prompted him to blacklist the entire instance and the admins specifically.

        This isn’t even getting into the intentional inaccuracies about the nature of his “Toxic Mode”, or his entire rant on db0 which is not only dishonest and weirdly personal, but also straight up lying about what happened and why. There’s zero way to say that exposing his blacklist is “going Karen” like he did, and it’s a straight lie to say that nobody had a problem with his blacklisting until db0 complained when the situation is that db0 made the existence of the blocklist known.

        The philosophy of federation is that such whims should be openly handled on the federation level, not in a secret blacklist of a front end that was openly available to all.

      • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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        8 hours ago

        All of this shit falls flat when the dev themself admits they hid the feature to disable deep in the app and even called it “toxic mode”. Is saying “perchance” toxic? Because that’s one of their blocked phrases. Fuck no, it’s not. This is just shit the personally dislike and put it in under the guise of making the fediverse more normie friendly.

        As if silently hiding content with phrases like “perchance” and causing a massive drama makes the fediverse more normie friendly.

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        10 hours ago

        “These are all rough edges of the threadiverse which I am attempting to round off

        I’m a rough edge!

      • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
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        17 hours ago

        Really? I’m malicious spammer, hate-monger or blackhat state actor? News to me, but good to know.

        Though I do fear the backlash. You’ve got a bunch of malicious spammers, hate-mongers and blackhat state actors who now have an open window to cause a lot of harm (harassment & general sowing of discontent) with the convenient smoke screen of upset trans folks who it can be blamed on.

        • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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          10 hours ago

          Don’t worry I’m on that list too. I’m just a grumpy reddit refugee. Apparently I’m an extreme violent leftist terrorist, so

          ¯\(ツ)

          • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
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            8 hours ago

            I know, I think it’s funny. But someone has to call out the guy who’s agreeing with Admiral Patrick and always seems to have a space/star trek themed name. Either an excellent shit poster that I get to set up, or it’s one of their buddies/alts.

      • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        I’ll give a short description of the long post.

        big fuckin baby

        also, I have to call him not just a dumbass but a malicious dumbass.

        “Someone leaked the list. Why am I on it??”

        A: The list was never hidden just not advertised (lest people game it). I also could have encrypted it, but I merely compressed it for efficiency. If you’re on the list, then one of the 10 reasons above applies.

        the file in question was placed obscurely. updated without directly calling out what it was. and published without notifying users.

        seems a lot of effort went into obfuscating the true purpose of the file.

        while on the subject of obfuscation. he claimed he “compressed it for efficiency”.

        he compressed it, then base64 encoded it. why? why compress it to only expand the size of the file by encoding it??

        @[email protected] is a dumbass and a shitty dev if he thinks any of the bullshit he said was worth the time it took to say it.

      • Unruffled [they/them]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        23 hours ago

        We’re included in what the lead developer describes as “bottom of the barrel” “people rejected by civil society.”

        That’s fucked up. And he’s the self-appointed “nice” [secret]police? Yikes.

    • fizzle@quokk.au
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      1 day ago

      some personal vendetta

      Seems like it’s hubris / arrogance - a poorly considered attempt to create some kind of ideal social experience.

      • Victor@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Been reading up on it a bit, yeah, seems to be the case indeed. Shame it went that way for them.

    • James R Kirk@startrek.website
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      1 day ago

      They posted an explanation in the tesseract community, but it boils down to they want the fediverse to succeed and replace reddit, but there is a contingent of toxic users that they feel is hindering that goal so they precompiled a list for new instance admins.

      It’s fully optional and can easily be disabled in the UI

      • Zombie@feddit.uk
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        1 day ago

        It is not fully optional. It was obfuscated and unremovable. That’s why the backlash has been so severe.

        Not to mention, why should a user interface make that decision? That’s up to individual server admins and their userbase.

        • Victor@lemmy.world
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          1 day ago

          Fully agree on the weirdness that this would somehow be the concern of a frontend. Nah brh. Very strange.

        • OpenStars@discuss.online
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          1 day ago

          The author offers a lengthy explanation in their own words as to precisely why this was done. TLDR: people are free to stop using it, but he’s making these changes because he wants to offer this service on behalf of those who don’t enjoy all the toxicity here.

              • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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                23 minutes ago

                Eh, I guess my opinion is somewhat colored by seeing some of the things they decided to block. Like “perchance” stood out. None of that specific information was in this post.

          • Zombie@feddit.uk
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            1 day ago

            Lmfao. I didn’t make it more than a few paragraphs because it’s written with the maturity of a 10 year old in a chocolate sausage museum.

            You can really tell they’re up for an honest and open conversation with the community, really trying to improve the Fediverse, with their locking of all comments.

            He’s clearly the toxic one and is projecting his issues onto hundreds of others.

          • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            people are not “free to stop using it” if the instance admin is using it.

            honestly I don’t even give a fuck about me being on “the list” anymore. I’m more upset that he decided for hundreds if not thousands of users without consulting them or taking into consideration of their opinions.

            he took the choice away from them, and that’s kind of the problem with tech anymore.

            @[email protected] is a scammy piece of shit that got caught and is attempting to do damage control now.

            don’t his users and his users users deserve transparency?

            • OpenStars@discuss.online
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              24 hours ago

              Yes they do but the irony present in your reply is palpable.

              Incels upon being told no simply create an alt to evade bans.

              Tesseract bans them anyway.

              WoN’t SoMeOnE pLeAsE tHiNk oF tHe children BaN eVaDeRs?!

              Sadge :-(

              • GreenKnight23@lemmy.world
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                24 hours ago

                I think you missed the point.

                I won’t bother wasting my time explaining it, I’ll just block you.

                because I have the choice to do that

          • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            Lol. TIL I’m a violent extremist. Me. Boring, professional, suit wearing, family of four having, generic white guy.

            The world this guy lives in must be truly weird.

            • ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              1 day ago

              Boring, professional, suit wearing, family of four having, generic white guy.

              That is like the quintessential serial killer description by his neighbors.

            • OpenStars@discuss.online
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              1 day ago

              I mean, to be fair, here is that entire paragraph for context:

              As will be explained further, there are 10 rules that are enforced, the biggest one being a very basic “don’t be a violent extremist”. That’s probably 30% of the list. Another 50% are just alts of Dwazou (persistent, long-term ban evader), and the remaining 20% just garden-variety spammers and toxic people who scare the normies away.

              Based on this, it is much more likely that you are an alt of Dwazou. (Or maybe I am? 🤪 Statistically, between the three of us, you me and the author, ONE of us must be!!)

      • OpenStars@discuss.online
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        1 day ago

        THAT list is able to be disabled, though people are mad about its discoverability and transparency.

        The OTHER list, the smaller instance-level one, reportedly cannot be disabled, seemingly the only recourse for those instances on it are to use his fork of the code.

        This is from db0’s reporting, I have not attempted to confirm personally, but I would be happy to be corrected if need be.