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.

  • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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    2 days ago

    that explains why my account got banned before i had a chance to use it.

    atleast it ended up working out in my favor: i had intended to switch away from lemmy.word and the ban led me to lemmy.ml; where my social media diet hot a million times better and it made me stop doom-scrolling all the time.

    • meowmeow@quokk.au
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      2 days ago

      Well, on ML they just ban you from ML when you don’t agree with the hive ;)

      • teslekova@sh.itjust.works
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        12 hours ago

        They haven’t banned me so far. Maybe they don’t actually like Russia, which is a terrible fucking country, as others keep claiming. Maybe they have read a history book.

        • meowmeow@quokk.au
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          12 hours ago

          Go on ML and say “Russia is the baddie for invading Ukraine” and watch the fur fly.

          They don’t actually care about Russia or China. They’re all teenagers from America and they just want to crush the US.

          How can a person be pro-Palestine and anti-Ukraine?!?! It’s pro-little guy. Always. Fuck the big 3.

          • teslekova@sh.itjust.works
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            11 hours ago

            Also, is crushing the US bad? Not the people, the system of government. The corporations. The military industrial complex. The jails. The police. All worth crushing, yeah?

            • meowmeow@quokk.au
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              10 hours ago

              They want the people dead. Which humorously is also them because they’re mostly Americans

          • teslekova@sh.itjust.works
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            11 hours ago

            I agree! They haven’t banned me yet, though, and I regularly post about how Russia sucks, and is the aggressor in Ukraine.

            You’re an anarchist, yeah? Me too. I support a mainly modern syndicalist approach, because collective community effort is far more effective than individual effort, but it’s going to be a hard time demonstrating the effectiveness of our preferred model while the capitalists keep crushing it anywhere it threatens to become practical.

            It’s more complicated than “Russia bad, Ukraine good” though. I think that’s the nuance that gets distorted by some ml people who have been arguing with centre-left Democrat voter types for ages and gotten tired.

            Russia has a fucked up, Mafia government, it is bad for its people, it encourages corruption as long as the money flows to the top, etc.

            Don’t ignore why that is, though: Russia was fucked over by the vultures of US capital in the 90s after Gorbachev and Yeltsin bent over and allowed former soviet state industrial assets to be bought for far less than their value. This is how the oligarchs were established. The economy was absolutely crushed, it reduced the living conditions of millions of people, increased crime, destroyed the social welfare state, etc.

            This created the opportunity for Putin to get popular by killing a bunch of the oligarchs and taking their stolen wealth for himself, as well as promising to restore the glory of Russia’s military, stopping the breakaway of the few remaining former Soviet countries that had not yet left Russian control, like Georgia and Chechnya, promising to fight the terrorists (the terrorist attacks were done by him, btw), etc.

            Basic Make Russia Great Again stuff, done more competently than Trump because he has at least half a brain.

            This much is clear from history.

            Ukraine does have a lot of Nazis in its power structure. And it has been very corrupt indeed ever since it broke away from Soviet control. Zelenzky has had to work with both of these power blocs as leader. He did gain power by promising to change things, but it’s impossible to run the place without working with the moderate parts of those factions, at least, even without a war. With the war, he has had to allow all sorts of very dodgy bastards indeed to coexist as long as they fight the Russians too.

            Now, Putin was absolutely right when he said that NATO was invading his sphere of influence by bringing the Ukraine into the Western economic sphere. The US knew this, and knew that Russia may invade the Ukraine in return, and they were happy to provoke that. It was a completely ruthless move in the Great Game of geopolitics.

            However, invading Ukraine is still an evil thing to do. It’s an imperialist action by Russia. It is one empire defending against an incursion by another empire.

            The people of Ukraine, flawed as its government and society is, are right to defend themselves. Russia is not the good guy here, even if they are effectively part of China’s sphere now. They use slave armies. So does Ukraine, but far less brutally. It’s… not an ideal situation.

            China practices ruthless geopolitics too, to defend its own system against the efforts of imperial capitalism, but that does not mean its client states are the good guys. China’s system is worth defending, imo, because capitalism is destroying the world with climate change and China is the biggest single factor in decarbonisation, not to mention a serious contender for a better economic system which we could learn a lot from.

            When we survive climate change, it will likely be due to the sheer industrial capacity of the Chinese economy, which is rapidly transitioning to renewable energy and exporting solar panels and batteries to the entire world.

            However, the Chinese defence of its “socialism with Chinese characteristics” system is ugly and throws a lot of people under the bus.

            Palestinians, the Russian people sent to die on the front lines, people who get arrested by Chinese security services, people who have to move out of the way of large industrial projects, non-Han minorities, LGBT minorities, etc. (Not Falun Hong, btw, fuck those cultist assholes).

            The mistake a lot of people make is to think that all systems of coercion are equally bad.

            Representative democracy with capitalism looks good in theory, until you factor in all the people who don’t get a vote, who still get affected by the actions of the govt. And of course all the decisions made by people who aren’t elected at all.

            And of course you as an anarchist know that nobody recognises economic violence when comparing systems by how much violence they do to their citizens, and nobody compares violence done by client states to protect capital’s ability to do that violence.

            So America and Europe look less violent than the Soviets and China, even though they are all drenched in blood. Imo, the US most of all.

            However, instead of having that sort of discussion, it’s way easier to say “go back to the DNC!” or “read a book, corpo!” or “boo, stop licking Xi’s asshole!”.

            It takes way less time.

      • thatsnomayo [he/him]@lemmy.mlB
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        1 day ago

        I think you’re mistaking “don’t agree” with an ideological refusal to engage with criticism. You’re either engaging in the discussion or not. Maybe you tell yourself “it’s just time to log off”, but everyone can see your evasiveness.

      • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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        2 days ago

        They ban you when you make it clear that you’re unwilling to learn how to deprogram yourself.

        • meowmeow@quokk.au
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          2 days ago

          Sorry bud, China is a capitalist country. Just like all the rest. ✌️

          • teslekova@sh.itjust.works
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            12 hours ago

            Evidence? I see this a lot, but nobody provides evidence that the market is in control of China. There are billionaires and companies there, yes, but they seem to be kept in line by the PRC.

            I mean, they execute corrupt bankers there. Would a capitalist country allow that? They do things for the long-term future, not the short-term profit of companies. Are you asserting that they are long-term capitalists?

          • Cowbee [he/they]@lemmy.ml
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            1 day ago

            No, the PRC is a socialist country, same as Cuba, Vietnam, the DPRK, Laos, and former USSR. The working classes control the state since 1949, and public ownership is the principal aspect of the economy. I have yet to see a compelling, rational argument for why this should be considered “capitalist” that doesn’t treat socialism like a fantasy in test-tube conditions, rather than a real mode of production and distribution.

          • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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            2 days ago

            Funny how ‘just like all the rest’ still manages to shrink billionaires instead of worshiping them or letting them control the gov’t; but sure, totally the same. Lol

            • meowmeow@quokk.au
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              2 days ago

              Yawn. The billionaires control all the governments. Keep on showing us how you simp for the billionaires.

              • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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                2 days ago

                project harder. i just pointed out one system actually restrains the rich — you’re the one who needs all governments to look identical so you don’t have to update your tired, lazy worldview. now go tuck your billionaire boogeyman back into bed and maybe read a book.

                • meowmeow@quokk.au
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                  2 days ago

                  You just simped for the billionaires while trying to get out of being accused of simping for billionaires.

                  • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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                    2 days ago

                    reading comprehension isn’t your strong suit, is it? pointing out that one system actually curbs billionaires isn’t simping — it’s just a fact you can’t handle because your whole personality is ‘all governments bad, me smart.’ you’re not woke, you’re just lazy. now run along and practice arguing with someone who confuses cynicism for intelligence.

              • RiverRock@lemmy.ml
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                2 days ago

                “Noo don’t look at the executions of billionaires and corrupt officials, they’re fake! Better things aren’t possible! I’m not listening lalalala you’re a simp.”

          • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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            2 days ago

            history’s full of empires that swore they were the only ones without propaganda; you’re just repeating their script wo knowing it.

            • ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zip
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              2 days ago

              I never said anything about anyone else’s propoganda.

              It’s ironic you’re saying this while Whatabouting away criticism of the propoganda you’re covering for.

              And you’ll plug your ears and cheer when I get banned for saying this here.

              • eldavi@lemmy.ml
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                2 days ago

                I never cheer when they get banned; I feel like each one would be me if life hadn’t kicked my ass hard enough to force me to learn that western/capitalist contradictions are everywhere.

                The fact of the matter is that the western hegemon – our hegemon – has been legally forced to admit that they fabricated their propaganda in writing thanks to the freedom of information act since the 1980’s yet westerners – Americans in particular – cling that that proganda nonetheless. (And the fact that you can learn of this propaganda just as easily as reading the Epstein files is icing on this cake).

                The worst part is that they use the propaganda to defend their world view wo ever knowing it.