In light of the dev silently blacklisting blahaj.zone, many of its users and several other instances, we have removed tesseract from the available lemmy front ends we offer.

  • neuracnu@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    Poking through both /src/lib/blacklists.ts and the double-secret policy file that gets pulled on load (see snot flickerman’s comment on how to look at it), I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the end goal of blocking this specific set of keywords, fediverse peers, communities, users, etc.

    You’ve got radical right stuff in here with radical left stuff, lots of lie-peddling news outlets and state-backed propaganda sources as well. Lots of focus on Russian-sourced content, and some attention paid to American MAGA crap. It’s quite strange to find blahaj hostnames and users among them.

    My best guess is that this is a hammy attempt to make Tesseract a more bland beige version of fediverse content with the pointy jagged parts filed off. But porn is a-ok.

    Really weird choices.

    UPDATE: The Tesseract project author made a public post addressing the obscured ban list: https://lemmy.world/post/49817942

    There’s some clarity provided, most interestingly recontextualizing the hidden ban list as a “toxic mode” setting that can be turned on and off by the instance admin. So sure, that’s nice and all, but it still groups our entire instance, and our admin, in with the literal worst of the internet, making us banned by default. That’s the moral assessment this person has made of us, with no justification or receipts to back it up.

    Just…

    “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.”

    That’s pretty warped, but I don’t want to call it unforgivable. I just want the author to introspect and say more about why they feel this way.

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      0·
      2 months ago

      EDIT: I was right. This is from their angry defensive screed.

      To be blunt: Tesseract is designed to attract and retain normies.

      There’s certainly a subset on the Fedi who seem to desperately want it to become a massively popular thing that persists through the ages instead of small but deep and worthwhile community growth among those who do choose to participate. Will it last forever? Probably not, most things don’t. Friendster died before MySpace and people forget it even existed (I mean, it was legitimately terrible)

      It makes me wonder if this person thinks that they’re making the Fedi more palatable for “normies” or something.

      Because popularity always brings a marginalization of already marginalized communities. This comic sums it up pretty well.

      Honestly, I think as long as we stay small and have our own community existing under the radar so to speak we have less likelihood of being invaded by even more numerous asshats than we already do. Lemmy or Piefed becoming massively popular could actually be a detriment, especially in terms of hosting costs, since most instances are funded via donations or the admins own personal income.