PieFed has done it once again, this time adding 'warning' labels for opposing ideological perspectives, well at least one; Can't find any warnings for fascism or capitalism 🤔
This can be demonstrated here: https://piefed.social/...
PieFedeology - Ideological Purity in PieFed
2 months ago by Loco_Mex to c/fediverse
mathemachristian 20 points a month ago
it is in the codebase, in a separate repo
The blocked domains are, the ones with a warning like in the screenshot are configured on a per-instance basis
mathemachristian 16 points a month ago
I mean it at least includes wikileaks.org, but I don't think anyone is gonna audit 3000 domains anytime soon.
Goferking0 7 points a month ago
It being in a separate repo is great but worse if not visible anywhere. Especially as it's just an install step calling it something completely different.
mathemachristian 31 points a month ago
Nah but they have some for theintercept and electronicintifada ...
Goferking0 23 points a month ago
Unsurprisingly not currently. Based on current behavior and responses doubtful in future
AzuraTheSpellkissed 40 points a month ago
Are you sure this is a "warning"? /s
Sounds like an indicator of quality, instead. Even the icon is in red, the color of hope.
rimu -36 points a month ago
This is a strong and succinct argument, cheers.
We need peoplesdispatch.org I think it's valuable thing to have a take on events from their angle. Yet it needs to be read with an understanding that they have an angle. Using the warning icon to provide that understanding is clunky and wasn't really intended for that purpose. There has been some drift in the usage away from the original idea behind the feature.
One day it might be good to have a different icon for providing context, separate from providing warnings.
Goferking0 27 points a month ago
Or other ones like radio free Asia?
ZombiFrancis 35 points a month ago
It's just an armband. You know. To help with context.
iByteABit 35 points a month ago
All the bullshit they say about silencing and 1984 is as always, a classic case of projection.
Please enlighten us on where we should be getting the full objective unbiased reality from, the New York Times maybe? God forbid a media takes a pro working class / global south bias instead of the usual neoliberal status quo ideology. Call them out on it and they'll deny they even follow any ideology, they're just being Objective™.
Five 34 points a month ago
Two years ago, Lemmy.world tried a similar move with their MediaBiasFactCheck bot. It was soundly rejected by the community, and they finally relented after weeks of outcry. Why is @Rimu putting us through this again?
Goferking0 18 points a month ago
The take away was make it embedded everywhere rather than a bot addition
hoagecko 11 points a month ago
path: 0 23637776 23639401, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 0
GuyIncognito 32 points a month ago
It's right in the name. Fed.
ProdigalFrog 10 points a month ago
I mean... Same for Fediverse, and Federation?
GuyIncognito 5 points a month ago
or Federal agent
ProdigalFrog 2 points a month ago
I understood the reference, but if we're going by that logic, the Fediverse itself is a federal ploy.
GuyIncognito 2 points a month ago
You never know...
reagansrottencorpse 14 points a month ago
I wish lemmy admins could take the code away from these dorks.
rimu -12 points a month ago
I'm happy to explain. You could have just asked, though.
During initial installation PieFed downloads a big list of 3000 right-wing domains from https://github.com/rimu/no-qanon and blocks them all. Admins can unblock them if they want but they would need to do them individually so I bet none do.
The list includes things like fox news, breitbart, etc. Before starting work on PieFed I spent 3? years studying right wing disinformation - qanon, antivax, all that and that blocklist is an output from that. Every site on that list was reviewed personally.
So.
Additionally, I have manually added these warnings (not blocks) onto some domains, for piefed.social only. You can download a list of those warnings from https://join.piefed.social/...
Most of them are tabloids, AI slop farms and a handful are authoritarian government mouthpieces.
So there's 3000 right wing sites that simply can't be linked to and 47 sites with warnings, about 10% of which are left wing. There's no need to warn for fascism because posts that link to them are not displayed in the first place.
There's an ideological slant to PieFed for sure, and it's very much in favor of the left. That could be why maga.place and lemmychan.org use Lemmy and not PieFed.
I'll take another look at peoplesdispatch and see if there's a less triggering warnings I can put on it.
Cowbee 58 points a month ago
There’s an ideological slant to PieFed for sure, and it’s very much in favor of the left. That could be why maga.place and lemmychan.org use Lemmy and not PieFed.
PieFed bakes in preferences against left wing groups, and you've been launching a crusade against anarchist instances lately. As much as you believe yourself to be left, you've done your best to left-punch wherever you can, and have unilaterally made decisions greatly impacting the functionality of PieFed to suit your overwhelmingly liberal views. This isn't even getting into how you agree with racist conspiracy theories like the idea that China is kidnapping people for organ harvesting.
Also, it's nice that you admit that PieFed has an ideological slant and that you do develop PieFed with that in mind, socsa swore up and down that that wasn't the case for some reason.
Also, since Rimu permabanned me from Piefed.social at PugJesus' behest after I critiqued PJ's views from the left, they won't see my comment, sadly.
Goferking0 28 points a month ago
It's also very telling they named it noqanon.
While sounds great weird that would trigger ml warnings as no one would consider qanon that
poVoq -2 points a month ago
The noqanon list and the OP warning sign are two different things.
The first is a default url blocklist that gets pulled on first start of a Piefed instance and which contains extreme right-wing and mis-information outlets.
The domain warning sign mentioned in OP is a separate list only manually added to the piefed.social flagship instance.
Goferking0 22 points a month ago
This gets back to how poorly designed piefed is and rimus explanations.
The domain block list having more than qanon and being part of the install while not saying anything about what it actually brings in is poor design choice. Along with it apparently only being disabled by individually checking the list in the ui.
The domain warning sign mentioned in OP is a separate list only manually added to the piefed.social flagship instance
Rimu made it sound like they were connected in the qanon repo
Flatworm7591 22 points a month ago
To heap insult on top of injury, Rimu has now unilaterally, and without any notification (to anyone it would appear), chosen to silently suppress anarchist.nexus and quokk.au from appearing in the PieFed.Social instance chooser. So, just more of the same old trolling and drama farming from him that we have been getting for weeks now.
vs
Flatworm7591 16 points a month ago
Diva 18 points a month ago
Modlog Reason for the action is only shown if it is from trusted instances, so abusive mods wont have an audience. Admins can still see the reason though.
pughitler is a mod on piefed.social and nobody seems to care about his abusive behavior.
rimu gets temporarily banned for 'emulating a zionist' and now suddenly it's a priority to address moderator abuse... via censorship 
incredible
Stamets 16 points a month ago
Rimu is single handedly generating so much misinformation and nonsense that essentially anyone else who works on Piefed alongside of him is becoming radioactive. Not sure how much I want to trust someone who is willing to help further Rimu's behavior. Working on Piefed used to be a bullet point and it is rapidly turning into an asterisk.
Goferking0 11 points a month ago
I'm sure it's been in the pipeline a while but the instance silencing feature being added is great timing
Blaze -41 points a month ago
Are we supposed to bring back the whole history every time Rimu comments anywhere?
- an anarchist.nexus admin calls for murder of Zionists in their username
- a LW admin and Rimu gets qualified as Zionists in dbzer0 community modlogs
- LW defederates anarchist.nexus
- Rimu bans that admin
- that anarchist.nexus admin changes their username and steps down as admin
- LW refederates anarchist.nexus
- Rimu asks the dbzer0 staff to act on the modlog calling him a Zionist, no action is taken, the dbzer0 staff advices him to ignore that
- Rimu discovers that a dbzer0 mod has been using a LLM for moderation. That mod has been somehow pretending to use OpenAI to upset the !fuckai crowd, actually it was a local freeware model. He posts about it.
- a dbzer0 admin reverts the ban calling Rimu a Zionist after I asked
- Rimu is still upset, doesn't take the previous action into account and keeps the post about LLM moderation up
- You bring it up here
Now, listen, db0: we've discussed a lot in the past, you know I like what you do, I support you and your instance most of the time. But that's also true for Rimu and Piefed. I think it's pointless to try to count points and see who was wrong when by how much. From my perspective, there were issues from all sides during that whole story.
Bringing it up every time anyone involved comments somewhere doesn't seem relevant, and will just start another round of "you were wrong", "I was wrong because you were wrong" etc. It can be endless, and most of the people are tired of that whole story.
Take care.
db0 55 points a month ago
Also:
I think it's pointless to try to count points and see who was wrong when by how much. From my perspective, there were issues from all sides during that whole story.
We have bent over backwards to de-escalate the situation, both with L.W. and with Rimu. Our admins have stepped down. People changed their usernames. Our admins overruled our mods. Literally creating tension within our instance to maintain relations with the larger fediverse. On the other hand, rimu's deliberate disinfo is still up to this day, without any statements from our team, or correction to their blatant lies. They've even blocked people calling them out, so piefed users can't see this criticism. So don't try to "both sides" me.
db0 40 points a month ago
Are we supposed to bring back the whole history every time Rimu comments anywhere?
When he's being hypocritical AF about people "could have just asked", then yes I think I will.
Rimu discovers that a dbzer0 mod has been using a LLM for moderation. That mod has been somehow pretending to use OpenAI to upset the !fuckai crowd, actually it was a local freeware model. He posts about it.
Talk about underplaying the situation...
Rimu spread purposeful disinfo. He never "just asked". He ignored comments from our admins explicitly telling him he's wrong, because it went against his narrative. Was purposefully uncharitable so he could spin it as badly as possible. Crossposted to Mastodon in an attempt to initiate a pile-on. I could go on...
luciferofastora -19 points a month ago
He ignored comments from our admins explicitly telling him he's wrong, because it went against his narrative.
Idk, sounds to me like you're equally ignoring comments from other parties telling you you're wrong because it goes against your narrative too. "We investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing" is hardly an argument.
That's why this is a slugfest: "You're wrong! "No, you're wrong!" "No, we told you you're wrong!" "Your telling me that I was wrong was also wrong!"
Reasserting conflicting claims like they're facts isn't worth jack shit.
mathemachristian 39 points a month ago
If you're going for the whole history don't forget the nazi smear by some german troll and rimu trying to paint db0 as uniquely ban-happy. Like this has been a busy 10 days or so with shots fired on the FAF day-after-day, this is not history yet but an ongoing barrage from their POV. Also
Rimu discovers that a dbzer0 mod has been using a LLM for moderation
there was no LLM moderation, and rimu knew this before making his post^[https://lem.lemmy.blahaj.zone/...
eugenevdebs 30 points a month ago
Are we supposed to bring back the whole history every time Rimu comments anywhere?
Until Rimu stops acting like this and learns better, yeah.
Goferking0 19 points a month ago
Plus there's rimu trying to tie lemmy as right wing (to maga and 4chan clones) because they used it as a platform...
Actually rimu is perfect fit with the lemmy.world admins and mods. Try to do the but are just incredibly terrible at messaging.
ZombiFrancis 23 points a month ago
The omissions in this timeline about brigading sockpuppets and falsified nazi smears...
But to list that timeline and act as though this is out of context or unrelated to an ongoing crashout... we are reaching some Hasan's dog collar level of bullshit.
IndustryStandard 18 points a month ago
You think defederating because they call for death upon Zionists is a win?
mathemachristian 34 points a month ago
Apparently piefed smuggles in domains from a completely different repo that clearly isn't just "right-wing domains"^[https://github.com/... and it requires an admin to unblock them all individually.
Every site on that list was reviewed personally.
so it is a personal semi-hardcoded blocklist, that requires an admin to go through and re-vet every site individually to see if they agree with your assessment or not.
There’s an ideological slant to PieFed for sure, and it’s very much in favor of the left.
lol. lmao even, you put a warning on electronicintifada.net like come on now
fiat_lux 31 points a month ago
If I saw this, I would not assume that Gawker, WikiLeaks, or FOX Weather would be included in a blocklist called "No-QAnon". The list itself might not be smuggled, but it's not accurately representing itself either. If it has simply evolved over time, then it needs to be renamed or split into separate blocklists.
Additionally, if someone installing this changes their mind or realizes that what they received is not what they expected, then requiring them to either directly modify the database or click "remove" over 3000 times is arguably a dark pattern.
mathemachristian 25 points a month ago
The design is very human...
Allero 31 points a month ago
To clarify: you say that by default all PieFed instances don't even allow to link resources considered "right-wing", without an easy way to disable such anti-feature?
If so, it's basically a centralized point for censorship in a decentralized system, which is very antithetical to the spirit of the Fediverse and is something even the very left Lemmy devs prefer to avoid. I see it being very detrimental in its own right.
Shouldn't it be an offered setting instead? Like, "if you want your instance to avoid certain topics, here are filter lists to freely enable or disable"?
Much can be said about the definition of left and the way Marxists you are addressing don't see "liberal" as "left" to begin with.
What matters, though, is that you end up projecting a certain personal, even if somewhat educated, bias onto both PieFed as a project (banning right-wing outlets from even being linked to, globally), and the flagship instance (making warnings about Marxist-inclined outlets). This is very unwelcome for many, myself included, and, as previously mentioned, antithetical to what Fediverse is and what it stands for.
rimu -31 points a month ago
I don't believe software can be neutral. By making banning them equally easy as not, we're saying that those choices are of equal worth - doing that is taking a side and it's the side of giving fascists an easier way in. Nope! That's how Mastodon gets forked into Truth Social.
Interesting how this thread started out about me being too right wing and now for other people it's about me being too left wing. Heh.
Can't please everyone and I'm not trying to.
mathemachristian 18 points a month ago
Wait so there is nothing in the code to check if the list on that repo got updated since after the setup? Are the admins supposed to maintain their own list or not?
mathemachristian 24 points a month ago
Here is the (piefed.social only) warnlist in readable format
| aa.com.tr | Turkish state media |
| adele.pages.casa | LLM-generated posts |
| bild.de | A tabloid that has been unfavourably compared to The Sun, and is considered generally unreliable. |
| browsergate.eu | AI slop |
| caixinglobal.com | LLM-generated posts |
| chainalysis.com | LLM-generated posts |
| coindesk.com | Crypto boosters |
| counterpunch.org | Not always reliable. |
| dailysabah.com | Turkey govt properganda |
| dailystar.co.uk | Tabloid |
| electronicintifada.net | Unreliable source |
| english.news.cn | Ok except about anything to do with China |
| eurasiantimes.com | Unreliable source |
| forbes.com | Anyone can write a forbes article. Check the byline to determine whether an article is written by a "Forbes Staff" member, "Contributor", "Senior Contributor", or "Subscriber". |
| fullstackpm.tech | slop |
| gbnews.com | Unreliable source |
| hispantv.com | Unreliable source |
| houseofsaud.com | AI-written posts |
| journal-neo.su | Russian propaganda outlet |
| marathonhandbook.com | AI |
| metro.co.uk | Unreliable source |
| ndtv.com | Modi propaganda. Check MBFC |
| nerds.xyz | AI-written articles |
| news.cgtn.com | Chinese govt propaganda source |
| newsus.cgtn.com | Chinese govt propaganda source |
| nycjournals.com | fake news |
| nypost.com | Unreliable source |
| peoplesdispatch.org | Promotes Marxist-Leninist perspectives |
| plenglish.com | Cuba state media |
| presstv.ir | Iranian state tv |
| rawstory.com | Often inflammitory and kinda biased |
| republicworld.com | Unreliable source |
| sixthtone.com | Singapore govt source |
| tasnimnews.com | Iranian state tv |
| techtimes.com | LLM-generated posts |
| techtrenches.dev | LLM-generated posts |
| telesurenglish.net | Propaganda news channel directly sponsored by the governments of Venezuela and Cuba |
| telesurtv.net | Bolivarian propaganda outlet |
| thatprivacyguy.com | LLM-generated posts |
| theamericanconservative.com | A self-identified "opinionated source" whose factual accuracy has been questioned |
| theintercept.com | |
| the-sun.com | Trash tabloid |
| united24media.com | Factual, but still state-aligned advocacy journalism |
| vgchartz.com | Unreliable source |
| wheresyoured.at | The author of this blog works for AI companies https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/2025/use-the-tools-of-the-job-youve-chosen/#the-unguarded-flank |
| writings.hongminhee.org | LLM generated posts |
Cowbee 36 points a month ago
Why isn't BBC listed as "British propaganda?" Same with many other western propaganda outlets. It seems like when leftists do it, it's propaganda, but when the west does it it's mostly fine for Rimu.
Edie 23 points a month ago
Reformated it as a table
| url | reason |
|---|---|
| aa.com.tr | Turkish state media |
| adele.pages.casa | LLM-generated posts |
| bild.de | A tabloid that has been unfavourably compared to The Sun, and is considered generally unreliable. |
| browsergate.eu | AI slop |
| caixinglobal.com | LLM-generated posts |
| chainalysis.com | LLM-generated posts |
| coindesk.com | Crypto boosters |
| counterpunch.org | Not always reliable. |
| dailysabah.com | Turkey govt properganda |
| dailystar.co.uk | Tabloid |
| electronicintifada.net | Unreliable source |
| english.news.cn | Ok except about anything to do with China |
| eurasiantimes.com | Unreliable source |
| forbes.com | Anyone can write a forbes article. Check the byline to determine whether an article is written by a "Forbes Staff" member, "Contributor", "Senior Contributor", or "Subscriber". |
| fullstackpm.tech | slop |
| gbnews.com | Unreliable source |
| hispantv.com | Unreliable source |
| houseofsaud.com | AI-written posts |
| journal-neo.su | Russian propaganda outlet |
| marathonhandbook.com | AI |
| metro.co.uk | Unreliable source |
| ndtv.com | Modi propaganda. Check MBFC |
| nerds.xyz | AI-written articles |
| news.cgtn.com | Chinese govt propaganda source |
| newsus.cgtn.com | Chinese govt propaganda source |
| nycjournals.com | fake news |
| nypost.com | Unreliable source |
| peoplesdispatch.org | Promotes Marxist-Leninist perspectives |
| plenglish.com | Cuba state media |
| presstv.ir | Iranian state tv |
| rawstory.com | Often inflammitory and kinda biased |
| republicworld.com | Unreliable source |
| sixthtone.com | Singapore govt source |
| tasnimnews.com | Iranian state tv |
| techtimes.com | LLM-generated posts |
| techtrenches.dev | LLM-generated posts |
| telesurenglish.net | Propaganda news channel directly sponsored by the governments of Venezuela and Cuba |
| telesurtv.net | Bolivarian propaganda outlet |
| thatprivacyguy.com | LLM-generated posts |
| theamericanconservative.com | A self-identified "opinionated source" whose factual accuracy has been questioned |
| theintercept.com | |
| the-sun.com | Trash tabloid |
| united24media.com | Factual, but still state-aligned advocacy journalism |
| vgchartz.com | Unreliable source |
| wheresyoured.at | The author of this blog works for AI companies https://www.baldurbjarnason.com/... |
| writings.hongminhee.org | LLM generated posts |
redrumBot 18 points a month ago
Before starting work on PieFed I spent 3? years studying right wing disinformation - qanon, antivax, all that and that blocklist is an output from that. Every site on that list was reviewed personally.
- Rimu
🤦🏽
Goferking0 20 points a month ago
Why is the intercept on there??
davel 19 points a month ago
Who knows? Only Rimu. Maybe because they blew up the Paper of Record’s disinformation piece that manufactured consent for genocide.
Edit to add (and mentioned recently):
Disputing genocide accusations that the imperial core flings on its enemies, though, that’s his “red line.”
lazynooblet 22 points a month ago
But why? I don't understand why you want to make your software politically charged. I'm left leaning, but I believe in free speech for all. This makes piefed a censored platform by default. You are manufacturing an echo chamber.
luciferofastora 5 points a month ago
The difference between a proprietary, politically charged, censored echo chamber and an open source "do whatever you want" platform should be obvious though.
Free speech is about the right to say what you want, meaning the government isn't supposed to repress you for it, but it doesn't guarantee the opportunity to do so on other people's private platforms. However, in this case, you're free to host your own platform where you can say what you want.
As an aside, I'd like to point out the "Paradox of Tolerance" and the proposed resolutions: If you're an advocate for free speech, extending that freedom to those seeking to undermine it empowers them to use it against that freedom. That way, "free speech for all" is a good intention paving the road to authoritarian hell.
Hence, it is reasonable to deny a platform for those hostile to your principle. Popper frames it as a form of self-defense, to compromise part of the principle to protect the rest. Others frame it as a social contract of mutual respect, whereby the people violating it also forfeit their own right to demand it.
Either way, if "free speech for all" is a self-defeating principle, an open society needs to accept some measure of illiberty for its enemies if it is to be defensible.
ZombiFrancis 5 points a month ago
Yeah, but let's take a step back for a moment here and look at how the Fediverse is run by people. These communities and instances are all equipped to take action, moderate, curate, and create.
The people on the Fediverse are well equipped to grapple with the Paradox of Intolerance in a public forum without the walls listening in and making decisions about doors.
luciferofastora 2 points a month ago
without the walls listening in and making decisions about doors.
I'm not sure what you mean with "walls listening in" when we're talking about a public forum, but the doors are perfectly openable. As the creator stated elsewhere, you can unban individual pages or delete the whole list. The "decision" is more like a suggestion.
I understand you'd rather not have that suggestion preconfigured. I personally see no harm in it.
rimu -10 points a month ago
I don't want fascists to benefit from my work. But it's FOSS, so anyone can download and install it, so I made it extremely unattractive to fascists.
There are plenty of other places where people can have "free speech".
Facebook, or reddit, for example. /s
lazynooblet 26 points a month ago
Heh, this puts Piefed in the same basket as Reddit, Facebook etc. for the same reasons you dislike them.
Blaze -9 points a month ago
You can't fork Reddit or Facebook and then federate with them.
Pievolution is a Piefed forks that removes this feature (as well ad other stuff)
https://codeberg.org/Situation0262/Pievolution
It's not completely ready yet.
By the way, thank you for your work on lazysoci.al
ultimate_worrier 13 points a month ago path: 0 23623972 23624960 23625056 23646036, hotness: undefined, score: 13, children: 0
SpookyBogMonster 12 points a month ago
Just log off, please. Nobody likes this shit
ultimate_worrier 10 points a month ago path: 0 23623972 23645354, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0
kopasu22 6 points a month ago
Cute, but not enough, not by a mile. Calling Piefed "left-leaning" is a LARP at best.
You’re treating these neoliberal interpretations of bias as some sort of intellectual debate to "inform" folks, instead of the existential threat it is to the nature of online discourse.
Sure, left-wing discussions are "allowed" as long as they wear their scarlet letter and stay in the ghetto where we put them.
I spent 3? years studying right wing disinformation
Guess some of it rubbed off.
TanteRegenbogen -1 points a month ago
For MLs, leftists are never left enough.
FreedomAdvocate -25 points a month ago
“There’s and ideological slant to PieFed for sure”
Slant?!?! It’s a giant goddamn left-wing circle jerk propaganda machine 🤣
FreedomAdvocate -9 points a month ago
It definitely isn’t lol. Banning all right wing sources while allowing left wing really screams liberalism over left wing lol.
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A community dedicated to fediverse news and discussion.
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I think Rimu has tied this warning to the peoplesdispatch.org domain. I think this is a custom thing he did to his instance, because I didn’t find it in the PieFed codebase. [ETA: it is in the codebase, in a separate repo]. [ETA: I’m told that no specific site warnings are baked into the code, just the feature is. For site blocks, there is an optional default list of domains, which I’m told contains only far-right/fascist sites.]
I don’t think People’s Dispatch is even Marxist-Leninist. I think it’s an international anti-imperialist media site. But I wouldn’t assume Rimu could explain the difference or care that there is one. Maybe all anti-imperialists are tankies to him.
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