They made a hidden shadow-ban list of instances, users, and phrases, keeping it secret from users and admins by not including it in the open source code and instead loading it at runtime, and added in there all non-centrist (instances, users, and phrases) they could think of. They also lied about it, by claiming it to be a technical issue, when any user looked for the banned instances from the front-end, instead of calling it what it is, a targeted exclusion.
Essentially, hidden censorship, and sliminess.
Its a kind of administrative abuse of power that has been slowly destroying the fediverse from the inside for a very long time. And it's not unique to the fediverse. But it's unique within the fediverse, in that the fediverse is a community built specifically to go against this kind of abuse of power.
We've been having a laugh about it but it's actually such a senseless abuse of trust and power, it's challenging to imagine them being anything less than a paraiah for all of time for doing this. Its implementation was quite clever and very insipid, because the snuck the ban list in in such a way you couldn't review it or even know of its existence.
the snuck the ban list in in such a way you couldn’t review it or even know of its existence.
*In such a way that it made it slightly harder to review it or know of its existence.
Any thorough look at the source code would notice it loading that list at runtime. And also notice it getting called and referred to in other parts of the code when it checks whether or not to block something. And that's not hypothetical, of course -- we're only talking about it because somebody did check, and it was found.
Addendum: Yes we know that you think ml/hexbear/grad are tankies and or .world are a bunch of liberals but it gets old quickly. Try and come up with new material.
This is not the place to start flamewars between Lemmy, Mbin and Piefed.
Somebody fill me in on the drama here? db0 has pissed me off when he decided certain political opinions where more important than free speech.
From another user:
Its a kind of administrative abuse of power that has been slowly destroying the fediverse from the inside for a very long time. And it's not unique to the fediverse. But it's unique within the fediverse, in that the fediverse is a community built specifically to go against this kind of abuse of power.
We've been having a laugh about it but it's actually such a senseless abuse of trust and power, it's challenging to imagine them being anything less than a paraiah for all of time for doing this. Its implementation was quite clever and very insipid, because the snuck the ban list in in such a way you couldn't review it or even know of its existence.
*In such a way that it made it slightly harder to review it or know of its existence.
Any thorough look at the source code would notice it loading that list at runtime. And also notice it getting called and referred to in other parts of the code when it checks whether or not to block something. And that's not hypothetical, of course -- we're only talking about it because somebody did check, and it was found.
If it was closed source no one would've know, common open source W