I'll just get right to it, and I'm pulling absolutely no punches here.

Foreward

Edit: I guess people are linking into this from another thread. Welcome brigaders and malcontents!

Let me speak plainly: Tesseract is no longer a general purpose "anything goes" client. That went out the window last year when I was planning to abandon it, and judging by the state of things here after I spent several much needed months in meat space, I can promise you things did not improve. Part of my, I suppose "conditions" would be the closest word, for keeping the project alive was that I must improve the situation...somehow. While changing the demographic here as if it were a dirty diaper was outside the realm of possibility, moving the dirty diaper out of the room was a substantial improvement.

If this pisses you off because I took your toy away, if this triggers you because, god forbid, people just have to hear the violent crazies no matter what, fine, I don't care. Don't use it. There's plenty of other clients you can use, and clearly you are not the intended audience.

There's no conspiracy here other than the ones you all are cooking up. There's no evil agenda. There is only the goal of trying to give people an instance-agnostic oasis in the cesspit of the larger threadiverse. Well, that, and not knowingly platforming people here just to spout violence and hate.

I have no tolerance for violence and hate. None. If you want to see and/or spout that shit, again, use another client. If you're as sick of seeing that shit everywhere as I am, well, maybe give this a try because that's the vibe I'm going for.

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.

The post is locked because I have no intention whatsoever of dealing with the abuse from you bunch of chronic malcontents. I'm not going to change my mind on this, and there is absolutely nothing to discuss. It is what it is. Don't like it? Once again, I'm asking you to use another client as this one is not for you. I owe you nothing.

No one is "censoring" you. You're free to spout whatever your instance allows, and nothing I can or would do can stop you. But that is a two-way street. I am under no obligation whatsoever to platform people, instances, or topics that lead to violence, hate mongering, and worse. I do not want that bullshit associated with my project, and I am exercising my right to use whatever means I have at my disposal to not associate my work with that. If that includes a persistent content warning when toxic mode is enabled, so be it.

Simply put, I'm choosing to not render content from certain sources in order to make a default experience that's actually a nice place and not an angry mob. Not everyone is here for the same reasons. Not everyone wants to be mad all the time. And some of us just want to discuss hobbies or make dick jokes without standing next to the crazy people jerking each other off about who deserves to be murdered and how.

Nor do I want the latter associated with me or my work. I'm not developing this software to make people's death threats look pretty.

Believe me when I say that I could have made my life 1,000 times easier by just throwing in a list and having it silently issue block API calls in the background. Would have saved me a LOT of work. But I didn't do that. Do you want to know why? Because that would have been a bridge too far. That would have impacted your experience outside of this application, and that is not now nor ever my goal.

So, in conclusion, if you don't like this, then use another app. It's that fucking simple.

And might I add that not one person complained until db0 went internet Karen with his hissy fit because I took his toy away from him. I'd warned him several times over the last couple of years that his instance was becoming problematic, and when it reached a point I no longer wanted it associated with me or my project, I exercised my rights to disassociate.

Key Points

1. You can turn the built-in filtering off.

Really. You can! It's been like that since day 1 had anyone bothered to look before deciding to start publicly running their mouth without having all of the facts. But what would the Fediverse be without those kinds of people? Oh, right: Tesseract! (by default, anyway)

To disable them (referred to as enabling Toxic Mode in the settings), it's as simple as:

Settings -> Advanced -> Click the "I feel like some content is missing. What's up?" text at the bottom -> Enable Toxic Mode

I didn't want to add that option, but I conceded nonetheless, and it's been available the whole fucking time. I'll admit the fine print buried at the bottom of the advanced settings isn't the most upfront place to put it, but it is there, and there's nothing stopping you from turning it on.¹

¹ Admins who deploy Tesseract can opt to disable the availability of toxic mode, but it is available by default.

It even flat out says why that exists:

Tesseract attempts to filter out as much baseline toxicity as possible in order to make the default experience welcoming and round off some of the Fediverse's rougher edges. This is particularly important for attracting and retaining new users and for facilitating long-term growth of the platform. If you absolutely must, you can enable 'Toxic Mode' to see all content. Note that this setting has no effect for admins as they can always see all content. Similarly, mods can always see all content in communities they oversee. Questions or Complaints?

This is NOT a {instance} policy or configuration. This is a Tesseract-specific policy, and if you are seeing this, then the {instance} admins have configured Tesseract to allow disabling of the built-in filters which is all they can do. Tesseract does not, and will not, allow for disabling the filters by default; it will only allow users to opt in to the toxic crap and violent whack-a-doos rather than making people opt out. So don't go complaining to the {instance} admins about this.

Furthermore, at least initially in the early 1.5.x releases, you had to acknowledge an "Acceptable Use Policy" banner before the app would even load; I think I moved that into the login flow in 1.5.5 rather than on initial load. Regardless, that AUP covers the reasons why someone or even an instance might be blocked by default. More on that later.

And finally, there are many references in the Tesseract info/about and taglines that say "Proudly taking a stance against extremism on the Threadiverse" and/or "Providing a normie-friendly experience". That's a bit cryptic, but I wasn't really hiding that Tesseract had decided to do things differently from here on out.

That brings us to the next item...

2. Tesseract is an experience more than a client

Yes, yes. That sounds like "techbros smelling their own farts marketing bullshit", but I'm not going that far with it. I'm merely trying to differentiate it from other clients in that it sands down the rougher edges of the Fediverse and tries to make it a place where you don't have to wade through an angry mob just to get to the cat pictures or photography or whatever interests you.

The goal is to create a microcosm of the fediverse where people who aren't here just to be angry about something can actually enjoy themselves.

In addition to providing powerful tools for mods and admins, Tesseract is designed first and foremost for "normies".

TL;DR

To be blunt: Tesseract is designed to attract and retain normies. The Fediverse is stuck in a bit of a chicken and egg situation right now. It needs new people, but anyone in their right mind isn't going to want to stick around because the loudest bunch here are just so off-putting to normal, well-adjusted people. I've attempted to resolve this catch-22 situation and am trying, perhaps hamfistedly, to save the Fediverse from itself.

I firmly believe the Fediverse has a lot of potential. In theory, anyway. I very much want to see it grow. See it mature. See it become the new norm. Pie in the sky fantasy? Possibly, but it won't be for lack of trying.

I came over during the 2023 Rexodous in the height of the API debacle. The first 9-12 months here were pretty great. As with any group of people, there were assholes, sure, but that's humanity for you.

As with all things, there were growing pains, some technical, some human, but at the end of the day, most people were here because they wanted to be here.

Long story short, at some point, the Fediverse stopped growing organically and simply became the dumping ground for all of the people too radioactive to be platformed anywhere else in civil society.

Is that what we wanted to build here? A refuge for people too toxic to be anywhere else? A place where people are only here because it's the only place that hasn't kicked them out yet? And if you do kick them out, good luck keeping them out. This place is a revolving door.

No. That is not the experience I want. That is not the experience many people want.

I know for a fact that I am not the only one who is flat out embarrassed to be associated with this place; I've seen many posts and comments to the same effect. Sure, I can show someone my feed after I've spent 3 years blocking, blocking, and blocking some more, but if they do decide to sign up, they will not have the luxury of having that work done for them. I've seen far too many people nope the hell out of this place, and it's 90% due to the loudest part of the demographic with the remaining 10% being a mix of other factors.

"Just subcribe to what you want and ignore the rest" or "Just curate your feed, brah" or "Just switch to a better instance" is what I hear.

That's a lot of work. I don't know if you've noticed, but people are lazy creatures and want things to "just work" or they move on to something else that does. They're not going to spend days instance hopping, re-curating their feed, or messing with the buggy import/export. They're going to go back to Reddit. Seen it happen too many times.

That's where the Tesseract "experience" comes in. It's pre-curated by someone level headed who has 3 years of experience rawdogging all the sewage, who knows where the most radioactive parts are, and has swept those under the rug so that normies can just log in and talk about their hobbies without being blasted with violent crazies, propagandists, and malcontents who just want everybody to be as mad all the time as they are.

Newsflash: Not everyone wants to be bombareded with political propaganda all the time. Not everyone wants politics injected into everything. Not everyone wants to be [blank]-shamed by a bunch of self-righteous assholes. Normal people just want to log in, talk about their interests, and have a good time.

That's what Tesseract attempts to provide.

If you don't want that, then you are free to turn on "Toxic Mode" or use another client. No one is forcing you to use Tesseract. And if you're upset that someone using Tesseract might not see your calls for violence or be riled up to be as mad as you are about whatever bee is in your bonnet today, well, that's kind of the point. And that says more about you than anyone else.

3. "Why is X on the list?"

Believe it or not, there's a pretty strict list of reasons and they aren't applied willy-nilly. I've ordered them here by frequency, most frequent being first.

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.

1) Advocacy of, incitement of, or ANY calls to violence.

Gallows humor is one thing, but some of you all are just sick in the head. Normal people do not talk like that. I cannot tell you how offputting it is to come into a comment thread and it just be "guillotins, Luigi, violence, violence, death!"

You wonder why this place is distilling into more and more of that? Because normal people see a bunch of violent nutjobs and nope the fuck out.

Instances whose admins directly endorse violence¹, systematically look the other way², or encourage it from their members¹ are NOT what I want associated with my work. I'm not making Tesseract to make borderline terrorist content look pretty nor will I knowingly allow the software to be used for such purpose. I certainly am under no delusion that I should approve of everything rendered in Tesseract, but I am drawing a line in the sand when it comes to online extremism.

¹ e.g. dbzer0, .nexus
² e.g. blahaj, quokk

Soapbox: You can be against bad things without devolving to death threats. Similarly, just because you're against something that is objectively bad, that DOES NOT make you good.

2) Racism, Xenophobia, Transphobia, Homophobia, Bigotry, et al

I have absolutely no tolerance for hate and will not knowingly platform it. The list is pretty self-explanatory except xenophobia. That one seems to get a pass everywhere, but I will not let that one slide. No country is a Planet of Hats, so when you perpetuate harmful or hateful stereotypes or make sweeping derogatory statements about all people of a national origin, you're only showing how hateful and ignorant you are. Those people are not welcome.

3) Persistent Ban Evasion

Some people just can't or won't take the hint. You probably know who I'm talking about, or at least one of the small handful of people who just create alt after alt despite each one getting banned.

I shit you not, at least half or more of the regexes are just DavrielleLouna / Dwazou.

4) Spam

Self-explanatory. Spammers often reuse account names, so those are regexed. Whatever website they're plugging goes into the list as well. This also includes the 1 minute old LLM-bots automatedly spraying out ads for their latest snake oil.

5) Perpetually Hostile and Uncivil People

Yes, histories are checked to make sure they're not just someone having a bad day or being goaded into a heated response. But some people are just assholes who find civil society too limiting.

6) People who (intentionally?) take others out of context just to attack them

You've seen this whether you know it or not. They pick one random point in someone's comment, take it wildly out of context, turn it into a false equivalence of "oh, you believe [this wildly twisted and exaggerated version of X] so you must be [really bad thing Y]" and then it degrades from there usually ending with them calling the other person a Nazi. These people need to grow the fuck up.

7) Overtly Political and/or Ouright Propaganda Accounts

Considering the threadiverse is like 90% political shouting anyway, accounts dedicated to the purpose become overwhelming. I give zero fucks which side of the spectrum these accounts are on. This includes "tankies" and others who are militantly political.

8) Accounts who only exist to stir things up

This is trolling, no question. It's a direct attempt to evoke some kind of gut, emotional reaction for whatever the account decides is the reason that day. These accounts are not acting in good faith.

9) Accounts that post content an average person off the street would see in the feed and go "What the actual fuck?!"

Kinda hard to quantify this one, but basically people who continuously post stuff that, even allowing for a very open mind, the average person would find offputting.

10) Conspiracy Crackpots

Joke conspiracies are one thing. Spamming alien manifestos is another.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why?

A: See above. I want to provide a nicer default experience to attract and retain new people who just want to come here and hang out in a civil atmosphere.

"Who are you to decide...?", "What gives you the right to...?"

A: Well, somebody's fucking got to. I've already made myself clear that I am drawing a firm line in the sand when it comes to online extremism and how I will not knowingly allow my project to be used for such purpose. Beyond that, I am simply trying to round off the rough edges to attract (and more importantly, retain) new, normal people while there is still enough Fediverse left to save. I refuse to sit idle and let the fediverse be the dumping ground for the people too toxic to be anywhere else.

If you don't like it, don't use Tesseract. If you're part of the built-in filter, then maybe ask yourself if you're really making this place better or just continuing on with the same crap that got you banned everywhere else. The fact that people who use Tesseract won't see you (by default) is the feature, not the bug.

"Why is X on the list and not Y?"

A: This goes back to the term "knowingly" I've used many times in this statement. It's an allow-by-default setup, so unless someone on the project is made aware of a particular problem, it's unable to be addressed. Save your whatabout-isms beacause the only rhyme or reason are the 10 "rules" listed above and someone on the team becoming aware that something needs to be done about them.

"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.

Will any person or instance ever be removed from the list?

A: Actually, yes. Admins can still see these users and if they grow up and learn to act like civilized, rational adults, they can and have been removed. Typically the only reason that is unconditionally permanent are egregious calls for violence.

Instances are trickier. The instance would have to demonstrate real effort of addressing the problem, show progress in the right direction, and, often, get a change in leadership. Admins are the captins of the ship, so to speak, and set the tone and expectations for members, especially when the admins are active on the platform. To further the ship analogy, big ships do turn slowly. So if an instance expresses a genuine desire to stop advocating or promoting violence, for example, then the case can be reconsidered.

Does that leave blind spots for mods and admins?

A: No. The filtering is disarmed completely for admins and for mods in their communities.

"Wahhh, I big mad. CenSOrShiP! Wahhh!"

A: That's not a question. And you're free to use another Lemmy client. There's no shortage of them. And you're also still free to spout whatever your instance allows, but app developers are under absolutely no obligation to platform you.