Like I genuinely don't want to give anyone ideas but I will never understand why they went through all that trouble and then didn't also have it auto-disable for instances that were on the secret blocklist. Like if that had been done, it might have taken YEARS for people to notice. Even if someone had they could have innocently hidden behind "Oh well the dbzer0 people don't like censorship so I defaulted them to toxic mode so they didn't have to mess with the settings."
Like.... I would ask why duplicitous people are so dumb in long term thinking but I think that's just answering my own question.
I'm curious about it's overall usage statistics, but I guess the best metric - downloads of said banlist - is in their hands. I've seen people saying they've used it at some point, but I don't think there were a lot of people. I'd go as far as to suspect that more people saw and reacted to recent news and memes about this frontend than used it at any point in time, total. My perspective as a mostly smartphone user is screwed though.
Mods and admins tended to use it because of the way it it easily presents information and the workflow is much better than the standard web UI. For instance, before lemvotes.org came around, it lets one who isn't an admin see who voted on what. Sadly, aside from the recently revealed scumminess from the dev, it is a much better UI in about every way than the default web UI for Lemmy.
uh, but then those mods and admins wouldn't be able to mod all the users on the list, right? Cause they wouldn't even load the posts?
All the users who are allegedly the worst scum of the fediverse were made unmoddable by the list that's supposed to protect the normies from seeing those users?
Yeah. It's good that this was caught relatively early. I'm not familiar with the way it works under the hood, but I suspect you would still see notifications for reports and be able to deal with them even with the blacklist because that's an entirely different thing from posts and comments.
He obfuscated the blocklist, and had it pull the latest list from his own server at run time (so forks and local configuration would be less likely to work)
He absolutely cared to push his blocklist to everyone
Someone made a frontend for Lemmy called Tesseract. This person added a default-on non-comitted list of users, communities, and instances that frontend would block regardless of your own instance or account settings (unless you were a mod or admin). This was done under the guise of wanting a "normal" experience for new users. This was never disclosed to users who would use the frontend.
Meanwhile, the blocklist (which is hosted separately and downloaded by the app when used to avoid instances removing the blocklist for their copy of the frontend) reads like a personal-grievance diary. A lot of people are rightfully really upset that this was done and not disclosed. The creator doubled down and is continuing to add people to the list and showing their whole ass to everyone.
The bans were added discretely by the tesseract dev.
It was noticed and pointed out by another dev.
Lots of people checked to see if they were banned. Some were angry...that they weren't on the list.
The tesseract dev then had a hissy fit and walked off in a huff...again. Apparently he's walked off before.
25 Comments
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 66 pts · 32d
Like I genuinely don't want to give anyone ideas but I will never understand why they went through all that trouble and then didn't also have it auto-disable for instances that were on the secret blocklist. Like if that had been done, it might have taken YEARS for people to notice. Even if someone had they could have innocently hidden behind "Oh well the dbzer0 people don't like censorship so I defaulted them to toxic mode so they didn't have to mess with the settings."
Like.... I would ask why duplicitous people are so dumb in long term thinking but I think that's just answering my own question.
halfapage@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 32d
idunnololz@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 32d
Muahahaha /s
Brkdncr@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 32d
He built it for his own use and didn’t care that his blocklist applied to everyone.
SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 28 pts · 32d
Right but they even admitted that they had HOPED no one would notice.
altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 7 pts · 32d
I'm curious about it's overall usage statistics, but I guess the best metric - downloads of said banlist - is in their hands. I've seen people saying they've used it at some point, but I don't think there were a lot of people. I'd go as far as to suspect that more people saw and reacted to recent news and memes about this frontend than used it at any point in time, total. My perspective as a mostly smartphone user is screwed though.
lyrial@anarchist.nexus · 6 pts · 32d
Mods and admins tended to use it because of the way it it easily presents information and the workflow is much better than the standard web UI. For instance, before lemvotes.org came around, it lets one who isn't an admin see who voted on what. Sadly, aside from the recently revealed scumminess from the dev, it is a much better UI in about every way than the default web UI for Lemmy.
Edit: autocorrect nonsense.
bstix@feddit.dk · 3 pts · 32d
uh, but then those mods and admins wouldn't be able to mod all the users on the list, right? Cause they wouldn't even load the posts?
All the users who are allegedly the worst scum of the fediverse were made unmoddable by the list that's supposed to protect the normies from seeing those users?
lyrial@anarchist.nexus · 4 pts · 32d
Yeah. It's good that this was caught relatively early. I'm not familiar with the way it works under the hood, but I suspect you would still see notifications for reports and be able to deal with them even with the blacklist because that's an entirely different thing from posts and comments.
lastweakness@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 32d
I like Photon, I hope it doesn't have a list like this
altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 4 pts · 32d
Photon's dev reacted somewhere saying it's not their business.
lastweakness@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 31d
That's good to know
aaaa@piefed.world · 13 pts · 31d
He obfuscated the blocklist, and had it pull the latest list from his own server at run time (so forks and local configuration would be less likely to work)
He absolutely cared to push his blocklist to everyone
crediblethreat@scribe.disroot.org · 5 pts · 32d
great. now we have to audit every commit from every so and frontend. I mean we should have been, but now we have another item to look for
Ilovethebomb@sh.itjust.works · 18 pts · 32d
Looking at that block list, I've had the same thought myself. Surely that's half the activity or more on this platform?
Including my own insightful commentary, I might add.
aaaa@piefed.world · 1 pts · 31d
PattyMcB@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 32d
I'M RIGHT HERE!
Oh, wait... I'm in the blocked list
FinalRemix@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 32d
Image won't load, but the band is pretty good.
bobsnq@reddthat.com · 5 pts · 32d
Keep seeing posts about this, can someone give me the tl;dr on what the tesseract stuff is about
RedSeries@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 24 pts · 32d
Someone made a frontend for Lemmy called Tesseract. This person added a default-on non-comitted list of users, communities, and instances that frontend would block regardless of your own instance or account settings (unless you were a mod or admin). This was done under the guise of wanting a "normal" experience for new users. This was never disclosed to users who would use the frontend.
Meanwhile, the blocklist (which is hosted separately and downloaded by the app when used to avoid instances removing the blocklist for their copy of the frontend) reads like a personal-grievance diary. A lot of people are rightfully really upset that this was done and not disclosed. The creator doubled down and is continuing to add people to the list and showing their whole ass to everyone.
EonNShadow@pawb.social · 18 pts · 31d
The dev proceeded to ragequit Lemmy, post a manifesto, and add a script that attempts to DDOS another instance into the client as a last "fuck you".
Good riddance.
MrNesser@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 32d
From what i have gleaned some guy built a lemmy app and released it but when he was critisised he shadowbanned people or whole instances.
Please someone give more information i'm sure that isnt quite right
D_C@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 32d
The bans were added discretely by the tesseract dev.
It was noticed and pointed out by another dev.
Lots of people checked to see if they were banned. Some were angry...that they weren't on the list.
The tesseract dev then had a hissy fit and walked off in a huff...again. Apparently he's walked off before.
DanceMomsSavedMe@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 32d
I hope he stays gone this time.
mountainRadish@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 32d
What is tesseract!? Even Google is confused
asudox@lemmy.asudox.dev · 2 pts · 28d
Tesseract is a Lemmy frontend.
mountainRadish@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 27d
Aight