According to Rimu Atkinson, the main developer of PieFed, all PieFed instances come with a 3000-long block list of resources that cannot be linked to. These include all sorts of right-wing outlets. There is no easy opt-out, forcing existing instances to follow the blocklist.
The flagship PieFed instance also rolled out a feature marking various other sorts of outlets - among them, resources considered AI slop and Marxist outlets. These are specific to piefed.social.
Related discussion: https://piefed.social/comment/11254679
Why YSK: Many users have hard time choosing between Lemmy, PieFed, and Kbin/Mbin. Users that prefer a more curated and politically uniform experience might prefer PieFed over the alternatives. Users that are right-wing, Marxist, or generally concerned about global censorship of the Fedi-/Threadiverse, might opt for other options instead.
Note: The post is only meant to inform users of the potentially important differences between Threadiverse platforms. Any ideologically charged discussions are better left in the respective topic.
It isn’t censorship though? Just as much as people have the right to speak, others have the right to not have to listen. The beauty of the fediverse is that literally everyone has the right to say what they want, you can join a new instance or make your own but if you start saying stuff that people don’t want to listen to then they can’t be forced to listen.
This isn’t an instance with a block list though. He’s putting it in the software the instance runs, without an opt-out option (besides forking).
So what? Its open source software and subject to what the developer wants. Don’t like it then fork it, remove the offending blocks and run your own, literally exactly the same freedoms offered. There is absolutely nothing wrong with not wanting to platform people.
There isn’t a problem, until it’s blocking what you want. I don’t trust all people. If all the users are informed, then fine. This isn’t that. This is trying to by tricky about it. It’s an attempt to control information that he doesn’t like (including leftist information) without clearly saying what’s happening. That’s not OK. It’s fine if you consent. It’s shady trying to sneak it through.
I still can’t find a reason to say it is censorship or sneaky. Isnt the point that it highlights the sources? In which case it isn’t really hiding it. And if you decide you don’t like it then just leave and go elsewhere. I don’t really see a reason why a creator of something has a requirement to be apolitical or make their feelings known. People complain a lot about .ml and lemmy’s creator. Never understood why, nobody is forcing you to participate and stay instead of going elsewhere - and I say that as somebody who was on .ml during the exodus then saw everyone defederating.
I guess i very much see it as creative freedom, it isn’t doing anything malicious and my understanding is that it does expose these blocks to the user when encountered?
Here’s a question: how many users do you think are aware of this? Were you aware of this before the post? If the answer to those is not very high and/or no, it’s not being forward with what it’s doing. If the creator sees it as a feature users would like, and not trying to be sneaky, why wouldn’t they proudly display it?
I don’t use piefed so no, of course I didn’t know or have seen it. And it doesn’t need to be malicious, i would have zero issues morally in suppressing or warning about links to stormfront or infowars and would think nothing of it - the line that somebody draws for themselves is personal and it seems the person making piefed has decided what they think is appropriate for them and their userbase.
Exactly my point. Let it be personal. I don’t understand why you would do this without a toggle and without being clear to users.
I don’t care that you don’t use Piefed. If you’ve seen it before and didn’t know about it, you’re in the same position as most users. This wasn’t advertised.
Also, you only said Stormfront or Infowars (now a The Onion site). If it was only extreme right stuff that’d be one thing (still bad if it’s not made clear, in my opinion). It isn’t though. It also includes some less radical right stuff, but also some left stuff. If he’s supporting the status quo by hiding Israel genocide information from users, that’s bad, right?
It’s a piece of software that should be designed to facilitate what the user wants, not what the creator thinks. It should be made in a way that’s easy for users to add or change the block list. It isn’t. The only option is to fork it, which is possible, so he isn’t stopping this, but purposefully chose to make this not clear so people won’t. It’s an attempt at thought control by being hidden and sneaking it in. If he wanted it to be a choice, again, it’d be a toggle. It is a choice through forking, so he hid it.
Err… what? That wasn’t my point at all, you just took the words and decided to say something totally different. I’m talking about the line one draws in what is seen as obvious, objective or morally responsible. Which is exactly what you then go to totally misconstrue here:
I made no comment on the filter list in this part. I said it as my own opinion on what I see as morally correct, not them. I made the comment as a set-up to the next part of the comment; I would think nothing of filtering those two items out as way of demonstrating that few people would object to them being blacklisted as hateful sites of no useful substance. The entire point was to demonstrate that my moral compass in that regard is less controversial yet ultimately it is the same concept - the developer chose to filter what they likely think is hateful or fake, they just have a different idea of what that covers.
(And thank you so much for the “UMMM ACKCHULLY” on Infowars. I’m well aware of the situation with it but it was clearly done as a way to pick an obvious website that few would have cared about blocking).
Aww, I’m sorry for offering up information that was entirely relevant to the question that you asked me:
I know you apparently don’t care about answers to questions you ask but I’ll make it clearer for you - Why would I be aware of the features of a piece of software I don’t use???
Yup. But that’s up to them. Don’t like it? Don’t use it.
Absolutely could not disagree more. You do not get to decide on their behalf what they produce - it is no difference in that sense than creating art, or writing a book or running a website. What the creator puts out is up to them - you don’t like it then you stop using it or you change it. Would allowing more user control over stuff like that be preferable to me? Yes. Would it make it more popular? Probably. Can we or should we force or pressure them? No. It is entirely their choice, you have no right to try force their hand to make it more palatable to your sensibilities. They create it that way because that is what they think is best. You can question that choice, you can hold that choice against them, you can attempt to change their mind, ask to re-think it, object to it, submit your own changes to it with justification, do whatever you want but implying that they have some kind of obligation to anyone but themselves to make them do what you think is best is absurd.
Aah yes, genius-level thought manipulation and level 100 sneak achieved by *checks notes* leaving the list in a plain text format in a publicly accessible repository, fully indexed, copied & replicated online &offline and integrated right into the most popular AI models. What a galaxy-brained master of subterfuge.
It isn’t hard-baked into the code. Instance owners can adjust it as needed in the software they want to run and the community they wish to create. If this is such a moral injustice then I’m sure we are going to see a fork of this with filtering removed and the original one will fade into irrelevance…
This is such a non-issue blown out of the water as some kind of evil mastermind carefully crafting the media landscape rather than just one person making a thing they like and blocking out the things they think are bad. This literally is freedom of speech and it couldn’t be more free than “don’t like what I’m doing? Go and do it yourself then, here are all the instructions, no strings attached”. Trying to force somebody’s hand because you don’t like what they are doing will only have the effect of driving the developer away entirely.
There are loads of projects and pieces of software I have seen that are either created by hateful people or people who tolerate bigotry in their community but it is my right to ignore them and pretend they don’t exist. Likely all they are doing is hurting themselves and I can live in hope that it doesn’t work out in the long run. I’m happy to make my distaste for it known and make it clear that i object to it but to say they have some kind of duty to cater to me or anyone else??? No, but hopefully if people get the message, agree and stop using their software or fork it and make their own then that’s a win.