To whichever admin deleted @Nakoichi's comment for "disinformation":

Some questions about Piefed.social - Lemmy.World

I’ve been considering making the move to Piefed for a while, but I suppose there are a few things that I haven’t been able to find that I was wondering about. First, what is Piefed.social’s structural situation like? After having survived the fall of Kbin (big RIP) and seen Lemm.ee [http://Lemm.ee] fall because of admins who cannot continue for completely understandable and unavoidable personal reasons, what is Piefed’s situation there? I don’t see the list of admins on the sidebar like in Lemmy instances, do you have enough admins to weather growth? Is there a broader org you could theoretically cooperate with if there was a sudden need for admins? Second, what is Piefed’s financial situation like? I’ve seen plenty of sites, though so far no major Fediverse instances, fall because of an inability to keep donations and expenses in order. I see the donation page, but what is the financial health of the instance like? Some instances post monthly or yearly reviews of the financial situation, but if Piefed does, I don’t know where to find it. Third, what is Piefed’s position on genocide? I fucking hate that I have to ask this, but having seen too many people on the Fediverse deny the Holodomor, Uyghur genocide, etc, including the Lemmy devs themselves (who are no small part of the reason why I’m considering making the move), I don’t want to move here and then find out that the position of the admins is something horrific. I don’t expect that the admins intend to play whack-a-mole with genocide deniers themselves, since if anything that’s properly the job of moderators and communities to drive the bastards out, but simply knowing that the admins are not supporters of genocide denial would put my mind at ease a great deal. Fourth, what is the defederation policy of Piefed.social? Thank you for your time!

(lemmy.world)

Defederation - I really need to improve https://piefed.social/instances so it shows the blocked instances. Anything that is a continual moderation headache gets blocked, temporarily or otherwise. This week aaalll the spam is coming from lemmings.world so they’re out but once it dies down they’ll be back. Hexbear and lemmygrad will always be blocked and PieFed is coded to block them by default on all new instances (admins can change it). No plans to defederate lemmy.ml as I’ve built mod tools that help me find the most odious users & banned them and now it’s tolerable. lemy.lol is blocked because of it’s fascist logo. That’s about it.

pyfedi/app/cli.py at main

pyfedi - Project background: https://join.piefed.social Demo site / Flagship instance: https://piefed.social

Codeberg.org (codeberg.org)

The removed comment for context

Fun fact 90% of piefed users can't see your comment because the code comes with baked in blocking of hexbear and Lemmygrad lmao. If they can't handle down votes they could never handle getting dunked on by us.

90% of Piefed users don't federate with hexbear, but that's because 90% of the Piefed instances are managed by teams who do not federate with hexbear on their Lemmy instances as well

List of Piefed instances that currently defederate hexbear:

• https://piefed.blahaj.zone/ , the same way https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/ does
• https://piefed.world/, the same way https://lemmy.world/ does
• https://piefed.ca/, the same way https://lemmy.ca/ does
• https://feddit.online/, the same way https://fedia.io/ does (by the way, Fedia isn't a software, it's called Mbin, and doesn't have such code, so not sure why you're including them into your title)
• https://quokk.au/, it used to be the same when it was still a Lemmy instance
• https://piefed.europe.pub/, the same way https://europe.pub/ does

Fediverse Observer checks all sites in the fediverse and gives you an easy way to find a home from a map or list or automatically.

We observe all Fediverse Sites. Find a Piefed site to sign up for, find one close to you using a list, map or let us auto-pick one for you!

(piefed.fediverse.observer)

As you can see, instances defederating hexbear are instances managed by teams which were going to do so anyway, as they already did on Lemmy. I'm still waiting for an example of an instance that defederated hexbear "by mistake".

Instances who want to federate know how to do so, as we've seen above.

Setting up an instance isn't trivial, assuming that admins would revise the defederation list doesn't seem realistic.

Recent comment from an admin

This is exactly how it works. I started a PieFed instance and made the decision (during setup) to trim the defederation list down to none. Users can block on the account level.

Discussing Hexbearians are pissed at Fedia and PieFed for the audacity of not wanting to deal with them LMAO

What is wetshaving? Modern wetshaving is made up of hobbyists who enjoy a wide range of shave soaps, aftershaves, shaving brushes, razors, and more. From modern to vintage, there's a great shave out there for everyone. We actually enjoy shaving! Visit the [wiki](https://wiki.wetshaving.social/) to learn more and see if it might be something you'd like to try. Feel free to make a post with any questions you might have. ##### 🪒 Track the uptime of our various services here: https://uptime.selfhost.ing/status/wetshaving #### 🪒 Check out our other WetShaving communities! * Lemmy: https://sub.wetshaving.social/ * Mastodon: https://wetshaving.social/ * Reddit: https://reddit.com/r/wetshaving * Discord: https://discord.gg/qnvxavp3 * IRC: https://kiwiirc.com/client/?settings=dd892af474749b032ba39bb88a8894d9#wetshaving * WetShaving Wiki: https://wiki.wetshaving.social/ #### 🪒 Wetshaving Lemmy Instance Rules ##### 1. Behaviour and Etiquette * Be Respectful. Do not bully, flame, or harass others. * Malicious comments are not allowed but heated discussion and salty banter is okay. * Low effort replies and complaints about content will be removed. * No bigotry of any kind. * No pornography. ##### 2. Content Guidelines * [!wetshaving@wetshav.ing](https://wetshav.ing/c/wetshaving) is the main community for everything shaving related. * Users are welcome to form other Communities on this server so long as they are related to traditional wetshaving. Administrators reserve the right to remove Communities that are not related to traditional wetshaving. ##### 3. Reviews and Disclosure * Use [First Impressions] if your experience with the product is limited. * Use [Review] if you can provide comprehensive details with enough familiarity to answer follow-up questions. * Disclose how the product being reviewed was acquired (e.g., PIF, loan, or purchase). If the product was provided to you directly by the maker or vendor free of charge or at a discount, you must disclose this fact even if the item will later be returned to the maker or vendor. ##### 4. Advertising * Vendors are to limit marketing posts by waiting 7 days before posting again (even if the post content is different). Non-shaving related vendors are prohibited. * Non-vendors may post topics about products if it will foster a compelling discussion. * Affiliate links will removed at moderator discretion. ##### 5. Inappropriate Content * All NSFW/L content must request administrator approval and be flaired appropriately. * Non-shaving related NSFW/L content is not allowed. ##### ∞. Administrator Discretion * The rules may not apply perfectly to every situation. The administrators have final discretion. * Questions, concerns, or appeals must be sent to [@wetshavingadmin@wetshav.ing](https://wetshav.ing/u/wetshavingadmin). Do not message individual administrators.

(wetshav.ing)

More details from the same admin

I'm on my computer now, so I'll type out some more detail if you're interested. To reiterate, I'm just going off memory and it was two weeks ago so I could very well be making stuff up...

The pre-filled input box asked for each blocked instance to go on a new line, so:

lemmy.world  
lemmy.ml  
lemmygrad.ml  
hexbear.net  
lemmy.zip  
piefed.social  
etc...  

I deleted all of the defaults and that was it. I'll put a screenshot of the settings page that's available to admins below:

There are still a few instances that federate with hexbear, showing that the 'baked in block' is just a configuration change:

• https://piefed.zip/c/news@hexbear.net
• https://piefed.zip/instances?page=9&filter=federated&search=
• https://piefed.au/instances?page=6&filter=federated&search=
• https://anarchist.nexus/instances?page=4&filter=federated&search= , which is related to https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/, also federated with hexbear

The removal reason:

misinformation. i could not find any mentions of hexbear or lemmygrad in code (checked issues as well)

Fun fact 90% of piefed users can't see your comment because the code comes with baked in blocking of hexbear and Lemmygrad lmao. If they can't handle down votes they could never handle getting dunked on by us.

It has been restored?

Is this the typical behaviour of fediverse users? Posts in Apple and Nintendo communities immediately get downvoted by people disliking the companies. Can’t they just block the communities? - Hexbear

Lemmy

(hexbear.net)

I don't mean ban every downvoter, but ban repeat downvoters. People who are clearly downvoting most things posted without any pattern.

That requires the effort of either writing or at least running a bot to perform that action, or PieFed can prevent the downvoting before it happens. e.g. Blaze shared this screenshot elsewhere in this OP:

That only impacts communities on Piefed locally. So people unsubscribed from other instances, etc could still downvote and harm a posts visibility across the fediverse.

In any case, I personally haven't identified post downvoting on the whole to be that much of an issue that it is impossible to not notice repeat downvoters by just checking posts a few times a day for a week. Not many people do it.

Obviously if you are running a controversial community it might be different.

So people unsubscribed from other instances, etc could still downvote and harm a posts visibility across the fediverse.

Are you absolutely certain of that - that is not what the feature description seems to indicate? If true, that sounds like a bug request should be submitted, either to fix the feature itself or at least the description to match, although I do not moderate any communities on PieFed so I lack personal experience with this and will have to leave it to you who knows.

I would have naively guessed that it would be trivially easy for PieFed to know which users were subscribed to a community vs. not, but maybe it's in an inaccessible form or something.

Are you absolutely certain of that - that is not what the feature description seems to indicate?

Piefed can't control lemmy instances like that. I don't know if it crosses over Piefed instances (I'll ask rimu later) but I can't see why it would work on lemmy instances. Similarly lemmy.blahaj blocks all downvotes, but it can't stop people outside of lemmy.blahaj from downvoting posts from lemmy.blahaj. People still see downvotes on lemmy.blahaj communities if they're looking at them from lemmy.world. It just means that from a lemmy.blahaj user's perspective, there are no downvotes on anything.

I would have naively guessed that it would be trivially easy for PieFed to know which users were subscribed to a community vs. not, but maybe it's in an inaccessible form or something.

Yeah, Piefed can read this - but it can only control the downvotes on its own instance.