In light of the dev silently blacklisting blahaj.zone, many of its users and several other instances, we have removed tesseract from the available lemmy front ends we offer.
Marked safe from Tesseract blocklist!
This controversy over tesseract finally got me to do a bit more reading to understand how federation actually works and what a frontend does. Now I understand why everyone is so pissed.
The email metaphor has been the most useful to me in understanding how this works. Someone tell me if I’ve got this right. Basically, you have your lemmy account, which belongs to the instance you created it on, like how a gmail account belongs to Google. You can use whatever frontend you like to view your feed, just like you could use Outlook to view your Gmail account. Tesseract is a frontend, kinda like Outlook in the metaphor. In theory, a frontend should deliver to you everything that would appear on your lemmy instance no matter where you access it from, but now the tesseract frontend is basically making content filtering decisions about what users, topics, and instances you have access to. It would be like if your Outlook app suddenly decided “ew, you shouldn’t be using your Gmail to talk to any of those yahoo mail people, and also it’s now forbidden to use Outlook to discuss seahorses.”
So all the posts, users, and instances are still there, it’s just that the dev of your frontend decided that you shouldn’t interact with those users or discuss those topics anymore. Worse still, they surreptitiously tried to hide all of this new filtering among other features that are needed for spam and whatnot, leading people to think something was actually broken.
Do I have that right?
Yep, you’ve got it!
What’s the deal with this Tesseract developer? Did they just block everyone that has ever looked at them funny? I looked at the blocklist and saw all kinds of people: trans-oriented, piracy-oriented, and lots of tankie-oriented instances. And a lot of users I’d never heard of.
Now they’ve taken their whole site offline, presumably so they won’t have to answer any questions.
Now they’ve taken their whole site offline, presumably so they won’t have to answer any questions.
Tea is just all over the damn floor at this point.
…but like… what did they think was gonna happen? Did they think they were so clever that no one could figure it out? Even when it effectively broke functionality on sites that used it but were blocked? Like they couldn’t add in code to disable specific parts of it if it was deployed on one of those sites so they could keep the whole thing secret? Like just another little regex search string to ignore any users and sites that match the site domain as its rolling out, so they would keep using it and be none the wiser because it would work for them but continue to have its blocklist maintained and secret because it wouldn’t cause any problems.
I hate that it takes me like zero effort to conceptualize a better way to have done this shady shit, but on the other hand I guess I’m just glad they weren’t that clever.
EDIT: Upon reflection, I do wonder if this was at least partially vibe coded, because LLMs don’t have forethought and can’t plan ahead for contingencies like that. Because it also seems like a no-brainer that it would lead to configuration failures if deployed on one of the sites that is blocked.
EDIT: Upon reflection, I do wonder if this was at least partially vibe coded, because LLMs don’t have forethought and can’t plan ahead for contingencies like that. Because it also seems like a no-brainer that it would lead to configuration failures if deployed on one of the sites that is blocked.
The dev was quite vocal about being against LLM usage. Most notably, I remember their April Fool’s Day post about an update that adds a bunch of AI features. The post was obviously just a big joke, full of disparaging comments about LLMs. With that said, that was April (maybe even 2025, I can’t remember). It’s possible that their opinion had changed in the time since. But I doubt it, personally.
EDIT: It was 2025.
Canonical link: https://dubvee.org/post/3069664
I won’t lie, that mention of Nicole kinda got me nostalgic. What happened to you Nicole? Why did you forsake us?
I used to use that frontend, and I am in that block list. What irony!
Tell me about it. I liked that frontend so much I promoted it heavily. They blocked my whole instance…
Wonder if I’m in there? If not I’ll be saddened.
Edit: apparently I am WOOHOO, THANK YOU FOR THE BADGE OF HONOUR
How does one look?
I feel like that’s probably a badge of honor.
I’m a bit miffed that I’m not shadow blacklisted.
But also wtf
And lastly, porn is ok but GirlsFrontline is banned? Lol. It’s like an anime style game. Looks kinda stupid to me but i wouldn’t be shadow banning it
I guess it just is the wrong kind of porn according to the dev.
The fuck?? Why in the world is a front end blacklisting people or instances??
ETA: This is literally the first thing I see after coming back from a break. Also, I’m so sorry you have to deal with this Ada, the dev sounds like a jackass
Why are some people so batshit insane ???
Yeah but what about those stupid tankies AM I RIGHT BRO LOL but seriously we gotta block all leftist content or they will take over and people won’t think for themselves!
/s
This one is just getting wilder and wilder the more the code is analysed
What’s the tea?
Youshouldknow has been running discovery posts but it blacklists left wing, and trans friendly instances and communities, certain users, keywords (including stupid shit like “censoring me” and “Yuri” but not “hentai” or “furries” wat) and the dev took their entire instance offline to hide when the shit hit the fan
I just read about this and it’s kind of insane. Thank you for all your efforts!
I honestly didn’t catch that this server was one of the blacklisted ones. Seriously fucking wild.
Those db0 kids are chill.
EDIT: Just looked at the JSON.
What the fuck they blocked YOU, @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone ? Seriously what the flying fuck.
Those db0 kids are chill.
Yeah, looking at the commit history from before db0 was officially blocked is interesting. It started with a content warning system. It was designed to give users a “be cautious when interacting with this instance, they encourage violence against people they disagree with” warning. Conveniently omitting that the “people db0 disagrees with” are typically straight up neo-Nazis and supes. Apparently the dev takes issue with “punching Nazis is okay” types of comments. And then a later update silently added the blocklist instead of a content warning.
Bet they do record numbers as a mod on reddit. This absolutely stinks of someone trying to find a way to supermod on an open frame network
Where can I read more about this? I’m new to the fediverse and lost!
A piece of interface software has been coded to dictate your lemmy experience and shockingly it curates towards the right.
https://lem.lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/45726226
This is a big thread on it, but just a heads up, it’s definitely on the more technical side of the Fediverse workings, so if you need an explainer on some basic concepts, don’t be afraid to ask here as a follow-up to help you understand a bit better (although @raspirate@lemmy.world has a really good basic explainer here for those who aren’t super familiar with how all this works yet.)
They got my piefed account too!
It really roils me because you seem to be one of the most level-headed people in the Fediverse. I love running across your comments in random threads because you always have something of value to add, and you write well, to boot.
As you said yourself, it’s not the blocklist that’s the issue it’s that it’s not documented, seems somewhat intentionally hidden (including the apps claim that blocked sites are “incompatible”), and so the people deploying it aren’t even aware it’s there and don’t have the option to disable or change it to suit their needs. It’s very, very sketchy behavior on the part of the developer.
I was peeking around on db0’s post about it, and somebody mentioned that it’s really bad code structure, too. Which is true, hard-coding lists is atrociously hostile to convention and clean habits. It would be like if a chef never washed their hands because they thought it added flavor.
So it’s vibe coded?
Hard coded lists are sometimes ok… but not for something that will change frequently like a ban list of websites
I mean, in really really really small, personal projects, I suppose. But again with the handwashing/sanitation analogy… It’s better to just wash your hands and make THAT the habit.
I feel attacked as someone who doesn’t wash their hands, you should be less extremist!
Tap for spoiler
/s
Oh hi RFK
Ah dang. Did they get my nick at all? 🤞
Nah gotta up your posting game, I got individually and regex blocked 💪
Shiiiiiiiitfuuck. Gfdi.
I am disappoint.
Congrats. Well done. Happy for you.
Edit: I’m just laughing my ass off that they’re out there angrily regex blocking INDIVIDUAL people in hardcoded encrypted hidden files. The more I think about it the funnier it gets
Edit 2: okay now I’m starting to feel sorry for them. Because yeah that’s kinda sad.
Edit 3: nope, funny again hahahahahahaha
I know I didn’t expect to be so saddened about not being infamous enough to be on the blocklist.
Part of me is disappointed, but also part of me is glad the world at least still has gestures vaguely to everything this level of anonymity.
Wonder if we should ask the devs of Lemmy and Piefed to somehow disable access to them, as it’s far-right idiots doing this… they may be tankies or liberals, but they’re not brownshirt fascists.
As this unfolds across the comms the dev is doublefucked in FOSS anyway.
I’m not sure I understand, disable access to the blocklists? That’s up to the frontend Tesseract, it doesn’t interact with lemmy or piefed. It’s the frontend that is developed independently from either choosing not to display posts depending on the dev’s weird list.
As for piefed, the main dev has his own strongly opinionated lists that he maintains. Most of them can be disabled by the admins who set up a piefed instance.
I meant as in, that those who ““develop”” the crap frontend, can no longer access whatever enables them to develop it. If that’s on Lemmy’s devs, then that’s there.
I find it problematic if that were possible on one hand, but on another, the time is always to fight fascism.
Oh, that’s not really thing in open-source. The source being public means anyone can work on it. There are certain restrictions in terms of monetizing that are put in place by licensing but you can’t forbid individual people from working with, rewriting or redistributing the code (for good reason).
Good. I support this decision.
Me as well.
Not sure you’re aware, but you are on the secret tesseract block list. Good job keep up the great work!
Good! If I weren’t on there I’d be sorely disappointed. Let the love flow through!
That said, I feel sorry for the comrades that have fallen victim to the fascists’ rhetoric and follow them in darkness, bound as slaves. Let them be cured with our equality. Let this be a reminder, that they may find greater salvation in finding the light of liberty and socialism again!
Whelp that explains why I’m experiencing login-loop at the blahaj.lemmy.zone landing page… I liked the UI & UX of Tes. Oh well.
Same. It was my default lemmy UI.
I’ll keep using the default Lemmy UI no matter how many times it breaks lmao
EDIT: OMFG it’s like it knew I said something, I got errored out for a moment I’m fucking dead 💀💀💀💀💀
Probably its sleeper agent got activated the moment you said remotely anything that isn’t batshit insane
welcome sib, you are one of us sick wackos now /j
literally me_irl
We contain multitudes
Can’t we just fork it?
I think someone at db0 forked it. If someone does so and actually keeps it up to date and maintained I could see it getting added, but I can understand why the admins would want to hold off for now.
They did and it should work just fine like that until Lemmy 1.0 drops since the API v3 compatibility is slightly broken in 1.0 unfortunately.
@ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone could probably add this fork back but it might not seem worth it because it will break in Lemmy 1.0 and it’s still software made by a transphobe.
If Tesseract was the only alternative UI, I’d probably keep a fork of it available for folk. But there are enough other UIs out there that I’d rather simply drop it and forget that it exists
Poking through both /src/lib/blacklists.ts and the double-secret policy file that gets pulled on load (see snot flickerman’s comment on how to look at it), I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the end goal of blocking this specific set of keywords, fediverse peers, communities, users, etc.
You’ve got radical right stuff in here with radical left stuff, lots of lie-peddling news outlets and state-backed propaganda sources as well. Lots of focus on Russian-sourced content, and some attention paid to American MAGA crap. It’s quite strange to find blahaj hostnames and users among them.
My best guess is that this is a hammy attempt to make Tesseract a more bland beige version of fediverse content with the pointy jagged parts filed off. But porn is a-ok.
Really weird choices.
Probably promoting his own biases while also blocking spam to justify its existence.
Desperate centrists who believe the axiom that all of their beliefs represent reasonable moderate positions no matter what are some of the weirdest, most ingrown people next to rightwing chuds.
I don’t think this is even something centrist, centrism is all about blandness, a la “whatever doesn’t offend people that aren’t batshit insane”.
Maybe “centrist radicalism” is a better word, in that someone tries to gather everything crazy.
As an anarchist/council communist, it is my belief that whether you are communist, socialist, christian democrat, liberal or not, as long as you oppose fascism and whatever’s more right wing, you’re my ally.
Sure, with some I’ll agree much more, and coordinate more. But either way, either someone’s a fascist or is not. Those that aren’t, oppose fascism, and therefore must be called upon to grow labour’s democracy, as fascism is a danger to everyone, fascists themselves included.
I see what you are saying and I am not arguing some opposite radicalism, but where your approach fails is that nobody is a monolith, we are many people in many different situations and it matters which version of people we feed energy and validation into… thus we must be concerned with how within each of us there are many potential fascist selves and thus what it means to be an antifascist/normal decent adult as a verb is to commit to continually re-examining the growth of our feelings and ideas and pruning away the things that begin to become ingrown.
Also, what is considered bland and what is considered radical are some of the most political battlefields in society.
There’s certainly a subset on the Fedi who seem to desperately want it to become a massively popular thing that persists through the ages instead of small but deep and worthwhile community growth among those who do choose to participate. Will it last forever? Probably not, most things don’t. Friendster died before MySpace and people forget it even existed (I mean, it was legitimately terrible)
It makes me wonder if this person thinks that they’re making the Fedi more palatable for “normies” or something.
Because popularity always brings a marginalization of already marginalized communities. This comic sums it up pretty well.
Honestly, I think as long as we stay small and have our own community existing under the radar so to speak we have less likelihood of being invaded by even more numerous asshats than we already do. Lemmy or Piefed becoming massively popular could actually be a detriment, especially in terms of hosting costs, since most instances are funded via donations or the admins own personal income.
We don’t have to stay small, we just have to kick out the bad and not put up with it.
I know this site was not designed this way but MetaFilter has always had a small one-time fee to get an account, because it puts weight on having the account and weight on being banned. It always helped keep out a lot of the riff-raff.
I’ve been a part of online communities for a long time. The ones I value most in retrospect were relatively small, niche and disconnected from grand global everything-platforms.
The fediverse is a step towards an internet of a million weird micro communities, finding ways to talk to each other.
After the Rimu fiasco I tried returning to Lemmy and found Tesseract to be my favorite frontend primarily because of the ability to create community lists w/o subscribing to them (the closest thing I found to Piefed Feeds).
And then this happens…
I’m going back to RedditI highly recommend the Alexandrite front end if you liked Tesseract
Fun fact: your name made the list, too:
"^RockBottom", "^rockerface$", "^rockSlayer$", "^RockyDale([0-9]+)?$", "^RockyGlen([0-9]+)?$",Fuck yea, worth it!
Unfortunately I don’t see Tess-like community grouping feature in Alexandrite, and it doesn’t even have a setting for the default comment sorting method.
I don’t really like Tess’ UI design that much - I’m comfy with Lemmy’s default. It’s advanced features that I’m gonna miss. Alexandrite seems to be just as bare-boned as Lemmy’s UI.
But I found info on Lemmy 1.0 that will be released eventually and has most features that I want so I probably just gotta wait a little until that day comes.
That’s fair, I wasn’t aware of the advanced features. I didn’t like the Tesseract UI, so I immediately abandoned it after checking it out
seems like a good move, thanks Ada!
Fuckin turds I swear to gawd. Liberalism is a rightwing ideology.
When you say liberalism, do you mean libertarianism? Because if so, then objectively yes.
liberalism was the “progressive” ideology when it superseded feudalism that process is over. Today liberalism is the regressive ideology getting superseded by socialism. Liberalism is the ideology of the private ownership of the means of production, instead of royal (feudalism) or public (socialism).
Ohhh, so SPECIFICALLY economic ownership? That can get confusing. Conservatives yelling at liberals and… leftists yelling at liberals. There’s two entirely different conversations happening, using the same word. Or is it specifically liberalism vs just liberals? Or… Ah why’d they have to be the same word? They’re so different. There’s so much nuance, no wonder everybody’s always angry and talking past each other. Maybe people should say politically liberal vs econ liberal? Or I guess you just have to draw from context? Maybe everybody gets it but me 😵💫
Nah it’s not just you, we get confused USians in here all the time 😄. Liberal parties are right of center in most countries i think. They certainly are here in Germany, in Australia the major conservative party is called the “liberal party of australia” just to name two examples.
The confusion I think comes from the fact that the US only has two parties that kept drifting further and further right ever since WW2. The far right fascists and the center-right moderate right wing. So a lot of people look at the dems as the “left” wing since, relative to the only other party, they are. But if you look at the other parties, green party, dsa, psl etc. You’ll see that the dems are to the right of all of them.
I mean I guess Nancy Pelosi spelling it out “we’re capitalists and that’s that” wasn’t enough to make it clear they’re on the side of business and money, and not on the side of regular people or something.
EDIT: Sorry, realized after posting this sounds kind of snotty. I just mean that unfortunately liberals often focus on growing capitalism, which is inherently a system that rewards ruthlessness and selfishness in business.
I think markets are important, but markets can still exist without capitalism, and it’s clear capitalism’s way of approaching economics poisons our governance through regulatory capture. Capitalism lets every business owner be a dictator of his personal fiefdom, it does not allow democracy for workers in the workplace. So capitalism and democracy are nearly inherently unable to permanently co-exist, and liberals support of capitalism over even tightly regulated capitalism (which also doesn’t work because the people with capital will always use that capital to influence regulation to benefit them selfishly), they are still basically all-in on laissez-faire capitalism where regulation is scant and allows for the corruption of both business and government. Their unwillingness to face these facts makes them squarely center-right, where they give platitudes for social justice like kneeling kente cloths (which did fucking nothing at all, just symbolic bullshit) but also make conditions for social justice worse by allowing a two tiered justice system to flourish.
