This morning while checking if Quokk.au’s new instance logo was federated out, I discovered that overnight we had been shadowbanned from the PieFed.Social Instance Chooser (This is a tool to help spread out users across the platform and help avoid funnelling users into the largest.)
Knowing that Rimu was happy to explain, I just asked for some clarification as we were visible on every other PieFed instance except his.
Apparently for ’ obvious reasons ', of which I can only assume is our left leaning anarchist/pro-trans stance we were chosen not be advertised on the PieFed flagship instance and first point of contact for many potential new users. Seeing as a large portion of our new users found us via this method, it will have a tangible effect on a small instance such as ours.
This was a pretty sad sight to see, and reflects the sort of petty drama that is emanating from the PieFed project lately. It’s now the third such move to discredit and harm left leaning instances by PieFed’s lead developer. This also shows a trend towards autocratic unilateral decision-making on Piefed.social, of which is starting to be run as a personal fiefdom without consulting the team or users.
I must commend Lemmy.ml for remaining neutral and not letting its own political leanings influence join-lemmy.org, while simultaneously condemn PieFed.social for this immature move that is harmful to the health of the Fediverse.
Following this exchange, Rimu announced a new update to PieFed allowing for some rather concerning things.
- Modlog: Reason for the action is only shown from trusted instances, so abusive mods won’t have an audience. Admins can still see the reason though. Which instances are trusted is set in the admin UI.
This feature means problematic users can now go undetected, and will harm moderators ability to view their past moderation history. For example PieFed.social runs a ‘trusted’ list of only 34 instances, meaning any mod action taken by any of the hundreds of instances outside of this will not show up. So for example if Quokk.au was to ban a user for transphobia (our most common ban), this will not be reflected for piefed.social users potentially leading towards more hate speech on the Fediverse.
- Instance silencing similar to Mastodon. A silenced instance is not defederated from but their posts do not show in the Popular or All feeds and their communities are not shown in Starter packs aka Topics. Their communities can still be found in the communities list and joined in the normal way. Once joined, posts in there show up in the subscribed feed as usual.
This is another way to shadowban instances and not ‘advertise’ them. Surely if an instance is problematic enough that a defederation would be in order rather than this reddit-like move.
I’m not trying to make a hit piece on quokk.au, I defended them in a top level comment. I think it’s pretty obvious that Rimu is attacking anyone on the left, and as such that impacts everyone on the left. It’s a pretty clear-cut case where left unity makes sense, and I don’t think that’s controversial.
That all being said, I do think Nazi apologia is pretty terrible, and some prominent moderators on quokk.au are absolutely guilty of that. I have no problems with the average quokk.au user, but I do take issue with people that insist, against all credible evidence, that the Hungarian counter-revolt was merely a student protest brutally crushed by the evil Red Army. This narrative is convenient if one wants to portray Marxists as necessarily brutal and evil, but it doesn’t measure up to reality, and in doing so it trivializes the Holocaust, as the pograms in 1956 were a direct continuation of Hungarian participation in the Holocaust.
This only gets worse if the anarchists try to claim the Hungarian counter-revolt as their own (which, to be fair, I have not seen). When the evidence is pretty clear on the subject, defending the counter-revolts as a progressive movement despite the mass lynchings of Jews and communists makes it seem like that’s what said anarchists believe is good praxis. Rather than defending the bourgeois view, the anarchist has more to gain by siding with the soviets and against the Nazis, as weakening bourgeois hegemony on culture and historiography benefits both Marxists and anarchists. By accepting the bourgeois view, the anarchist hurts both the Marxists and themselves.
Then, there’s the accusation that the only sources provided are from small indie wikis. There’s a few problems here, though. The first is that, for this specific claim, I gave a source citing the New York Times, Maariv, Politika, The Independent, Naye Presse, and more. This is a wide variety of pro-communist and anti-communist journalism. The second is that even if a wiki is small and made as a direct counter to standard liberal framing, this does not mean the sources cited are inherently worthless. The third is that usually people do not cite Prolewiki itself, Prolewiki is linked more for understanding a concept or for the library aspect of it, not as a source for a claim.
To return, I think quokk.au is fine, except for the fact that some prominent moderators are perfectly happy to downplay Nazi repressions in order to get a cheap rhetorical win over Marxists. The users usually aren’t guilty, but the ones who are absolutely are. I don’t think Nazi apologia should be levied against everyone on quokk.au, but the Nazi apologists on quokk.au aren’t just wholesome and innocent. It’s an important issue.