tesseract/src/lib/blacklists.ts at main · asimons04/tesseract
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I discovered this after upgrading our instance yesterday, which also upgraded all frontends to their latest versions as well. After I did, our Tesseract frontend stopped working and I noticed immediately as it’s been my primary for a while. Initially I thought it was an API version mismatch, but no, it was much worse.

Someone pointed out that the developer of the frontend added an explicit hidden and unmodifiably blacklist which includes any and all instances to the left of Kissinger. There’s a commit which also explains their specious reasoning about our instance specifically, as it seems we’ve been on their shit list for a bit longer than that.

This instance and its admin staff encourages identity politics, groupthink, mob mentality, and extremist solutions to societal problems. Users who advocate violence are not moderated so long as the admins agree with the target. Caution and critical thinking are advised when interacting with this instance or its users.

When you use tesseract to connect to one blacklisted such instance , you just get a message informing you that Tesseract is “incompatible with that instance” which leads one to think of a technical issue, like an API mismatch, rather than the dev being an opinionated coward.

Isn’t it funny how all the software developed by turbolibs, like Piefed and Tesseract, end up with hidden control mechanisms from developers who think they know better than everyone else? That they don’t just think they deserve to tell you what you should think, but they should manipulate you to think it? Isn’t it funny how libs go on about how bad it is to support lemmy due to the ideology of the devs behind it, and yet lemmy has 0 opinions as a software? It does make one think…

Anyway, I forked - it as one does - and disabled the blacklist, but since this is a massively ideologically compromised software, I’ll doubt I’ll keep this frontend up after Lemmy 1.0. I think we’ll bring up mlmym again now that someone’s maintaining it again.

  • Javi@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    7·
    1 day ago

    Looks like they’ve deleted their repo for tesseract.

    Probably for the best given their credibility as a FOSS dev is shot now anyway. But at least nobody else will unwittingly walk into their curated enforced bubble.

      • Javi@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        2·
        15 hours ago

        Yeah looks like its back up. I’m guessing they made it private and had a change of heart. When I checked earlier, it would 404, and db0’s fork now references the earlier fork in the chain rather than this one.

        • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPM
          1·
          14 hours ago

          There wasn’t an earlier fork. Either ap isn’t telling the whole story of what they did with their repo (they also lost all their stars), or github is bugged somehow

      • Mr. Satan@lemmy.zip
        1·
        19 hours ago

        More likely they privated their repo. Your fork is way ahead with this devs commits. I’d guess the dev made a fork of the paulo-roger repo when they stopped the development.

          • Mr. Satan@lemmy.zip
            1·
            16 hours ago

            Well yeah. The guy made a bunch of commits, you forked, they privated the repo. The repo you forked “no longer exists” so parent fork is reported. Nobody renamed their account, nobody transferred the repo.

            • db0@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPM
              1·
              15 hours ago

              I’m pretty sure his wasn’t a fork. He hard forked from photon, so there’s nobody he forked from calling it tesseract. This doesn’t make sense

              • floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                1·
                4 hours ago

                So the last commit on the apparent “original” paulo-roger/tesseract repo states abandonment of the project in 2023. However this commit, like every other in this repo, is authored by asimons04.

                $ git log | grep asimons | wc -l 
651
$ git log | grep roger | wc -l
0

                That seems pretty weird to me. I guess if they were added as a contributor at some point they could’ve force-pushed a rewritten history? Still doesn’t make a lot of sense.

                Edit: Maybe it’s just paulo-roger who checked out asimons04’s repo after they abandoned it and uploaded it to his profile as a fresh repo instead of forking, and somehow GitHub mistook it for the parent repo after as04 made their repo private/whatever happened?

                • Mr. Satan@lemmy.zip
                  1·
                  4 hours ago

                  My theory was something like:

                  • Repo A (paulo-roger) abandoned at 2023
                  • Repo B (asimons04) forked and worked from there
                  • Repo C (OP)

                  Now what happens if repo B is removed (privated)? We still have all the commit history form repo B, but no upstream to link to that history. We also have all the commit history form repo A, however the upstream is still public so it gets linked properly.

                  The fork chain is still the same A -> b -> C we just no longer see repo B on github. It doesn’t mean that anything got moved, deleted or overwritten, just hidden.

      • Javi@lemmy.dbzer0.com
        3·
        1 day ago

        Fair enough. I noticed that one from the fork you made. I just assumed that’s where Patrick forked it from originally.

  • metalsd@eviltoast.org
    201·
    2 days ago

    Well at least open source coding makes it so this is easier to spot and the community can choose better going forward. The beauty of descentralized social media

  • Stamets@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    352·
    2 days ago

    It is kind of amusing to me how often these people who run their own instances force other people to accept their own ideology.

    Admiral Patrick has ruined all credibility and has proven that he doesn’t add value to the fediverse. He actively detracts from it by shaping instances other than his own into his own image. Without their consent.

    I’m not saying this because I’m on that user list (fucking lol) but because it’s just pathetic. Rimu is doing the same thing on Piefed, Kaplan tried to do something similar by pressuring other instances to blacklist Dbzer0… Meanwhile the Flotilla seems to be the only ones willing to be completely transparent about what is going on and actually have their users decide.

    And for Admiral Patrick, considering the dipshit seems to love Star Trek so much, let me remind you of what someone far better than you once said who you seem to admire.

    With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.

    I’m adding on my own quote.

    Fuck you.

  • anarchiddy@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    101·
    2 days ago

    I thought Admiral Patrick “”“left”“” lemmy more than a year ago?

    I think a bit of a problem with the fediverse might be that the majority of instance admins are just barely competent enough with development that if they get upset with how other admins run their shit, they end up forking some piece of the project in order to put their thumb on the scale and bend the network to better fit their worldview.

    This bullshit is starting to feel like a bit of a pattern.

  • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
    18·
    2 days ago

    If they could hid a blacklist I wonder if they also could hide a coin miner or a backdoor.

    With this, the author has forever ruined their own credibility.

  • Mystic Mushroom [Ze/Zir]@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    28·
    2 days ago

    I really hope you don’t get rid of tesseract completely. It’s a very useful tool when moderating and I haven’t found anything with a similar feature set. This dev sucks as a person for doing something this stupid and reactive.

    Edit: Apparenly he’s also blocking trans friendly instances too. What a transphobic piece of shit!

  • Jankatarch@lemmy.world
    57·
    3 days ago

    Why the fuck are trans-friendly instances blocked too?? They just make wholesome memes and once in a while come over to comment “:3”

    • Abyssian@lemmy.world
      302·
      3 days ago

      I blocked a lot of them because I’m not a fan of seeing the same shit page after page. For instance the flood of selfies recently.

      But deciding what a user does and doesn’t want on their feed should be the user’s decision, not some sneaky hidden bullshit pulled by the world’s lamest dev.

  • tinfoilhat@lemmy.mlEnglish
    5·
    2 days ago

    Lol. I’m on lemmy.ml because I thought it meant .machine-learning. I just thought it sounded cool. So my content would get banned

    • Draconic NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      243·
      3 days ago

      I agree. People who do this are emotionally compromised and in my opinion can’t be trusted when writing code. There was a different developer who through similar political convictions made his software wipe PCs that were in Russia or Belarus. Maybe that seems more extreme but it comes from the same politically charged and emotionally compromised place.

      • wyldrstallyns@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        51·
        2 days ago

        wipe PCs that were in Russia or Belarus.

        What a no-effort adult* tantrum. Were they hoping to somehow strike it lucky and wipe govt rigs? Nevermind the innumerable civie casualties along the way? Fuckin’ chud. 🤮

        *being generous, I know.

        • Draconic NEO@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          51·
          2 days ago

          Unfortunately that piece of shit didn’t even get fired or cast out of the open source community, let alone get sent to prison for that. And yes as an American he could get sent to prison for that because he also effected American military systems in the region.

  • Allero@lemmy.today
    762·
    3 days ago

    You don’t understand! Freedom of speech is only good when it’s freedom of their speech!

    But seriously, this recent shift of project leads deciding what users should and shouldn’t see is concerning. And honestly, I could give them the benefit of the doubt if they added it as some sort of opt-in list. But no.

    They will force their narrative down the users’ throats.

    I might not always agree with db0, the Anarchist Flotilla, or the “Tankie Triad”. But whatever shakes Lemmy right now, consider me an ally. Whatever these egocentric folks attempt to create, it is everything Lemmy was created to replace.

    Also, that’s a lovely list they made of places to follow.