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.

  • ItWasntMe@discuss.onlineEnglish
    8·
    1 day ago

    I just logged in this afternoon and saw all this going on with Tesseract. Does anyone have a link to an article or summary of what is going on? I heard of this program until lemmy got a bunch of posts about it. lol

  • gandalf_der_12te@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    24·
    1 day ago

    took me a while to realize that tesseract is also the name of a lemmy frontend. because there’s also tesseract-ocr which is used for optical character recognition. (i started using tesseract-ocr yesterday to scan all my meme images for text to make them easily searchable).

    • Hildegarde@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      2·
      15 hours ago

      This comment is likely a bit too close to the line for this instance. Blahaj is governed by guidelines rather than rules, and that sounded quite like a comment intended to cause harm. By all means criticize and condemn people for their actions, but this isn’t the place to post veiled wishes for harm. Its not the vibe of this instance.

      You’d probably be fine saying that on lemmy world, but comments like that rather iffy here.

      • YappyMonotheist@lemmy.world
        3·
        13 hours ago

        I have no way to put anything into action nor any desire to do so in earnest… but thanks for letting me know, I’ll keep it in mind. 👍

  • raspirate@lemmy.world
    136·
    2 days ago

    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?

    • WhatsHerBucket@lemmy.world
      9·
      18 hours ago

      You win the internet for today!

      This explanation should really be somewhere easier to find. Especially when you’re wondering if it will go down on your permanent record.

      • raspirate@lemmy.world
        4·
        17 hours ago

        I’m just glad I actually got it right. I was mostly typing up that comment just to make sure that my understanding was correct. I wasn’t even thinking at the time that it would be helpful to others as well. I guess I’ve been kind of assuming that everyone else on lemmy already understood how all of this stuff works. Happy to help!

        • birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          5·
          1 day ago

          http and https are communication protocols, www is a way of enabling content sharing.

          You use a web browser, such as Firefox or Librewolf. When you put in a URL (Uniform Resource Locator) such as https://en.wikipedia.org/ in the address bar (which shows the current URL), you tell the browser to retrieve that URL, through the HTTPS method.

          Almost all websites use HTTP or HTTPS (which is more secure, as it’s encrypted). The abbreviation stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol (Secure mode).

          The way of ‘retrieving’ that URL is often done through that HTTP(S). Web browsers for that reason can be called a ‘user agent’.

          Search engines, such as Mojeek, are essentially websites that link to other websites, using a search query.

          You can also sometimes use non-HTTPS methods, a few well-known examples are mailto and ftp (file transfer protocol) or database access like jdbc (Java database commectivity).

          The internet works by encapsulating the data into layers.

          After you send in the URL and method, the browser goes to look for the page. There are multiple layers to that. HTTP(S) belongs to the application layer, which tells “I make or have this data, I communicate with the same or another host”. The www uses the HTTP(S)’ rules to communicate.

          Then there’s the transport layer, that communicates “You’re on this host, I’m on that host”. TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) is one of those.

          After that there’s the internet layer, which says “This is the host address, that is the host address, both worded in the same ways” and “I send this data to that data”. IP addresses are part of this one. Domains work through the DNS (Domain Name System) and you can think of them as more human-readable, more specific IP addresses.

          Then there’s the link layer which says “This is how things locally communicate on the same host without intervening routers.” Wi-Fi and ethernet are examples.

          There is another, that’s not necessarily part of it, but nonetheless relevant here: the syntax (or presentation) layer. It “translates what this application layer reads to another application layer”. An API is part of that.

          So, then, what are front and back ends?

          Think of the user interface; that is how you communicate with your computer. It’s what the ‘menus’ look like, how logos look like, etc.

          If your computer is a bicycle, what it looks like (the front end) is the user interface; and how the parts are connected, is the API. The back end is managing the previous layers I’ve mentioned.

          I hope that that kind of explains it!

  • Limonene@lemmy.worldEnglish
    30·
    2 days ago

    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.

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      31·
      2 days ago

      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.

      • SatyrSack@quokk.auEnglish
        15·
        2 days ago

        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

        Mirror: https://lemmy.world/post/27634335

            • birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              7·
              1 day ago

              I’ve tagged you as “Greatest shitposter” and tbh I could see you doing that lmao.

              But … where is TotallyJessica?

            • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
              2·
              1 day ago

              Yeah it might make more sense instead of doing the bit at all times to set up an alert or something for key words or phrases that would get Nicole to want to comment. You could potentially have a big log of randomized responses built into a bot to just auto-respond, and then you don’t have to do the bit at all, but you’d also have to take care to make sure the bot wasn’t so intrusive that it was as annoying as the “real” Nicole.

              • Taleya@aussie.zoneEnglish
                2·
                2 hours ago

                Enjoy.

                My fave is a relatively new addition: they chose to release a “public statement” on their own instance that they could control and nowhere else then started complaining about cross linking and brigading when people shared it.

                • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
                  2·
                  58 minutes ago

                  To be blunt: Tesseract is designed to attract and retain normies.

                  HOLY SHIT I FUCKING CALLED IT! They’re one of those freaks who wants to make this a huge shithole like reddit.

                  it’s genuinely an unhinged rant. They come so close to getting it “no matter what I did the people here would screech.” Maybe, just maybe, when your idea is antithetical to the communities goals, that means you somehow think you have ownership over this community and it’s direction. Maybe people don’t like that because it’s both dictatorial and ineffectual? It’s like on some level they understand exactly why no one will like this, but instead of being like “maybe I don’t actually have ownership of the community” he’s all “No, it’s the users who are wrong!”

                  Further, considering their username is an aging Star Trek reference and Star Trek nerds are rarely “normies” you’d think they would put two and two together and realize they’re probably not actually a “normie” themselves and so the idea that they would know “what a normie wants” is horseshit anyway.

  • nature_man [he/they]@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    66·
    2 days ago

    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

  • nimble@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    411·
    2 days ago

    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

  • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    1221·
    3 days ago

    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.

    • Carl@anarchist.nexusEnglish
      20·
      2 days ago

      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.

      • Taleya@aussie.zoneEnglish
        15·
        2 days ago

        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

      • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        65·
        3 days ago

        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.

        • Maeve@kbin.earth
          7·
          2 days ago

          Well said. Ada works hard to achieve a reasonable balance, and is vastly underappreciated.

          Thanks, Ada.

        • SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          331·
          3 days ago

          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.

          • SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            292·
            3 days ago

            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

          • birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            71·
            3 days ago

            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.

            • mathemachristian [he/him]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              6·
              3 days ago

              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.

              • birdwing@lemmy.blahaj.zone
                21·
                2 days ago

                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.

                • mathemachristian [he/him]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
                  41·
                  2 days ago

                  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).

      • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
        9·
        2 days ago

        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.)

        • A_be_seedy@beehaw.org
          5·
          1 day ago

          Thanks! To be clear, its pretty common for instances to block, say, Nazi and the instances that call North Korea NPRK, right?

          I’d like to view most of the fediverse. When I joined first, I accidentally joined hexbear lol, then I made it to beehaw. Am I getting the full experience?

          • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            3·
            1 day ago

            Yes, blocking is absolutely common. What is uncommon is for a developer to purposefully hide a blocklist and not allow it to be changed by the admin who is spinning up the service. The issue is that it was undocumented and blocked many people who liked the interface.

            I think beehaw is a great choice. When I came to blahaj, it was between here and beehaw, and I still am subbed to a bunch of beehaw communities. I am unsure about what sites beehaw is federated with and not federated with, but they strike me as level-headed and unlikely to be blocking anything that shouldn’t be blocked, I would think.

      • Taleya@aussie.zoneEnglish
        61·
        2 days ago

        A piece of interface software has been coded to dictate your lemmy experience and shockingly it curates towards the right.

    • supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz
      105·
      2 days ago

      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