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@Vicinus@piefed.zip
2026-10-16 23:25 UTC
… when unedumacashiated people are allowed to vote, chaos is not nearly as likely to result (from such “random” inputs) as the system being taken over by a malicious actor who may then use it for their own nefarious purposes.
I understand that viewpoint, but my understanding is that there is not a “good” solution. If “education” or “knowledge” requirements are implemented, they are, or at least to my knowledge have been, used to disenfranchise the most vulnerable. An example of this could be the Southern States after the American Civil War. They implemented “literacy tests” biased toward the wealthy and whites to restrict the poor, minorities, and immigrants from voting. The “best” solution I’ve heard to stopping an uninformed populace is to educate the masses to develop critical thinking skills. Unfortunately, that “solution” is generally on generational timescales.
… that explanation neither absolves people of their failures in the absolute necessity to remain curious, nor absolves us of our own failure when we allow the system to propagate, and in fact help it along.
How do they know to “remain curious”? How did you learn to? How did I learn to? From my experience in life and learning from others about their lives, I’ve found I’ve had a quite privileged upbringing with regards to education and emotional support. This leads me to be quite generous in my view of people’s “failings”.
Anytime I run across someone “failing” to understand something I consider basic or common, I try to think back to when did I learn that and from whom. In most cases, the person or situation I learned from didn’t exist for the person “failing”. From that point, I try to, with no judgment of them, explain my reasoning and thought process to them (just as someone did for me). If they want to take in and consider my words, great. If not, that’s alright too. I could always be wrong about the topic, they could not be ready to change, or any other reasoning (you don’t need to force every seed to sprout, just keep providing a nurturing environment and you may soon find yourself surrounded by greenery).
Mostly I just try to be open minded myself (like I am truly open to changing my viewpoint to theirs) and provide an open and safe environment for others to consider alternatives. I find it works quite well.
According to this post PieFed.zip uses the same blocking system as Lemmy.zip for new joiners. See also this comment from the admin.
“This means some of the spicier instances are blocked by default, which users can remove themselves in the user settings.”, “… piefed.zip (and lemmy.zip) already blocks hexbear, lemmygrad, and lemmynsfw by default, and sends a PM to the user when they sign up to let them know why we do this, and how to remove it.” Huh, TIL. I was going based on the listed instance de-federations (where they aren’t shown).
… which unfortunately neither the Lemmy nor PieFed UI offers a mechanism to expose that list publicly to the users, making the transparency of this issue rather horrible, where I have to link to messages from the admins but there is no webpage that will simply show an updated status - like does exist for instance federation vs. defederation.
Great point. This might be a time to “weaponize” Pylova. Since Piefed has been “back-porting” Pylova’s work, if Mia implemented this transparency addition, it would probably make its way to Piefed. Maybe Lemmy would follow suit, but no idea. I’m thinking worst-case its implemented in Pylova and the Pylovians all benefit. Thoughts?
Edit: Switched a word for grammar.
Replies (1)
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I was thinking the same, just didn’t want to promise anything in case I could not deliver. The devs are VERY eager for feedback though, so it’s truly doing them a favor to ask, plus as you said most likely also a significantly wider userbase as well. Then again I think I’ve already asked for something vaguely similar in terms of general transparency features, although this is concrete hence much more likely to move forward (otoh there is a distinct possibility that I’ve already asked for precisely this, so I’d have to look it up). Edit: okay, done - discuss.online/post/46939614.
We seem mostly in agreement on other factors as well. Stoicism suggests that we cannot fix the entire world, we can only do what we can in our little corner of it. Personally I would hope that PieFed.zip would automatically apply a user-level block to new joiners for Lemmy.ml, the same way that it already does for hexbear.net and Lemmygrad.ml. Bc whatever we personally think about tankies or magats and how much we can stand to put up with their alternative factual argumentation practices, it remains that new people are extremely put off by such, and keep fleeing here when exposed to it, then subsequently complaining about us to anyone who will listen.
i.e., being kind to and/or having empathy with people who enjoy trolling behaviors is not the same thing as offering them a platform. Especially one where their messages are presented identically alongside with all other messages, such that new joiners cannot distinguish between them. A warning label, an icon, a different color highlighting etc. would go a long way. But that’s a ton of effort, which anyone using a 3rd-party app won’t be able to access anyway, hence blocking is all that is left, short of full defederation.
The alternative, which is the current method, is to simply get comfortable being a troll bar. We feature trolls here, we make them feel very comfortable, and offer only confusing methods to people and very little guidance to new joiners to avoid them.
Open ##5281582