cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/46665693

PieFed blocks !enoughmuskspam@lemmy.world (and a few other communities) by default. At the time of writing this post, you can search for the comm on many PieFed instances and you will not find it.

The block is only by default. The admin can choose to override it. Many big instances have done so, including

  • piefed.social
  • piefed.world
  • piefed.zip

See more information here.

  • freamon@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    This has come up before. Hopefully you’re just not understanding the code, rather than deliberately misrepresenting it to others. Even a casual scan should clue people in to the fact that the linked function isn’t concerned with federation blocks (the same list that ‘enoughmuskspam’ is in also contains ‘memes’ and ‘piracy’, which every PieFed instance has without any overrides required).

    I’ll copy-paste my comment from last time (I can’t link to it 'cos is was in reply to a deleted post). The first 2 paras are the most relevant bits:

    The code that OP has linked to is part of a convenience function for admins to add content to their new instances. It can query individual remote instances (e.g. lemmy.world), or it can query lemmyverse.net, and fetch communities that look to be popular and active.

    It’s completely unrelated to routine federation, and doesn’t prevent anyone subscribing to communities that may have those words in their names.

    The admin function could potentially be used to fetch hundreds of communities. It runs as a background process, so you don’t know what they were until after they’d been followed. The “bad words” list acts as a safeguard against bringing in things you might not want or expect. One reason is that you may want to curate the first impression you give new visitors, as there as some that will be put off by the “fuck this” and “shitpost that” reddit-isms. Another is that you don’t typically want communities that are disproportionately popular than others (e.g. if you bring in the default 25 communities, and one of is 196, then it completely dominate your front page).

    If there’s a particular community that you are interested in (e.g. because you moderate it), using this function isn’t an efficient way to add it. In addition to the “bad words” filters, it will also exclude communities that are NSFW, or below thresholds for popularity and activity. Rather than fetching a bunch of communities at the same time, and hoping that the one you want is included, it’s better to just add it manually (via a ! link or by using the “Add remote community” link) in much the same way as you would on any other platform.

    • Liketearsinrain@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      I was curious so had a look around.

      I assume it’s this https://codeberg.org/rimu/pyfedi/src/commit/cfc35b0e1b812d929d62aea87f47014f8ce845b4/app/main/routes.py#L131

      if current_user.is_anonymous:
              flash(_('Create an account to tailor this feed to your interests.'))
              content_filters = {'-1': {'trump', 'elon', 'musk'}}
      

      Some of the complaints about hardcoded values were fixed in the last commits, but the code is a spaghetti mess littered with ad-hoc hacks for random whims of the developers. This is bad software design and disrespectful to users imo, but to each their own.

      • freamon@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        The OP linked to the function with the ‘enoughmuskspam’ filter in it: it’s here (line 352 if it doesn’t auto-scroll down).

        As mentioned, it’s a bulk-community import function, that new admins can optionally use to kick-start a new instance.

        The code you’ve linked to is another convenience function, for users this time, that will optionally add the relevant values to their content filters for the ‘All’ feed. It’s also not a federation block, and it’s common enough for fediverse users to want to hide posts about those people that it’s value arguably overrides any perceived messiness about ‘hard-coding’ their names.

        Anyone who takes the time to understand PieFed’s codebase could find plenty of things to legitimately criticise. To my mind, though, it seems against the social contract around open-sourcing one’s hobbyist project, only for people to then be snarky about it online. If there’s bits of code that look like they were written on someone’s lunch break, that’s because they were.

        The frustrating thing about this post, and the (now deleted) post before it, is that someone has taken more time to create some shit meme than they have reading the code they’re haphazardly attacking. I’ve no idea why PieFed has suddenly come under some Lemmy users sights, especially since the whole point of federated social media is that it shouldn’t matter what client someone uses, and how much it reeks of “People Front of Judea” bullshit.

        • Liketearsinrain@lemmy.ml
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          1 day ago

          It was not meant to be as harsh as it came across.  And yes, this function is for logged out users, was just trying to show that it ends up messy.

          I assume you’re one of the devs? I can delete the comment if you want, but I think it would be worth fixing sooner than later instead of just adding features. A lot of the mechanisms are a bad idea even if it wasn’t a mess but you do you.

          that it shouldn’t matter what client someone uses

          There are a few implementation issues and incompatibilities I saw but not too confident in my knowledge of the protocols to say good fixes. Not sure what the Judas comment means.

          • freamon@lemmy.world
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            1 day ago

            I’ve contributed code to PieFed in the past, but nothing recently. If someone comes across something I’ve written and finds it amateurish, then that’s a reasonable assessment. There’s no need for you to delete your comment, as I’m not a fan of features over fixes approach either.

            The “People’s Front of Judea” remark relates to a Monty Python sketch from the The Life Of Brian (youtube link) - it’s a swipe at leftist infighting (swap out “The only people we hate more than the Romans is the Judean’s People’s Front” with “The only site we hate more than Reddit is PieFed” I suppose).

            • Skavau@lemmy.world
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              1 day ago

              The OP linked to the function with the ‘enoughmuskspam’ filter in it: it’s here (line 352 if it doesn’t auto-scroll down).

              It’s a bug with the latest update that has already been patched. Not sure if piefed.ca has updated their instance in response to it, but this isn’t even completely right as lemmy.ca was still returning results for “piracy” in the search.

              “So since a few hours ago, when I deployed v1.6, many communities no longer show up in the search. the private value should be true or false but really old communities have it as null”

              “Yes, null should be fixed to true or false. I originally added the private column many months ago, with no default value. So now the data is all over the place.”

              (excerpts from the matrix chat)

              OP made some assumptions, got excited and just found a bug.

              • freamon@lemmy.world
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                1 day ago

                Not the first time that bug’s reared its head either.

                Example from here:

                'nsfw': post.nsfw if post.nsfw is not None else False
                

                A meme about PieFed half-arsing database migrations might not be funny, but would at least be valid, and less wearisome than OP’s post.