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Comment on PieFed 1.4 is released - emoji, federated stackoverflow and AI content filters

Off the top of my head, piefed is:

Sending pseudonymous actor ids to hide votes
"Migrating" communities by re-creating activities and objects on their own server, just rewriting the URLs the piefed server actually was the authoritative source.
Integrating functionality that is hardcoded to specific instances/groups (auto-posting new communities on !newcommunities@lemmy.world)
Integrating lemmy-federate directly into the instance - which is a horrendous idea if you consider that will lead to every instance holding a copy of the messages, even if no one there actually follows or interacts with it.
Proposing a completely out-of-band and a custom activity protocol to notify moderation reports
generating a JSON-LD document filled with unspecified terms.

I am not here to gate-keep anything. If the devs are having fun working on it and if the users are happy with the product they are getting, more power to them.

It might be that piefed gets enough users and outside interest to force the team to be more discipline and mature about their practices, but to an outsider this looks more and more like a bunch of amateurs building stuff for fun, and not something that can become a viable alternative for a open social web.

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Skavau@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

Sending pseudonymous actor ids to hide votes

This has long been scrapped. You can choose to not federate out your own downvotes now for maximum anonymity, but this was widely disliked so it was dropped.

“Migrating” communities by re-creating activities and objects on their own server, just rewriting the URLs and pretending the piefed server actually was the original source.

Yup. Although this isn’t complete in many cases, but is an entirely transparent process. I’ve told you this has vast fediverse support because it enables community modularity, which is needed in a world where instances will go offline, causing communities to be orphaned.

Integrating functionality that is hardcoded to specific instances/groups (auto-posting new communities on !newcommunities@lemmy.world)

This was agreed with the moderators of said community.

Integrating lemmy-federate directly into the instance - which is a horrendous idea if you consider that will lead to every piefed instance holding every copy of the messages, even if no one in the instance actually follows or interacts with it.

I’m not quite sure how this specifically functions for new instances, but I have suggested this be opt-in rather than opt-out.

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- rglullis@communick.news ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  
  maximum anonymity, but this was widely disliked so it was dropped.
  
  Maximum anonymity is a lie. Users still need to trust the server admin. The truth is that the Fediverse is not a secure/private messaging platform, and attempts to hide this from the users might be well-intentioned but will bite the devs in the ass, sooner or later.
  
  this has vast fediverse support because it enables community modularity, which is needed in a world where instances will go offline, causing communities to be orphaned.
  
  To solve this it would be better to have the PieFed team pushing/implementing the appropriate FEPs (FEP-7952 and FEP-EF61) instead of an-hoc hack.
  
  This was agreed with the moderators of said community.
  
  Not the point. The point is that the devs are taking the “everything and the kitchen sink” approach to features, prioritizing any type of functionality that is minimally useful to the users instead of putting some effort on the harder stuff.
  
  I have suggested (lemmy-federate) be opt-in rather than opt-out.
  
  Doesn’t matter. Admins will see it, think “that is nice!”, turn it on and only realize later that their database is completely bloated with data that is not really needed. Meanwhile, the real problem of content discovery could be solved by implementing pull-based federation and client-side caching, but again this type of work is not being done because it’s not something that the users see directly.
  
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  - Skavau@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    
    Maximum anonymity is a lie. Users still need to trust the server
    admin. The truth is that the Fediverse is not a secure/private
    messaging platform, and attempts to hide this from the users might be well-intentioned but will bite the devs in the ass, sooner or later.
    
    Sure. Pseudonymity. Again, it was dropped.
    
    To solve this it would be better to have the PieFed team pushing/implementing the appropriate FEPs (FEP-7952 and FEP-EF61) instead of an-hoc hack.
    
    I’m not here to quibble about the mechanics of the implementation, but purely noting that it is popular. You seem to be opposed to it on principle.
    
    Doesn’t matter. Admins will see it, think “that is nice!”, turn it on and only realize later that their database is completely bloated with data that is not really needed. Meanwhile, the real problem of content discovery could be solved by implementing pull-based federation and client-side caching, but again this type of work is not being done because it’s not something that the users see directly.
    
    Then attach with it an explanation that it could cause data bloat and increase costs for them. You’re against admins having the ability to turn this on if they want?
    
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    rglullis@communick.news ⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    
    Sure. Pseudonymity. Again, it was dropped.
    
    No, it was not dropped. “do not federate votes” is not a privacy guarantee. It just reduces the exposure of the information from the whole Internet to the server admin. People still need to trust the admin.
    
    I’m not here to quibble about the mechanics of the implementation, but purely noting that it is popular.
    
    If you are one of the developers of the project, you should be quibbling about the implementation. “It is popular” is not a good enough reason to effectively fabricate information.
    
    You’re against admins having the ability to turn this on if they want?
    
    What I am against is this constant release of poorly thought out features and the prioritization of “easy” vs “correct”.
    
    The more you try to justify what PieFed is doing, the more you are cementing my original opinion:
    
    it looks and feels amateurish.
    
    Its idea of “design” is “add any tool/functionality/feature that the developers think might be useful to them/their users”.
    
    it is not contributing in any meaningful way to development and improvement of the standards of the Social Web.
    
    You might feel offended by me calling it “a pile of hacks”, but I can not think of any other term to describe this.
    
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