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List of blocked words in community names:
shit piss fuck cunt cocksucker motherfucker tits memes piracy 196 greentext usauthoritarianism enoughmuskspam political_weirdos 4chanSeems like one of the PieFed devs has some opinions about the kind of content they dislike, and are unilaterally forcing that on every PieFed instance. I can somewhat understand filtering out curse words, but specific communities should not blocked by default, and definitely not hidden in a hardcoded list in the source code.
Edit: Important context here: https://lemmy.world/comment/21323475 Seems this blocklist is more limited in scope; it’s not blocking federation entirely, just blocking (from what I can tell) their appearance in search and automatically federating with them when adding an instance. Still problematic to exclude specific communities in a non-configurable way with little justification IMO.
They also put “memes” and “enoughmuskspam.”
The latter I guess could be used to stop Musk spam (since the community is literally nothing but Elon Musk news) but not allowing the word “memes” in a community name?
Utterly stupid.
But they do appear to be fans of Carlin based on the first 7 banned words.
There’s no racial slurs in there either. I might have assumed this was merely an example an operator is meant to edit themselves, but these are some weird ass choices for even that.
Well, it seems specifically 196 just got removed: https://codeberg.org/rimu/pyfedi/commit/b7a9ea0eea3a80f710e0b5b63cf0bbecde60f8bf
Actually, they only removed it from 2 places. It’s still there https://codeberg.org/rimu/pyfedi/src/branch/main/app/cli.py#L1026
Duplication of constants is a cherry on that whole cake of stream-of-consciousness code style.
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Got any other specific examples?
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That’s hilarious
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Ok thats based af. It’s not about stopping one idiot, it’s about saving thousands of people from being subjected to discussion-derailing derailing drivel.
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Hard-coded filters, here we go again.
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/622I think a regex to filter out common slurs isn’t really the same
The regex:
(fag(g|got|tard)?\b|cock\s?sucker(s|ing)?|ni((g{2,}|q)+|[gq]{2,})[e3r]+(s|z)?|mudslime?s?|kikes?|\bspi(c|k)s?\b|\bchinks?|gooks?|bitch(es|ing|y)?|whor(es?|ing)|\btr(a|@)nn?(y|ies?)|\b(b|re|r)tard(ed)?s?)fagtard
That can’t be common enough to be included lmao. Also censoring “bitching” is kind hard, now I can’t tell everyone about my bitching ride
What are the words in the harcoded Lemmy filter?
this is optional lol
I’m not okay with them filtering profanity, who the fuck are they to define what is or is not acceptable?
I don’t think it’s a good idea either, but it’s less egregious than filtering specific communities.
I probably agree, but frankly I find neither acceptable
The stupid thing is that all those words are only in English. No “merda”, “scheisse”, “joder”, “merde”, …
I imagine that was true for Lemmy’s similar functions in the past (referred to in this thread)
You can contribute to the codebase by offering to add them in…
They aren’t complaining that there aren’t enough filters. They’re pointing out just how stupid and futile filtering a few words is in the first place.
There may also be a misunderstanding, or perhaps this argument is only one of those that only looks smart from far away, but either way to clarify: this list isn’t truly a filter list, it’s a listing of community NAMES that will get filtered out.
For one thing, (sadly) there aren’t so many Latin-speaking instances in the Threadiverse?
And I tried to search for community names for some of the others, but did not find any? e.g. https://feddit.org/search?q=scheisse&type=Communities&listingType=All, https://feddit.org/search?q=joder&type=Communities&listingType=All&page=1&sort=TopAll, etc.
So is it really “stupid” then, to block communities that don’t even exist? ich_el would be an example of one that would actually exist, although I don’t think that one needs to be filtered out. I was saying that if there is really truly one that should be filtered, then it could be added to the list?
If someone wanted a less ah… “argumentative” subset of the Threadiverse, then I could see how filtering out “fuck_cars” would achieve that end (not that I agree with having such a listing, or in the exact contents of this one, but I do disagree that it is “stupid” as in ineffectual to have made the list in this way - it is achieving some kind of a purpose, and with people’s help that purpose could itself be changed, or if kept intact then the list enhanced to function even better than it has been doing so far).
But the “tits” filter can apply to “partits” (Catalan, means parties in English) or “partitsocialista”. And now there are no communities with those names… but what if someone in the future wants to create them?
George Carlin would be amused.
So if I started a piefed instance and wanted to host a 196 community I’d have to edit the list, but would every single other instance also have to or no?
Or you could pull it in manually. It’s just that the automated startup would not do it for you, for communities with these keywords. Nothing prevents anyone from pulling in the communities manually though.
Isn’t there a Java based Lemmy compatible thing too? I forgot what it was called but I think there is one.
They’re pretty explicit about what they don’t like when you sign up. That’s why I joined it
Each instance should be free to set their own rules. Individual instances blocking those communities is fine, but the PieFed devs hardcoding a blocklist that applies to all instances (especially one as opinionated and arbitrary as this) is absolutely not.
Each instance should be free to set their own rules.
They… are though? Maybe I am dumb, but I do not understand why each instance setting its own rules would apply to all other instances? Say if you made your own instance, you would set your own rules, but the other instances are free to set theirs as well? Like if you want to allow communities such as “4chan”, then go ahead, but if others want to block that, then why shouldn’t they be allowed to?
Definitely agree that this issue should be made much more transparent and easier to change, like not hard-coding it.
This filter is not part of any specific instance, it’s hardcoded into PieFed’s code. That means it applies to every PieFed instance unless the instance admin explicitly patches the code to remove it.
As mentioned elsewhere, it’s just a convenience function - anytime after starting up the instance, the admins can always pull in those communities manually. Or change this part of the code beforehand. So it’s not a hard-coded “block”, just slightly less convenient for it to not automatically pull in those communities during the one-time initial setup for an instance.
But anyway you are right that this should not be a hard-coded list.
Edit: it’s also worth mentioning that the way that Lemmy does this is via a direct pull of communities from Lemmy.ml. What I am reacting to here is not so much to say that PieFed’s method is perfect, but that both suffer from flaws, and that PieFed’s is relatively benign, at least in comparison to Lemmy’s. Lemmy uses an extremely authoritarian approach whereby Lemmy.ml is the sole and invariant arbiter of what communities are allowed vs. not during that initial one-time setup, and there is no way to change that, whereas PieFed uses a list that the instance admin is capable of changing. On the spectrum of authoritarian control, PieFed’s level here is like a 1 out of 100, whereas Lemmy’s is… well, it’s still not much in this exact situation, but it’s definitely way more. Sorry for being confusing initially in the way I worded that.
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I presume that it was a simple misunderstanding, but in any case it has lead to some… interesting, and ultimately quite fruitful discussion, so there’s that to have enjoyed:-).
And it really shouldn’t have been hard-coded like that. A minor issue imho, and one not really a problem until now, but at least it’s already now well on its way to being resolved. In contrast, Lemmy’s own hard-coding of Lemmy.ml into the equivalent function I doubt will ever be changed, certainly not without strong reluctance (and likely along with public outcry, as before with the filter list).
One point: I would argue that opt-in vs. -out doesn’t fully apply here, as this automated convenience function will only ever be run once upon initial setup for an instance, after which the instance admin can add any communities they desire, manually (I’m not sure why OP phrased it then as needing to be “debugged”, that seems an odd term for such routine instance maintenance tasks that do not need any modification of any code at all, anywhere?). In short, it’s not actually a “block” at all, as the wording in the meme seems to me to strongly imply by using “federate”). The phrase “opt-out” usually referrs to something harsh but that isn’t all the way fully forced, but this issue of not pulling in (initially) of communities is so extremely gentle than on the spectrum it is adjacent to “opt-in” already? Still, ultimately you are probably correct, I am just not sure of the wording there, so wanted to help by offering those additional nuances.
Jesus that’s a lot of spaghetti code, and why are they hardcoding a bunch of terms? Is this just for a public facing site, or does every deployed instance effectively filter these out?
It’s hardcoded in the PieFed source code, so every instance does this by default unless you patch it like I did.
The combined swearwords + excluded communities list seems to appear at least 3 times in the codebase (not referenced, copied verbatim).
Let’s just say that it wouldn’t pass my code review if I saw this at work
EDIT: It has been removed from 2/3 places in the codebase.
The piefed.world instance has some of these edited out but I don’t think they all are.
I think the communities were added manually
How do you manually add communities?
You just try to go to the community from that instance, and it’ll say “community not found” and you just click it. Then someone local needs to subscribe to it for new content from there to federate.
You go to
https://INSTANCE_DOMAIN/c/COMMUNITY_NAME@COMMUNITY_DOMAINand press Join
Help them clean it up!
I’ve made a PR
Atta boy!
Yeah. The list should be in the site config. Go ahead and include those as defaults to block, but allow sites to override that.
OP, are you saying that the federation is blocked on the OUTGOING side? Because then that just seems bass ackwards.
No, it’s incoming. When you first set up an instance you have to kickstart the federation process by adding communities to federate. The linked code excludes those specified communities from that. Once federated, they won’t be blocked AFAIK.
Hardcoded blacklists are never a good idea.
That shit belongs in a config file.
What, why 196? Actually why any of these? I get 4chan and greentext sort of(?) but even ignoring the terrible programming practices here, this is really stupid.
Edit: actually almost makes me regret switching to Piefed
They just removed it from the list 15 minutes ago
Ah, that’s good to hear. I’m still sketched out by the hardcoded blacklist of terms though. I’m very much a person against the sort of free speech that hinders other’s freedom to live without discrimination but the filter still seems so arbitrary and entirely the response to the dev’s own vandettas and that just gives me bad vibes.
On top of that, hardcoding English language terms to block is bad programming on a number of levels. Why isn’t it a configurable list? The hardcoded values don’t contain any other language variants so you can still have those communities if you speak something other than English (or just add an extra couple characters or anything really)
Just to be absolutely clear, there is foundationally no expectation whatsoever that either PieFed or Lemmy are trying to make a “free speech” platform. Truth Social and 4chan seem to already have that covered…
Rather, the owner of the instance (aka the one who pays for the machine and in all likelihood has to register it with their irl credentials within its country of residence, for legality purposes e.g. CSAM) gets to decide all of the rules that govern it.
If someone wants to use the Threadiverse to e.g. spread CSAM, they are welcome to make a fork but that’s not what either PieFed or Lemmy (or Mbin, Mastodon, nodeBB, etc.) are about.
Anyone is free to say whatever they want, but none of this software is not bound to have to offer a platform to send those thoughts out to everyone, particularly those who do not want it.
I think you’re misunderstanding my comment. I’m all for built in safeguards but it being a rather arbitrary hardcoded list is silly. Even keeping the existing arbitrary list would be fine to me if it was pulled from the database instead of being a copy/pasted list in the actual code
On that we agree. I just wanted to make absolutely certain that it is clear to everyone that “free speech” is not something that the PieFed devs are prioritizing in any way.
So all that remains is the form that the list is implemented in, which as people are saying is already in the process of being changed.
Btw, the Lemmy equivalent is likewise hard-coded (this is a different issue than the blocklist one mentioned that happened years in the past):
latest case in point: the next version will hardcode lemmy.ml as a source to pre-fetch popular communities
it uses lemmy.ml as the source of truth for that, and there is no way to change that
I think the only reason this issue is getting any attention at all right now is that the PieFed devs have made it so ridiculously easy to install a new instance that people are starting to do it even without glancing at the code (which for Lemmy can’t be done, see e.g. this story). Not many instances (in either platform) are initiated often, and usually when it is done it is by self-hosters, so this is a growing pain caused by having expanded the userbase beyond that?
So, it’s really a great problem to have to have imho, and gives me hope for the future of the Threadiverse. Especially to see the devs begin fixing it within mere minutes of this post, rather than telling the userbase to piss off and make their own fork instead (Nutomic), and only reluctantly change it, or for other issues refuse to do so even many YEARS after asking. The differences between having devs who are actually responsive vs. not is enormous!!:-)
It has been removed from 2/3 places in the codebase. I’m guessing they missed the other list so I’ve opened an issue and PR on Codeberg.
I know the feeling (over here on .world)
Maybe they’ve had a bad experience with the 196 moderators, as many have. I hope that’s all it is.
The mods are awful. But basically all mods are awful. You have to have brain damage to want to be a moderator of an online community.
So it is a bit of a catch 22
Insane toxic trolls are insane toxic trolls regardless of how virtuous you might think their “cause” is.
Sir a second hardcoded blacklist hit the fediverse
Never meet your heroes
Never read the code of a project you respect
That is some nasty code.
If you dont like it, fork it. Stop bothering us about it
-devs of PieFed
Oh wait no, that’s the devs of Lemmy when asked the same request. (edit: ‘asking’ to ‘asked’)
Hopefully Rimu will be more accommodating when you ask him? (codeberg issue creation prefered)
It might be time to move this away from a hard-coded list now, if the expectations that someone installing an instance is going to read through the code is lower now than previously.
What a shit show of a discussion on that issue… Not only is hard coding bad design in general[1], but doing so for constantly evolving and highly context dependent word list is even worse. Reading the discussion I see their decision as extremely short sighted and arrogant if not just stupid.
Having hard coded configurations has it’s uses, but it’s a strong red flag that might complicate maintenance down the road, and should be used with caution. ↩︎
Edit: I seem to have misread the comment I was replying to here, in criticizing PieFed’s hard-coding rather than Lemmy’s hard-coding.
Yes, likely very bad design on their part (if it is hard-coded not once but 3 times and if all 3 of those represent the same use cases), though until a few months ago not many PieFed instances existed except to test the evolving codebase, so this is all VERY new.
See also this discussion of so many frustrating and LONG-STANDING bugs in Lemmy that the instance admins of slrpnk.net will switch to PieFed that (reportedly) is less buggy overall.
All of the Threadiverse software is still new-ish and under active development - PieFed more than most, and what blows me away is how it is doing so even without a NLNet grant, just entirely freely developed by real people making actual contributions in return for basically nothing at all. Somehow this software being developed in a Western nation is out socialism-ing the literal communists, who btw also make it impossible to donate directly to the development of code without also supporting the heavily politicized lemmy.ml instance (which people have noticed a LOT of time is spent on moderating… time that could have been spent on code development, e.g. in fixing those long-standing bugs?).
TLDR: the entire Threadiverse is new, and PieFed has “potential”. At least as much if not significantly more so than Lemmy. It will be good to see both of them improved in the future.
I mean, if I read the thread correctly they did end up making it optional…
Eventually, but only reluctantly and after first telling the userbase to simply piss off and stop asking.
In contrast, the PieFed devs seem to have edited their codebase within mere minutes of this discussion having started to have already started changing things in highly positive directions, even prior to being officially asked on codeberg.
The contrast there is eye-opening, and I hope indicative of what the future holds for the Threadiverse. There are far too many LONG-STANDING issues remaining in Lemmy that only continue to get ignored as the years drag on… Lemmy is their codebase, you exist at their leisure, whereas PieFed is ours, able to be modified in ways that we collectively want it to. Obviously I mean on the spectrum, aka “PieFed has highly responsive devs”, who not only receive but even outright ask for advice on things like prioritization (see e.g. last year’s !piefed_2025@piefed.social, although nowadays they are doing that via codeberg issue tickets).
wow. blocking slurs. oh no thats terrible lmfao
maybe they should expand that list
on free and liberated piefed we can use slurs freely and liberally
tankies btfo
As we know from TikTok having a filter for those totally prevents people from using slurs.
But I think the bad practise here is hardcoding, not having it as a feature in general.
Wasn’t that only blocking slurs and not specific communities?
These aren’t specific community *blocks (they’re not blocks as such). They’re keywords. It jus so happens that “196” was a community as well, although that has now been removed.
Yes they’re keywords, but they also happen to be the exact names of threadiverse 8 communities, so that’s pretty specific to me.
Wait until you see what is coming up next in Lemmy:
latest case in point: the next version will hardcode lemmy.ml as a source to pre-fetch popular communities
it uses lemmy.ml as the source of truth for that, and there is no way to change that
(Edit: I forgot to add the link to source)
At least PieFed allows you to edit the list. I still agree that it should not have been hard-coded, but this is not a case where Lemmy is a shining beacon of all goodness and PieFed is pure shit - both have their flaws, and Lemmy’s is MAJOR (and unchangeable) whereas by comparison, PieFed’s is fairly minor as these things go.
Plus haven’t the PieFed devs already changed the code in response to this very thread? (In 2 of the 3 places, but I haven’t taken time to actually look directly myself, and the 3rd place should also be changed too, if it hasn’t been already, to remove the list from being hard-coded.) The PieFed devs, instead of telling the userbase to piss off and only reluctantly change things after a large outcry, are (especially by comparison, but also very much objectively too?) VERY responsive to feedback? I bet you will even be thanked for bringing this to their attention… though in the future you could also try submitting a codeberg ticket:-).
Anyway, you are helping make the installation experience more streamlined and smooth for future users, so (while I have nothing whatsoever to do with the devs), I will say thank you just by myself!:-)
Huh, so thats why i havent seen greentexts in quite some time.
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.All of this would perhaps be already known to OP and other people, if the code had comments. This is where the adage comes in that the comments should explain why the code does what it does.
As the code currently is, anyone trying to fiddle with it would have no idea why large swathes of it are there. And it generally could use more than a bit of organizing.
It’s completely unrelated to routine federation, and doesn’t prevent anyone subscribing to communities that may have those words in their names.
99% of commentors here seem to have precluded this as even being remotely a possibility. Sadly, much of what happened on Reddit seems to have followed us here. I suppose it’s just basic human nature.
Yeah… I’m unsure how they thought this was a platform-wide ban when it includes terms like “meme” and “greentext”. I don’t even need to look at any more than this one line of code to intuit this does something more specific than OP thought.
Looks like I’ve been spreading misinformation, whoops. Edited my comment to clarify.
Dear God, that code! Why is it all in one file? The more I read it the worse it becomes!
Holy crud, you were not kidding. I got through a bit and was just like, “nah I ain’t reading this shit”.
Very glad I never got deeper into PieFed. Great post.
Help them!
Well, like the Lemmy devs, I guess the PieFed devs have decided to plant a flag instead of making a neutral platform for federated communication.
The Lemmy devs don’t seem to hardcode those opinions into Lemmys source code.
They had one for a while, but removed it on pushback.
That’s why I first joined kbin.
One could argue the design choices themselves are hardcoded opinions, as it would be possible to imagine for example a more democratic way to moderate.
neutrality is one of those subjective things
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Is that specifically added for that person that uses þ all the time?
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Then I will never use PieFed. Justice for the thorn.
That’s interesting. I understand not wanting to fed some of those communities.
I definitely understand wanting to filter out obscenities, but I think the filtered communities should be a seperate configurable list.
As a mod of !fuckcars@lemmy.world, I’m kinda upset about the “filter out obscenities” part.
Now you mention it, I haven’t seen your community either.
EDIT: It was also filtered out, I had to add it manually
the cursewords are specifically referencing George Carlins 7 words you can’t say on air.
And cute as that reference is it’s still not justification for or authority to censor language of adult speakers. That’s bullshit.
Yeah. Like i get the joke, but don’t FUCKING use a whole ass instance to play it
Side note: lmfao wtf is this Mickey Mouse block-quote-but-not-really bullshit?
How would you write it, I’m new to python but it reads like they are just trying to make the code not go off the side of the screen?
You do multiline strings with 3 quotes, e.g.:
some_var = “string” s = f""" This is a very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very long {some_var}. """If you don’t want line breaks, you can also do
some_var = “string” s = ( f”This is a very very very very very very very very very” # note the leading space here f” very very very very very very long {some_var}.” )But doing it the way shown will render the string something like:
This is a very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very long {some_var}.That big block of white space in the middle is not desired.
goddamn, asshole, peepee, and poopoo are missing.
Is this the “shit piss fuck” list?
Yes, it starts with swear words, the names of some communities are also thrown in.
