admiralpatrick

"Antiyanks" is back at it again and has switched tactics to spamming a massive number of comments in a short period of time. In addition to being annoying (and sad and pathetic), it's having a deleterious effect on performance and drowns out any discussions happening in those posts. That spam also federates as well as the eventual removals, so it's not limited to just the posts being targeted.

Looking at the site config for the home instance of the latest ~~two~~ three alts, the rate limits were all 99999999. 🤦‍♂️

Rate limits are a bit confusing, but they mean: X number of requests per Y seconds per IP address.

The comment API endpoint has its own, dedicated bucket. I don't recall the defaults, but they're probably higher than you need unless you're catering to VPN users who would share an IP.

Assuming your server config is correctly passing the client IP via the XFF header, 20 calls to the /create_comment endpoint per minute (60 seconds) per client IP should be sufficient for most cases, though feel free to adjust to your specific requirements.

Edit: A couple of instances accidentally set the "Messages" bucket too low. That bucket is a bit of a catch-all for API endpoints that don't fit a more specific bucket. You'll want to leave that one relatively high compared to the rest. It's named "Messages" but it covers far more than just DMs.

Just checking in since this is turning out to be a big update, especially for a single point release. These are the changes implemented thus far. I thought I was ready for a feature freeze, but as I've implemented these, some things have become redundant so I've had to double back and find a way to combine them (e.g. merging community tagging and community groups into one feature).

Highlights:

The filtering system has been further expanded to include URL domains and entire instances. Community groups have been overhauled and can now have filter policies applied to their member communities. User tagging has been implemented, and those tags can be used in filter policies as well. You no longer need to be logged in to utilize community groups, favorites, or user tagging. This means you can completely curate your experience without even having to log in!

General

• Lots of bugfixes
• Re-implemented the auth and profile library and initial login flow
• Small UI tweaks and refinements
• [Planned, not implemented yet] Suppress notifications for filtered items
• [Planned, not implemented yet] Allow muting replies for posts and comments
• [Planned, not implemented yet] Revamp settings page

Filtering is much more granular

• You can optionally completely hide posts and comments that match any of your filters (instead of showing the placeholder)
• Users of blocked instances can be completely hidden (posts and comments) if you wish.
• Can now filter posts by URL domains (e.g. if you don't want to see any posts linking to example.com, add that to your filter)
  • Can define wildcard domains (*.example.com) such that anything.example.com will match the filter
  • Built-in toggles for Bluesky, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter/X so you don't have to manually enter each of their multiple domains

Limited (but growing) Built-in Spam Detection (and filtering)

• Detected spam posts and comments are hidden and can be revealed
• Domains that are commonly spammed by bona-fide spam accounts will trigger the filter
• Brand new accounts linking to blogspot [dot] com will be hidden and flagged as blogspam. This can be applied for other domains, too, but blogspot is the one that's typically spammed. Blogspot links will not always be flagged, just if they're posted from brand new accounts.
• You can optionally filter out "help farmer" posts. Help farmers are those accounts that spin up a disposable alt, throw out their question in one of the various "ask" or support communities, and then delete the post and account shortly thereafter and taking any answers and discussions with them. I HATE those people. The only way to really deal with it is to stop interacting. So now you can filter those posts and optionally completely hide them.

Community Groups Got a Big Upgrade

• Community groups now (also) act like Community Tagging. Any groups a community is a member of will be shown as flairs (it's on by default but you can turn it off).
• The group list in the sidebar/navbar is now searchable.
• Community groups can be turned into filter groups (see more below).
• The community details are no longer stored which reduces localStorage usage
• The community groups have been moved out of the profile and are now system-level.
  • Sadly, this means that you can no longer have separate groups for each profile. I thought about making the new groups profile-specific, but decided against it.
• Groups are now able to be used without being logged in
• I'm debating on including a default set of community groups if there are no user-defined ones. Haven't decided yet
• Groups can now be exported/imported separately (and merged). This allows you to share your groups with others.

Community Groups Can Be Used as Filter Groups

• Turn any community group into a filter group (or vice-versa)
• Filter groups can be listed and searched separately in the sidebar
• Filtering rules can be defined (and combined) that apply only to communities that are a member of that group:
  • Filter all posts to any of those communities.
  • Filter users with certain tags in those communities
  • Filter specific keywords only in those communities
  • Filter users of specific instances only in those communities
  • Filter URL domains only in those communities
  • Filter (collapse) or completely hide any items which trigger the filter

Community Filter Group Examples

Screenshots:

Group Editor:

Filtered "Help Farmer" Post:

Community Group Tagging:

Community Group Filtering:

After some back-and-forth with a few people, some very generous drinking about it, and, quite frankly, just not having a new hobby lined up yet, I've decided to un-archive the repo and continue limited development of Tesseract.

What do I mean by limited?

• By and large, it'll be in maintenance mode only.
• I'm no longer spending time here on the platform (this announcement notwithstanding). This means I will not notice annoyances and bugs like I used to. Any bug/annoyance must be user-reported in detail on Github.
• Mod tooling will likely not see any changes except maybe bugfixes. I have stepped down as mod in all communities and self-destructed my instance, so there is no longer any way for me to test privileged API calls.
• There will probably never be support for Lemmy 1.0 or anything beyond the current 0.19.x API
• Piefed support is still up in the air; if/when Piefed support happens, it will be in place of Lemmy and not concurrent with.
• The Matrix rooms ~~and support/announcement community~~ are not coming back. All bugs, questions, etc will need to be submitted via Github. New versions will not be announced other than in the "Releases" list on Github
• ~~The unlocked, hosted instance formerly at "tesseract.dubvee.org" will not be coming back; you will need to self-host or ask your instance admin(s) to offer it as an alternative UI.~~
• I'm more likely to remove features and fine tune what's left than add anything new.
• I am taking a more opinionated approach to options, settings, etc. The codebase has become a fustercluck, so some options are likely on the chopping block in favor of "this is just how it is"

1.4.42 is in development.

NBC New York obtained exclusive video that shows the torture victim running down the street after his escape, 17 days into captivity, and seeking help from a police officer.

What to Know

• An Italian man escaped from a house on Prince Street in New York City last week, where he said he had been held captive for 17 days and allegedly tortured by two business partners
• Two NYPD members, including a detective on Mayor Eric Adams' security detail have been placed on modified desk duty after links surfaced to the two crypto businessmen charged with kidnapping an Italian tourist, sources tell News 4
• The detective allegedly provided security for the Prince Street townhouse where the Italian man was held and it's believed he may have picked up the tourist from the airport and brought him to SoHo, sources tell News 4
• City Hall said it is "disturbed by these allegations" and the investigation into the officer's behavior is ongoing
• John Woeltz, was arrested in his bathrobe outside the scene; he is expected in court on kidnap and torture charges, among others, on Wednesday. A second suspect, William Duplessie, surrendered in connection with the case a day ago

Note: There are two headlines for this, one on the actual article page and a different one in the embed description. The post title is the one from the article. The headline from the embed description is "Crypto king torture investigation takes shocking turn".

“I would not acknowledge reproduction as a human right, but instead as a form of rape,” IndictEvolution wrote on Lemmy.World in July 2023. “I am also not bothered by infanticide as long as it is done humanely...”

Preface: I'm neither equipped nor here to diagnose anyone with body dysphoria or anything like that.

I totally get the appeal of working out, getting a nice summer/beach body, staying fit/healthy and all that. That's all well and good. But the degree to which bodybuilders intentionally overdo it just looks awful to me. Like, to me, they all look like tiny little heads atop roided-out, spray-tanned, lumpy, disproportionate looking bodies.

That just looks gross to me, and I can't see the appeal of wanting to do that to yourself.

Just added rule 6 to the sidebar that reduces some ambiguity between rules 4 and 5. 99% of posts here already do this, so there shouldn't be much change other than it being required now.

Rule 6: Defend your position

This is a bit of a mix of rules 4 and 5 to help foster higher quality posts. You are expected to defend your unpopular opinion in the post body. We don't expect a whole manifesto (please, no manifestos), but you should at least provide some details as to why you hold the position you do.

This won't be applied retroactively, but anything from here on out is expected to include some exposition to go along with the opinion itself

Edit 2025-01-13: LW has indicated they will be clarifying these rules soon. In the mean time, the community will remain locked until those are updated and deemed acceptable.

So the LW Team put out an announcement on new, site-wide moderation policy (see post link). I've defended, to many a downvote, pretty much every major decision they've made, but I absolutely cannot defend this one. In short, mods are expected to counter pretty much every batshit claim rather than mod it as misinformation, trolling, attack on groups, etc.

My rebuttal (using my main account) to the announcement: https://dubvee.org/comment/3541322

We're going to allow some "flat earth" comments. We're going to force some moderators to accept some "flat earth" comments. The point of this is that you should be able to counter those comments with words, and not need moderation/admin tools to do so.

(emphases mine)

Me: What if, to use the recent example from Meta, someone comes into a LGBT+ community and says they think being gay is a mental illness and /or link some quack study? Is that an attack on a group or is it "respectful dissent"?

LW: A lot of attacks like that are common and worth refuting once in awhile anyway. It can be valuable to show the response on occasion

I understand what they're trying to address here (highly encourage you to read the linked post), but the way they're going about it is heavy handed and reeks of "both sides"-ing every community, removing agency from the community moderators who work like hell to keep these spaces safe and civil, and opening the floodgates for misinformation and "civil" hate speech. How this new policy fits with their Terms of Service is completely lost to me.

I'll leave the speculation as to whether Musk dropped LW a big check as an exercise to the reader.

For now, this community is going dark in protest and I encourage other communities who may disagree with this new policy to join. Again, I understand the problem that is trying to be addressed, but this new policy, as-written, is not the way to do it.

Voting has concluded on whether the community wants to remove the "Vote the opposite of the norm" voting guidelines.

As you can see in the screenshot below (or in the post), the results are a tie (only upvotes are counted, not the score). I abstained from the vote, leaving it entirely to the community, and I do not wish to cast the tie-breaking vote.

Since it is a tie, I'll treat that as a non-majority vote and, as such, we will keep the voting guidelines as they are.