Reposter feature
Based on recent feedback, PieFed v1.8 includes functionality that lets instance admins flag accounts as being a “Reposter”. Other than putting a little icon next to their name this has no effect on anyone until viewers opt in to filtering based on this flag.
It works just like how filtering for bots or NSFW content does - in your Filtering settings you can select to Show, Hide or Make Semi-Transparent posts by reposters, independently from bots or NSFW.
In your filtering settings (at https://piefed.social/user/settings/filters ), look for the field “Posts by reposters”. By default this is set to ‘Show’ so unless you opt in to this everything will be the same as it was before.
Admins: to flag an account, go to their profile and click ‘Edit in admin area’ (or find them at /admin/users), then tick the “Flag their posts as from a reposter (bot)” checkbox. PieFed v1.8 includes a raft of different tools for finding inauthentic behaviour, some of which falls under the umbrella of “reposting”, which you can employ. They are fairly complex so I will need to write more about how to use them, later.
If you are unsure, you can just ask the potential reposter. Go to their profile and click ‘Ask if reposter’ and they’ll receive a direct message from you. Bots will ignore it and PieFed will automatically apply the reposter flag after some time.
Each instance will need to define for itself what the difference between a bot and a reposter is. Some might choose to just ban all reposters rather than get into it. Many will just do nothing. For piefed.social I define a bot as automated posting of content, usually from a RSS feed or similar, always in the same community with no pretense of being human, no comments and no voting. A reposter is an account with automated posting of content, often from reddit or similar, often in a variety of communities, usually with a human operator that participates in discussions and votes.
There are a lot of different reposters. Some limit their automated posts to a single community and perhaps do some manual posts in others. Some blast out all kinds of posts and manually delete off-topic or undesirable posts later. Some reposters are part of a swarm operated by a single person. Often their content is interesting, relevant and generates a lot of discussion. I don’t know how the threadiverse is going to look with them hidden from me but I’m keen to find out.
This is a complex issue and it might take a few tries and experiments to find a good way of managing it. I hope you can bear with us as we feel our way forward through it.
PieFed 1.8 is released - multi-image posts, reposter filter, new admin tools
Gallery posts, which is an image post with multiple images in it, compatible with Mastodon and Pixelfed. Check out this example from Mastodon.
“Reposters” as a separate thing from “Bots” with the same Show and Hide options for filtering that bots have. Reposters are more targeted, with higher quality content than true bots and often have a human operator writing comments. However many people find this inauthentic so now they can be filtered out. More details
/c/microblogs can show posts from people you’re following OR all posts.
Recent hashtags shown on the home page sidebar.
Support for receiving posts with jpegxl images.
Communities can have a default hashtag for new posts - posters can edit or remove it if they want.
For admins:
Option to manually approve posts by new accounts, to cut down on spam while having open registrations (no approval on the new account). This will let people dip their toes in without waiting.
Easily contact other instance admins, see /admin/instances
Vote manipulation detection tools for simple sockpuppets and complex coordinated voting networks. See /admin/voting
Serial downvoter report showing who made lots of downvotes against a single person in a short time.
Other bot detection tools - e.g. easily spot unnatural runs of very quick post creation.
Display list of alts on user profiles to more easily investigate activity by alts.
Filter emoji with keywords rather than importing absolutely everything - this will speed up the emoji reaction dialog.
Identify instances likely to be used by spammers in future. See /admin/instances?filter=liability
Microblog posts with no replies can be automatically deleted - set the MICROBLOG_CONTENT_RETENTION environment variable to how many months you want to keep them for.
To upgrade from 1.7.x
git pull
git checkout v1.8.x
Then,
./deploy.sh or ./deploy-docker.sh
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How should PieFed handle accounts that mix human activity with automated reposting?
Recently there have started to be a few accounts that seem to be used by a person for writing comments while also being used by scripts to automatically repost content from Reddit and possibly elsewhere. This doesn’t cleanly fit into our existing tools for classifying accounts and posts - a conventional bot might post RSS articles or other automated content, and users can choose to filter based on that bot setting. These new types of accounts are different from that because they’re partly human and partly automated.
This causes a few problems:
there are cases where the reposted content is written in the first person. Like for example, a Reddit post might say here’s a photo of my cat, but when that post is automatically reposted into the Threadiverse by a reposter script, it can appear to us that the PyFed account owner is claiming the cat as their own. Yet that’s obviously not the case, which gives an inauthentic feel to the environment.
sometimes some of the material being reposted is content that violates the rules and norms of Threadiverse. And so we see a lot of strange culture war stuff and racist content coming through sometimes.
a lot of people left reddit to get away from all the astroturfing and bots and LLMs running amok so letting that happen here too will just drive those people away.
Despite this, their content is often quite popular and many people upvote it and comment on it. Many people seem totally ok with it.
Before I change anything, it’d be really good to understand what the community wants to happen in response to this. I’m considering several possible approaches, including doing nothing, or introducing a new automated / reposted indicator for accounts (with a feed filter, separate from the bot indicator and filter), or continuing to apply the existing bot label onto those accounts, or restricting those kind of accounts completely. But I’m not going to propose a particular outcome yet. I’d like to hear what, if any, problems people are experiencing from these accounts and what information or controls would be useful.
