this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2026
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Tesseract is a web client for Lemmy that was found to be secretly and arbitrarily blocking users, communities and even entire instances. You can see if you're one of the kool kidz by running

curl -s https://tesseract.dubvee.org/tesseract/api/system/policy | base64 -d | gunzip > policy.json

and grepping your name / instance. Further details can be found in this post.

The poem above is adapted from Bertolt Brecht's The Burning of the Books, which can be read here. If you would rather read it in the original German, go here.

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[–] davel@lemmy.ml 30 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I’m hard-coded into both Tesseract and Piefed.

[–] dessalines@lemmy.ml 20 points 1 month ago
[–] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 24 points 1 month ago (3 children)

Get yar medals here!

For the lucky ones indirectly blocked by Tesseract (instance ban / regex):

For the elite few who pissed them off enough to be banned by full name:

[–] grue@lemmy.world 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

IMO first and second class should be reversed because being banned by regex implies the guy cared enough to make sure he got all your alts.

[–] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago

I don't think that's the case. I haven't made any alts and still am regex blocked.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Most of the regex bans are for those with user accounts on multiple instances under the same name. Extreme example: https://lemmy.ml/search?type=Users&q=cm0002

JSON isn’t especially greppable, which is why I often pipe them through gron.

[–] gary_host_laptop@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

so essentially the only real blocks are the ones in the user list?

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Both lists are blocklists, it’s just that one is processed as literal matches and the other as regular expression matches.

[–] goferking0@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 1 month ago

Did that user even make the list like on piefed.

[–] CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I know I’m banned but how would I know which one?

[–] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The list has been mirrored at https://file.garden/amIRhTctI0qld2r5/policy.json

You aren't banned by name, only by regex :-(

[–] gary_host_laptop@lemmy.ml 22 points 1 month ago (1 children)
[–] gary_host_laptop@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 month ago (4 children)
[–] raspberry_confetti@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 month ago

Showoff 😡

[–] anotherspinelessdem@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 month ago

Fucking LEGEND

[–] BrainInABox@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 month ago

Hell yeah, me too.

[–] 4am@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 month ago

I’m 12th user regex, which means he wanted me banned from everywhere.

Except it looks like that list is sorted alphabetically…

[–] HiddenLayer555@lemmy.ml 16 points 1 month ago

Weird how it's never the tankie instances doing the most blatantly authoritarian shit on Lemmy

[–] Arcanepotato@crazypeople.online 14 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

It makes no sense because some A+ comrades are not blocked but I am? It must be the veganism.

Edit: oh darn, another comment says it's likely because I have the same username on different instances. I thought that was the least shady way to do things?

Some of us don't know how to use computers and didn't realize how the fediverse worked at first 🥲

Edit: I hope it was one of these

[–] eldavi@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago

... didn’t realize how the fediverse worked at first

Same here and all if my accounts are easily regex-able so the hard coded blocks definitely have something to do w your ability to be received by the normies.

[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This is a bit of a misread from where I can see

There's more people upset about not being on the list

[–] raspberry_confetti@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 month ago (1 children)

We just have to post harder

[–] CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

WAKE UP SHEEPLE!!

[–] carotte@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

"^carotte$" is in the user regexes but i'm not in the user list... hmmm.

looking at the list i'm wondering how is it possible that any content from lemmy showed up on tesseract lol. why did they block "article is paywalled"???

[–] VeldtSchema@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 month ago

Because the loser behind this hates people that are not okay with the enshittification of the internet, of course!

The whole thing screams he is not okay with conflict-So he hides anything that he considers conflictive. There is no war in Ba Sing Se moment.

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

Edit to add: He’s put it back up again 🤷


Wow. Guess what existed yesterday but not today?

I was about to show how the repo version and the dubvee version of the obfuscated banlists are somewhat different from each other, but it’s no longer possible now that the repo has been deleted.

git diff --no-index \
    <(curl -sL https://github.com/asimons04/tesseract/raw/refs/heads/main/static/data/policy.dat \
        | base64 -d | gunzip | gron) \
    <(curl -sL https://tesseract.dubvee.org/tesseract/api/system/policy \
        | base64 -d | gunzip | gron)
[–] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Interesting. I'm guessing the repo version is publicly viewable, but the dubvee version is the one actually implemented?

[–] davel@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I couldn’t say. Perhaps the dubvee version was from an earlier git commit. There’s no way to know without a copy of the deleted repo. It might be deducible from @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com’s fork, but it’s not worth the time & effort. https://github.com/db0/tesseract

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

lmao I love how it went from 84 to 3 stars now, I guess stars must reset when repo is undeleted?

[–] Pandantic@midwest.social 5 points 1 month ago (1 children)

😭 I'm too lib to be banned. I just dont post enough prolly. I didn't even know what tesseract was until today. I think I've heard of it but I almost always use the Thunder app. And I know Hexbear isn't censored for me. However, I did wonder if my instance admin was because I saw him on the list but haven't heard from him in a while.. @seahorse@midwest.social u good? We dont have to worry about tesseract, right?

[–] seahorse@midwest.social 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Hi, I didn't know what this was til now

[–] Pandantic@midwest.social 3 points 1 month ago

cool, cool. I thought we were good but it doesn't hurt to check.

[–] Mucki@feddit.org 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I do not understand why everyone is using the name of the codebase "tesseract" - which is in conflict with the absolutely wonderful concept of a tesseract - that is a four dimensional hyper cube. Why shame this beautiful word instead of shaming the name of the developer behind the fuckup? Save the word tesseract and shame the dev behind the frontend instead. Anybody care to explain their frivolity?

[–] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

This drama started off as a PSA to users and instances using Tesseract as their default Lemmy frontend. The dev has at least two lemmy accounts and a different username on github; the software is better known than any of their names.

[–] Mucki@feddit.org 5 points 1 month ago

I see, thanks for the input. So then fuck Admiral Patrick and his other pseudonyms!

[–] VeldtSchema@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 month ago

The Captain whatever dude is a loser. Wow.