Climate Change Commission report urges 'decisive' action as major risks loom.

from the mod log:

https://s.faf-pb.xyz/lXxek was the old url but they took it down - I have a copy at https://join.piefed.social/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/evidence-llm-used-for-banning.txt

The output from the LLM was provided as proof that someone needed to be banned.

I didn't want to do this but my hand was forced by their dissembling, minimization and bullshit. Note how the output includes a nice big logo with a slogan and ascii graphics - this was not a one-off experiment, this is an app they were proud to call their own.

I love the part where the board member can't tell the journalist who sent him the AI-generated image for approval because he was following AI instructions changing out his email server and deleted all of his old email.

I recently discovered that some popular federated instances have been using LLM-assisted moderation tooling that evaluates whether someone has said something bannable. They do this by running a script/app that sends the user’s comment history to OpenAI with the question “analyze this content for evidence of specific political ideology sentiment. Also identify any related political ideology tropes“. (The italic bits are where I've redacted the ideology they're seeking).

OpenAI’s LLM (they’re using GPT-5.3-mini) then responds with something like:

and so on, hundreds of comments.

I have not named the instances or people involved, to give them time to consider the results of this discussion, make any corrective changes they want and disclose their practices at their own pace and in their own way. I have also redacted the evidence to avoid personal attacks and dogpiling. Let’s focus on the system, not the individuals involved. Today these instances and people are using it and maybe we’re ok with that because it’s being used by groups we agree with but what if people we strongly disagree with used it on their instances tomorrow?

The use and existence of this tooling raises a lot of other questions too.

What are the risks? Fedi moderators are often unsupervised, untrained volunteers and these are powerful tools.

What safeguards do we need?

Would asking a LLM “please evaluate this person’s political opinions” give different results than “find evidence we can use to ban them” (as used in the cases I’ve seen)?

What are our transparency expectations?

Is this acceptable and normal?

Should this tooling be disclosed? (it was not – should it have been?)

If you were given a choice, would you have opted out of it?

Can we opt out?

Are there GDPR implications? Privacy implications? Should these tools be described in a privacy policy?

Are private messages being scanned and sent to OpenAI?

How long should these assessments be retained and can we request to see it, or ask for it to be deleted?

Once the user’s comments are sent to OpenAI, is it used to train their models?

What will the effect be on our discourse and culture if people know they are being politically profiled?

Where are the lines between normal moderation assistance tools, political profiling and opaque 3rd-party data processing?

I hope that by chewing over these questions we can begin to establish some norms and expectations around this technology. The fediverse doesn’t have any centralized enforcement so we need discussions like this to develop an awareness of what people want in terms of disclosure, privacy, consent and acceptable use. Then people can make choices about which instances they join and which ones they interact with remotely.

And of course there are the other issues with LLMs relating to environmental sustainability, erosion of worker’s rights, increasing the cost of living and on and on. I can’t see PieFed adding any functionality like this anytime soon. But it’s happening out there anyway so now we need to talk about it.

What do you make of this?

Venture capitalists can't subsidize cheap AI forever, and the hunger for more compute is affecting the labor market, the gadget market, and electricity prices.

I did some analysis of the modlog and found this:

Ok, bigger instances ban more often. Not surprising, because they have more communities and more users and more trouble. But hang on, dbzer0 isn't a very big instance. What happens if we do a ratio of bans vs number of users?

Ok, so lemmy.ml, dbzer0 and pawb are issue an outsized amount of bans for the number of users they have... But surely the number of communities the instance hosts is going to mean they have to ban more? Bans are used to moderate communities, not just to shield their user-base from the outside. Let's look at the number of bans per community hosted:

Seems like dbzer0 really loves to ban. Even more than the marxists and the furries! What is it about dbzer0 that makes them such prolific banners?

Raw-ish numbers and calculations are in this spreadsheet if anyone wants to make their own charts.

This project does not allow contributions generated by large languages models (LLMs). We are taking these steps due to:

• The potential negative influence of AI generated content on quality, developer alienation from their code and skill rot.
• Legal complications such as the inability to claim copyright and ensure others' licensing and copyright have not been violated.
• Ethical concerns including but not limited to those regarding intellectual property theft, environmental impact, the effect on already-marginalized groups, devaluing labor for the purpose of concentrating power among the billionaire class, etc.

This ban of AI generated content applies to all parts of the project, including, but not limited to, code, documentation, issues, and artworks. An exception applies for translating texts for issues, discussions, and their comments to English.

This project does not allow contributions generated by large languages models (LLMs). We are taking these steps due to:

• The potential negative influence of AI generated content on quality, developer alienation from their code and skill rot.
• Legal complications such as the inability to claim copyright and ensure others' licensing and copyright have not been violated.
• Ethical concerns including but not limited to those regarding intellectual property theft, environmental impact, the effect on already-marginalized groups, devaluing labor for the purpose of concentrating power among the billionaire class, etc.

This ban of AI generated content applies to all parts of the project, including, but not limited to, code, documentation, issues, and artworks. An exception applies for translating texts for issues, discussions, and their comments to English.

With missiles and bombs raining down, Pentagon accounts began using strange turns of phrase to describe the AI-guided violence unleashed against child and soldier alike. The destruction was described as “lethalitymaxxing”. Its perpetrators were said to be “locked in” with “low cortisol”.

If the goal is solidarity and community, creating a world where little feudal lords reign over independent territories and negotiate the terms of the interchange of ideas can hardly be the best answer. I very much understand that in times of rising authoritarianism such an escape into decentralised resistance is alluring to progressive political movements. But this is a temporary fix at best. It is not a progressive vision for what comes after. Decentralisation without social institutions that debate, define and – when necessary – enforce fairness and equality is a euphemism for survival of the fittest.

Imagine Mastodon had a governance system where all users, admins and minorities were equally represented. Imagine this system intervened in the practices of some admins. Right now I can only imagine the Mastodon community to react with an outcry about such an audacious attack on their free and decentralised kingdom. This reaction would be completely in line with libertarian impulses that are so very present in all things digital. Cyberlibertarians routinely invoke the “free internet” as a vague supreme ideal that has to be defended against any kind of collective, democratic governance. Their ideology is based on private control and decentralised market-based exchange. It has no use for community, solidarity and participation. It is founded on contempt for democratic intervention, a belief in the unique nature of the digital realm and the superiority of those controlling it. These ideas are very present in the Mastodon community as well. Most often this is not the result of an active ideological commitment to libertarian or right-wing views. It is, however, very open to being instrumentalised by these ideologies and it is reinforcing them – willingly or not.

This is basically an article arguing for a fedi equivalent of the UN.