As part of the devs farewell message on their site, they have included malicious code to make each visitor sends 2,000 requests to the dbzer0 servers in an attempt to DDOS and take the instance offline.
This is an important post and I appreciate the insight into the happenings on the Fediverse, but the comment chains are going off the rails and I’ve issued a number of bans from this post alone.
Locking.
I’ve never seen a dev do something like this. Pretty incredible that he put that in the code. It just shows the maturity level of these guys.
Well, there’s another one going down the deep end. Can anyone enlighten me why there are devs losing their minds on the regular and pulling everyone else into their shitshow? Most of the time those people are actually skilled, but something goes wrong and they become megalomaniac, believing they are the arbiter of truth and a gift from god we all should be thankful for while they pull more and more insane shit.
Speaking as a nearly lifelong developer of one kind or another, with ASD and ADHD… there’s a big ol’ overlap. I’m not talking “the venn diagram is a circle” level overlap, but it is significant. Lots of people with these traits have personality quirks, differences in socioemotional processing from the “typical” stuff, experiences in early life, and other things, that can cause some pretty intense rabbit holing/spiraling when things get overwhelming.
To be clear though, this guy is obviously just a major dipshit. Nobody deserves being lumped in with that.
Confluence of stress burnout, and character traits.
Is worthwhile to explore both the psychological and societal precursors to such.
… Probably worthwhile looking into narcissism too. Albeit many perspectives on the topic, there are common themes and distinct insights to catch, that are sometimes difficult to really have sink in, so distinct and alient an umwelt exists behind the contrastingly “normal” facade. Until blow-out.
… Probably worthwhile looking into autism too. Maybe AuDHD specifically (whom are the majority). The absence of the socially normativising stuff, from the different neurophysiology, almost like we’re having to do all the work of the cerebelum, the gpu, in the forebrain, the cpu, with the neuronal journeys having more finegrain, less pruning, and fewer main reinforced trunks, and so experience far more of the intricate detail all the way there, and all the way back… it’s not just exhausting in itself, the extra brain power required for all the meta-navigation, only having the intricacies of side roads of working-it-out-now, none of the popular motorways of presumption, but also exhausting from the resultant clashes, and the cassandra syndrome, putting up with a majority who dismiss what you see in preference for their shared reality, regardless of how well it can be seen otherwise… no judgement on who’s right or wrong there, only a consideration of what it’s like, having to live like that. … I can imagine that adds a whole other dimension of burnout to be experienced. And then when having found something that can accommodate you, avails a space where you’re finally allowed the control you need to soothe your fine-grain sensitivities from that different awareness frequency range, gives you that peace, and then that area expands back into the social space, where there’s still a different umwelt clash, each modality appearing stupid to the metrics of the other modality. And in the absence of support nor aptitude in that other’s stubborn paradigm, for your own stubborn paradigm, whether you try to brashly persist in your integrity, or you try to bend to fit, it exhausts, either way. And then melt-downs and rage-attacks and so on can happen. Especially when got so close to it, and identified with it, this new thing you made that availed you such grace, that could save the world, that’s part of you… and then these ungrateful swine come along and threaten it!? Yeah, I can see how such blow-outs could come about.
Especially bad if one has both autism and narcissism. The narcissism would preclude their any will whatsoever to self improvement. They’d have total aversion to accountability. No real introspection, and thus no real regret or apology is possible. Only pretence. If even that. Sometimes the grandiosity slips out of the mask of even the most covert narcissists (and community narcissists, martyr hero narcissists, vulnerable narcissists, etc). Narcissists, especially the true ones, where it has become their personality, and not just a rare incidental moment or rarer trait, in having itpped past the point of introspection, into delusional non-reality in fantasy love of their self image, no longer able to distinguish other people as other people, seeing them only as means to their own ends, and lingering in that, growing more machiavelian, psychopathic, even sadistic and demented. And in a way, a bit of a saving grace for us all, if the autism’s louder than the socially manipulative covert machiavellianisms. Better the devil we can see [because they lack the social aptitude to hide], than the devil we cannot see [because they hide among us, pretending to be the paragons of virtue].
It’s dictator syndrome. There’s always going to be a subset of the population that, after acquiring the faintest whiff of power or authority, seizes it like a drowning man.
@ineedmana@piefed.zip @1984@lemmy.today @rustysharp@programming.dev @iglou@programming.dev @digit@lemmy.wtf
You all made some very good points, and I think the answer lies somewhere at the focal point of all your theories at once. It takes a special kind of mentality to start a project like this, and factors like pressure, emotional baggage and/or instability, narcissism, autism, ADHD all come together, explaining the exceptionally violent breakdowns we’re seeing in the solo dev field.
People who are attracted to computers often have emotional baggage. As a kid, I liked computers myself for that reason. I could escape the real world and have fun. The computer would do exactly what I wanted all the time.
Today, you have all kinds of emotionally unstable people using computers. The trans community are very much into computers as well, for the same reasons I did probably. Because it’s a safe space when you are different.
And yeah, some people will use their tech skills to cause damage. Others to build something useful.
I think you’re projecting a little. People act like this no matter the field. We swim in the tech pool, so we mostly only see the shit floating in our pool.
I can assure you the neighbour’s pool also has their fair share of floaters.
Would make sense, yeah. But different personality traits are attracted to different professions. They just have other issues if it’s more of an extrovert profession.
I’d say everyone has emotional baggage. I don’t see a single person growing up on this planet that can possibly not have emotional baggage.
The difference is about how you handle it. Emotional baggage and emotional instability are NOT connected.
I don’t think there is a particularly higher amount of people in tech that become insane at the first feel of power. They just often have a higher impact. Just look at the corporate world. The amount of power tripping managers is pretty high as well.
Being an open source dev requires thicker skin than you’d think, and even thinker than most people have.
Either you go the community route where you build a loyal user base, listen to feedback, and have q community of contributors as well.
Or you go the ‘I made something cool for me, and its open so anyone can use it too!’
The former is sustainable, the later is not if you domt maintain the idea that its yours first and only.
Once you start half listening to people using your stuff, but believe what you want is right, starts to isolate you.
You think all your users are stupid for their feature requests, because you don’t need it. Plus you alone are in charge. Its your repo.
This ego can continue to inflate to this point. I’ve seen it in both closed and open source (anyone remever when the FSLabs A320 for Microsoft flightsim with malware? Just me?.. Okay).
But this is by no means new.
Do you think it’s skill or just vibe code?
Oh, it’s skill alright. If we look at e.g. Empress who was bonkers insane at the end, she was the only one far and wide who was actually able to crack Denuvos antitamper at that moment in time, a task many believed to be actually impossible.
When you say empress
I think it’s the pressure and the solo developer model
You put something out. It seems to be running. There are bugs. You fix them. There are more bugs (pareto is a PITA). You fix them too. Someone accuses you of sacrificing kittens in the basement. There are ideas for features and more bugs. Some worded in an entitled or just tone-deaf way. Very often you’re the only one working on the project and saying “I accept PRs” somehow became received as a FU. It becomes hard to put the project away for just a week
You are perpetually in “I-fix-it” mode
Not to mention that in order to even start a project like that one needs to have at least a bit of “fuck it, I’ll do it myself” mentalityIt’s a pity that !unfinishedprojects@forum.unfinishedprojects.net wound down. I hoped it might have been a space for projects to find communities. As we see around, it doesn’t require a 10 person team with a kanban board to write something that works. But on the other side of the spectrum I think a project needs some sort of community around it. So even if there’s only one dev, someone else could write the tutorials, less technical parts of docs, help new deployments etc
I’m sorry but that excuse is bullshit.
That is when they have a meltdown and quit the project because demand for bug fixes or new features it too much pressure.
This guy promoted a secret block list of leftists and when discovered, lashed out at his critics with a DDOS script.
Just another thin skinned fascist crying because their scheme was exposed.
The question I responded to was rather a general one. And I think that seeing all dev-related dramas as “that guy was just fascist all along” is similar to saying “all X are thieves” - a simplification that is easy to choose because it addresses our emotions regarding what has happened but not necessarily always the best explanation
That is when they have a meltdown and quit the project because demand for bug fixes or new features it too much pressure.
That requires self-awareness to ask oneself “maybe I need a break?” and I think such decision can be hard to make due to sunken cost fallacy. I think that with the pressure of the pings about bugs and requests etc, it’s easy to get into mindset of “it’s either on or off” with nothing in between. Because 5 bugs solved means only 3 other to go.
And the second option is to dig in harder and in this case “curate the feed. All of it. Whatever that means”I’m not saying that that person did not act out of an agenda. But I can imagine a set of choices that lead to a catastrophic breaking point
Nobody wakes up and decides to be an asshole, it takes a lifetime of poor emotional self regulation.
Ah, but you see “asshole with a lifetime of poor emotional self regulation” is not “scheming fascist with an agenda”. That’s what I’m arguing with in your take
And in the scope of the question, which used plural “devs losing their minds”, I think that it would be a vilification to effectively say “they snap because they are fascists”
There are and will be non-fascist (and IMO also non-asshole) devs who snap. And I think some times it will be because of the feeling of responsibility for something, “either I fix it or it won’t get fixed” situation, lack of social/team/peer safety net, … (in my first comment I tried to rather portray the situation than name all those things because I just can’t name all of them)
I, for one, appreciate the post-mortem you’re doing here.
Calling someone an asshole and a fascist does nothing to show us how we got to this place. Stress and a lack of emotional regulation is a nightmare when you’re building in public.
considering the state of the world… the formation of the list and its secret origins for the explicitly stated purpose of regulating content to change the dynamics of power and silence of dissenting voices of the marginalized is fascist, and so the fascism steak happened before any fallout or pressure and was not a factor in reliving the possible pressure if there was any.
the list and his intentions are far worse then the attempt at DDOS, which even without detecting the code would have been identified almost instantly as if there wasn’t already reason enough to deny requests from tesrsserect. the attempt to explain the shit behavior does not follow the results
Yeah exactly. The dev had been talking for a while about how lemmy wasn’t good for their mental health and they weren’t enjoying it. Even a year ago they made a post saying they quit. But for some reason they came back a couple weeks later. And I guess over the past year it’s gotten worse and worse. I guess we’re witnessing a mental health crisis :(
I just want to point out the poetic beauty of !unfinishedprojects@forum.unfinishedprojects.net becoming an unfinished project.
I wish responses were turned on for that elephant in the room post cause:
Makes reddit clone>gets absolutely anally sore over the users>the users are banned users looking for a reddit alternative > literally can not stand the people they attracted and then decides to shadow ban people>complains about people complaining about censorship when the person knew they’d attract redditors that got banned> gets even bitchier and more Karen-y and starts going after more people and instances.
People called out the dev-mod whatever the fuck the pussy is and then they go even crazier after doing the worst form of damage control I’ve ever seen. Yeah maybe don’t insult your user base if you’re trying to do damage control over shadow banning and then tryin to say it was always able be turned off but not advertised MEANING NO ONE KNEW OF THE EXISTENCE
Then the only reason we found out is because someone had to go a bunch of ways around with coding to figure it out, to figure out what the fuck it even was.
That person got caught, then tried to save face by saying they were trying to keep the peace used strategic italics and tryed to write calm after venting AT us, about us.
I don’t know if they’re a dev or a mod but they did a really shit thing and now they’re being a baby about not knowing how to rectify this.
I tried to carve out a space where those people and other rougher edges were not drowning out niche communities and hobbies and where people who choose to use the platform to harass others were also out of sight, out of mind. Apparently only three people who aren’t me actually want a place that’s not just a circle-jerk of rage and hate. Thus sayeth the mob.
100% that dude was running an op. If you want to “carve out” such a space, that would be an instance for the “non-crazies” where all “those people and other rougher edges were not drowning out niche communities and hobbies” were banned or filtered out. You can block and filter however you want on your instance. In fact that is one of the expectation one has of an instance and how one chooses an instance. I chose blahaj because of how the admins, you know, administrate and curate the instance. Writing a front-end and smuggling in a blocklist via other commits (no commit message ever acknowledged the blocklist as it was being built afaik) and having a central point of truth for what and who gets filtered is not how you “carve out” a space, it’s how you try to shape discourse on an entire platform.
That DDOS attempt is him being extremely mad at db0 for thwarting this before his front-end became the de-facto standard for power-users, especially mods and admins.
.world was on the precipice of doing the right thing and disaccociating themselves from that psychotic shit show, but silently dropped the issue and carried on as usual after wringing their hands for maybe two weeks.
Oh yeah they just silently dropped it, they still owe db0 an apology for throwing all this shit at them right immediately after the nazi allegation got debunked.
I’m one person and have held my fucking ground, mostly with dignity and grace, in the heat of my own shitstorm of trying to disaccociate from the extremist elements of the fediverse.
You already had ragequit the fediverse last year remember? This is just lolcow behavior at this point.
P.S. Rimu, you owe me a beer. No one is talking about the Piefed vote quotas anymore, so you’re welcome.
I sometimes do wonder what goes on in the matrix rooms around the fediverse lol. Seems like someone fell out of favor with even the most liberal of the anti-tankies.
Dignity and grace…
And a fucking DDOS.
Oh yeah they just silently dropped it, they still owe db0 an apology for throwing all this shit at them right immediately after the nazi allegation got debunked.
Still waiting for their update on that saga and the flat world rule adjustments. Any day now
As for those 3 people, how much you wanna bet they’re the admin team of startrek.website? They just sided with Patrick and defederated from dbzer0 while also refusing to share any sort of evidence of any harassment or serious wrongdoing on the dbzer0 community’s part. Instead of just one clown, we’ve got a circus forming.
I wasn’t on the list but I feel included now. Thank you deranged manchild of the fediverse.
Lol, what a loser.
Lemmings going to lemmy…
Just waiting for the mass suicide…
It’s just honestly sad. How do you get lodged so far up your own ass that even the ones you trust and “interacted positively for years” with can’t even demonstrate to you that you’re plain wrong.
I can see that someone wants to feel big, but once he was ousted, we could all tell how small and fragile he is, and he had to make himself even smaller.
This is so pathetic it’s hilarious!
“extremism is a scourge”
Oh! Is that maybe why my network choked to a mere double figure kb crawl after I posted about it [~ and pasting the diatribe for posterity, and so others wouldnt have needed visit that]?
I just presumed it was the dozen distro ISO I was downloading at the time too, in a distroholic relapse.
… I’m not really paying attention to all this drama.
Classy.
Dude should reflect about running into assholes all day.
Fukkin rat bastard
woah there… i’ve known nice rats
I had two cute little ratties.
Yeah no way I believe this without some cute rattie pics as proof mhm (pretty please :3)
(also cw probably because many people are afraid of rat cuties for some reason)
Huh that’s funny, I’ve known chill bastards
The ones you’re referring to are probably rat cuties in this case (unlike the Tesseract dev)
I hope this queerphobe in denial actually leaves for good and doesn’t pull some supervillain comeback.
