PyLova: agreed, sadly.

Disinformation: yes, exactly like MAGA. They aren’t bad people, just disinformed - as in actively utilized as tools to achieve the objectives of the one(s) pulling the strings. Arguably we should all resist such, but as you say the barriers against such are high, and I think we can agree that some people are simply too preoccupied with the basics of living to have either the time or inclination to become properly informed. One implication then being that it is the very foundational principle of democracy itself that works against its own demise: when unedumacashiated people are allowed to vote, chaos is not nearly as likely to result (from such “random” inputs) as the system being taken over by a malicious actor who may then use it for their own nefarious purposes.

But even so, that explanation neither absolves people of their failures in the absolute necessity to remain curious, nor absolves us of our own failure when we allow the system to propagate, and in fact help it along.

According to this post PieFed.zip uses the same blocking system as Lemmy.zip for new joiners. See also this comment from the admin. Like programming.dev, the .zip instances (like all other instances) can also block particular communities - which unfortunately neither the Lemmy nor PieFed UI offers a mechanism to expose that list publicly to the users, making the transparency of this issue rather horrible, where I have to link to messages from the admins but there is no webpage that will simply show an updated status - like does exist for instance federation vs. defederation. The tools here, again both Lemmy and PieFed, are abysmal at such transparency topics.

This is the kind of stuff that I would love to see added - to Lemmy, to PieFed, or to PyLova - and I feel like the increased transparency would help entice new joiners.