Lemmy Apps

Cross-posted from "1.4.26 Released [Troll Buster 5000]" by @[email protected] in [email protected]

1.4.26

This release brings bugfixes, ability to upload videos, and new moderation capabilities.

Bugfixes

• Add /reports route that redirects to /moderation so the email links from the API work correctly if you're using Tesseract in place of Lemmy-UI as your default frontend.
• Add moderation button to crosspost items
• Long links in the modlog were not wrapping when reflowing to mobile
• Pause markdown videos/audio when leaving viewport instead of destroying (same as how post videos are now handled).

Bugfixes from 1.4.25

Didn't do a post for 1.4.25, but there were only some minor bugfixes in that release.

• When viewing a user's submissions in the profile modal from a /c/community page, the post meta is hiding the community and treating inCommunity as true.
• Removed code to switch between community icon and user avatars in CommentMeta component since that's actually useless since you can't browse just comments in a community.
• Comment card colors were not reactively updating when user was banned with content removal from site/community
• When removing/hiding a community, the local cache of the community details was not updated to reflect that; had to open the app in a new tab to get a new session in order to fetch it again. The cache now updates on block/unblock/hide/unhide.

New Features

Support for Video Uploads

Less a "new feature" and more a bugfix to canonize a feature I didn't realize already existed and mostly worked lol.

The file upload handler sets the supported MIME types, but it has no way to enforce them (it's more a suggestion to the browser). A user reported that they forced a video upload, and it worked, but the process was buggy. This was a surprise since I'd never actually tested or even thought about supporting video uploads.

So I patched up the upload handler to support video/mp4 and video/webm formats. The previewer will only show the first frame as if it were a static image, but it will no longer glitch out. It will also automatically disable and hide the "Pre-convert to webp" options if a video is detected.

I'm not sure how useful this will be since most instances limit upload file sizes or disallow videos, but if you're on a supported instance, hey, you can do videos now.

Edit/Clarification: You've always been able to link to a video. This addition allows you to upload a video to your instance's pict-rs as you would an image.

New Moderation Capabilities (aka Troll Buster 5000)

Added support for community moderators and admins to issue bulk community bans/unbans. For several releases now, Tesseract has had the ability for mods (or admins) to directly ban/unban a user from a community (Community Modal -> Ban/Unban User -> Enter username -> Ban/Unban).

Now, there's an extra option to allow issuing either action in bulk for every community you moderate.

Highly useful if a known troll is roaming about (you probably already know which one I'm talking about) and you want to quickly ban them from all of the communities you moderate (whether they've posted there or not).

I'm all about being proactive, so if a known troll is making rounds, I see no reason for them to have to make a mess first when I can simply prevent the mess (or further messes).

Example: You're scrolling /all and see some vile, racist troll posts from a brand new account. Rather than having to wait on an admin to ban them or waiting for them to hit your communities before you can do anything about it, you can simply click their username and [pre] ban them from everything you moderate. Easy peazy.

Basically, every time "that guy" goes on a trolling spree, Tesseract's mod tools adapt and get more powerful. A less polished version of this feature has been in my "private" build for a while now, but since "that guy" shows no signs of buggering off, I figured it was time to mainline it and give everyone else the same defensive capabilities I've thus far hoarded for myself.

Note: Please do not use this feature as an "I really don't like this person" button. In the wrong hands it's got high potential for abuse, I admit, but the benefits it offers outweigh the risks of a few bad mods going on a power trip.

This is a powerful feature. Please use it responsibly.

If time passes and it seems like I've handed loaded guns to a bunch of toddlers, I'll absolutely yank this feature and move it back to my private build.

Modes of Operation

It works a little differently depending on where it's invoked and whether you're a moderator and/or an admin.

In all cases, the expiration date, reason, and whether to remove content applies to all communities (i.e. the API is called for the same user with the same options and loops through the list of communities you moderate).

User Profile Modal

New option in the user profile modal to ban/unban that user from all of your moderated communities. Available to Mods + Admins

This button is also available in the Moderation Modal as well as the quick actions on the moderation reports.

Ban Instance Modal (Admins) With Option to Ban from all Remote Communities They May Moderate

For admins, there's a new option in the "Ban User..." form to "Ban All Remote Communities". Will issue community bans for all remote communities you may be moderating in addition to the instance ban for your home instance. The "remote" filter is to avoid spamming the modlog in case you're an admin of a large instance (technically you moderate all local communities you're subscribed to).

Community Profile Modal:
The "Ban/Unban" option has been extended to allow optionally banning/unbanning the supplied user from all the communities you moderate. Available to Mods and Admins.

Here, the user is not pre-populated and you can enter the username in any of the following formats:

• Actor ID: https://instance.xyz/u/username
• @ Format: @[email protected]
• Lemmyverse Link: https://lemmyverse.link/u/[email protected]

While "Ban" is the action shown in the screenshots, these work in reverse as well to unban them from all. The only thing that's not automated is restoring content if "remove content" was selected during the initial ban. I'm working on that, but there's no clean way to do it without restoring everything, even things that were removed prior to the ban action. As always (since this is the case for all UIs with mod tools), take care when selecting "Remove content" when issuing bans.

Note for admins: Since you technically moderate all communities on your instance, it will only issue bans for communities on your instance that you are subscribed to. The preferred flow for admins is to just instance ban them and select the option to "Ban All Remote Communities" if needed/applicable. Care should also be taken to not select that if they violate a local instance rule but not a remote community/instance rule.

Get Tesseract

Docker

• ghcr.io/asimons04/tesseract:1.4.26
• ghcr.io/asimons04/tesseract:v1.4.26
• ghcr.io/asimons04/tesseract:latest

Github: https://github.com/asimons04/tesseract

Hosted Instance https://tesseract.dubvee.org