Someone made a frontend for Lemmy called Tesseract. This person added a default-on non-comitted list of users, communities, and instances that frontend would block regardless of your own instance or account settings (unless you were a mod or admin). This was done under the guise of wanting a “normal” experience for new users. This was never disclosed to users who would use the frontend.

Meanwhile, the blocklist (which is hosted separately and downloaded by the app when used to avoid instances removing the blocklist for their copy of the frontend) reads like a personal-grievance diary. A lot of people are rightfully really upset that this was done and not disclosed. The creator doubled down and is continuing to add people to the list and showing their whole ass to everyone.