He added a blocklist. A self-host still trusts his key.

You people will never, ever, ever, ever, ever make me stop. I just want you to know that. You will continue to be terrorized by the fact I wake up every morning and do awesome and heroic things until the end of time. 😂

Reddit account gleasonator13, 24 October 2026, 21:07:09 UTC. Comment 19rlmplyiowkj, on "A bit concerned about Armada." The words are the thread's Atom feed, fetched 25 October 2026. The feed's updated time is 24 October 2026, 23:59:28 UTC.

That is his reply in the thread. At 19:54 UTC the same account wrote that he had put censorship in the app. The blocklist he is describing shipped in Armada Stack 0.8.0 on 20 October. A default self-host keeps his moderation key on the list: the test in env.rs expects both keys.

The thread

The quotes below are that same Atom feed: 115 entries, updated 24 October 2026, 23:59:28 UTC, fetched 25 October 2026. old.reddit.com returned a login page for the same .rss path on 24 October. The feed has no parent field, so a time and a permalink are the citation. Each comment below links to the HTML permalink.

u/Any_Illustrator360 posted "A bit concerned about Armada." at 19:03:38 UTC. The post says the app can now ban a community, take it off discovery, and refuse a private join. It says users had been told the protocol cannot see or moderate anything, and it asks why that change was a footnote in an update log. An edit in the same post says the subject is the missing disclosure. At 21:26:39 UTC the same account wrote, in 19rlnkx9nieht, "I had misunderstood the situation," and that the material had not been posted in the Soapbox channel that week.

The post also tells anyone who had been on the Team Soapbox server to clear the app cache, and it gives a folder to delete. u/henk717 wrote on 8 October, in pejs1n7, "I am not involved with Armada itself otherwise, part of soapbox, etc." That limit is on Who ships it. In this thread, 19rlkpl2c2tb7 at 20:22:17 UTC says being in the room does not put a file on a device unless the client rendered it, that the people who had the room open were a handful, and that he had already told those people to clear the cache. Which devices stored a file is the part those two comments disagree on.

gleasonator13 is the username on the 8 October rebuttal post and the 12 October self-host post. Those two posts are checked on the rebuttal and the stack. This thread's Atom feed does not include a flair. The feed lists five comments from that username.

What he wrote

At 19:54:08 UTC, 19rljge4y50pt:

Oh no! Drama about Armada!? Woah anyway, someone reported a group distributing CSAM on Armada to me over email, and they included an invite link. An invite link includes a decryption key. The decryption key is the only way it's possible for me to see what anyone is doing on Armada, and without that report I wouldn't have been able to know. So I decrypted just enough of the room to confirm this was a highly organized/sophisticated CSAM distribution group with rooms titled "18+", "12-17" and "12-". So yeah, I added censorship into Armada at the app level because what the fuck do you expect me to do?? Then I updated Armada Stack to ignore our moderation key and use your own, so if you self-host you can make moderation choices. Feel free: https://soapbox.pub/blog/how-to-self-host-armada It's not perfect. But I have to say CSAM is the line, where I'm willing to compromise my values about decentralization. If you don't like it, self-host. Very simple.

At 20:44:39 UTC, 19rllpi0mqy1x:

I posted about it publicly in multiple places. What do you want me to do, send you a handwritten letter? Dear Any Illustrator, I am writing to inform you that child porn was found on Armada... we were forced to make a difficult choice. Thank you for your continued support and understanding. With love, Alex

At 20:48:50 UTC, 19rllw7gexko2: "Touch grass"

At 20:53:40 UTC, 19rlm3zbe52at:

Are you even in this room? I've tried to find you before. At a certain point I don't have the energy. I'm not going to defend myself against your walls of text.

The image URL in that comment is this file on blossom.ditto.pub. Checked 24 October 2026, the picture is Soapbox Community, channel #general. The account on the message is labeled Alex Gleason, Owner. The message reads: "Who is Any_Illustrator360 on Reddit? Is that one of you?" The client marks it "1mo." A line under it reads "Thank you, whoever you are." The comment is him showing that he asked the room to name the Reddit account.

At 21:07:09 UTC, 19rlmplyiowkj is the comment quoted at the top of this page.

The invite is a key. The product is wider than Concord.

He wrote that the report came by email and included an invite link, and that the link is a decryption key. INSTALL.md lines 214-216, in the 0.8.0 tree, say the same thing about Concord: "Communities are end-to-end encrypted, so the relay can't see what they hold. But if you're shown a community's invite link and don't want to host it, give the link to armada ban." src/ban.rs lines 4-11: the link "opens the Community's bundle, whose keys give every address the Community publishes at in its current epoch: its Control Plane, its Guestbook, each Channel's Chat Plane." The commit that added that reader is 5c218f9c4be0, 17 October 2026, 23:53:00 UTC: "Concord, just enough to open an invite link and read a Community's planes." His "decrypted just enough of the room to confirm" is his account of this report. The tool is written to read the community's planes.

"The decryption key is the only way it's possible for me to see what anyone is doing on Armada" is a sentence about the whole product. It matches Concord chat, which a passive relay stores as a sealed event (kind 1059, policy.rs line 21). Fain's Buzz post, 22 July 2026, says a Buzz workspace is one relay. The voice comment in the client, quoted on the client, is "no media E2EE (relay-trusted SFU)." The operator of that relay can read the room. The stack relay's accept list starts with kind 0 and kind 3 (policy.rs lines 36-38): the profile and the follow list. env.rs line 40 still adds relay.ditto.pub and relay.dreamith.to. soapbox.pub, fetched 25 October 2026, says "real events, streaming live from relays we operate" and prints a user count for relay.ditto.pub. The 8 October policy, quoted on the rebuttal, names that relay as operated by Soapbox.

"I posted about it publicly in multiple places" is the 20:44 comment. The 19:54 comment links the self-host guide. Fetched 25 October 2026, that page is dated 12 October 2026, and the blog index still lists it as the newest Armada post. The 0.7.0 and 0.8.0 notes describe armada ban and the blocklist. The email, the invite, and the room titles are in the 19:54 comment. The changelog names armada ban and the blocklist.

The app will not open the community

Changelog 0.8.0, commit 7a6205ace7, 20 October 2026, 19:56:56 UTC, the newest commit on the GitHub mirror when this page was checked:

armada ban puts the community on this server's blocklist, so the app served here won't open or join it, and armada unban lifts it. Entries are signed with a moderation key armada makes on first start; the relay takes them from that key alone, and the app is pointed at it through BLOCKLIST_AUTHORS, beside Soapbox's.

INSTALL.md lines 231-237: the app "won't open or join it, even from its other relays, and drops it from the sidebars of members who already have it." "The app here honours entries from that key and from Soapbox's; set BLOCKLIST_AUTHORS under [web.env] to change that." src/moderation.rs lines 4-7 say the same rule: Armada won't open a community whose newest entry by a key it trusts says blocked, and this armada names its own key beside Soapbox's.

The client served at armada.buzz, fetched 25 October 2026, still has <meta name="build" content="2026-10-24 01:47:10Z">. The check is in assets/storeQuery-CTEjZVNF.js: de("BLOCKLIST_AUTHORS") ?? "0ddf6c35f61eb040316d01f68ded4d38b579c17423d26715fd489105a981910a". de is function i in platform-r630diHz.js. It returns window.ENV[name] when that value is a string. Otherwise it returns a fallback object whose only keys are BRIDGE_PORTAL_URL and KLIPY_API_KEY. /_npanel/env.js, fetched the same day, is self.ENV = {"BRIDGE_PORTAL_URL":"https://bridge.armada.buzz"}; BLOCKLIST_AUTHORS is absent from that script and from the fallback object, so this build uses the pubkey after ??. An entry counts when it is kind 37307, scope community, version 1, status blocked or lifted, and signed by one of those authors. The newest created_at wins. Status blocked is the ban. The screen for that state, in CommunityBlocked-C2LFE1vf.js, says "This community is unavailable in Armada."

src/web/env.rs lines 44-46 name that same pubkey "Soapbox's moderation key, from src/lib/blocklist.ts." main.rs lines 173-174 load or create the server's own moderation key and call with_moderator. The doc comment on that function, lines 66-70, is "Have the web app take blocklist entries by the moderation key with this pubkey, as well as Soapbox's." The unit test adds_its_moderation_key_to_soapboxs expects:

BLOCKLIST_AUTHORS = ab,0ddf6c35f61eb040316d01f68ded4d38b579c17423d26715fd489105a981910a

ClientEnv::values lines 90-93 copy the [web.env] map onto that joined list, so a BLOCKLIST_AUTHORS string in the config is the list the app receives. His sentence was "I updated Armada Stack to ignore our moderation key and use your own." The release he is pointing at puts the server's key on the list and leaves Soapbox's key beside it. Dropping his key is the edit the install guide names. u/henk717's 19rlkiqmpycit, 20:18:01 UTC, describes the patch as a self-host that ignores Soapbox's list. The test is the list.

The relay is narrower than the app. src/relay/policy.rs line 33 sets BLOCKLIST to 37307. Line 226 refuses anyone else's entry: "blocked: only this armada's moderation key may publish blocklist entries." The app still asks its relays for entries from every author it trusts. A default RELAYS list still includes relay.ditto.pub and relay.dreamith.to. The 14 October kind list on the stack predates 37307.

What the command deletes

He described censorship at the app level. armada ban, since 0.7.0, does more on the server that runs it. ban.rs lines 4-11 and INSTALL.md lines 223-228: the link's keys identify the community's current control plane, guestbook, channels, and other invite links. The command bans those keys, deletes what they published on this server, deletes Discover posts that share the links, and deletes the Blossom blobs the icon, the banner, and the messages point at when those authors uploaded them here. --members, in the 0.8.0 notes and INSTALL.md lines 243-250, bans everyone in the community by their own keys, "from posting anything on this server, not just to the community," and deletes what they published and uploaded here, short of a blob someone else also uploaded. People the community has already banned are left off that list. Lines 239-241: epochs older than the link can reach stay, "since nothing in the link derives the old ones." Lines 255-258: armada unban lifts the ban and the blocklist entry. "What was deleted stays deleted."

The comments say he decrypted enough to confirm the report and that he added the app blocklist. The email and the command flags are absent from the thread.

M. K. Fain's comparison essay, 30 July 2026, already in the claims table, says "a platform-wide ban is technically impossible" because "there is no company account to disable," and that "nobody can erase you from every community at once or delete a community out from under its members." The key still holds: this command does not delete a key the company did not issue. One server can refuse the events and delete its copy. The new piece is the app. INSTALL.md says the app will not open or join the community "even from its other relays." That refusal travels with the client, which is the censorship he said he added.

The sentences, side by side

What he says Where Record
"I updated Armada Stack to ignore our moderation key and use your own." 19rljge4y50pt, 24 October, 19:54 UTC. 0.8.0 points the app at this server's key and Soapbox's key. The test expects both. INSTALL.md says to set BLOCKLIST_AUTHORS to change that. The hosted build, with no such setting in env.js, uses his key alone.
"The decryption key is the only way it's possible for me to see what anyone is doing on Armada." Same comment. Matches Concord: ban.rs opens the invite. Buzz is one relay the operator can read. Kind 0 and kind 3 are on the accept list.
"I added censorship into Armada at the app level." Same comment. storeQuery-CTEjZVNF.js hides a community whose newest trusted blocklist entry says blocked. CommunityBlocked-C2LFE1vf.js says "This community is unavailable in Armada." INSTALL.md says the app will not open or join it, even from its other relays.
"I posted about it publicly in multiple places." 19rllpi0mqy1x, 20:44 UTC. The comment then offers a mock letter. Fetched 25 October 2026, the blog index still lists the 12 October self-host guide as the newest Armada post. The changelog describes the command. The email and the room titles are in the 19:54 comment.
"Nobody can switch it off. Not Discord. Not a slop cannon. Not us." armadaexposed.exposed, fetched 25 October 2026. Checked on the rebuttal. The switch is the blocklist in the client he ships. Self-host is the exit he named on 24 October, and a default self-host still trusts the same key. See the first row.

The misinformation charge

At 23:56:52 UTC, u/chabalatabala posted 19rlua4u5wp9d:

I mean i'm only arguing that you post misinformation. I don't care about Alex other than as an example when anti-logic is used. He's a stranger that has a lot of different views to me.

The feed names no parent for that comment. The same account had already pasted two model writeups of the thread: 19rltax73g3j9 at 23:34:56 UTC, and 19rltcg6401r6 at 23:35:53 UTC. The second says the self-host update lets users "bypass the official ban lists entirely," calls that "a feature explicitly documented in a public blog post," and says the developer "posted about it publicly in multiple places and explicitly detailed the moderation tools in the app logs."

The ban-list sentence describes the edit in INSTALL.md. A default self-host joins its own key to Soapbox's key. The string the test expects is both. Setting BLOCKLIST_AUTHORS under [web.env] replaces that string. That setting is how an operator drops Soapbox's key.

The blog sentence points at the self-host guide. Fetched 25 October 2026, how-to-self-host-armada is dated 12 October 2026. The words blocklist, BLOCKLIST, and "moderation key" are absent. The 19:54 comment is the comment that links that URL. The blocklist sentences are in the changelog and in INSTALL.md. "I posted about it publicly in multiple places" remains his sentence in 19rllpi0mqy1x. The changelog describes the command. The email and the room titles are in the 19:54 comment.

The same writeup says the developers cannot see private rooms, and that the emailed invite was the key. That matches Concord and armada ban, quoted above. Kind 0 and kind 3 are on the relay's accept list. Buzz is a relay the operator can read. The writeup calls him the lead developer. The client-repo author count, checked 7 October 2026, is on Who ships it.

The writeup also marks the original post's cache sentence false. The original post and 19rlkpl2c2tb7 disagree about which devices stored a file. Both comments are linked above. This page does not count the devices.

Receipts

Every quote on this page is one of these. The code lines are commit 7a6205ace7 unless a link says otherwise. The same list is on Sources.