Allowing modding is a mistake and will always be exploited to the detriment of the game and its community. Wonderstruck, make it easier on yourself and fair for PS4 players, disallow all mods in the public servers. Private world mods are fine, but keep public servers fair and consistent.
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That isn’t a mod. Mods modify the parts of the game we have easy access to in the assets folder, like the hud, some strings, configs, textures etc. Let’s keep hacking separate from this topic.
The aforementioned rumored hacks, xray, memory reading etc aren’t sactioned by the devs and should be discussed separately.
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I thought it was confirmed that PC players can see time on a beacon - it isn’t protected by the game and there’s no detection-and-prevention system to keep players from doing this.
If there are hacks that are undesirable according to the devs, in my opinion they should say EXPLICITLY what is or isn’t allowed, even if there isn’t yet a system for detecting and booting players who use these hacks. If they don’t make such a statement, I’d argue that they are mods and not hacks.
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I can’t see beacon timers and I’m on PC. Only ones I can see is if I have perms on the beacons.
With modding
With hacks. Which I’m sure if discovered would be a perm ban.
If so then I think the devs should officially post a list of things modding is NOT allowed to do. So everyone knows the difference between mods and hacks. As I pointed out above, if the devs don’t differentiate between the two, there’s no hacking going on, it would all be considered fair-play modding.
Maybe they’ve not taken the time to post because it’s just common sense:
Hack = Accessing information that you wouldn’t normally be able to gain access too through vanilla gameplay
Mods = Organising and reformatting data that you do have access to via vanilla gameplay
Well, that and the fact that when you post a list of ‘allowed’ and ‘not allowed’ things somewhere like this, you then get a thousand posts from people trying to find the edge cases and push the theoretical boundaries, many of whom don’t actually care about the answer and are just trying to prove some point or other.
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I want a mod that can change my beacon flame blue 
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I donno. The mods definitely access info that you couldn’t normally access via normal gameplay, such as making meteors larger. I’d argue that’s a hack not a mod, since it’s equivalent to farscoping zoom mods in shooters (showing target reticles over enemies heads to help you line up shots, using existing game info but with an overlay)
It gives you a competitive PVP advantage. Yes, changing render distance and resolution gives a similar advantage. TBH that’s why I switched from PC to console; I think even render distance and resolution and FPS give an unfair advantage in shooters and I like an even playing field.
On the other hand, showing the number along with the name of a gleam color I’d say is more of a mod.
A mod is any change you can make to the files available on the client (your PC or console). You’re effectively just modifying what you and you alone can see on the screen using data already available to you. If the server is already sending you data on beacon expiry, and there are string in the raws that affect the display of that data, then a mod can show it.
A hack is anything involving changing data sent to or from the server. That may be intercepting the data stream or doing -in-memory modifications. This can have the effect of modifying what the server knows about you, and consequently the game state. Any such exploit is usually a breach of contract and grounds for a one-way cancellation.
You can’t mod a server unless you manage to gain root access over the network and have broken several laws in the process. There are many national police forces who would be interested in talking to you, probably leisurely while you rest for a while at the expense of the state.
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FWIW I don’t have much skin in the game because I’m not a big meteor or gleambow guy. I plan on gleambow hunting pretty much exclusively with friends to help them fill out their own collections, not for benefit to myself.
That said, I think it’s an important point for us to discuss.
I do know there is a way to use a mod to make your third person view farther out and possibly at a slightly better angle, and a mod to fix the HUD so the cardnal directions are not directly on the compass line but right above it instead (making it easier to see what direction is what). I don’t think they are competitive advantages, just nice to haves. Although, honestly I don’t really feel there is such a thing as competitive advantage unless you are creating items of value from nothing.
In my view discussing the technical details of the difference between a mod and a hack is irrelevant, just a distraction.
Boundless may not be PVP, but I would describe it as competitive PVE (obviously can be played as cooperative Pve), as in we are in a shared universe where we are all trying to acquire the same resources, these may regenerate, but it costs time and other resources to collect.
Cosmetic changes are irrelevant.
Changes made to the client by the user, in any way, to make it easier for the person using that client to gain those materials is, in my view, cheating.
Whether this is being able to see beacon timers or being able to remove the grass to see plants easier doesn’t really matter either, it’s the principle of it and not knowing the devs stance on it that matters.
The fact that it’s possible for only part of the playerbase to make those changes is secondary, but still important.
Not condoning this, at the very least, is the same as saying it’s OK for a some of the player base to gain an advantage over the rest.
I would be over the moon if all of this was completely unfounded, and I don’t know if any of the suggested mods/hacks/whatever are accurate, but there as been too many hints/rumours/suggestions for it to just be completely ignored.
If none of what I object to is possible, then all it would take is for a dev to say so, and I’d be a happy camper! 
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I agree. I think knowing the official stance would help.
I hadn’t even thought of hiding the grass to see plants easier. Is that a mod too?
You could also presumably have a mod to make lucent blocks highlighted so you don’t miss them, or make plants twice as big to find them easily.
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Unconfirmed rumour…
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I have a mod that gives me…PANTS!!!
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If anything is a bannable offence…its pants.
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This highly cosmetic change that I made to my client to remove the ugly grass that just happens to also have the side effect of allowing me to see the plants better, is fairly simple to do, and while I obviously cannot speak on behalf of the devs, I can say that in my opinion, their actions of allowing this change to be easy to do, The fact the forums haves a modding section at all, And the inaction of the devs doing anything at all to try to break this change I have been running for 4+ months, tells me that the devs are 100% fine with it at this time.