this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
623 points (95.9% liked)

Fediverse

28561 readers
381 users here now

A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to [email protected]!

Rules

Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Whoever is in charge of that instance, STOP.

It's an instance that crossposts posts from Reddit, except it also makes a new user for each Reddit account it came from. So if /u/hello123 made a post, it makes that post under a new account called hello123. That makes it impossible to block posting bots.

Not only that, it makes posts look like they're posted by real people, with many question and text posts being copied as well. I was very confused as to what these posts were until I realized they're crossposts.

Examples:

https://alien.top/post/263029

https://lemm.ee/u/[email protected]

https://lemm.ee/u/[email protected]

https://lemm.ee/u/[email protected]

I strongly believe Lemmy isn't the place for mirroring content from other websites. You can host your own alternate Reddit frontend like LibReddit, there's no reason to spam the posts to everyone using Lemmy just because 5 people asked for it. Not to mention there are already enough instances mirroring posts, this is getting obnoxious.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Agreed. I really dislike the Reddit spam, but I'll give credit to whoever made it for trying. The creator's intentions were noble, like trying to recreate how facebook got big, by making people feel not disconnected from MySpace.

However the fact it's only one way integration (and the wrong direction), it's a resource headache for all federating instances for little genuine interaction, it's difficult to block due to being from many users (until the 0.19 instance blocking feature arrives) is all very problematic.

It singlehandedly makes Lemmy feel like a place devoid of any real community from the outside, and just a Reddit mirror. I'm happy with how I have things set up for myself, but looking at some instance front pages anonymously I see significantly more spam, people won't want to sign up for that.

Bots and even Reddit reposter bots have a place -- @reddit_[email protected] is one I am very glad to have to not miss any sales. We still need to have standards so that limited volunteer and donation-based resources are used effectively.

Bots need to:

  • Have a targeted and specific purpose
  • Be easy to block for anyone not interested
  • Be limited in how many posts it can make in an hour.
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

instead of the majority of users having to create blocks (multiple opt-outs) couldn't this be set up so users that want bot posts sign up or opt-in somehow?

[–] transientpunk 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You can already toggle a setting that hides all bot accounts/content. But that's rather heavy handed and not very nuanced.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago

It's better than banning instances wholesale. Like Lemmit.online, alien.top etc.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Yeah I would like these things to be opt-in, but such a feature is not implemented yet. In Mastodon you follow people that you want to hear a lot from, but Lemmy works differently by design that you can't follow people.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

difficult to block

Can't you just block the communities? There are only a few

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Lemmit.online has a bunch of communities, but at least you can curtail that by just blocking one bot user.

Have a look at nba.space, style.land, gearhead.town, hi-fi.community, poweruser.forum, on and on and on. Every post to all the communities on there is an alien.top bot with some Reddit username. How do you block that from the user or community level?

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think Lemmy 0.19 instance blocking will make it easier but it's still 18 instances. From the communities there appears to be about a dozen communities per instance. you'd need to go and visit each one and block them, or just wait for the latest spam from one of them to appear and block them, more than 100 times.

The point being, that even if they are useful, bot accounts and automated Reddit reposts flooding people's "All" feeds reduces the quality of the Fediverse network, and leaving it up to users to go through an opt-out process that's harder than opting out of individual cookie vendors is not conducive to a healthy online community.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I think Lemmy 0.19 instance blocking will make it easier but it’s still 18 instances. From the communities there appears to be about a dozen communities per instance. you’d need to go and visit each one and block them, or just wait for the latest spam from one of them to appear and block them, more than 100 times.

Good point, I thought there were less because it's always the same that come up. Wouldn't Lemmy 0.19 allow to block them all by blocking alien.top, as all bots are from that instance?

The point being, that even if they are useful, bot accounts and automated Reddit reposts flooding people’s “All” feeds reduces the quality of the Fediverse network, and leaving it up to users to go through an opt-out process that’s harder than opting out of individual cookie vendors is not conducive to a healthy online community.

That's valid, but on the other hand, if it were to actually work and bring people to Lemmy, then it would be positive for the community.

I find the Fediverser communities more useful than something like Lemmit for instance, because Lemmit doesn't add the comments, which are usually why people are on Reddit

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There are only a few communities (650+ that I know of) dedicated to mirroring reddit content to the Lemmyverse. This is part of a bigger problem, not just this specific user's system.

If bots started spamming [email protected] I don't agree that the best course of action would be for users to block the community.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago

I was talking specifically about the ones in Fediverser. In this case, it's quite simple to block the communities.

If bots started spamming [email protected] I don’t agree that the best course of action would be for users to block the community.

That's indeed another issue, and I agree with you that bots shouldn't be able to spam there.