this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023

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[Discussion] alien.top bots (self.agora)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by InEnduringGrowStrong to c/agora

38 comments fedilink hide all child comments

English message:

As some of you may have noticed, there's an instance with 1.1M bots reposting reddit posts and comments accross communities in several other instances.

I expect there are multiple valid opinions on the subject and this thread is meant to get a feeling of everyone's opinion on the situation.

You might also want to read lemmy.ca's discussion on that here which is a pretty decent thread about the subject.

Things that I think need to be pointed out:

alien.top currently has 1.1M bots, only 6 of those are weekly users logging in.
together they've made 1.59M comments accross a multitude of communities in other instances.
That project claims to be trying to get reddit users to switch to lemmy.
They have a portal to allow reddit users to claim and take over their bot persona.
alien.top has a single local community, the bots all post on different instances with copies of different subreddits.

I don't have an exhaustive list of such communities, I haven't found an official one. I'll post a fewfrom my personal blocklist in a comment below.

And a note on the upcoming 0.19 release:

the new user-level instance block feature will block all the communities of the blocked instances, but will not block these users' posts or comments if they are done on another instance's community.

My opinion isn't any more valid then anyone else's so I'll put it in a comment below.

Our users' input is welcomed.

What do you, dear users of sh.itjust.works, think about federation with them?

Thanks

Message français:

Comme certains d'entre vous l'ont peut-être remarqué, il y a une instance peuplée de 1,1M de bots qui copient ees posts et commentaires Reddit dans plein de communautés sur plusieurs autres instances.

Il y a plusieurs opinions sur le sujet et ce fil de discussion vise à prendre le pouls de l'opinion générale sur la situation.

Je vous suggères de lire la discussion chez lemmy.ca à ce sujet ici, discussion intéressante.

Quelques points qui, selon moi, doivent être soulignés :

alien.top compte actuellement 1,1 million de robots, dont seulement 6 sont des utilisateurs hebdomadaires qui se login.
collectivement, ils ont déjà fait 1,59 million de commentaires dans une multitude de communautés dans différentes instances.
Ce projet proclame essayer de convertir des utilisateurs de Reddit à passer à Lemmy.
Il existe un portail pour permettre aux utilisateurs de Reddit de prendre contrôle de leur version bot.
alien.top a une seule communauté locale, les bots publient tous sur différentes instances, des copies de différents subreddits.

Je n'ai pas de liste exhaustive de ces communautés, à première vue, je n'en trouve pas une liste officielle. Je mettrai dans un commentaire ci-dessous quelques communautés que j'ai bloqué au niveau personnel.

Pour finir, une note sur la version 0.19 de lemmy qui s'en vient :

La nouvelle fonctionnalité pour bloquer une instance au niveau d'un uutilisateur bloquera toutes les communautés d'une instance bloquée, mais ne bloquera pas les publications ou les commentaires de ces utilisateurs s'ils sont publiés dans une communauté d'une autre instance.

Mon opinion n'est pas meilleur qu'une autre et je mettrai plutôt dans un commentaire ci-bas.

Les commentaires de nos utilisateurs sont les bienvenus.

Que pensez-vous, cher utilisateurs de sh.itjust.works de la fédération avec eux?

Merci

all 40 comments

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[–] InEnduringGrowStrong 13 points 11 months ago (3 children)

The following is just my opinion.

First, my issues with this as a user.

The project claims to try to achieve mostly 2 things:

Get redditors to switch
Kick-start communities/subreddits

Personally, I don't see how having a copy of your content history really helps in getting a reddit user to switch.

On kick-starting communities with content, this is debatable.

Personally, I think it instead creates somewhat of an illusion of content, a firehose of unmoderated reddit content that a lemmy user can't really engage with because the 1M users aren't here, not really, they're on reddit. You could already feel like a ghost by visiting a reddit thread a few hours old, this just ensures no-one of your interactions do anything.
Plenty of those are meant to be a discussion, in this case, one which you can't be part of.
If I wanted to lurk reddit without any way to interact with them, I'd just go to reddit or use one of the several front-ends like LibReddit.

The communities themselves are just bots talking to each other. An echo of a conversion that's happening on reddit, with the odd lemmy not realizing they're commenting into the void of reddit bots. I know I've done just that a few times before realizing the OP or commenter would never get it.

It is also somewhat difficult to deal with as a user, because even if you block alien.top in 0.19, it won't do anything. You'd still have to stay on top of the new instances that pop-up and keep blocking the new ones.

Now, my issues with this as an admin:

This firehose is unmoderated and it is unrealistic to expect any lemmy instance to take on moderation for all the spam and gavage that inevitably comes along with it. It is openly breaking reddit ToS.
Don't get me wrong, I have no lost love for reddit, but such flagrant infringement is bound to attract unwanted legal attention sooner or later. While "Reddit can suck it" is a vibe I don't disagree with, I'd still rather not deal with their lawyers for hosting stolen content.

The author's comments are also somewhat problematic in that regard, they're claiming to be "at war with reddit", have publicly flaunted breaking reddit ToS, not caring for either their permission nor the consequences. Even if they do implement a 2-way bridge with reddit, they'll be insta-banned by reddit.

Seems more like a liability than a positive.

All this for 6 active users that have maybe switched.

I'd be inclined to block them at the instance level.

[–] Jumuta 8 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I think the best idea is to just defederate from them for the meantime. They haven't asked us permission to bridge our communities or post their content in our communities and are actively destroying what makes Lemmy nice. Even if the bidirectional bridges end up working, lemmy would be the second class way of seeing that content, and would make Lemmy seem cheap, slow, old, etc compared to Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

On a personal level

They have a portal to allow reddit users to claim and take over their bot persona.

So they're just going to impersonate me somewhere else, and then I can supposedly 'apply' to get the faked account back? And if I don't ask for that account, what happens when the botmaster gets bored? Do they just abandon their network, or do they view it as an asset that they put effort into and deserve to profit from - astroturfing, selling accounts, spamming products, running troll farms, etc?

[–] Cheradenine 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I can't find it now, but there was a long post on blahaj about it too.

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong 3 points 11 months ago

I suspect that's a discussion most instances will end up having eventually.

[–] nyahlathotep 12 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

A couple of thoughts:

More community interaction is nice, but this is like the ghost of community interaction.
I don't really think the stated goal of getting lots of people on Reddit to move over is a great idea. I don't have a problem with people from Reddit coming (I came from Reddit back in June), but slow organic growth is the better way to go in my opinion, rather than trying to force it.
What it really comes down to is that it's spam. It might have been ok if there were an easy way to block it, or even if the coming update's instance level blocking would work for it, but it won't.

For some more personal opinions:

I'm kinda sick of hearing about Reddit. I wish those of us who've joined because of it would move on.
I don't know the specific details so I may be wrong, but from what I understand this is all the work of one guy. I don't like the idea of one person unilaterally deciding to do something that could end up heavily influencing the entire platform.

I'd vote to defederate.

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong 5 points 11 months ago

Agreed.
Well put and certainly more succinct than what I wrote.

[–] Gullible 8 points 11 months ago

1.1M bots

Jesus shit in my fuck. That’s too much! Bots shouldn’t be commenting except to facilitate human interaction, anyway. Stealing the posts from /r/topofreddit sounds fine, but there is absolutely no need to rehost all of Reddit on Lemmy.

[–] threelonmusketeers 7 points 11 months ago

I'd vote to defederate as well. I'm all for getting Reddit users to switch to Lemmy, but I don't think that alien.top's strategy is a good one.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

As someone with an account on that instance, I picked it because it was easy to sign up coming from reddit, and it has good federation.

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

To be fair I don't really have a problem with the 6 of you who are active users, but these threads are just spam.

https://sh.itjust.works/post/10364305 140 bot comments, I might as well chat with an LLM.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Lmao Jesus. Maybe it's just because I transferred it from my banned reddit account that I don't see any of that stuff normally

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I mean you can always make an account here lol

We have buff sailor moon which is better company than bots?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Tbh you guys have defederated too much for my personal taste in instances, and just having a bunch of separate accounts seems like it'd be annoying

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If I may... which blocked instance from your personal tastes would be missing here?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's the principle of it mostly.

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The current block list has only instances full of bot spam, pedophilia and lolicon. Is that principled or tasteful?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I get that you guys have legal issues and such to worry over, being located in Canada and all, but where I'm at, but where I'm at, loli is considered completely legal free expression, and the pedo servers seem to just be weird discussion stuff and not porn so idgaf, I can just block on my end. And same regarding spam. I can block and ignore it on my own end.

One of the big reasons I decided to switch to federated social media is because I was sick of having what I see controlled by someone else, especially big media companies. You guys are nowhere near as bad a reddit, and there's a few communities I like on your instance, but ultimately it doesn't seem like where I want to make my account.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Just keep making accounts on various instances until you can find one that maintains a balance of not being autocratic ban-happy limp-wrist pearl-clutchers and also not full of tankie/pedo/gun-grabber/MAGA nutjobs.

[–] imaqtpie 3 points 11 months ago

impossible challenge

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Same.

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Quelques communautés...
A few of them..

[–] clay_pidgin 4 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Wait they have several instances going at once? Why?

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong 4 points 11 months ago

The generous assumption would be to spread the load.
The less generous assumption would be to mitigate blocks.

Anyway, I think they've paused it for the moment.
Whether they manage to deliver their 2-way bridge is a bit moot, as soon as they do that reddit will ban and sue them (and possibly us and other instances on which that content is available).

There's a reason alternative front-ends like libreddit don't store much and instead fetch it from reddit.
Archive sites would fall under fair use.
This doesn't.

Stealing users from reddit? Sure.
Stealing their content? No.
The fediverse grows (or not) by being more interesting.
Floods of reddit bot content isn't.

[–] clueIess_stoner 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Communick owner tries to makes money by selling instances so that is a way to advertise I guess.

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong 1 points 11 months ago

Yea I totally forgot about their hosting offering. yikes.

[–] atzanteol 3 points 11 months ago

This isnpary of what leads me to believe their motives are more malicious than well-meaning.

If they created "redditmirror.ml" or something and just put everything there that would be one thing.

But also - they're actively copying user-created content and impersonating the users?

Fuck 'em I say.

[–] captain_aggravated 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I see very little value in mirroring Reddit on Lemmy.

As a link aggregator, I think we're doing fine. We seem to have no shortage of our own "Headline linking to a paywalled article no one reads" thank you very much.

As a discussion board, I think most folks will see a Reddit mirror and go "Well that's pointless to engage with" and ignore it.

It doesn't really help us out here, and I don't think it makes Lemmy more attractive to Redditors, who probably haven't noticed and might be a little alarmed at the identity theft aspect.

I'm also curious as to the load this kind of behavior puts on the rest of the Fediverse. How much bandwidth, local storage etc. of sh.itjust.works does it take to spam the All Active feed with pages of Reddit mirrors?

Aeons ago I drafted a defederation policy, which I don't think was ever officially ratified. I'm glad to say it hasn't come up a lot. "operated for the purpose of hosting bot accounts for the purposes of spam, scams, denial-of-service attacks, or other traffic generally unwelcome or disruptive to the Fediverse." was number one on my list of reasons to defed from an instance.

I would call the behavior of alien.top to be spam, generally unwelcome or disruptive.

If they are keeping posts within their own instance, open the poll and I'd vote to defederate. If they have bots that are posting spam here, I actively petition to defederate.

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong 1 points 11 months ago

The author paused their bots soon after this post was made, although probably not because of this post but likely the general backlash, not just from here.
Last I checked, they were still very much in a "no it's the kids who are wrong" mindset.

My main problem with this is it's actually a net negative for user engagement.
Like you said, why would anyone interact with a pool of bots?

While much less egregious, sometimes even useful, even the normal bots who post stuff from an RSS feed can get a little tiring. At least when someone posts something, there's at least this one person who's likely willing have a discussion about it, whereas with bots it's far from guaranteed.

I too would be curious about the resource use coming from them, maybe if/when we purge them we can compare.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Lemmy sucks more and more everyday.

It's sucking fast. I've been blocking so much lately. Like ...just pointless shit. Usually in communities that are irrelevant to the post.

Is it possible to block instances as a regular user?

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It will be in 0.19, but it will only block communities on that instance, not their users.

[–] MomoTimeToDie 1 points 11 months ago (2 children)

The bots only post in their own communities, and not just random ones, no? It doesn't really seem like an issue if so. Block those instances, and then you won't interact with them at all?

[–] clay_pidgin 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I think that's right. The alien.top bots are only posting on their own communities, which you won't see if you block the instance in 0.19 or in your client. (many have had instance blocking for a while - I use Connect for Lemmy.)

[–] imaqtpie 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Not exactly. He decided to set up a bunch of other instances like hardware.watch, soccer.forum, and level-up.zone, where he groups the botted communities based on topic. So you'd have to block those instances as well, if I'm not mistaken.

I personally have experienced no issues, because I don't browse /all and I'm not subscribed to any of the fake communities. But the decision to spread it across dozens of servers definitely makes it harder to defend, because it's not exactly trivial to avoid the botted content if you make a habit of browsing /all.

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

I'm not even sure I got them all yet and I'm at 176 communities across 16 instances:

[–] imaqtpie 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Wow. It's really a misleading system because the average user wouldn't normally recognize that those are all related instances with bot content. If he had at least followed a consistent naming scheme, it'd seem more honest and easier to engage/disengage with.

That being said, I still genuinely believe that his motives are altruistic. He's just trying too hard to force growth when it's better to let it come organically for now.

It's a bit rash to go ahead and create 16 instances. Maybe trying a pilot instance and seeing how people like it first would have gone over better.

[–] InEnduringGrowStrong 1 points 11 months ago

Yes, with a caveat.
The bots are on alien.top.
The communities are spread out in multiple instances, which do seem dedicated to that purpose.
0.19 would allow blocking of these instances as they come up, if you stay on top of it.

The author conveniently sells a hosting service for such instances, so I guess that's how they plan to monetize this.
Money aside, I'm not sure how I feel about that much centralization in the fediverse if that ever was to take off.
Im probably biased, but so far their comments I've seen make me think of spez2.0

Legally speaking, it's also a hornet's n'est.

I think they paused it because several instances backlash, I guess we'll see.