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/pocalyuko@alien.top

https://lemm.ee/u/ItzMeRocket@alien.top

https://lemm.ee/u/CaptainCapp-n@alien.top

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.

199 points
*

I personally hate all the reddit cross post stuff, and it seems like the majority of lemmy users do too. I don’t understand why people obsess over this as a way to “grow” lemmy.

It doesn’t contribute to active conversations, in fact it deters users who reply locally and then never get a response.

Just let lemmy grow organically by making good content and contributing, stop forcing it with mirrors from reddit.

I wonder if we could get the top admins to threaten defederation with any instance that doesn’t flag automated posts as bots. This way at least the users have some visibility.

permalink
report
reply
41 points

It isn’t about “growing” lemmy. It is about “growing” internet points and communities. People see an opportunity to become the mods they hate (fucking pricks, how dare they ban someone for screaming forty slurs in every single post for six months straight!) while establishing themselves as power users. Because if it worked on reddit, it works on here.

Just block communities and, where possible, instances.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-12 points

Of all criticism I am hearing, this is by far the most misguided one.

My goal with Communick is to become a mere service provider. I want to do as little as possible with the communities themselves. Sure, I am doing the moderation now because they are not big enough, but if/when they become a real alternative to current subreddits, I hope that the community steps up to govern itself as fast as possible.

If you don’t believe me, you can go the matrix channel used by the /r/selfhosted crowd during the protests. I offered them the selfhosted.forum instance for free. They didn’t take it.

permalink
report
parent
reply
19 points

I want to do as little as possible with the communities themselves.

That is painfully obvious

I hope that the community steps up to govern itself as fast as possible.

They are. They just aren’t at the site you want their content to be on.

permalink
report
parent
reply
26 points
*

yea people get drowned out by these bots and they feel less inclined to contribute. I know I was less likely to leave a comment on Reddit when there were already many comments. I was less likely to post on Reddit when a subreddit was already getting many posts. I post and comment more here on Lemmy because it doesn’t get drowned out. If we wanna grow then it needs to be natural, not via bots.

everyone do yourself a favor and go to your settings page and uncheck the option for “Show Bot Accounts”, it’s unfortunate that I can’t keep the few good bots visible but there’s just too much bot spam now.

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points

it’s unfortunate that I can’t keep the few good bots visible but there’s just too much bot spam now.

As a moderator needing a daily thread created by a bot (!casualconversation@lemmy.world ) it is indeed annoying that a lot of people do not see it due to this.

I got the bot banned a few weeks ago because I hadn’t flagged it as such. I could maybe reach out to the LW admins again, but got other stuff to deal with.

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points

I escaped Reddit some months ago. Every day the same video of trashy girls, equal rights equal fights and his wife too (and my axe).

When I started I reacted on posts, but that was not a nice experience. I lurked and only downvoted posts that I thought were mean or hurtful.

In a sub about knitting I found out they started here new. So I followed.

I knit you not haha.

I’m still shy to react, but the reactions I got were supernice and almost allways with some clausule like : “but that’s my two cents” and that feels very comforting.

What I would like is more comments on posts. I would love to follow and perhaps engage with lots of people with different knowledge and views.

I miss the Wiki-dive, often multiple times on 1 post.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points
*

A while back I tried going to alien.top to as what the site was about and my adblocker completely blocked it. That was a sure sign I did not need to visit.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-3 points

Alien.top itself is just a standard Lemmy instance. I could believe it if you said it was timing out (as it had a 5 day outage a couple of weeks ago) but to claim there are any ads or trackers there is a simple, verifiable lie.

permalink
report
parent
reply
-4 points

Can you simp any harder for this instance?

permalink
report
parent
reply
96 points

Defederated. What a waste of resources.

permalink
report
reply
31 points

permalink
report
parent
reply
79 points

The worst part is when I spend time replying to a question, later to realize the OP will never see it.

permalink
report
reply
34 points

I fell for that a few times. Then I realized these were communities on instances that had like 40 million posts all from people from Alien who had a Lemmy history consisting of one post and no comments.

permalink
report
parent
reply
24 points

Exactly this. I didn’t notice the bot icon the first time I saw alien.top, and wasted time responding.

I’ve blocked the instance from my client.

permalink
report
parent
reply
76 points

I’m honestly so sick of bots on this website. Nobody even comments, it’s just junk that then dilutes the actual communities posting in c/all. I’d love to have a way to block all memes, porn, and bot posts just so I could actually discover new communities here instead of AI redhead pussy, bots crossposting stale linux memes, and old reddit help threads with 0 comments because they are asking for help on a different site.

permalink
report
reply
15 points
*

Yeah, why would anyone comment in a crosspost. Feels weird when the OP is not even here. I started blocking communities that mostly crosspost.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Right? There is an argument to be made for bot-submitted content to be used for jumpstarting news-oriented communities (the kind that are essentially RSS feeds with comments). But anything else just feels like speaking into the void.

permalink
report
parent
reply
13 points

You can disable bot accounts in your settings so at least those don’t show up in your feed.

permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points

Yes, but this also blocks helpful bots, for example link converters. I’d like to block the x-post spam but keep the utility from other bots.

permalink
report
parent
reply
9 points

Yeah, understandable. On Lemmy World we defederate with those kind of instances because we know most of our users don’t want that stuff.

Luckily the next version of Lemmy is around the corner and then you should be able to block those instances yourself.

permalink
report
parent
reply
11 points

You can block both NSFW and bot posts in your account settings. I do the former, but I don’t want to miss out on the good bots so I just block the bad ones individually. Then, memes usually stay in the meme communities and it is quite easy to block those.

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

Huh, good to know. I might actually do that. I usually use an app, so I dunno if those settings are exposed in-app.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

They should apply everywhere :)

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

They do

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points
*

there are plenty of communities with useful content that are also plagued with pointless unfunny garbage memes. it seems that there’s no way to filter image posts on any client that I’ve seen. I don’t know if it’s an issue with Lemmy as a platform but it seems kind of strange to me since the client knows which posts are image and non-image links

permalink
report
parent
reply
10 points
*

I would very much like to be able to block image posts

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

I think the Summit client for android can do this

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Very cool thanks!

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

hell yes it does thanks for the gold kind stranger

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

Where the AI redhead pussy at?

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

There’s a bunch in c/all, lol. Some of it okay, some just straight up not great. Eventually c/all runs out of topics and just starts injecting nsfw posts from subs.

permalink
report
parent
reply
76 points
*

God I can’t wait until instance blocking because this kind of drama is just soooo very tiring.

Edit: Clients that do that are great and all but I switch between desktop and phone too often for just a client-side solution on one of them.

permalink
report
reply
20 points

This exists in Sync for Lemmy. I couldn’t live without it tbh.

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

It’s doable in Boost, too.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

Also Summit for Lemmy can do this too.

permalink
report
parent
reply
12 points

If I’m not mistaken, they are going to release that feature soon on the default lemmy client.

The backend will support it https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/pull/3869 but I can’t find the corresponding frontend PR or issue

permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points
1 point

Oh, I wasn’t aware that was accessible to users! Cool, thanks.

Dunno when they plan on releasing it.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

Connect client can do this

permalink
report
parent
reply

Fediverse

!fediverse@lemmy.world

Create post

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 !moderators@lemmy.world!

Rules

  • Posts must be on topic.
  • Be respectful of others.
  • Cite the sources used for graphs and other statistics.
  • Follow the general Lemmy.world 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

Community stats

  • 5.4K

    Monthly active users

  • 1.7K

    Posts

  • 62K

    Comments