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://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.
Well, it clearly seems that this experiment is failing, but not for any reason I was expecting…
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Fediverser is first and foremost a set of tools to help people migrate away from Reddit. I was not expecting so many “if I want to see Reddit stuff, I just go to Reddit”. I thought that the people that came to Lemmy during the protests were willing to put their words into actions and leave Reddit, or maybe do what I am doing and only using it to spread awareness of the alternatives. I thought that it was understood that the problem with Reddit was on management, not with Reddit users. I thought that people liked the content from their niche subs, and I thought that people were willing to help others to move to a newer alternative, free of Big Tech and centralized corporate control. It doesn’t seem to be the case. For all the talk about community and all the people crying against spez, it seems that Slacktivism is still the dominant ideology of social networks.
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Fediverser is very specific about what subreddits are being mirrored and into what communities the content is going to. To talk about “spam” honestly makes very little sense to me, until I realized that there are so many people browsing via “all”. I can not understand how someone in their right mind would be looking at any content firehose without filtering, but it seems like that this is the reality for many.
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People were feeling “tricked” into responding. That’s on me. My work on two-way communication is going a bit slower than I was hoping for and I thought that marking accounts as bots was enough, but clearly the UX is failing to make this noticeable.
With all that said, I will retire the bots until I deliver on my promise to make two-way communication work and/or I have better tools at fediverser.network to help community promotion.
Wow. Didn’t expect 5 users to actually downvote. If people who did it also claim that they came here to leave reddit and belive in fediverse, but hate Matrix - mainstream fediverse instant messaging protocol and one of default lemmy profile fields, I would like to read how they came up with such bizzare and self-contradictory combination of ideas.
I just want to chime in that I agree with you. The number of people who are browsing “all” on a large server like Lemmy.world and then complaining about content they don’t want to see is way too high.
You don’t want to see it, don’t browse “all” or accept that someone does want to see that content.
If you think it’s the “will of the people” petition your server admin to block it. Or move to a server where it’s blocked.
You don’t need to shit on this guy because you don’t like their project. It’s easily avoidable.
You can’t tell people to not browse all. How will small communities reach new users if new users don’t browse all?
Sure. But if you’re going to browse all then don’t bitch about what’s in it. All isn’t your personal curated feed. That’s what subscribed is for.
Just don’t, repost bots add nothing of value to the platform in my experience. We don’t want this place to be Reddit 2.0, we want it to be it’s own thing.
We don’t want this place to be Reddit 2.0, we want it to be it’s own thing.
One of the things that I truly despise is the use of the “Royal We”. It’s a cheap rhetorical trick to make it sound like your opinion and your preference is an universal truth. It’s quite simple to disprove that what you want is not necessarily what everyone else wants.
For example:
repost bots add nothing of value to the platform in my experience.
- Thanks to mirrors, I could simply get rid of all the 40+ subreddits that I used to subscribe to lurk around. E.g, I don’t to participate in discussions on /r/soccer, but I do like to follow some of the discussions and I do like having the posts to see game highlights, match threads, etc.
- Mirrors allow us to have content protected and out of Reddit’s control. If Reddit decides to tighten up their grip on the API even more, the mirrored content will be already safe from their hands.
Mirrors allow us to have content protected and out of Reddit’s control. If Reddit decides to tighten up their grip on the API even more, the mirrored content will be already safe from their hands.
I think you are confusing people here by saying mirror. They think about it as another frontend.
I suggest to use Matrix terms. Here what you have would be one-way bridging
One-way bridging is rare, but can be used to represent a bridge that is bridging from the remote system into matrix. This is common when the remote system does not permit message posting, or is simply not capable of handling posting outside their system. The users bridged from the remote system often appear as virtual users in matrix, as is the case with matrix-appservice-instagram.
I have never used Reddit so I don’t know what experience it is you want, but couldn’t you achieve the same thing in a better way by browsing on Teddit?
Ooooh. This is exactly what I want, and I want to help you make things better!
I’d like to brainstorm ways of making it opt-in, and making it discoverable without being spammy.
What do you use to coordinate code contributors to your project? Do you have a matrix channel?
PS: I don’t think you need to focus that hard on making it two way. What you’ve implemented so far is already useful. There are some porn subreddits I used to go to when I’m horny, and let me tell you that comments are absolutely not necessary!
Rule 34 strikes again. :)
No matrix channel yet, but you can take a look at https://github.com/mushroomlabs/fediverser. If you know your way around Docker it should be easy to get started.
Thank you.
It doesn’t seem like you understood why people are upset though. Currently the only way to discover new communities and widen your network is by browsing All. Dare I say most Lemmy users do this. Making repost bots actively harms “real” post discoverability and makes browsing content difficult. Not to mention most reposted content is very superficial, and most of these text postd have zero value when there’s no interaction.
I was not expecting so many “if I want to see Reddit stuff, I just go to Reddit”.
No, we’re saying if you want to see Reddit content you should host an alternate frontend like https://teddit.net/ or go to a dedicated place to view that content. Hosting it on Lemmy makes little sense because…
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You are stressing out every Lemmy instance by making so many posts and comments a minute
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There’s no way to opt-in, so a lot of these posts are making its way to people’s feeds without consent and people aren’t interested in seeing it, which is why most people are upset
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It’s actively making the new user experience worse because it feels like there’s too much botspam and someone who’s brand new won’t understand what’s going on.
If there was some way to opt in it would be very cool and a great project, but the way it works now does more harm than good
So far, the reasons that people claim to be upset has more to do with their own ignorance of the current state of affairs than something harmful being done by fediverser or alien.top.
And I don’t mean ignorance as a pejorative. I mean it that I have failed to communicate and educate people about the strategy and plan for fediverser.
To illustrate the point:
Currently the only way to discover new communities and widen your network is by browsing All.
That’s not true. There is https://browse.feddit.de and https://fediverser.project. There are communities about new communities. You can browse an user profile to see what communities they subscribe to. All of these are better methods to find new content than browsing “all”.
That’s not true. There is https://browse.feddit.de and https://fediverser.project. There are communities about new communities. You can browse an user profile to see what communities they subscribe to. All of these are better methods to find new content than browsing “all”.
Until these are built into the UI, how is a user supposed to find them when they just want to start using Lemmy? They don’t search for such sites, they browse all. The reason sites like reddit work is because they cater to the non-technical crowd.
You are thinking like a developer and not like someone worried about the user experience, this is not a dig but a key part of the problem. The root cause of users not coming to Lemmy in the thousands is the UX. Fix it and normies can use it and post content themselves.
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: !newcommunities@lemmy.world
Currently the only way to discover new communities and widen your network is by browsing All.
*discover already discovered communities. This is how fediverse works. Server doesn’t know about community unless someone on server interacted with it.
https://github.com/Fmstrat/lcs (resource intensive, so to be used by admins only) can mitigate that issue
I can not understand how someone in their right mind would be looking at any content firehose without filtering, but it seems like that this is the reality for many.
I typically browse subscribed until I’m seeing posts I’ve already viewed. I occasionally switch to all to see if I will find any new content/ communities to subscribe to. How do you typically do it?
If I ran out of content to see, I take it as a sign that I should go back to work…
I’m never on here during work. Even if I was, that point is pretty unhelpful. I think it’s a normal thing for people to want an unlimited supply of content, as that’s what we’ve gotten used to and that’s what these websites are for. What’s it to you, to dictate how I want to use my time? Whether this behavior is a good or bad thing is another argument. I think the limited content supply here is a concession that most people have accepted on Lemmy, but I also think that it’s possible that it wouldn’t have to be a concession as the platforms grow and get better.
I get that you saw a perceived problem and you’re trying to fix it. I get that what you’ve built is cool on a technical level and it probably feels really terrible to have people be so negative about it. So first of all, none of this is personal at all. But I feel this comment illustrates exactly where the problem lies.
You want to “help people migrate away from Reddit”. But I’m not sure what makes you think people need “help” at all, I mean if someone wants to stop using a platform they can just stop using the platform. I was a heavy Reddit user and was in plenty of tiny niche subreddits, but so what? I wanted to leave so I left.
So maybe the real problem is that so many people don’t want to leave Reddit, and that disappoints you, and you want to try and convince them that they do? This I could definitely understand, but trying to convince someone you know what they want better than they do themselves is not generally a great tactic.
Most people will just stick with whatever the “best” platform is in terms of showing them content they want to see, and are slow to move to the next thing once the one they’re on starts sucking. So if you really want to put your dev skills to use it would make more sense to get stuck in with Lemmy itself and help increase the pace of improvements. A lot of us are happy here, but a lot of people also bounced off due to the jank. And the more we can reduce that bounce rate, the more we can keep people around, the more we’re in a position to capitalise whenever the next big wave of newbies hits.
Thank you for the effort to understand my perspective. It’s much appreciated.
You are definitely right in a lot of your assessment. I am disappointed at the sheer amount of people who claimed to want to leave Reddit but never took any action about it. I am disappointed at mods who were all protesting about the changes but when push comes to shove, the large majority of them simply were afraid of giving up and losing their “power”. I absolutely agree that any approach that ends up patronizing users and telling them how awful their choices are will cause them to be more resistant to change and aligned with the status quo.
The one part that I strongly disagree is the notion that “if someone wants to stop using a platform they can just stop using the platform”: Social media (as we know it, with centralized control by a handful of corporations) is made to be as addictive as the most powerful drugs, and peer pressure is one of the strong behavior-regulating forces.
We can not wait until “things start to suck”, because by then people will more likely than not just move on to the next crappy corporate-controlled media. What I believe is that we need a coordinated effort and that we need to act as an intolerant minority to fight against it. And I know that I am not getting everything right off the bat, but I hope that at least I can gather enough support to make this a credible threat to the status quo.
The one part that I strongly disagree is the notion that “if someone wants to stop using a platform they can just stop using the platform”: Social media (as we know it, with centralized control by a handful of corporations) is made to be as addictive as the most powerful drugs, and peer pressure is one of the strong behavior-regulating forces.
The addictiveness and the inertia factor are the two main ways to hold your user base to your product, very true.
Don’t give up on what you’re doing, keep working at it, refining. The vocal indigenous minority of any place don’t handle change well, and tend to rescue defeat out of the jaws of victory.
I don’t like your bots at all because I, like others, browse all. Lemmy is too small and inactive to stick to little groups. They also filled my feed with a disproportionate amount of stuff I don’t care about, like selfhosted.
The idea is genuinely interesting and the execution, especially the bridge to claim ownership of the bot account, is legitimately really cool. But until it’s not spammy— which may be never at the rate Lemmy is expanding, or lack of expansion— it’s going to meet significant resistance.
It’s weird because I really agree with you. Lowering the barrier to entry for leaving Reddit and porting over its discussions is great. People say they don’t want Reddit content, but honestly I doubt that. Hell, even having copies of the niche Reddit content would help fill out the fediverse’s lack of content. Sadly I don’t see this working at all without two way communication (which you would probably need proxies for). I’d be pretty surprised if you ever brought it back.
I particularly agree on the moral front. I disagree with Reddit the company and don’t care for the state of the internet. But I can’t see a barrier of entry low enough for people to actually stand up for themselves, so while I respect the effort and willingness to do something about your values, my faith in the remaining Reddit users is low enough that I really can’t see a universe where this works.
I mean if someone wants to stop using a platform they can just stop using the platform. I was a heavy Reddit user and was in plenty of tiny niche subreddits, but so what? I wanted to leave so I left.
That’s not the case for most people. Most people will go where the content they’re looking for is.
I follow a sub that’s all reposts from reddit. Occasionally I think about replying to something, but then I just go, “What’s the point? OP isn’t here.” I don’t recall ever seeing anyone else respond to any of the crossposts, either. The community is c/bicycletouring@lemmit.online if anyone is curious, which is a pretty niche topic to start with.
I’m not convinced it’s adding anything to the Lemmy experience, but at least those are clearly marked as crossposts and are all posted by one account, so it’s easy enough to ignore if I wanted.
On the “all” thing - remember that reddit has a mode, which is the default, that’s between Lemmy’s “truly, everything all” and “subscribed”. In this mode, you’d get popular posts on subs that had opted in to allowing them to hit that page (or didn’t opt out, I don’t remember).
/r/hockey is a good example - their posts usually generally stayed in the sub, but their Super Bowl post (and occasionally others) would usually hit reddit’s front page and bring in a ton of people who weren’t subbed to /r/hockey.
This was a good feature of reddit, I hope Lemmy eventually gains something similar.
It’s possible I misunderstood your last goal, but if you’re planning to have Lemmy comments posted back to reddit, I suspect that wouldn’t go over well with reddit’s admins after they figure it out.
“What’s the point? OP isn’t here.”
Please don’t ever feel discouraged by contributing content to the network, if you think the contribution is positive.
- There are other people there. Just check the number of subscribers to get an idea of at least how many people could be reached by your post.
- Your comment there can act as a catalyst for other Lemmy users to join in and participate.
- Having content on Lemmy that is not available on Reddit creates a positive asymmetry in our favor, and it creates an incentive for people on Reddit to migrate here.
reddit has a mode, which is the default, that’s between Lemmy’s “truly, everything all” and “subscribed”. (…) I hope Lemmy eventually gains something similar.
I agree, and it doesn’t even need to be on Lemmy backend. I firmly believe that everything related to content filtering and even algorithmic choices should be part of the client, not the server.
We can have an (mobile/web) app that takes all of the firehose and does the filtering in the client.
I can’t believe two people downvoted your comment.
You’re right about contributing.
As for the filtering, I’m not sure how I feel about that - I use the web interface on my computer and an app on my phone and tablet. I’d prefer them to have similar results. But I see the point you’re making; it could be curated by user instead of a massive algorithm for everyone.
Hey, do you also know the /c/bicycle_touring@lemmy.world community? I saw you posting about your trips on /c/bicycle@lemmy.ca and was wondering.
Bicycles is a really nice sub though, i like the vibe, was exclusively posting there about my trips too. On reddit i never subscribed to cycling subs other than touring and bikepacking, since that really is what i’m most interested in, in cycling. So i was kinda hyped to see some traffic in the touring c and kinda switched, even though i’m unsure if it even makes sense to split the cycling subs yet, Bicycles is quite low traffic too. But i somehow ended up with mod status in the touring sub, so i feel partly responsible for it.
No, I didn’t, thanks for the tip. Subbed! I might drop the other one now.
I do miss /r/bicyclingcirclejerk. I loved the absurdly fake bragging and having fun with the stereotypes. Then one day we realized quite a few of us actually ride Cannondales, and that made it even funnier.
I thought that the people that came to Lemmy during the protests were willing to put their words into actions and leave Reddit,
I did
I didn’t mind some of your bots as I theory maybe one of the communities would be useful. But none of the ones I’d have wanted seem to appear in my feed.
You have to ask the project creator if you want to add a community, they would set up the bridge.
I worry too – if this gets any significant uptake, what’s stopping Reddit from shutting off the spigot? Given their reasons for turning the screws on API and other policy changes, they may not take kindly to having “their” content re-posted elsewhere, let alone to a system designed specifically to escape reddit.
if this gets any significant uptake, what’s stopping Reddit from shutting off the spigot
Then mission. fucking. accomplished.
If this gets significant uptake, it will mean that the Fediverse has enough people to the point that the mirrors are not needed and network effects will be large enough to get other people interested/invested in Lemmy to the point where they will sign up even if takes some effort.
@rglullis@communick.news, let me break it down to you as simply as I can:
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Reddit comments are copyrighted material.
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Reddit ToS means reddit can do whatever they want with these comments, you don’t have the rights to these comments.
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Scraping and mirroring reddit comments to start a competitor, therefore, is copyright violation, and is illegal.
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You don’t even have plausible deniability because you outright admitted, multiple times, that you are mirroring reddit comments to start a competitor.
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Reddit’s army of lawyers can find you through your domain registrar, and will make an example out of you.
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Every instance that federates with yours can also get sued for hosting copyrighted material.
Please stop.
Wasn’t reddit trying to claim that they own everyone’s comments pretty universally decried? As in the reason half of us are here is because they decided they owned everyone’s comments (so they could sell it to the AI trainers) and users said ‘fuck off, it’s my comment and I’ll delete it’. There are plenty of reddit rehosters already, how is this different legally?
Directly from Reddit’s user agreement when you sign up for an account there.
You grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world.
So like it or not, they have the rights to whatever you post there already.
There are plenty of reddit rehosters already, how is this different legally?
Because these were noninteractive front ends, none of them with a creator who is insane enough to publicly declares that they are scraping reddit to start a competitor and explicitly to harm reddit’s financial interests.
You can see some more discussion about the implementation on a past !fediverse@lemmy.world thread here:
It’s an instance that crossposts posts from Reddit, except it also makes a new user for each Reddit account it came from.
Impressively stupid, if I’m honest. I wonder what the hell happened to make anyone on the planet think of that bit of genius.
So you think creating new accounts for every post instead of just using a bot is a good idea? Why?
The account is meant to be taken over by the corresponding redditor. alien.top already has 100+ users who came from Reddit this way.
Agreed, screw the person running that instance. If I wanted to see the front page of reddit I’d go to reddit. They aren’t helping Lemmy grow, they’re just a spammer.
