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.

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[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months 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_sales_repost_bot@lemmy.ca 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.

[–] Dedh@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months 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@sh.itjust.works 6 points 11 months 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.

[–] registrert@lemmy.sambands.net -2 points 11 months ago

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

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 1 points 11 months 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.

[–] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de -2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

difficult to block

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

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months 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?

[–] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de -4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

The list of communities is listed here in the sidebar: https://communick.news/c/communick_news_network

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 5 points 11 months 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.

[–] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 11 months 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

[–] CommunityLinkFixer@lemmings.world 1 points 11 months 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: !communick_news_network@communick.news

[–] registrert@lemmy.sambands.net 2 points 11 months 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 fediverse@lemmy.world I don't agree that the best course of action would be for users to block the community.

[–] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de -1 points 11 months 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 fediverse@lemmy.world 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.