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.
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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.
If I wanted to see the front page of reddit I’d go to reddit
This is the only way to see it for now. Bridge doesn’t show “the front page of reddit”.
I think a defederated instance could be made containing all of that. Lemmy makes it extremely easy to switch accounts between instances, so those in need of Reddit on Lemmy can use another profile without spamming all of Lemmy.
This has been absolutely beyond infuriating I can’t even block it properly from Connect. Agreed this is nothing but pollution spam
Server admins should block stuff like this
I’m sure they mean well, but it’s annoying
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.
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.
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.
Are you trying to access via http or https?
If you open https://portal.alien.top, do you see the same message?
I typed “alien.top” into my safari and that is what I got.
Then why does the URL show
portal.alien.top?I honestly don’t know what to tell you. I’d like to investigate, but both Chrome and Firefox are normal.
I also have ublock installed, and it shows zero elements being blocked.
Can you simp any harder for this instance?
He is not simping, it’s his instance so ofcourse he is giving his POV
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.
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.
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.
I want the programming communities to be on programming.dev. I want the adult communities to be on lemmynsfw. I want the nix community to be on nix-community. I want the Brazilian communities to be on lemmy.eco.br, like the italians on feddit.it or the Germans on feddit.de…
These communities already have their place, so there is no need to recreate them. But what about the communities that don’t?
You are trying to paint my work in the worst possible light, as if I am trying to hijack the networks. Not only that is not true, it is against everything I stand for. And the really funny thing is that I already have written out quite a bit about how my “evil plan” is to get rid of ad-funded internet and that are alternative business models that can be more ethical without trying to capitalize on eyeballs.
A bit of cynicism can be good, just make sure it doesn’t become paranoia.
And what you still seem to not understand:
Those communities don’t want to be on those domains. So all you are doing is trying to force their hand because you think your desires override their autonomy.
I don’t have to “paint (your) work in the worst possible light” because… you are doing that yourself.
Can you honestly say that the communities on reddit are on reddit due to their choice and absolute free will?
I would say that I would rather they make their own decisions rather than someone decide they know better and force their hands.
deleted by creator
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.
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.
Defederated. What a waste of resources.
Matrix appservice happened
Can you please add a note to your original comment please?
alien.top misreports its instance name and can confuse client blocks. In some cases you have to manually add “selfhosted.forum” for blocks to work correctly. I know this is an issue with Lemmy Connect specifically and I have left a note for the dev about this. If alien.top is misreporting its name like I suspect, it could cause issues for other clients.
I requested my home instance (lemmy.ca) defederate from alien.top, but my cries went unanswered.
There is no “misresporting”. Selfhosted forum is a topic-based instance, like many other that set up as part of !communick_news_network@communick.news .
alien.top is a fediverser instance, which is done to help mirror content and to help people from reddit to migrate.
The whole idea of fediverser is to make migration for redditors as easy as possible and in a way that they when they migrate they have access to all the content they were used to.
Some clients see the instance name as alien.top when it is a actually selfhosted.forum. When the instance info is referenced, it’s reporting back both names. Lemmy can clients see one or the other and just blocking alien.top won’t stop the spammy noise.
When I try to block a post from selfhosted.forum the client sees it as alien.top. This is partially a client issue, but it is likely caused by how the instances are presented.
Nobody hates the idea of a “Reddit transition instance”. We just can’t stand the noise it generates and that little effort was put into identifying posts as bot generated.
You mentioned somewhere that people should comment on those posts to help bootstrap conversations. Unfortunately, that is not how this is working out and it is wasting people’s time.
Again, this might be an UI/UX issue, but there is no misreporting.
What you are seeing is the homepage of selfhosted.forum, which is an instance that by itself does not take any users and is only the home of the communities, like !homelab@selfhosted.forum or !main@selfhosted.forum.
Alien.top works by being a home to accounts only (no communities) and they follow specific rules about what “which content from each subreddit should go to which lemmy community”. For example, content from /r/homelab will be posted by alien.top to !homelab@selfhosted.forum.
The “about page” of selfhosted.forum contains information disclosing that the instance is part of the “Communick News Network” and promotes two alternatives for the people that want to sign up for Lemmy. Granted, it is missing information about the selfhosted instance is supposed to be about (which I have done already in other instances like level-up.zone) , but this in any way means that the “instance” is misreporting itself.
I’m from lemmy.ca too, and while I’m conflicted about the project, I’d rather limit defederation unless it’s about something very clearcut
After v0.19 drops, users can block instances which should fix the problem for everyone that might want it gone
I’d rather limit defederation unless it’s about something very clearcut
Alien.top is a spam instance. This is as “clearcut” a reason to defederate as it gets.
Spam implies it’s useless but it seems I can read my content from Reddit on that instance? While also staying on a single app and getting my regular lemmy threads.
Not sure why it’s a problem other than resource intensity, if the users have the option to block an instance as a whole it’s fine.
I don’t agree with them creating bot accounts and commenting on other instances posts though. Everything should be maintained within the instance.
I don’t agree with them creating bot accounts and commenting on other instances posts though. Everything should be maintained within the instance.
Not sure why you added preserving metadata like username, pfp and timestamp(I guess ts in preserved too) and called it “creating bot accounts”. And as I understand bridging communities on other instances is opt-in.
Alien.top is one-way bridge instance. If you belive(I will not say think because it will be insult to thinking) that it is spam instance, are you sure you understand what fediverse is? It lowers switching cost for reddit users since they can come here, post here, comment here and STILL be able to see content they want to see, but without ads and spyware.
In easy to understand terms: u r spam.
While it likely is spam for the majority of users, I imagine the mods are looking at de-federating an instance that fulfills a specific need for a small number (keeping alien.top users updated on reddit). Because of that, it will likely have a bit of push back to de-federate entirely vs. a request to create the ability to block users/platforms. Think of it like newsletters, we need the ability to unsubscribe/block them, but we shouldn’t necessarily ban them outright.
Thank you for this. I also use Connect, so went ahead and manually added that to my block list.
The worst part is when I spend time replying to a question, later to realize the OP will never see it.
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.
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.
Not just spam, it is also using system resources as high as big instances. I just defederated from it.
I wish someone made this integration in an app, that shows both Lemmy and Reddit feed, without an instance.
Personally I just block the entire community if all posts are made up of Reddit mirrors. If that’s all the posts that are there, that’s probably all there ever will be. It just clutters up my feed otherwise. There are a handful of lower post volume communities that I have mild interest in that I’ve let slide but it seems to have worked well so far.
All the options are pretty much all or nothing at this point. You can block the community the bot is posting to or disable bot posts being visible in entirety in your settings.
What if lemmy starts dumping its posts on reddit? That might be interesting
As long as we do it nicely, it could make communities better for everyone!
Some subreddits have friendly relationships with Lemmy, and understand why things are the way they are. I’d rather focus on those (reposting good quality relevant posts) and ignoring the ones that want nothing to do with the fediverse.
You can see some more discussion about the implementation on a past !fediverse@lemmy.world thread here:
Thanks for letting me know, I’ll block that instance
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.
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?
You can already toggle a setting that hides all bot accounts/content. But that’s rather heavy handed and not very nuanced.
It’s better than banning instances wholesale. Like Lemmit.online, alien.top etc.
difficult to block
Can’t you just block the communities? There are only a few
