this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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In the months since I deleted my Reddit accounts and joined Lemmy, the lack of user base growth has made it clear that we need some users to stay on Reddit as a means of shepherding more users over on an ongoing basis. Otherwise, Reddit simply got what it wanted: less users who make a fuss about how it manages its platform without losing users en-masse.

In doing so, however, does Reddit shadowban posts that mention or promote Lemmy? Googling mentions of Lemmy on Reddit mostly brings up posts from around the time of the blackout, suggesting that mentions of it since then have been suppressed. Before I return to Reddit to promote Lemmy, does anyone know for certain one way or the other?

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I think the reality is that no one on Reddit gives a shit about Lemmy. I used to see if my comments were being deleted by a mod by opening the permalink in a private browser window. I don't know if admin removal has a more complicated way of masking it or not.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 7 months ago

I think the reality is that no one on Reddit gives a shit about Lemmy

I wouldn't be so sure:

[–] [email protected] 26 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

Not enough users left Reddit after the blackout to either make a difference there or establish communities on Lemmy that are big enough to encourage people on the fence to switch over. To turn Lemmy into a viable alternative, we need to convince more Redditors to switch over by mentioning Lemmy in the right threads, making sure to explain features of Lemmy in terms of Reddit analogs to avoid the usual complaints of Lemmy being difficult to understand. Most people won't care, but the ones that do will be vital in bringing the userbase to the point where people will want to join Lemmy due to it having active communities rather than it just not being Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

When I ended up at Reddit 16 years ago after Digg, I don’t recall it being a huge community immediately. I think it helped that there weren’t subreddits yet. So, probably seemed like more people. I think it took a couple of years for the transition to hit critical mass.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

Yup, this is the answer. We know enshittification will continue apace because history has shown that these companies will never change their behaviour. They are fundamentally fragile systems.

The way to deal with this is not some big marketing push - that's a centralised approach - but to make an antifragile system that will slowly gain users and not lose them en masse. It's the tortoise vs the hare.

Lemmy is the tortoise.

I'm not even too worried about corporate entryism - although I do think we should block them - because they will only make fragile instances and they will be outlasted as long as we keep independent instances alive and healthy.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Precisely. Excellent points!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (2 children)

It would be really slick if you could join multiple communities into a larger virtual one kinda like multi-reddits. It would be a nice way to aggregate similar communities from different instances and not segment the limited userbase too much. I tend to rely on my main feed here more for similar reasons

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

A couple of the apps do have this "multi community" feature, if you're a mobile user. Summit definitely does, Raccoon (the one I'm replying from now) technically does but it's pretty broken so I'm hoping that gets looked at soon. And tbh maybe more of them do now, it's been a while since I checked!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

If the back end provided support for multi-communities it would work cross-app in the same way... unfortunately it looks like this is not a priority for the time being.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Mbin has that

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago

a viable alternative

It's already a viable alternative. I can tell because I'm only here and not there anymore and lack nothing

we need to convince more Redditors to switch over by mentioning Lemmy in the right threads

This is just the worst idea. First off, it would require me to have a reddit account, which I nuked. Second, it'd require me to go to reddit and there's no more ingress points that won't rape my eyes. And finally, I'm not using my time and energy proselytizing just to accelerate another tragedy of the commons.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago

switch over by mentioning Lemmy in the right threads, making sure to explain features of Lemmy in terms of Reddit analogs to avoid the usual complaints of Lemmy being difficult to understand.

I feel like we are very close to this inflection point where all the pieces are in place to make mass migration completely transparent. What is missing:

  • Integrate the "Login with Reddit" functionality that I implemented for Fediverser (and available on alien.top) directly into Voyager.
  • Get more instances to connect to fediverser.network, so that we can onboard redditors into other instances besides alien.top
  • Promote Voyager on /r/apolloapp.
[–] [email protected] 42 points 7 months ago (1 children)

They don't shadowban, but they'll auto-remove comments mentioning it. I posted the Join Lemmy link in a comment a while back, and that comment was immediately updated to [removed by reddit].

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (2 children)

This could be a automod setting that community admins can add. I've mentionned lemmy and didn't get remived comments, I might try again

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago

"Removed by Reddit" implies admin action though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I've tested this on r/lemmy, and it still got removed.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 7 months ago

At most they suppress them, no shadowbanning. There's a whole lemmy subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/Lemmy/ and it gets mentioned on r/RedditAlternatives all the time

[–] [email protected] 22 points 7 months ago

Probably not. But from their POV it's at least a competitor, albeit an insignificant one, and pushing too hard to "let people know" is... pretty much spam. They're used to handling spam and have mechanisms in place (fewer now, though. snort.)

[–] [email protected] 20 points 7 months ago

I know for a fact some mods remove and ban for it, but I've been on reddit a long time and I remember seeing mods ban people over linking similar subs.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 7 months ago

No shadow ban, but auto-removal of the posts

[–] [email protected] 18 points 7 months ago

They definitely used to delete links to popular Lemmy instances. I posted a few as a test one time and found the comment to be shadow deleted. It looked like it existed to me, but if I logged out, I couldn't see it. I wasn't banned, though. Idk if this is still happening.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 7 months ago

Not reddit as a whole, it is individual moderators with the automod. My small community has a pinned lemmy link that is visible and the posts to the sub are restricted.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (2 children)

No, they don't. The /r/KDE subreddit has their automod mention the Lemmy community on every post.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 7 months ago

Tbf it could be that automod is exempt from such automatic banning/removal.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Ooh, shiny new community to join

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (2 children)

I cant say for sure but it would make sense that they did a regex or something. We could go around that the same way spammers get around spam filters. By writing L3mmy for instance or something else entirely.

I think links to world dont work at all (just a rumor I heard) so we could use link shorteners.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I'm sure people will stampede and trample each other on their way to try out a website that uses spammers' tactics for promotion

[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Oh you mean like every other successful business? Yeah, you‘re probably right. Nobody will use it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

ah yes, all those successful and well respected businesses selling V1agra, this is the model we should all look up to

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Could make use of Unicode lookalike letters (е and у in this case) to write Lemmy as Lеmmу.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I honestly doubt that works. If Reddit really has a blacklist of keywords it's almost certainly accounting for this kind of thing.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Honestly, no. People are pretty bad at filtering for Unicode alternative characters. It can be worked around when the site admins understand what's going on, but...have fun skimming all of the Unicode code pages for every possible lookalike character.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Its their job to do this but I think OP is right, we need to try. As much as it sucks, marketing is important to succeed in the long run. Not trying to get the whole of reddit in here but if they can manage to not talk about us we would have a problem I believe.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

If Reddit really has a blacklist of keywords it's almost certainly accounting for this kind of thing.

🤣

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I have totally deleted all my Reddit contributions (still squatting on the username) and so I can’t really answer whether mentioning lemmy gets your comment shadow banned. We don’t really need more redditors, just need to wait for the first scandal and people will start googling “Reddit” alternatives (which ironically are all Reddit threads) and Lemmy is at the top of most of those lists. People should come here organically

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Right? Personally, I want people who come here to care. Not the masses.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

And I’ve got no desire to kill reddit or to grow lemmy. I’m not here for the inter-network wars.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago

I don't know how frequently this happens, but my experience is that a link to a lemmy group was deleted by mods. It was very politely worded, and suggested and alternative community on Lemmy, and also noted that there's no reason that somebody couldn't read both communities. It was still deleted as "spam or self-promotion."

That could just be a maturity issue with the mod who deleted it. It could also be that Reddit itself is doing it and simply said it was done by the mods of the group.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Random thought, do Lemmy posts show up in searches?

I'm pretty sure that's how I ended up at reddit. After so many google searches lead me to the site, I decided to check it out some more

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

It depends on the subreddit. I think I've had only one comment "Removed by Reddit". The other comments I've had removed were reported by users. I've managed to come to an agreement with some mods who protect my comments mentioning Lemmy in exchange for some useful summaries and links.

Your mileage may vary. See my accounts in both places for details.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

Yes it would be nice to have more people on Lemmy to have more activity in the smaller communities, but otherwise I don’t think it’s so important.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

My last post there (pointing the way to lemmy) still stands, un-shadowbanned and slightly upvoted since last I saw it. But it's marked NSFW, as I guess the whole sub was set to at the time, which may be why it doesn't show up in search.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

The Reddit admins have the lessons of Digg seared into their collective memory

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

I know a comment of mine got deleted qhere I mentioned Lemmy, but that's about it. I lost access to that account soon after and never made another one.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Does it shadowban mentions of Kbin/Mbin or Piefed too?

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