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Reddit repost bots are ruining Lemmy. (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[-] [email protected] 188 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Honest thoughts: I think fractured communities are what's causing the issue.

You end up with the same post on 5 different instances, each with a fraction of the engagement it would get in one place.

I wonder if some way of federating communities might be a better way, eg, c/photograohy could exist on both lemmy.world and lemm.ee, have submissions and comments from both.

[-] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago

If one of them is down we see half the posts but they should be together and one. Hopefully the mods won't get a power trip and try to make separate

[-] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

Make it like a collective: mods can remove their community from a federated collective if they want. Mods can only moderate stuff posted on their community, not in other communities in the collective. But unified rules or just some space for text in a collective will make it seem much nicer and coherent even if it is still a bunch of different communities behind the scenes.

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I dislike that idea. It brings a lot of messyness if the only mod on one server is asleep, etc.

Im not sure if one god owner of a "federated community" is the right answer. But i do think nods across multiple servers is the right answer? Perhaps giving all individual server community owners equal powers is a good choice?

Edit: Maybe it's something server admins could do? "Hey, c/photography, is now an alias for [email protected]". Maybe if they decide to unalias it, the local photography becomes a mirror of the remote instance. Then local users could interact as normal, and the remote instance would see incoming users acting as normal remote users?

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[-] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

I think the user's just need to coalesce around a single instance's community and let the other ones go away. Don't treat each instance's version of a community the same. Subscribe to the one that has the most users (or best mods) and let the other ones die.

It's no different than reddit having multiple subreddits with similar themes. r/xbox vs r/xboxone for instance. If I'm looking to subscribe to one, I will look at the subreddit with the most users and ignore the other one.

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[-] [email protected] 106 points 1 year ago

I don't think this is unpopular. Well, at least I hope it is not. Those bots are horrendous.

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[-] [email protected] 88 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Fragmented communities are.

My front page has the same thing 10-15 times because they were cross posted to so many different instances.

I've reduced my Lemmy usage by probably 95% because of it. I scroll so much but get nowhere.

No matter what my sort options are.

Edit: which aren't always bots, unfortunately. A ton of people see them from other communities and will post the same thing to theirs. Blocking bots does not help.

[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Have you considered unsubscribing from the fragments? Dramatically reduce your subs and you'll have a much better time.

[-] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago

It's all over my front page. Even the few that I am subscribed to, I kinda need to be because of the fragmentation. There are 3 main Android communities. If I only pick one, I miss news, but if I pick all 3, I get a ton of duplicate news.

Lemmy is flawed. They need to publish an update where Lemmy condenses these posts into one post with a drop down where you can open and choose which instance you want to view it from. Shouldn't be hard, and to prevent any issues, allow the user to condense a certain time period. For example, allow me to condense all posts that are the same URL that were posted in the past 6 or 24 hours. Make the most popular post the "main" one, and have a drop down to view the other ones.

I know it's possible because I used to have an extension to check if any URL I was currently on was posted to Reddit, and if it was, show me every single instance of it. It was useful to see exactly where the news article I was viewing was posted on, or the YouTube video, etc.

I had very high hopes for Lemmy, but the fact I've been here for a month before the Reddit API changes, I have seen the clusterfuck that Lemmy has become. There's no way new users are going to even sign up when the front page is repost city.

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[-] [email protected] 81 points 1 year ago

Yeah. We need conversations here. We need to generate our own content. Sometimes the reposting bots give us something to talk about, but I think 90% of them don't get any conversation going.

[-] [email protected] 73 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Not just Reddit bots... "There is a discussion on [Reddit, Hacker News, etc...] but feel free to comment here as well." (⁠╯⁠°⁠□⁠°⁠）⁠╯⁠︵⁠ ⁠┻⁠━⁠┻

[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Hacker news gets me a lot

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[-] [email protected] 55 points 1 year ago

Your opinion is not unpopular, everyone wants these dumb repost/article bots that post the same link in 15 communities gone.

[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Yeah, initially I thought it would be a good idea to kick-start discussion for certain communities, but in practice nobody comments on those posts.

I ended up blocking the bots too.

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

The reason I personally don't comment on those bot posts is because there's no real OP that might be interested in my answer/opinion so I think "Why even bother?".

[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Pretty much.

Why do I want to read a bot of AITA on a different site? That really makes no sense to me.

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Yeah, you can always block them

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[-] [email protected] 53 points 1 year ago

Unpopular opinion: I think Lemmy is fun.

[-] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

I hope this wont actually become an unpopular opinion. This place is pretty cool

[-] [email protected] 51 points 1 year ago

You have the wrong community

[-] [email protected] 47 points 1 year ago

Hey, this is supposed to be /unpopularopinion

[-] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago

Seems like it's filling the same role as r/unpopularopinion perfectly then

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[-] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

With you. All these single upvote posts with 0 comments. Ban them!

All new post views are full of them.

[-] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

To some extent they can be useful

But yeah, I don't need a one to one of reddit, if I wanted that I'd just be on reddit

[-] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago

Not unpopular at all, I personally think the weird political crap I never came across on Reddit is keeping people away more than anything. Never seen terms like “tankie” until I came here.

[-] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago

Probably didn't see a lot of tankies themselves until you came here either, but lemmygrad and hexbear are where they live.

Mentions of them are abundant here because they are abundant here themselves and annoy everyone else.

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[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Lemmy has a significant amount of tankies which is why you come across that term and politics associated with them. It is the same way you come across conservatives on Facebook or reddit, and Nazis on Twitter. If you use any platform you will come across political groups in some shape and form.

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[-] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago

They're just aggravating. If I accidently click one I just regret it. There's never any comments, I don't want to click one and generate traffic elsewhere. It's not just the reddit ones either. There's a few other repost bots that direct elsewhere. They're all bad.

[-] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

Not an unpopular opinion. I don't want to go to Reddit anymore.

[-] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

I think aggressive meme formats is also a big contribution. Unless you block a lot of communities, All is usually just filled with memes. My subscriptions (and I assume any new/casual user's) are not varied enough yet and I run out of interesting things there. This makes me browse All, but it's just memes.

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[-] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

The only thing I've noticed is a recent influx of people just shitting on poor people.

[-] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

yeah! i've noticed really toxic shitty discourse lately. i wonder if this is some sort of astroturf? i know that inherently sounds conspiratorial, but it's genuinely noticeable

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[-] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

I said this was a bad idea when we first moved here. Nobody wants to interact with a bot. Especially if it is a discussion that involves the OP... people realise the conversation is taking place on Reddit and go back there.

[-] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

Posts about x ruining lemmy are ruining lemmy.

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[-] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

Maybe its just me but I havent seen any of them?

[-] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

The Lemmit.online bot is banned from lemmy.world for all users, which I think is responsible for a lot of the useless bot traffic (useful for people who want to keep up to date on Reddit happenings I suppose). Lemm.ee, Lemmy.ca etc. don't block the bot site-wide so it's up to users like OP to block that bot if they don't want to see it.

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[-] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Block the reposting bots, there might be around a dozen popular ones at most that make up the lion's share of bot post traffic. Even just the Lemmit.online bot will clear your feed up a lot.

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[-] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

I actually keep seeing other repost bots show up quite a bit, something for Hacker News seems to be the biggest one, but there's others apart from the Reddit reposter (which I think I had already blocked at one point). I think it was necessary in the beginning when an increase of content was needed, but just cut the fucking cord already. If you really want to break free from reddit, then stop trying to scrape content from them.

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[-] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

Lemmit.online clogs my feed really bad. I wish there was an (open-source) way to block the whole instance

[-] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago

Block the user (bot) and you won't see anything.

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[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Defederate Reddit

[-] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

I mean just block them...

[-] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This is such a bad take. Lemmys barrier to entry is already staggering, from picking an instance, figuring out how what and where communities are, finding ones with any engagement and sorting through dead duplicates, filtering hexbear and tankies, to blocking out porn and other stuff you may find undesirable. With bots flooding communities, Lemmy sometimes feels like a shell left behind from other social networks. Just block them? Sure I can, and may succeed playing bot whack-a-mole, but not everyone will bother, and the discussion stifling effect bots are having will remain.

Lemmy is small but growing, and content bots have a place, but maybe that place should be gathered into a bot instance that can be content surfed at will and need not require manual blocking from every individual. All these quirks of Lemmy are stifling it.

Lemmy could go a mile with content and community tagging and grouping functionality. The fractured state of federation and bot infestation, if it's to be a feature, needs fleshed out tools to easily moderate in an additive way, rather than manual filtering out. It needs to be useful and functional from account creation and improve with filter work, not start as a bot ridden fractured mess and get manageable after some filter work.

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[-] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

This is UNpopular opinion

[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Pssh, if you think that's bad, try tussling with the rape and pedo apologists inundating .world and the other popular instances. Which you can't escape, because the popular instances overshadow every other. That's a very quick way to lose your faith in humanity.

[-] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

I must be doing something right, because I'm not seeing any of this shit.

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[-] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

I think I've got the unpopular opinion in that I think they have a use, for me at least.

There's a couple of communities that I followed back on Reddit that haven't made their way to lemmy yet. I'm glad to be able to have that content in my subscriptions until they do.

Also maybe this one is more laziness, but it's nice to not have to switch app to browse HN now too

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this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023

745 points (89.9% liked)

Unpopular Opinion

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