Precisely, a lot of us left that horrible place to escape all the rampant transphobia and persecution they have over there. We don't need their kind of "content" mirrored here. My first thing I'm going to do when they allow us to block instances is to immediately block those that have mostly repost bots.
I think Lemmy as a whole should forbid any links from Reddit just protect everyone here. Is it censorship? Yes, but it's for a good cause.
Nobody wants to participate in a disconnected discussion.
This is why the next part of the work is to build a bridge to send notifications to the people on reddit.
We have multiple instances with bots that do precisely what you’re saying
Do we really? Can you point me to them?
Nobody wants to have a discussion about a reddit post.
You are starting to sound like a gatekeeper. First, this is not the goal of this tool. The idea is eventually to have mirror accounts ends to work as proxys to allow for two-way bridges. Second, a lot of people know that they are not with reddit, but when they have come to lemmy they bounced back because they couldn't find the content they were used to.
We need more people posting to Lemmy.
Agree, but If we follow the rule of 90/9/1 for lurkers/commenters/posters, this means that we can bring 90% of reddit's userbase to the fediverse just by bringing the content here. The posters and commenters will eventually follow.
The logic is simple: unless I start breaking into people's phones and computers, I can not force people them to post to Lemmy, but I can get their content here. A tool like this can help the intolerant minority to drive the behavior of the majority.
You won't be interacting with Reddit. It's the opposite. This tool is to make sure that those on the fediverse do not need Reddit, but those on Reddit start getting exposure to the Fediverse.
Okay not precisely, but we have a bot (I think it's the one at smeargle.fans) that reposts Reddit threads and replicates all of their comments, which nobody engages with
You are starting to sound like a gatekeeper.
Well that term just doesn't apply. I'm not saying "Real Lemmy users avoid anything to do with Reddit" or anything along those lines. You asked for feedback, and I gave you my honest criticism of it.
I understand that you found a project that sounds fun to make, and it probably will be. This is what we engineers do, we get excited to build things that seem to have clever technical answers. However in my past few months on Lemmy, I have seen these ideas, and have seen the way they tend to work out so far.
The logic may be simple, but human psychology is rarely as simple as engineers wish it could be.
Feel free to build your project. All aspiring engineers should make things that they want to make. But if you ask for feedback, don't argue that the feedback is wrong. Not all solutions end up working out the way you hope, and that's part of the engineering life. And based on prior experience, this one is likely to get the same treatment that the other repost bots get.
But if you ask for feedback, don’t argue that the feedback is wrong
Sorry for the bluntness, but I did not ask for any feedback at all. I am asking very specific questions and this post is mostly to collect information from those who can be interested in using it.
Do we really? Can you point me to them?
lemmit.online did this and was recently defederated, partially because the one admin wasn't able to prevent the volume of posts being generated from ending up filled with spam.
There's a few HN bots too, but unfortunately the posts never get much engagement here, so I have to go through to HN to read some discussion about it (which I will do, but a much bigger proportion of people just don't appear to engage with mirrored content here)
We have multiple instances with bots that do precisely what you’re saying
Do we really? Can you point me to them?
Two examples:
I wonder if the time people had to spend for removing their spam from their feed already surpasses the time the developers have spent setting them up. I know, I know, you intend your bot to be different, so not 'precisely' that, but I'm worried the result might be the same. Lots of posts with zero engagement, which give people the impression Lemmy consists of bot posts, ultimately driving user engagement down.
they’re using are going to be flooded with mirrored Reddit
Only if someone set this up to mirror some large subreddit, which would be frankly stupid: the service still requires a reddit API key and they would quickly go over the limits of the free tier if they pulled data from the larger subs, also instances that would be flooding other communities would quickly be banned.
This is why I am being very careful about setting this up. I am not going to set these bots to any community unless I get explicit approval from the admins and mods, and I am not going to create mirrors from any subreddit with more than 250k subscribers.
Honestly, I like this idea, just because it means I could block your instance in my app and instantly filter out that kind of content, just like how someone can block lemmynsfw to get rid of almost all porn.
I hope this feature becomes included in all views soon. Some apps support it, others do not. Web view does not, AFAIK.
Even then, I think it's concerning. Yes, advanced users have tools to deal with the problem. But not everyone is an advanced user. Most people will have to rely on their instance admin to take care of instance blocking.
We should consider the experience of newcomers, especially since the intent of this bot seems to be to increase activity in niche communities. Newcomers are the people who can increase activity. We should aim to make Lemmy more welcoming and interesting for them, out of the box, not expect them to tweak their settings to have a bearable experience.
These bots merely advertise for reddit. They drown the All feed in zero engagement posts, hiding actual activity.
Experienced users might be able to handle this (although the question persists why one unresponsible bot admin should be able to force thousands of users to take action), but new Lemmy users will not look for a fix. They will leave and never come back.
These bots make Lemmy a worse and shallow copy of reddit. Please stop running them, or make it in instances which do not federate their content to the rest of Lemmy.
They drown the All feed in zero engagement posts, hiding actual activity.
If I tell you that I've been running this system for two days already, have you noticed and/or found yourself "drowned" by anything?
Yes, every time I try to use the All feed, I'm presented with new communities which consist of nothing but zero-engagement bot-posts.
Every time, I can choose between wasting more time on blocking them or abandoning that Feed altogether.
Granted, not your bots as far as I can tell, but two days is not a long time either. Give it more time and into more hands, abuse will happen.
There's an entire instance for that already - lemmit.online and it sucks. There's no engagement, no interaction. Nobody wants it. Everyone hates it.
Why isn't the focus aimed at creating more communities over here, that actually add to engagement & interaction...if I want to see what's happening over there, I'll go and take a look... I'm one of those that has bots blocked anyway, so makes little difference to me really..
Why isn’t the focus aimed at creating more communities over here, that actually add to engagement & interaction…i
Because it's not mutually exclusive and we can do both.
if I want to see what’s happening over there, I’ll go and take a look…
Yeah, but what about those who do not want to go over there out of principle. I know I am not the only one in this case, and I'd also like to have a way those who want to migrate.
I think it took me less than a minute to block the lemnit bot.
We want to grow beyond just being a Reddit clone/replacement - mirroring active discussions here just feels like stalking an ex on Facebook.
That said, in a previous discussion about about archiving good answers from Reddit, I did suggest that this would be a great use for a wiki that was integrated into Lemmy. Being about to semi-automate the retrieval and formatting would be useful. I think starting new threads for them isn't the way to go.
mirroring active discussions here just feels like stalking an ex on Facebook.
I am not sure if that is the best analogy. We didn't break up with the communities in the subreddits, we broke up with Reddit, Inc.
Interesting initiative!
FYI, there is already https://lemmit.online/
Yeah, I know of lemmit but AFAIK it has the opposite ideas in many cases:
I wonder if the dev from lemmit would be interested in being the host of some of the "fediversed" communities, so that we can have comments as well.
You have it follow whatever instance you want it to follow. There’s a request community that you post to and it’s then added to the queue.
I don’t understand the point of this at all. Might be a fun project for you to do, but nobody wants a bunch of communication set before them that you can’t interact with. It doesn’t help this grow at all.
There’s a request community that you post to and it’s then added to the queue.
But only the posts, while I want to have all of the conversation, comments included.
Might be a fun project for you to do, but nobody wants a bunch of communication set before them that you can’t interact with.
What if I told you that I started working on this precisely because some of the people who were active on /r/emacs wanted to leave reddit but would also like to support those coming with questions? With this tool we can see the content on Lemmy, respond on Lemmy and (WIP) end up notifying the original asker on reddit.
Something a bit similar to what lemmit is already doing, but more powerful with your addition of comments: read-only, best-of archives of really old content from popular subs.
10-5 year old askreddit posts for instance would be interesting blasts from the past to read today. Isn’t there already a ‘best of Reddit’ convention on Reddit itself that resurfaces such content from time to time?
You are fixated on the bots. Don't worry about them. The bot accounts are only needed to have a way to get people on reddit to migrate.
The real point here is that this tool is as spammy as the admin of mirror instances. It's the admin that sets:
What people are failing to understand: the last point is not automated. The idea is not to get the firehose from reddit and unleash it on Lemmy. The idea is mostly to bring some automation to the process that I've been doing on all the different lemmy communities already where I was (a) browsing reddit just to seed content here and (b) sending DMs to people on reddit to let them know about the lemmy alternative.
Let me repeat: you will not see a flood of posts from bots coming from alien.top or any "fediverser" instance.
The real point here is that this tool is as spammy as the admin of mirror instances.
I agree that technically the person using the bots is to blame, while I only ever see the bots, and never a person behind them. I don't see what that changes about their behaviour though. You clarified the bots are not acting autonomously, a human decides how much they spam. I still have a problem with too much spam.
Let me repeat: you will not see a flood of posts from bots coming from alien.top or any “fediverser” instance.
How can you be so sure? We have precedent of bots making 800k posts per month. Apparently, bot admins exist who use these tools indiscriminately. Numbers go up, I guess.
What measures do you as the creator take to prevent abuse? How can you prevent abuse, once another person gets their hands on it?
I see what you’re trying to accomplish and congratulate you for trying to make Lemmy a better place, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. As many people here I’ve blocked @bot@lemmit.online precisely because it just posts Reddit content and floods my feed, with what is basically spam. Also many people came here just to avoid Reddit and to try and make something better. Sure, when 0.19.0 comes out and people will be able to block instances, lemmings will have a choice if they want to see that instance, but what about new users, or people just checking Lemmy out? Do we really want them to see reposted reddit content? Because they can already do this on reddit. What we need is to stop being so invested in “our ex” and just grow as a community, in a natural way.
The argument can be made that bots measuring the content are no better than some random dude on the Internet reposting shit they like. Situation becomes worse when that same "bot" doesn't credit the author proper.
Memes are meant to be shared, and it’s a great way to grow small communities. Karma whoring is not that big here since reputation points are not shown (at least in the webUI). So a person will post a few memes and could start a conversation, something a bot can’t do.
Whether the meme is meant to be shared in some other context or not, I think, is the decision that should be based on the sum of copyright liberation and how generalistic the contents are. Today, I can't bear a thought of reposting some stranger's niche meme on social media without at least attaching a source or creator, because I'm most likely making one more point where engagement with the same meme ends - and reposting full works doesn't qualify as commentary/criticism/research, so it's not a fair use, to begin with.
That's why we are correct of assuming the worst from the bots: programming any fair use considerations is left to gather dust, as it's ultimately something that human has to decide.
it just posts Reddit content and floods my feed
Wait, how come does it flood "your" feed if the lemmit bot only posts to their own instance/communities? If you are browsing with the "all" view, it's not really your feed.
Apologies for the "you're holding it wrong" response, but maybe it would be better if you just start browsing the specific communities that you want to follow?
It’s seems like you ignored my point entirely just to argue on a technicality. As I asked, should Reddit content reposted by bots be something a new user should see?
Also browsing /all is a great way to discover new communities, but even if you don’t browse it bot communities find their way into the discover communities tab, which makes it more difficult for people find the communities that they want to follow.
Okay, I am starting to realize that most people are looking at the word "bot" and stop reading the rest of the description.
The point of fediverser is not about creating an army of bots or a fully automated content firehose. The point of fediverser is to have a tool that gives a way for humans to bring content that they want to have on the fediverse. The mirrored instance and the bot accounts are just a mechanism to (1) facilitate the curating process, (2) automate the posting of content that has been curated and (3) to keep a bridge with Reddit which can help redditors to signup to Lemmy in a frictionless-way.
All this work started because I spent almost 3 months bootstraping !emacs@communick.news by doing the following:
At no point the idea is to:
I've repeated multiple times in this thread and in the original announcement, but I can do it yet again: the main usage of fediverser is for people that do not want to use reddit but still are interested in interacting with niche communities.
Love the idea for subreddits I can't find a Lemmy sub for. But I don't want all the rest. I specifically went out of my way to block seeing bots on Lemmy. I don't think there is a way to opt in to seeing just one and even if there was I don't see how I would transition that into only seeing bots for the subs on reddit I'd still want to engage with. I don't understand how you're planning to manage this?
Right. But what I am saying is that even if I turned the setting off and was seeing the bots how would I only see the bits and pieces I wanted from reddit and not the whole of the reddit website mirrored?
You are never going to see all of reddit mirrored. Please read the description again. There is already a mechanism that lets admins create a mapping between specific subreddits and Lemmy communities, and only those subreddits gets pulled.
So, correct me if I'm wrong. But does that mean there has to be a Lemmy community that is synchronous to the subreddit in order to be mirrored?
Are you going to foot the bill for the Reddit API fees?
Have you considered what you will do if Reddit cuts you off? IANAL, but it's fairly clear from the TOS that they will likely shut you down.
Except and solely to the extent such a restriction is impermissible under applicable law, you may not, without our written agreement:
license, sell, transfer, assign, distribute, host, or otherwise commercially exploit the Services or Content;
modify, prepare derivative works of, disassemble, decompile, or reverse engineer any part of the Services or Content; or
access the Services or Content in order to build a similar or competitive website, product, or service, except as permitted under any Additional Terms (as defined below).
I am not mirroring all of reddit, and the idea is that each "fediverser" instance pulls only enough data to stay under the 600 requests/ 10 minutes, which is free.
If they decide to go after these fediverser instances, they will have to play whack-a-mole, because anyone can get new keys and start anew.
It'll be easy enough for them to block fediverser/0.1.0 user-agents, so perhaps that's not a safe default value since it's an easy target.
I'll be honest, I saw a previous post of yours and was sceptical, but I think based on the idea, you've taken the best steps to make this a reality. Having the communities be part of instances where they fit in and can be maintained by moderators who care about the subjects is a challenge, but it does set it up for longer success.
As others have pointed out, there's still an imbalance where people don't realize they're replying to shadow accounts (like this for example). Maybe a good solution would be to DM someone who replies to a comment by one of the bot accounts explaining what's going on. Maybe asking the person who commented to reach out to the user on Reddit directly, and asking them to join the Fediverse would be a good solution and would bring in the human element to the process. This would avoid you having to build that feature (and likely appear to be a spammer) which might have a higher conversion ratio.
I'm not sure if you have a plan for it, but somehow allowing the Reddit user to take over the shadow account would probably achieve your goal of getting more people to convert, and would be a benefit to niche instances looking to grow their organic members. However you do this, it should be seamless to the new member, with the minimal number of hurdles.
Good luck!
Thank you! I really like the idea of getting the people already on Lemmy involved in the process of "fediversing" the people. I will definitely try to find a way to work this into the tool.
Let's say I have a favorite sport and there exists a sub_ named: r/.
Let's also say there already exits a Lemmy community and that community is struggling to get off the ground: !@lemmy.world
I can see a value add if your project directly helps !@lemmy.world get started; but I don't see how it does. If anything wouldn't your project compete with !@lemmy.world and therefore hinder it?
It might be different if your project directly tied r/ to !@lemmy.world but it doesn't.
So, like /r/soccer and !main@soccer.forum?
Yes
Checking out !main@soccer.forum I saw very few posts by bots. Mainly saw posts by you. I saw one post coming from alien.top .
What's interesting is that only posts by bots have any comments. So maybe this could be a good way to get communities started.
Therefore, if it's okay with the admins at the following community, I'd nominate !tennis@lemmy.world
There's almost nothing happening there.
Do keep in mind that the comments on the soccer threads are also likely to be from bot accounts, but I'd expect that as more people start subbing to the community, there will be more "organic" participation.
As for the inclusion on the bot on a lemmy.world community. Please get in contact with the community mod, but I really doubt that the instance admins would be interested. If they don't go with it, I might set up a Lemmy instance specific for tennis (matchpoint.zone was available for cheap. ;)
Yeah, check !main@soccer.forum, I am using the tool to post some content that I find on /r/soccer. I am working to do similar things with /r/NBA and /r/NFL.
Did you check with the admins on lemmy first or are you bot posting without permission?
What an interesting idea. As this project scales, how would you think of getting around the Reddit API limit problem? This sounds pretty API intensive. I also wonder if Reddit might see this as a TOS violation (particularly when the bot was posting comments) and killing it without even reaching an API limit.
That said, I applauded you for trying to think of creative ways to increase content on Lemmy. One thing in particular that I miss are the questions on niche subreddits, particularly hobby subreddits. You can learn so much just by reading others’ questions. Lemmy doesn’t have the user base and reach to support stuff like that yet, so I like that you’re trying to think of ways to increase that content here.
As this project scales, how would you think of getting around the Reddit API limit problem?
The first idea is to scale horizontally. More instances run by different people, each of them running for different communities.
The second idea is a bit crazy but I would only be able to do it with some serious financial support and the help of a mobile app developer. Basically it would require a mobile app that could work as a client of both reddit and lemmy.
I also wonder if Reddit might see this as a TOS violation.
I do worry about it, but if it gets to this point, it would mean that this project would have started to make some noise. If it has started to get their attention, it would mean that the fediverse would be already reaching some critical mass.
I miss are the questions on niche subreddits, particularly hobby subreddits.
That's exactly the type of community that I want to bring via alien.top. I started !makers@communick.news, but it didn't catch on. Can you give me a list of specific subreddits you want?
TINLA: factors for fair use don't seem to align, though.
About that last point: solvable by manually gathering authors' links or making a hyperlink to respective Reddit profiles.
Adding a link to the original profile is quite easy and it would help alleviate the issue.
Also, keeping in mind that one of the goals of such a tool is to get people on reddit to be aware of the alternatives... the easiest way to let people on reddit to file a claim and/or to remove copy they don't want copyrighted would be to let simply let they taking over their mirrored instance by proving they own their reddit account. And if this tools becomes popular enough to the point that redditors start signing up to the fediverse because the copied instance is getting significant viewership, then mission. fucking. accomplished.
It does not merit a verification of the author, when you hold their content encaged somewhere they did not approve yet. You say it's to increase registrations on Fediverse and for the brighter future, but please remember to deal with this ethically. Creator deserves to know first that your mirror (or whatever ends up being) intends to seek engagement with their piece.
Linking to original, as we both proposed, is an aftermath. Top three factors also need to be addressed if you claim fair use.
As an alternative, asking for consent and delaying repost is not a rocket science.
I like it, seems like a good way to get to critical mass on the small subs here. Can't really offer any help, but good luck and thanks!
I will update this list as it goes:
Currently created:
r/okbuddyretard would be nice
Subreddits id like to have mirrored with discussions so i dont have to visit reddit anymore.
/gakinotsukai /90dayfiance /pathofexile /linux /fcbayern /diablo /diablo2 /diablo2resurrected /diablo4 /hextcg
Great, thank you so much for the suggestions! Question now is, where should I point them to?
I can have /r/linux at communick.news, and the football ones I can gladly send to soccer.forum. What about the gaming ones?
Again, please notice that I'm only going to mirror anything on Lemmy if the community mods give explicit approval. Could you please post on the lemmy community to see if you can gather more support?
Unfortunately the feddit.de admin is not on board. Would be happy if you could find a suitable instance at least for 90dayfiance and gakinotsukai which are dead communities on lemmy, the gaming ones can be skipped as not niche enough. I love what you did with the fcbayern one! Thank you so much!
Thank you for this. Don’t listen to the haters, by bringing reddit’s content over here you’re still adding more content to the fediverse. I would love it if you brought over meme communities
Thank you for the kind words, but I'm probably not going to do this for meme communities for the following reasons:
But if you really want those, you can get a domain name and I could perhaps host it for you on https://communick.com ?
This is my first time looking into this service, but I would be willing to pay to have the service hosted. Does your link above include a way to get started with running the software you coded?
You can host it, that’s fine. I just want my memes however they happen lol. I’d I just have to buy a domain I’ll do so
thanks for using Leebra!
go to feed...
Nobody wants to participate in a disconnected discussion. We have multiple instances with bots that do precisely what you're saying, and they just flood the feed with posts that people won't engage with.
Nobody wants to have a discussion about a reddit post. Nobody wants to have a discussion about a hackernews or slashdot post. If Lemmy just looks like a place to mirror Reddit content, people will see that and just go to Reddit and engage directly.
We need more people posting to Lemmy. If this is just a place for bots to have discussions with themselves, nobody will stay here very long.
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