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alien.top is a new level of Reddit crossposting spam (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by simple@lemm.ee to c/fediverse@lemmy.world

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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://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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[+] rglullis@communick.news -8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

“What’s the point? OP isn’t here.”

Please don't ever feel discouraged by contributing content to the network, if you think the contribution is positive.

There are other people there. Just check the number of subscribers to get an idea of at least how many people could be reached by your post.
Your comment there can act as a catalyst for other Lemmy users to join in and participate.
Having content on Lemmy that is not available on Reddit creates a positive asymmetry in our favor, and it creates an incentive for people on Reddit to migrate here.

reddit has a mode, which is the default, that’s between Lemmy’s “truly, everything all” and “subscribed”. (...) I hope Lemmy eventually gains something similar.

I agree, and it doesn't even need to be on Lemmy backend. I firmly believe that everything related to content filtering and even algorithmic choices should be part of the client, not the server.

We can have an (mobile/web) app that takes all of the firehose and does the filtering in the client.

[-] uis@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Client-side filtering? Easy. Client-side sorting? Not easy.

[-] rglullis@communick.news 0 points 1 year ago

Why?

[-] uis@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago

Why hard? Client needs to fetch all metadata needed for sorting for every post created during entire lemmy's existance on every discovered lemmy instances, which depending on algo you are using, might include comments metadata. To aid client-side sorting you would need server-side filtering, which will limit data avaliable to sorting algo. For example client-side trending algo would not show old trending post because it was filtered out.

So client-side sorting is basically running stripped version of instance without file hosting.

[-] rglullis@communick.news -1 points 1 year ago

Client needs to fetch all metadata needed for sorting for every post created during entire lemmy’s existance on every discovered lemmy instances.

Why would you need all data to build the frontpage? Why not just make a sliding window with the content from the last 24/48h?

So client-side sorting is basically running stripped version of instance without file hosting.

Even if that were true, how is that different, e.g, from any modern desktop email client?

[-] uis@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Why would you need all data to build the frontpage? Why not just make a sliding window with the content from the last 24/48h?

Exactly what I'm saying. To not be super resource-intensive, client-side sorting needs to be incomplete. As I said, if there is hypothetical post from 49 hours ago with 10k upvotes, you will not see it, but you will see one from 48 hours ago with 1k upvotes.

Even if that were true, how is that different, e.g, from any modern desktop email client?

Not much I guess(sounds like Thunderbird). But what about mobile?

[-] rglullis@communick.news 0 points 1 year ago

As I said, if there is hypothetical post from 49 hours ago with 10k upvotes, you will not see it, but you will see one from 48 hours ago with 1k upvotes.

Not necessarily true. You can build an index and keep a cache of the N posts by each sorting method. Your data store will grow linearly with the number of sorting criteria you will have, which should be small.

But what about mobile?

We are talking about an amount of data that a sqlite database process in a breeze. My K-9 email client can handle all my 20 years of gmail...

[+] limelight79@lemm.ee -8 points 1 year ago

I can't believe two people downvoted your comment.

You're right about contributing.

As for the filtering, I'm not sure how I feel about that - I use the web interface on my computer and an app on my phone and tablet. I'd prefer them to have similar results. But I see the point you're making; it could be curated by user instead of a massive algorithm for everyone.

[+] rglullis@communick.news -11 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the support, but I honestly stopped caring about downvotes. I think there is a vocal minority that is already set on not liking what I am doing, so they are going to vote me down even if I post a cure for cancer.

[-] remotelove@lemmy.ca 12 points 1 year ago

Fucking hell you are tone deaf. Your idea is fine. Your implementation sucks ass.

Did I see in another post where you told people to stop thinking of bots as bots and imagine they are real users because they might be one day, and then redefine what a bot was? Just stop.

People are telling you time and time again what is pissing them off, and then you just try and repackage and resell what you are doing. Just stop.

Put in big bold letters at the top of the posts that "THIS IS A THREAD THAT IS COPIED FROM REDDIT TO HELP FACILITATE USER TRANSITION TO LEMMMY."

Sure, you are driving people to participate in a thread, but it's pointless and counter productive. It's pissing people off and you are poo-poo'ing it like they don't understand your grand plans.