[Discussion] alien.top bots (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works to c/agora@sh.itjust.works

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English message:

As some of you may have noticed, there's an instance with 1.1M bots reposting reddit posts and comments accross communities in several other instances.

I expect there are multiple valid opinions on the subject and this thread is meant to get a feeling of everyone's opinion on the situation.

You might also want to read lemmy.ca's discussion on that here which is a pretty decent thread about the subject.

Things that I think need to be pointed out:

alien.top currently has 1.1M bots, only 6 of those are weekly users logging in.
together they've made 1.59M comments accross a multitude of communities in other instances.
That project claims to be trying to get reddit users to switch to lemmy.
They have a portal to allow reddit users to claim and take over their bot persona.
alien.top has a single local community, the bots all post on different instances with copies of different subreddits.

I don't have an exhaustive list of such communities, I haven't found an official one. I'll post a fewfrom my personal blocklist in a comment below.

And a note on the upcoming 0.19 release:

the new user-level instance block feature will block all the communities of the blocked instances, but will not block these users' posts or comments if they are done on another instance's community.

My opinion isn't any more valid then anyone else's so I'll put it in a comment below.

Our users' input is welcomed.

What do you, dear users of sh.itjust.works, think about federation with them?

Thanks

Message français:

Comme certains d'entre vous l'ont peut-être remarqué, il y a une instance peuplée de 1,1M de bots qui copient ees posts et commentaires Reddit dans plein de communautés sur plusieurs autres instances.

Il y a plusieurs opinions sur le sujet et ce fil de discussion vise à prendre le pouls de l'opinion générale sur la situation.

Je vous suggères de lire la discussion chez lemmy.ca à ce sujet ici, discussion intéressante.

Quelques points qui, selon moi, doivent être soulignés :

alien.top compte actuellement 1,1 million de robots, dont seulement 6 sont des utilisateurs hebdomadaires qui se login.
collectivement, ils ont déjà fait 1,59 million de commentaires dans une multitude de communautés dans différentes instances.
Ce projet proclame essayer de convertir des utilisateurs de Reddit à passer à Lemmy.
Il existe un portail pour permettre aux utilisateurs de Reddit de prendre contrôle de leur version bot.
alien.top a une seule communauté locale, les bots publient tous sur différentes instances, des copies de différents subreddits.

Je n'ai pas de liste exhaustive de ces communautés, à première vue, je n'en trouve pas une liste officielle. Je mettrai dans un commentaire ci-dessous quelques communautés que j'ai bloqué au niveau personnel.

Pour finir, une note sur la version 0.19 de lemmy qui s'en vient :

La nouvelle fonctionnalité pour bloquer une instance au niveau d'un uutilisateur bloquera toutes les communautés d'une instance bloquée, mais ne bloquera pas les publications ou les commentaires de ces utilisateurs s'ils sont publiés dans une communauté d'une autre instance.

Mon opinion n'est pas meilleur qu'une autre et je mettrai plutôt dans un commentaire ci-bas.

Les commentaires de nos utilisateurs sont les bienvenus.

Que pensez-vous, cher utilisateurs de sh.itjust.works de la fédération avec eux?

Merci

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[-] MomoTimeToDie@sh.itjust.works 1 points 8 months ago

The bots only post in their own communities, and not just random ones, no? It doesn't really seem like an issue if so. Block those instances, and then you won't interact with them at all?

[-] clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 1 points 8 months ago

I think that's right. The alien.top bots are only posting on their own communities, which you won't see if you block the instance in 0.19 or in your client. (many have had instance blocking for a while - I use Connect for Lemmy.)

[-] imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works 4 points 8 months ago

Not exactly. He decided to set up a bunch of other instances like hardware.watch, soccer.forum, and level-up.zone, where he groups the botted communities based on topic. So you'd have to block those instances as well, if I'm not mistaken.

I personally have experienced no issues, because I don't browse /all and I'm not subscribed to any of the fake communities. But the decision to spread it across dozens of servers definitely makes it harder to defend, because it's not exactly trivial to avoid the botted content if you make a habit of browsing /all.

[-] InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I'm not even sure I got them all yet and I'm at 176 communities across 16 instances:

[-] imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Wow. It's really a misleading system because the average user wouldn't normally recognize that those are all related instances with bot content. If he had at least followed a consistent naming scheme, it'd seem more honest and easier to engage/disengage with.

That being said, I still genuinely believe that his motives are altruistic. He's just trying too hard to force growth when it's better to let it come organically for now.

It's a bit rash to go ahead and create 16 instances. Maybe trying a pilot instance and seeing how people like it first would have gone over better.

[-] InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works 1 points 8 months ago

Yes, with a caveat.
The bots are on alien.top.
The communities are spread out in multiple instances, which do seem dedicated to that purpose.
0.19 would allow blocking of these instances as they come up, if you stay on top of it.

The author conveniently sells a hosting service for such instances, so I guess that's how they plan to monetize this.
Money aside, I'm not sure how I feel about that much centralization in the fediverse if that ever was to take off.
Im probably biased, but so far their comments I've seen make me think of spez2.0

Legally speaking, it's also a hornet's n'est.

I think they paused it because several instances backlash, I guess we'll see.

this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023

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