Fedigrow

What do you mean by this?

I do sometimes see a link post on Lemmy (often on some general community like !games) and copy it to (usually more-specific, like gaming genres: think copying from !games to !rpgs) communities I am active in (or sometimes ones I am not but am aware of: if I see a strategy game post I'll put it in all the relevant strategy game communities I know of), and figure it is alright because I always see a little "cross-posted to:" and the community I got it from, so I figure that is good enough for credit. Probably obvious I got it somewhere else, and easily clickable to find out where. (Or sometimes the little communities are just the communities I myself already posted it to.) Is this a bad assumption and I should stop?

I do it because I want conversation in the specific communities, and for things that could go in more specific communities to not only get talked about in one giant umbrella when the smaller niches already exist on Lemmy. Especially because I think there is a valid reason to not be on !games. Maybe you are not interested in most posts there, just some subgenres, or like me, you are sick of the ragebait-but-also-probably-true-news-so-not-off-topic-and-allowed posts.

I am fine stopping though, less work for me, and as life gets busier I have less time for Lemmy anyways.

I admit I exclude .ml from my crossposting bonanza because of all the political drama I hear about but never bothered to look into, because I feel I'll end up drawn into a political slapfight. Just look at all the comments here about .ml, whether justified or not (not sure and not about to try to figure out). I do not sub to anything on .ml and mostly look at Subscribed though, so I know I am not taking any of their content and copying it elsewhere, unless it was first copied from .ml to something I do look at. I also don't really look at the instance someone is commenting from unless I suspect trolling or we interact a lot though, so I am not being nasty to .ml users for just being on .ml, either. I know a lot of people who do not have anything to do with the political drama are there too because it is recommended as the Lemmy dev's instance, and I do not expect everyone to litmus test every social media for political drama before joining it.

Well, the good news is that at least some of those that sort by new/all know that the newest version of a repost is the newest, and that the last one is the earliest.

The issue you're raising is one I've had conversations about in meat space.

The problem with that is that not everyone who knows about it pays attention to it, or bothers to report things since it would require scrolling back

Personally I rarely report because I have no way of knowing if a link came independently or via repost. It's easy to spot when it's something like a meme or similarly identifiable, but even then it may not be intentionally douchey, just thoughtless. So reporting isn't necessarily a primary option.

I don't think there's an easy solution to the problem tbh.

I feel you. This is quite an interesting thread to read and the different opinions in the comments.

I also think this is a problem for Lemmy. We could be better than other social media sites. Have genuine human conversations. Post high quality content that matters to us. But we regularly don't. We dump the news, re-post memes... And I mean there are people who like it. But I don't. I'm here for the comments and I'd rather talk to people than have a lot of noisy content dumped at me, burying human interaction with fabricated activity that's following some ulterior motives, like make the place seem more busy, or do some internal politics... Which may be warranted. But those aren't genuine in my opinion. It's not some other user who likes to talk to me, but someone fabricating something, and it regularly makes me feel used. Plus I'm pretty sure I see it chill engagement.