lemmit.online is a controversial lemmy server since its sole purpose is to run a bot that mirrors reddit posts to lemmy. Previous discussion 3 years ago about whether to block it: https://lemmy.ca/post/1380644
Currently it is blocked from lemmy.ca and I would like to unblock it to ease weaning off reddit gradually. If I can use lemmy.ca as my main site with links off to reddit on occassion I don’t need to use reddit anymore to browse but just drop in for a specific post of interest.
The main complaint is it can fill up the all category with high volume of low interaction posts. This can be dealt with on a per user basis by blocking either the lemmit.online instance or blocking the bot@lemmit.online user.
Looking at the top 10 lemmy instances on https://fedidb.com/software/lemmy here’s who allows or blocks the lemmit.online instance:
lemmy.world ✅
lemmy.ml ✅
sh.itjust.works ✅
lemmy.dbzer0.com ✅
lemmy.ca ❌
programming.dev ✅
lemmy.zip ✅
lemmy.blahaj.zone ❓
ttrpg.network ✅
lemmy.one ✅
My personal feeling is that reddit repost bots are actively harmful to the growth of the fediverse.
In my opinion there’s a few general buckets of users: link consumers, comment consumers, commenters, posters. Reddit bots help the first group, and actively deter engagement by the others. When your feed is a flood of reposts and no comments, the community feels dead and you’re disincentivized to comment yourself. If you do comment because you don’t realize the OP has no idea what lemmy even is, then you’re even less likely to comment in the future.
I honestly care less about appealing to the link consumers, since they’re just lurking and not helping grow the community. We could potentially do something like refederate but add it to everyone’s instance block list by default, but I struggle to see the value in that for the handful of people who might unblock it. Otters idea of just having the communities be hidden unless you’re subscribed, might be a reasonable approach. (We haven’t really played with that lemmy functionality yet)
I’m also curious about lemmit’s future as old reddit is locked down. Eventually reddit is going to start blocking however they’re scraping.
That being said we consider our instances to be community led, and we’re always are open to changes that the majority want.
I’ve changed my mind a bit since Otter’s comment suggests Lemmy has some admin-accessible features I didn’t know about. I personally haven’t needed Reddit for several years now, and the Old Reddit redirect plugin works fine for my needs the odd time I do want to peek at a thread. My own transition period from Reddit to Lemmy was about 3-4 months, so I understand the want to wean off gradually.
I think I can support LemmitOnline’s re-federation on the condition that it will not show up on any lemmy.ca user’s All or Local feeds, unless that user has subscribed to the lemmit.online community or the bot. It also shouldn’t show by default for logged out users.
However, I still worry if it will bring overwhelming traffic, disk or other resource use for the lemmy.ca admins from re-enabling that federation. Something to consider.
not show up on any lemmy.ca user’s All or Local feeds, unless that user has subscribed to the lemmit.online community
subreddits should show in “all search” though. I like your “soft defederation/block” concept, but may require a lemmy software upgrade?
for whatever it’s worth i would vote against it if only for avoiding any legal chicanery reddit might pull on lemmit and lemmy instances that interact/federate with it(though its not a deal breaker for me). As it currently stands lemmy.ca can claim it does not and has not interacted with lemmit and therefore would fare better if reddit comes looking to attack the fediverse/lemmy. we need to do our best to protect fedecan and avoiding businesses with big pockets and billionaire interests that would hurt or damage it seems the best way to do it. we don’t need that crap here anyway, the only thing it has that I wish lemmy had is more users to update the news feeds quicker.
I’d just block the instance so it’s no big deal for me, but if I didn’t have the option to block, then I’d say no because I didn’t leave Reddit to read their shit topics elsewhere.
That doesn’t seem like something that should ever be unblocked. Reposts from reddit should get less necessary over time.
If you want to wean yourself off reddit try following the RSS feeds for your usual subreddits.
Reddit has rss feeds? I thought they shut that down years ago along with every other quality of life feature.
It still works if you use old reddit. I still follow r/halifax with https://old.reddit.com/r/halifax.rss
Please no. We didn’t need reddit content mirrored here before, and as the quality there drops like rocks, we need it even less now.
I fonpt want to have to continually add more personal blocks on junk.
If we did this, you would be able to block the whole instance at once. See the blocks tab on: https://lemmy.ca/settings
I will note that since that previous discussion, Lemmy has improved the functionality that lets an individual user block entire instances. So users that don’t want to see this content can block everything by adding
lemmit.onlineto the block list in the user settings.It might also be possible for us to hide the communities from public feeds, so only subscribed users will see the communities and associated content. We need to explore that some more: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2943#issuecomment-1581485335
I do agree with this reasoning
can use lemmy.ca as my main site with links off to reddit on occassion I don’t need to use reddit anymore to browse but just drop in for a specific post of interest.
When users are migrating off of old social media platforms, letting them see everything from one app reduces a lot of friction. Especially with Reddit taking steps to keep users locked in to their app (ex. Blocking logged out users, limiting
old.reddit.com, killing the RSS feeds).We’ve seen a lot of “mirror content from elsewhere” sites, and
lemmit.onlinewas one of the better organized cases. Every post makes it very clear that the post is a mirror / archive, so no one should mistake the bot for a real user looking for help. For example: https://lemmit.online/post/8699035No thanks.
I don’t have a reddit problem to wean off. I’m over it, and I believe a large percentage of us are here because we left reddit years ago.
Making it ours and future reddit refugees’ problem to block the instance seems bad, yo.
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