this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2023
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[Discussion] alien.top bots (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
37 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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

all 40 comments
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[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (3 children)

The following is just my opinion.

First, my issues with this as a user. 

The project claims to try to achieve mostly 2 things:  

  • Get redditors to switch
  • Kick-start communities/subreddits

Personally, I don't see how having a copy of your content history really helps in getting a reddit user to switch. 

On kick-starting communities with content, this is debatable. 

Personally, I think it instead creates somewhat of an illusion of content, a firehose of unmoderated reddit content that a lemmy user can't really engage with because the 1M users aren't here, not really, they're on reddit.  You could already feel like a ghost by visiting a reddit thread a few hours old, this just ensures no-one of your interactions do anything.
Plenty of those are meant to be a discussion, in this case, one which you can't be part of.
If I wanted to lurk reddit without any way to interact with them, I'd just go to reddit or use one of the several front-ends like LibReddit. 

The communities themselves are just bots talking to each other. An echo of a conversion that's happening on reddit, with the odd lemmy not realizing they're commenting into the void of reddit bots.  I know I've done just that a few times before realizing the OP or commenter would never get it. 

It is also somewhat difficult to deal with as a user,  because even if you block alien.top in 0.19, it won't do anything.   You'd still have to stay on top of the new instances that pop-up and keep blocking the new ones. 

Now, my issues with this as an admin: 

This firehose is unmoderated and it is unrealistic to expect any lemmy instance to take on moderation for all the spam and gavage that inevitably comes along with it.  It is openly breaking reddit ToS.
Don't get me wrong, I have no lost love for reddit, but such flagrant infringement is bound to attract unwanted legal attention sooner or later.  While "Reddit can suck it" is a vibe I don't disagree with, I'd still rather not deal with their lawyers for hosting stolen content.  

The author's comments are also somewhat problematic in that regard, they're claiming to be "at war with reddit", have publicly flaunted breaking reddit ToS, not caring for either their permission nor the consequences.   Even if they do implement a 2-way bridge with reddit, they'll be insta-banned by reddit.

Seems more like a liability than a positive.

All this for 6 active users that have maybe switched. 

I'd be inclined to block them at the instance level. 

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I think the best idea is to just defederate from them for the meantime. They haven't asked us permission to bridge our communities or post their content in our communities and are actively destroying what makes Lemmy nice. Even if the bidirectional bridges end up working, lemmy would be the second class way of seeing that content, and would make Lemmy seem cheap, slow, old, etc compared to Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

On a personal level

They have a portal to allow reddit users to claim and take over their bot persona.

So they're just going to impersonate me somewhere else, and then I can supposedly 'apply' to get the faked account back? And if I don't ask for that account, what happens when the botmaster gets bored? Do they just abandon their network, or do they view it as an asset that they put effort into and deserve to profit from - astroturfing, selling accounts, spamming products, running troll farms, etc?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I can't find it now, but there was a long post on blahaj about it too.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

I suspect that's a discussion most instances will end up having eventually.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

A couple of thoughts:

  • More community interaction is nice, but this is like the ghost of community interaction.
  • I don't really think the stated goal of getting lots of people on Reddit to move over is a great idea. I don't have a problem with people from Reddit coming (I came from Reddit back in June), but slow organic growth is the better way to go in my opinion, rather than trying to force it.
  • What it really comes down to is that it's spam. It might have been ok if there were an easy way to block it, or even if the coming update's instance level blocking would work for it, but it won't.

For some more personal opinions:

  • I'm kinda sick of hearing about Reddit. I wish those of us who've joined because of it would move on.
  • I don't know the specific details so I may be wrong, but from what I understand this is all the work of one guy. I don't like the idea of one person unilaterally deciding to do something that could end up heavily influencing the entire platform.

I'd vote to defederate.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

Agreed.
Well put and certainly more succinct than what I wrote.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

https://sh.itjust.works/comment/6284995 want to say that for now they are disabled, so perhaps they come up with something better.
i dont mind the actual users from alien top, but the myriad of posts that dont try too much to make it clear that they are botted are frustrating and make it harder to look for actual content.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

Thanks for the link.
This linked thread is so full of entitlement, I don't know where to start.

I thought that the people that came to Lemmy during the protests were willing to put their words into actions and leave Reddit

Yes. I did. Many did. But it seems I can't escape reddit when people insist on spamming as much of reddit as they can everywhere they go. They need to take their own advice and leave Reddit and enjoy lemmy for what it is instead of trying to make lemmy into reddit.

that people claim to be upset has more to do with their own ignorance

Holy shit, that's the Skinners meme from the Simpsons. "No, it's the children who are wrong."

And I don’t mean ignorance as a pejorative. I mean it that I have failed to communicate and educate people about the strategy and plan for fediverser.

I also don't mean entitled bot spammer as a pejorative? But words doesn't really work like that.
Shrug.

I kinda understand where they're coming from, I just actually quit reddit and think their efforts drive down engagement more than they help.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

1.1M bots

Jesus shit in my fuck. That’s too much! Bots shouldn’t be commenting except to facilitate human interaction, anyway. Stealing the posts from /r/topofreddit sounds fine, but there is absolutely no need to rehost all of Reddit on Lemmy.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago

I'd vote to defederate as well. I'm all for getting Reddit users to switch to Lemmy, but I don't think that alien.top's strategy is a good one.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

As someone with an account on that instance, I picked it because it was easy to sign up coming from reddit, and it has good federation.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (1 children)

To be fair I don't really have a problem with the 6 of you who are active users, but these threads are just spam.

https://sh.itjust.works/post/10364305 140 bot comments, I might as well chat with an LLM.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Lmao Jesus. Maybe it's just because I transferred it from my banned reddit account that I don't see any of that stuff normally

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I mean you can always make an account here lol

We have buff sailor moon which is better company than bots?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Tbh you guys have defederated too much for my personal taste in instances, and just having a bunch of separate accounts seems like it'd be annoying

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If I may... which blocked instance from your personal tastes would be missing here?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's the principle of it mostly.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

The current block list has only instances full of bot spam, pedophilia and lolicon. Is that principled or tasteful?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I get that you guys have legal issues and such to worry over, being located in Canada and all, but where I'm at, but where I'm at, loli is considered completely legal free expression, and the pedo servers seem to just be weird discussion stuff and not porn so idgaf, I can just block on my end. And same regarding spam. I can block and ignore it on my own end.

One of the big reasons I decided to switch to federated social media is because I was sick of having what I see controlled by someone else, especially big media companies. You guys are nowhere near as bad a reddit, and there's a few communities I like on your instance, but ultimately it doesn't seem like where I want to make my account.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Just keep making accounts on various instances until you can find one that maintains a balance of not being autocratic ban-happy limp-wrist pearl-clutchers and also not full of tankie/pedo/gun-grabber/MAGA nutjobs.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

impossible challenge

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Same.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Quelques communautés...
A few of them..

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Wait they have several instances going at once? Why?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

The generous assumption would be to spread the load.
The less generous assumption would be to mitigate blocks.

Anyway, I think they've paused it for the moment.
Whether they manage to deliver their 2-way bridge is a bit moot, as soon as they do that reddit will ban and sue them (and possibly us and other instances on which that content is available).

There's a reason alternative front-ends like libreddit don't store much and instead fetch it from reddit.
Archive sites would fall under fair use.
This doesn't.

Stealing users from reddit? Sure.
Stealing their content? No.
The fediverse grows (or not) by being more interesting.
Floods of reddit bot content isn't.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Communick owner tries to makes money by selling instances so that is a way to advertise I guess.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

Yea I totally forgot about their hosting offering. yikes.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

This isnpary of what leads me to believe their motives are more malicious than well-meaning.

If they created "redditmirror.ml" or something and just put everything there that would be one thing.

But also - they're actively copying user-created content and impersonating the users?

Fuck 'em I say.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Lemmy sucks more and more everyday.

It's sucking fast. I've been blocking so much lately. Like ...just pointless shit. Usually in communities that are irrelevant to the post.

Is it possible to block instances as a regular user?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It will be in 0.19, but it will only block communities on that instance, not their users.