The Agora

1603 readers

1 users here now

In the spirit of the Ancient Greek Agora, we invite you to join our vibrant community - a contemporary meeting place for the exchange of ideas, inspired by the practices of old. Just as the Agora served as the heart of public life in Ancient Athens, our platform is designed to be the epicenter of meaningful discussion and thought-provoking dialogue.

Here, you are encouraged to speak your mind, share your insights, and engage in stimulating discussions. This is your opportunity to shape and influence our collective journey, just like the free citizens of Athens who gathered at the Agora to make significant decisions that impacted their society.

You're not alone in your quest for knowledge and understanding. In this community, you'll find support from like-minded individuals who, like you, are eager to explore new perspectives, challenge their preconceptions, and grow intellectually.

Remember, every voice matters and your contribution can make a difference. We believe that through open dialogue, mutual respect, and a shared commitment to discovery, we can foster a community that embodies the democratic spirit of the Agora in our modern world.

Community guidelines
New posts should begin with one of the following:

[Question]
[Discussion]
[Poll]

Only moderators may create a [Vote] post.

Voting History & Results

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

TheDude@sh.itjust.works

imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works

Seraph089@sh.itjust.works

Difficult_Bit_1339@sh.itjust.works

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

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works to c/agora@sh.itjust.works

38 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

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] imaqtpie@sh.itjust.works 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

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 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

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 11 months ago* (last edited 11 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.