[Lemmy.ca Discussion] What should we do about Lemmit.online

@bot has been subject to multiple reports from our users over the last while.

We would like the users’ input on how to deal with it. It is the opinion of the administrators that @bot, and @lemmit.online doesn’t add anything positive and constitutes spam. We especially want to make sure we get feedback as we are more likely to be sensitive to bots like this and other forms of spam compared to most users as we’ll often scroll through “All” sorted by new.

Here are the options.

  • Defederate from Lemmit.Online
  • Ban @bot from lemmy.ca
  • leave it up to users to block @bot

Please vote by up voting on one of the comments below. Downvotes will be ignored. Additional comments and discussion is more than welcome. Results of this discussion will provide us guidance on how to deal with other bots in the future as well.

If you’re not a lemmy.ca registered user, please refrain from voting but feel free to comment with your opinion.

Vampiric_Luma, (edited )
@Vampiric_Luma@lemmy.ca avatar

I vote to defederate.

I don’t want to see spam and that is in great part why I validated my email and joined this instance. The great thing about being on Lemmy is I can go to another instance to view that content if I want to see it. I like having a variety of instances with different moderation levels.

The way I see it, the user is still in control. I’m on other instances; I’ll still see the content if I want. Here, I want moderation curated towards user engagement. I left Reddit to avoid low-quality bot posts and I preferably don’t want to think about bots all the time. It’s exhausting and I don’t want to play whack-a-mole. What I want to see are the things people are interested in straight from the users. I don’t need doomscrolling reddit feeds sourced by bots again.

Edit for clarity, I hope!

zesty,
@zesty@lemmy.ca avatar

Let’s not turn into Beehaw with the de-federating from everything until there is no content left.

TheWaterGod,
@TheWaterGod@lemmy.ca avatar

I’m in favour of defedding. It’s just Reddit spam that’s not needed here. If people find interesting things over on Reddit that also belong here, that’s one thing, but there’s no reason to make a 1:1 copy. Let Lemmy be Lemmy and let Reddit be Reddit. They don’t have to be the same thing.

Has anyone noticed @linkbot as well? Is it doing the same thing?

Gestrid,

Just glancing through it, it looks like it. I’d defederate from that instance, too. It seems to just be cloning certain popular Reddit subreddits and auto-postink their posts to lemmy.link.

n7gifmdn,
@n7gifmdn@lemmy.ca avatar

Have you considedred turning off SHOW BOT ACCOUNTS by default?

https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/4533b1fe-f0a8-4ef0-8dfa-7212495044bf.png <a href=""></a> <a href=""></a>

Bo7a,

I don’t think losing access to all the helpful bots is the right solution. Go take a look at the lemmit instance description. They have no users, just the repost bot. Defederation is not going to hurt anyone.

Gestrid, (edited )

Seems they’re already offline? I tried going directly to the site only to get a 502 Bad Gateway Error on a Cloudflare error screen.

In any case, if it’s literally just bot spam, definitely defederate from it.

canis_majoris,
@canis_majoris@lemmy.ca avatar

I don’t get how it’s a big debate when the guy’s FAQ functionally boils down to saying “yeah this is spam and defederate if you don’t like it” almost as if it’s a challenge.

As much as I miss content in abundance to mindlessly doomscroll that was functionally why I left reddit.

Jesse,

I vote either defederate or ban. Even if it is “technically legal” by the current rules, it goes completely against the spirit and intent of this place, and rules can and should be changed over time to preserve that. Bot/AI generated posts are exactly what we DON’T want this place to turn into, and it will take active effort to avoid that.

zephyreks,

Ban spam.

ryanpdg1,

After reading their FAQ I think we should defederate.

Here’s a snippet

Q: This is spam, can you stop?

A: First of all, I apologise for the inconvenience. All you have to do is block @bot, and none of its posts will ever show up on your instance. If you you don’t want anyone else on your server to be exposed to this bot/instance, you should convince your admin to defederate from lemmit.online. Since there are no other users on here, there will be no harm done.

No users to offend

Lucz1848,
@Lucz1848@lemmy.ca avatar

I was leaning towards letting the individual user decide, but now vote to either defederate, or ban the bot.

I’m of the mind that this is where I go insteadof reddit. If there’s going to be overlap between what gets posted over there, and on lemmy, I’d rather it gets posted by a person who wants to engage, and is invested in the post.

Additionally, I am not in favor of any bot that can potentially make me engage with reddit in any way.

James,

I just noticed you added comments for voting.

Unfortunately that doesn’t work too well because the comments aren’t sticked and some options become less visible.

I think a straw poll would have been the better choice, despite you being unable to track votes from only our instance.

masterofn001,

I’m using jerboa on Android. It has a check box in settings to allow/disallow bots in the feed. I haven’t seen this mentioned bot, so I suppose it works.

But, if the bot is drowning out the feed for others it may be nice to block it at server level.

avidamoeba,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

We really need a poll function in Lemmy. 🤭

mp3,
@mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

With the ability to limit the poll to users of a specific instance and/or subscribers from a community (that were subscribed prior to the poll’s creation).

avidamoeba,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

I like the prior subscription filter.

mp3, (edited )
@mp3@lemmy.ca avatar

That way it greatly reduces the amount of users trying to brigade a vote. Can’t do much against sleeper/inactive accounts subscribed just for that purpose, but that at least require some planning.

twistedtxb,
@twistedtxb@lemmy.ca avatar

I’d say just let each user to decide whether or not to ban the user.

It’s super easy to do. Not an issue imo

avidamoeba,
@avidamoeba@lemmy.ca avatar

Using the All+New sorting is practically useless because of 🫘 and equivalent noise whether this bot is alive or dead. From what I’ve seen New is only useful when combined with Subscribed or Local. On the basis of that I wouldn’t take any action since people who might want to read this stuff won’t be able to, and we’ll not see a dramatic improvement to All+New.

Now that I know it exists, I might subscribe to several Canadian communities on lemmit to keep track of stuff that’s not reflected here yet. Will probably repost what’s interesting to our communities.

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