Update: so, the responses this far are almost universally that these bots have been blocked by users of the community. There is also a general disinterest in defederating, which is on brand.

You guys wanna do a poll or something or?

I’d like to lead my thoughts with a quote from the admins regarding bots within lemm.ee:

“Bots must not be responsible for the majority of content in any community”

There are two entire instances that immediately spring to mind, zerobytes.monster’s b0t user, and lemmit.online. Their content is quite literally 90% bot content with 0 engagement, and they spam constantly.

Now here at lemm.ee we generally don’t defend from stuff, that’s actually why I prefer this instance. Yes, you can block the bot users and that solves the problem, but hear me out:

These bots ruin the experience on Lemmy for new users. They spam so many posts, attempting to block them from a mobile app will usually crash the app. If you’re a new user coming to Lemm.ee sorting by all, you see tons and tons of empty posts.

Zerobytes is particularly egregious because it doesn’t even repost actual content, just thousands and thousands of links to Reddit posts. It’s a spam instance, period, and I feel strongly about this.

Lemmit.online isn’t quite as bad, but it’s an entire instance dedicated to spam reposting everything from Reddit. All the posts have zero engagement, and the comment value is gone so everything decent gets buried.

Yes there are ways around this on an individual user level, but then you’re creating a context where there’s even less engagement in the vast majority of “new” posts.

Anyway, thems my thoughts. Repost bots are stupid, one that drive traffic to Reddit are even worse. Thoughts?

  •  Jordan Lund   ( @jordanlund@lemmy.one ) English
    14•1 year ago

    Repost bots are no better than spam bots IMHO, but I think defederation needs to be based on bad behavior by the admins, not the accounts themselves.

    In the case of lemmit.online, yeah, they are creating a bunch of communities that ONLY the bot can post in, and the posts get no replies because what’s the point in replying to TIFU or AITA if OP will never see it?

    That’s clearly the fault of the admin, but OTOH, blocking bot@lemmit.online solves the problem without full defederation.

    There’s a food community I read that gets spambots from lemm.ee all the time only posting affiliate links.

    Those get reported for spam and blocked, but it’s clearly not the policy of lemm.ee so no reason to defederate.

    •  TexMexBazooka   ( @TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee ) OP
      12•1 year ago

      I’m going to keep echoing this argument: just blocking the user is a shitty solution, because now new users are going to be alienated, especially if they browse by new.

      Your example of spambots posting from lemm.ee break down fast because, you said it: we ban the spam bot. Lemmit.online is nothing but spam, all the time

      If lemmit.online were a community within lemm.ee, it would be removed

      •  Jordan Lund   ( @jordanlund@lemmy.one ) English
        5•1 year ago

        Oh, I definitely see the argument, but I’d start by blocking everything by the bot, then if the admins decide to skirt the block with bot2@lemmit.online then the only real answer is defederation.

        •  TexMexBazooka   ( @TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee ) OP
          9•1 year ago

          “Let me tell you about this thing called Lemmy, it’s great! But first, here’s a list of users you need to block to make it useable. Also, you have to do it from a web browser on a decent computer with decent internet because you’re going to try and load a profile with 1000000 posts.

          Once you’ve jumped through those hoops you’ll be able to see the actual content that’s posted on Lemmy”

          ^this is not a good way to bring someone into the fediverse

          •  Jordan Lund   ( @jordanlund@lemmy.one ) English
            2•1 year ago

            Blocking them on Voyager on Android works for me. :)

            But I think it’s reasonable to tell people to use the search to find communities that interest them, curate your home feed, and be aware that diving into the “All Federated Content” feed will show you stuff that’s a) not particularly useful or b) potentially offensive to your sensibilities.

            It took me way longer to get fed up with bot@lemmit.online than I’d really like to admit, and I only blocked them when it became clear they weren’t going to stop. I could see other people enjoying the feed… but then why don’t they comment? 🤔

              •  Jordan Lund   ( @jordanlund@lemmy.one ) English
                1•1 year ago

                Huh, I went looking for it just now and can’t find it, so either I already blocked it or maybe lemmy.one already defederated from it? ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

                But yeah… bad administration needs defederation. Bad users need blocking/reporting.

                lemmy.world got a bunch of heat from defederating from hexbear pre-emptively, but it seems like that was the right call. Then they got ddossed after defederating from pirate communities. Not saying that’s CAUSATIVE, just “interesting”. ;)

            •  cubedsteaks   ( @cubedsteaks@lemmy.today ) 
              2•1 year ago

              But I think it’s reasonable to tell people to use the search to find communities that interest them, curate your home feed, and be aware that diving into the “All Federated Content” feed will show you stuff that’s a) not particularly useful or b) potentially offensive to your sensibilities.

              I was just using lemmy explorer to look for communities and didn’t realize some were just bots cross posting until I looked again later in my feed. I was disappointed.