this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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Lemmy instances that are focused on mirroring Reddit content? (communick.news)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I've posted before about my fediverser project, and I am now looking to see who is interested in participating.

The short description is that it does the following:

  • it runs a lemmy instance which will be the home of bots that mirror accounts on reddit.
  • The admin of this instance can choose what subreddits are going to be monitored from this instance. Let's say that these are the "source" communities.
  • For these selected subreddits, the admin can define where the posts from these subreddits should be posted in the other lemmy instances. We can, e.g, map posts from /r/selfhosted to [email protected] or [email protected] .
  • You can choose whether to mirror the posts only or the whole thread with comments from reddit. Each of these will be authored by the account that mirrors the original reddit user.
  • (WIP, optional) responses to the reddit mirror accounts will create a comment on reddit with a link to original lemmy thread.

So, now I finally got to deploy the first lemmy fediversed instance, and I'd like to know the following:

  • which subreddits you still follow but would like to bring to the fediverse?
  • For instance admins and community mods, what communities you would like to be the destination of the mirror posts, and would you be interested in having the posts only or the whole thread?

Bear in mind that this is NOT advised to be done for the bigger subs. The idea here is not to create a huge army of bots and overwhelm the fediverse, but mostly to create a migration path to those who rely on the more niche subreddits.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I see what you’re trying to accomplish and congratulate you for trying to make Lemmy a better place, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. As many people here I’ve blocked @[email protected] precisely because it just posts Reddit content and floods my feed, with what is basically spam. Also many people came here just to avoid Reddit and to try and make something better. Sure, when 0.19.0 comes out and people will be able to block instances, lemmings will have a choice if they want to see that instance, but what about new users, or people just checking Lemmy out? Do we really want them to see reposted reddit content? Because they can already do this on reddit. What we need is to stop being so invested in “our ex” and just grow as a community, in a natural way.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The argument can be made that bots measuring the content are no better than some random dude on the Internet reposting shit they like. Situation becomes worse when that same "bot" doesn't credit the author proper.

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

Memes are meant to be shared, and it’s a great way to grow small communities. Karma whoring is not that big here since reputation points are not shown (at least in the webUI). So a person will post a few memes and could start a conversation, something a bot can’t do.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Whether the meme is meant to be shared in some other context or not, I think, is the decision that should be based on the sum of copyright liberation and how generalistic the contents are. Today, I can't bear a thought of reposting some stranger's niche meme on social media without at least attaching a source or creator, because I'm most likely making one more point where engagement with the same meme ends - and reposting full works doesn't qualify as commentary/criticism/research, so it's not a fair use, to begin with.

That's why we are correct of assuming the worst from the bots: programming any fair use considerations is left to gather dust, as it's ultimately something that human has to decide.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

it just posts Reddit content and floods my feed

Wait, how come does it flood "your" feed if the lemmit bot only posts to their own instance/communities? If you are browsing with the "all" view, it's not really your feed.

Apologies for the "you're holding it wrong" response, but maybe it would be better if you just start browsing the specific communities that you want to follow?

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

It’s seems like you ignored my point entirely just to argue on a technicality. As I asked, should Reddit content reposted by bots be something a new user should see?

Also browsing /all is a great way to discover new communities, but even if you don’t browse it bot communities find their way into the discover communities tab, which makes it more difficult for people find the communities that they want to follow.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Okay, I am starting to realize that most people are looking at the word "bot" and stop reading the rest of the description.

The point of fediverser is not about creating an army of bots or a fully automated content firehose. The point of fediverser is to have a tool that gives a way for humans to bring content that they want to have on the fediverse. The mirrored instance and the bot accounts are just a mechanism to (1) facilitate the curating process, (2) automate the posting of content that has been curated and (3) to keep a bridge with Reddit which can help redditors to signup to Lemmy in a frictionless-way.

All this work started because I spent almost 3 months bootstraping [email protected] by doing the following:

  • checking /r/emacs.
  • Manually posting one or two links that I found there to the lemmy community
  • Realizing that the majority of content on the community is from "self posts" with questions
  • sending DMs to the authors of these self-posts, telling them about the community and inviting them to join my instance.
  • Having about 10% of successful positive rate.
  • The people who joined start asking "ok, now what? I can post here, but if the majority of people are still on reddit, what is the point? How about we have the reddit comments as well, so that we can start the conversation from here?"

At no point the idea is to:

  • pull content automatically from reddit to lemmy
  • use bots to flood the lemmy communities
  • ignore the people that already joined lemmy.

I've repeated multiple times in this thread and in the original announcement, but I can do it yet again: the main usage of fediverser is for people that do not want to use reddit but still are interested in interacting with niche communities.