re: Fediverser Network - We should immediately turn off the automatic posts, and keep it off until the bidirectionality is implemented

I think it's a cool idea, and it could be the best way to help users on Reddit learn about Lemmy and migrate over.

I have some concerns though

What I like:

If you go to communities like !datahoarder@selfhosted.forum, you can see what I mean. Lemmy commenters are generally more helpful, more detailed, and get to the posts a lot faster than Reddit users.

If I understand correctly, once the network is implemented:

Reddit user signs up on Fediverser
Reddit user posts on a subreddit that has a Lemmy equivalent
Post is crossposted to Lemmy
When a Lemmy user replies to the post, that comment is reposted by a bot on Reddit

Users on the Reddit post will:

learn about Lemmy
see the good quality reply (if the reply is good, Reddit mods won't ban the bot)
get a direct link to a community/instance relevant to them

Users in the Lemmy community will

get more content from people that are already curious about Lemmy

That would be really cool!

HOWEVER

Right now, the network isn't fully implemented. Instead, in communities like !datahoarder@selfhosted.forum, there is a flood of ALL content that is posted in the respective subreddit.

This is bad because:

Lemmy users don't know that no human will see their replies, and the helpful Lemmy users are just talking to a wall. This will make them... less helpful in the future
Because ALL content is being mirrored, this spams out the actual Lemmy posts
Reddit users have no idea, and no control, over whether their posts are mirrored. I only noticed on the datahoarder community, but there are more sensitive subreddits where I would want control over where it is posted. I would also need a way to delete the content from Lemmy, and right now the users can't do that.

Proposed fixes

Don't mirror all content, only the stuff from Reddit users that sign up. There is already an incentive for signing up (more replies, better replies, better reach). If a user doesn't sign up, their post will not be mirrored, and they will not get the benefit.
If two communities WANT full mirroring, let them decide and have them contact directly (ex. from Modmail). Encourage them to talk to their communities before deciding
Any automated post NEEDS a note saying so
- Posts to Lemmy should have a link to the Reddit user, the Reddit post, and an "about" page for Fediverser
- Comments to Reddit should have a link to the Lemmy comment, an "about" page for Fediverser, and a link to some "what is lemmy"/"new to lemmy" article.
If it's not being implemented like the above, maybe change it up to consider the points about user control

As it is, reposting everything is damaging to Lemmy and potentially harmful to Reddit users that don't know their stuff is being mirrored.

44 comments

Yeah the datahoarder one was the first time I commented on a post thinking it wasn’t a bot/reddit-repost. I had a lengthy answer and only realized later on I was talking into a void. lol
- If it is any consolation, you were not talking to a void and your message was visible to at least 60 other people.

I block every one of these garbage repost bots.
If I wanted to see Reddit content, I'd go on Reddit. Instead, I am inundated with content there's no point in interacting with, when interacting with content is the purpose of these site.
Ban repost bots
- If I wanted to see Reddit content, I’d go on Reddit.
  What about the people who do not want to go to Reddit?
  when interacting with content is the purpose of these site.
  For you, maybe. But for everyone like you there are 10 other people who are just interested in following the content and be informed, entertained, distracted.
  
  Keep it on your instance (that the rest can easily block or defederate from) and it's all good.

Reddit users have no idea, and no control, over whether their posts are mirrored.
I can't believe that I actually had to say this, but what these bot instances are doing is EXTREMELY ILLEGAL.
Reddit comments are COPYRIGHTED materials, and when reddit users sign up, they agree to a ToS that grants reddit essentially a permanent license to do with the contributed content as reddit pleases. However, anyone else mirroring these reddit comment would not have permission to do so, and theoretically reddit, or any reddit user whose comments are being mirrored, can start issuing DMCA takedowns against any instance that host these comments by federating with these bot instances.
I'm not a lawyer, but @rgullis@communick.news, instead of saying they are archivers or frontends that explicit do not host contents, you are ACTUALLY dumb enough to admit that you are illegally scraping, mirroring, and rehosting reddit's content for the explicit purpose of making a competitor and harming their commercial interest so you can't even claim fair use. You better pray that reddit's lawyers don't find out about your little projects, they'll find you through your domain registrar or your cloud host, and you, and any instance that federates with yours would be in a world of pain.
Any instance owner should defederate from these bot instances immediately.
- Has there ever been a case where a user has been able to legally enforce the copyright of internet comments?
  
  From what I understand, the copyright is exclusively Reddit's.

I know it's not quite what you're talking about, I could see automatic posts being pretty useful if they are informational such as weather alerts. I guess it's not possible to do a repost bot from Twitter at this point with their API restrictions, but hopefully there are at least some services on Mastodon that would be worth mirroring on Lemmy for people who don't use kbin.
- That could be cool
  Once Lemmy gets the ability to follow other users, that could be extended to the rest of the Fediverse. Let Lemmy users follow people/services from Mastodon/PixelFed directly
  
  I like that idea!

I'm really glad to see that people are a lot more accepting of the project compared to when I first announced it, and believe me when I say that I am taking a lot of everyone's feedback in consideration. Initially I was set on having this a simple tool to get users from reddit into Lemmy, so I was thinking that having bi-directional communication would actually be counter to the project's goals and I thought that it would be better to simply send a DM to the users on reddit with a link to the Lemmy post and promoting the join-lemmy website. I changed my mind on this regard and now I see it this hard-nosed approach would likely just be treated as spam by Reddit users and would turn them away or flagging the bot.
However, I am still not convinced that the automated posts are a bad thing. To support my argument:
Having the content from niche communities on Lemmy means that most people can leave Reddit right away. I keep reminding people about the 90/9/1 rule of social media because it's important to keep in mind that the majority of any social network is made of lurkers, not of active participants, and at the same time a good part of these active participants go where their audience is.
Lots of people are saying "once people realize they are talking with bots, they will stop posting". The data I am seeing suggests that not to be the case. Participation in the mirrored communities is growing in relation to some (relatively big for Lemmy standards) communities on lemmy.world. The important thing to realize is (again) the 90/9/1 rule. A community that has 100 organic subscribers and zero bots will see maybe 1 post per day and 10 comments. A community with 100 organic subscribers and 1000 bots will see 10-20 posts per days and hundreds of comments, some of which will be happening between organic users who would never had interacted if the mirrored post was not there in the first place.
Content is king. Having the content mirrored on the Lemmy instances increases the chances of making it visible on the search engines. Even if the mirrored communities were nothing but "absolute ghost towns" as some of the critics have called it, the fact that I can search for something directly on Lemmy without having to go to Reddit is a huge plus, for me.
Related to the point above: having the mirrors running now are also a hedge against the possibility of Reddit further closing down their API.
There really isn't a difference in behavior from "users on Reddit" and "users on Lemmy". While I certainly agree that really large communities will have a different user base compared to the niche ones, I find it hard to believe that the average subscriber of /r/datahoarder will behave differently from the average !datahoarder@selfhosted.forum Lemmy "organic" subscriber. And even if these differences exist they will disappear as Lemmy (hopefully) grows.
Regarding "Reddit users have no control over the mirror". I'd argue that they do have a way to delete the content from Lemmy and it's quite simple. Any user that has been mirrored by alien.top needs to do the following:
Sign up via the portal to take over the bot account.
Login to the instance using the password provided.
Delete all their posts.
Re: "proposed fixes".
Don’t mirror all content, only the stuff from Reddit users that sign up.
This is actually impossible to do. Once a user signs up to the mirror instance, they take over the bot account and I can no longer post on their behalf.
If two communities WANT full mirroring, let them decide and have them contact directly.
For all intents and purposes, we should assume that mods on Reddit are aligned with Reddit. The last thing I want to do is to ask for their permission to do anything.
Posts to Lemmy should have a link to the Reddit user, the Reddit post, and an “about” page for Fediverser
There is a reason that I am not going to alter the content of any Reddit post, because I am working with the assumption that any bot user will eventually become a organic account. I am planning though to make the user profile page be more informative, though.
Comments to Reddit should have a link to the Lemmy comment, an “about” page for Fediverser, and a link to some “what is lemmy”/“new to lemmy” article.
Yes, this is my plan, but the hardest part (UX-wise) is figuring out a way to post the content on reddit in a way that seems natural without a bunch of "spammy" content around it.
- Regarding “Reddit users have no control over the mirror”. I’d argue that they do have a way to delete the content from Lemmy and it’s quite simple. Any user that has been mirrored by alien.top needs to do the following:
  When Google and company do "opt-out" features that people are forced into using unless they manually opt-out (usually with long and convoluted procedures that aren't front and centre in the docs), they are (rightly) excoriated for it.
  Thankfully you don't have long and convoluted procedures to opt out…
  Sign up via the portal to take over the bot account.
  Login to the instance using the password provided.
  Delete all their posts.
  … Oops.
  Rethink this if you don't want really serious backlash. This is almost the textbook case of how not to do features.
  
  Does the archive team ask permission from users before crawling data?
  If you put a website and don't set up a robots.txt file, does it still get indexed by Google? IOW, isn't it "opt-out"?
  If you ever posted a question on StackOverflow, did you have to give explicit permission to have your data pushed to their data exports? Can you ask to have it removed?
  Google gets (rightfully) a ton of shit when they violate users privacy. What "privacy" is being violated here, when the data is on a public network and it can be crawled even without access to the API?
- Hi. With the utmost courtesy and respect: please look at the vote counts and feedback here.
  At the least, in anything like its current form, we fediverse people don't want this.
  If people want to be on reddit, they can be. If they want their niche community on that site, they're allowed. Trying to bridge content between sites that are potentially even antagonistic toward one another is not a good plan, no matter how virtuous your intentions.
  
  Not that vote count is a good measure of feedback, but the votes are more favorable for my comments than the ones saying "I don't want this" or "I don't like this", so...
  In any case, one of the greatest things about the fediverse is that the "fediverse people" can decide for themselves. Don't like mirrored content? Don't follow it. Don't like mirrored instances, block them. There is absolutely nothing being forced on you, and those that are complaining about "flooding content" are usually browsing through "all", to which there isn't much to say besides "I can not fix stupid."

When advertising the service, the benefit to Reddit users could just be
Sign up here and forget about it. When you make a post on a subreddit with a Lemmy equivalent, we will post it with your Fediverser Lemmy account and let you know. Any replies from Lemmy users will be forwarded to your Reddit post.
We are curating a list of official and unofficial Lemmy communities for each subreddit. By signing up, you are likely to get replies from helpful, kind, and like-minded users on Lemmy; many of which who migrated from your subreddits to the Lemmy communities.
You can learn about Lemmy passively and migrate when you're ready, or just benefit from the further reach.
Also @rglullis@communick.news, if you have a community where people can talk about the project and help out, I'm sure there are people here that would be interested!
- @rglullis@communick.news FYI

I have selfhosted.forum blocked. All the posts I see I see no point in replying and since they're all tech support it's not like I learn something from reading them
- I like learning about the stuff there, but recently I've noticed a rise in one sided posts
- Have you tried browsing by "Subscribed" instead of "All"?
  
  I have. It's dreadful. Suggesting it as the solution to a problem created by software that is not ready is profoundly stupid.

Thanks for the post.
I always found the project interesting, but you bring valid points.

Here's one problem with bidirectionality.
I'm banned from reddit. But if a bot is mirroring my comments back to reddit, that means I get to affect the reddit conversation again. This tells me reddit is going to have a problem with mirroring comments back to reddit.

44 comments