Thank you for this. I also use Connect, so went ahead and manually added that to my block list.
Comment on alien.top is a new level of Reddit crossposting spam
remotelove@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Can you please add a note to your original comment please?
alien.top misreports its instance name and can confuse client blocks. In some cases you have to manually add “selfhosted.forum” for blocks to work correctly. I know this is an issue with Lemmy Connect specifically and I have left a note for the dev about this. If alien.top is misreporting its name, it could cause issues for other clients.
I requested my home instance (lemmy.ca) defederate from alien.top, but my cries went unanswered.
forrgott@lemm.ee 9 months ago
rglullis@communick.news 9 months ago
There is no “misresporting”. Selfhosted forum is a topic-based instance, like many other that set up as part of [!communick_news_network@communick.news .
alien.top is a fediverser instance, which is done to help mirror content and to help people from reddit to migrate.
The whole idea of fediverser is to make migration for redditors as easy as possible and in a way that they when they migrate they have access to all the content they were used to.
remotelove@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Some clients see the instance name as alien.top when it is a actually selfhosted.forum. When the instance info is referenced, it’s reporting back both names. Lemmy can clients see one or the other and just blocking alien.top won’t stop the spammy noise.
Nobody hates the idea of a “Reddit transition instance”. We just can’t stand the noise it generates and that little effort was put into identifying posts as bot generated.
You mentioned somewhere that people should comment on those posts to help bootstrap conversations. Unfortunately, that is not how this is working out and it is wasting people’s time.
rglullis@communick.news 9 months ago
Again, this might be an UI/UX issue, but there is no misreporting.
What you are seeing is the homepage of selfhosted.forum, which is an instance that by itself does not take any users and is only the home of the communities, like !homelab@selfhosted.forum or !main@selfhosted.forum.
Alien.top works by being a home to accounts only (no communities) and they follow specific rules about what “which content from each subreddit should go to which lemmy community”. For example, content from /r/homelab will be posted by alien.top to !homelab@selfhosted.forum.
The “about page” of selfhosted.forum contains information disclosing that the instance is part of the “Communick News Network” and promotes two alternatives for the people that want to sign up for Lemmy. Granted, it is missing information about the selfhosted instance is supposed to be about (which I have done already in other instances like level-up.zone) , but this in any way means that the “instance” is misreporting itself.
Pika@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
I might not be understanding the post- correctly. From my perspective using connect I can go to alien.top and then select a post that’s on that instance and then the instance will change from alien.top to the self-hosted one, which is confusing to me as a user. This happens even when I tap on the alien top instance as a whole.
otter@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
I’m from lemmy.ca too, and while I’m conflicted about the project, I’d rather limit defederation unless it’s a lot more unanimous.
After v0.19 drops, users can block instances which should fix the problem for everyone that might want it gone
ZeroCool@feddit.ch 9 months ago
Alien.top is a spam instance. This is as “clearcut” a reason to defederate as it gets.
OmanMkII@aussie.zone 9 months ago
While it likely is spam for the majority of users, I imagine the mods are looking at de-federating an instance that fulfills a specific need for a small number (keeping alien.top users updated on reddit). Because of that, it will likely have a bit of push back to de-federate entirely vs. a request to create the ability to block users/platforms. Think of it like newsletters, we need the ability to unsubscribe/block them, but we shouldn’t necessarily ban them outright.
Sl00k@programming.dev 9 months ago
Spam implies it’s useless but it seems I can read my content from Reddit on that instance? While also staying on a single app and getting my regular lemmy threads.
Not sure why it’s a problem other than resource intensity, if the users have the option to block an instance as a whole it’s fine.
uis@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Not sure why you added preserving metadata like username, pfp and timestamp(I guess ts in preserved too) and called it “creating bot accounts”. And as I understand bridging communities on other instances is opt-in.
uis@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Alien.top is one-way bridge instance. If you belive(I will not say think because it will be insult to thinking) that it is spam instance, are you sure you understand what fediverse is? It lowers switching cost for reddit users since they can come here, post here, comment here and STILL be able to see content they want to see, but without ads and spyware.
In easy to understand terms: u r spam.
Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I will say that as it is 0.19 isn’t going to be the holy Grail people think it is because the instance level blocking only affects communities hosted on those instances it does not hide users from those instances. So for instance is that are still Federated to hexbear it’s not going to remove the hexbear user spam and it likely won’t help in cases like this either.
It’ll mainly help in cases where the communities on the instance and not the users are the problem. Things like the NSFW instance.
reddwarf@feddit.nl 9 months ago
If this is true then I indeed misunderstood v0.19
All I want is to be able to block an instance completely as a user. How hard can this be? I really had my hopes up for v0.19. This needs to be built into Lemmy asap because the idiocy of some instances is getting on my nerves hardcore. I mean, why not go back to reddit if I have to take shit anyway? At least I know the communities are larger over there and if I need to suffer bullshit then by all means, I’ll suffer over there. This is not good for Lemmy tbh…
uis@lemmy.world 9 months ago
How can you as user block votes from one instance?