Is a filter for muting Lemmy 'power users' possible?

Submitted ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨voluble@lemmy.ca⁩ to ⁨fediverse@lemmy.world⁩

I’m seeing a lot of users on my preferred instance with <1yr old accounts, that have thousands of posts and comments. Whether these accounts are people with nothing better to do than post mindlessly 24/7, or are bots pushing some narrative, it doesn’t make a difference, I’d rather not see what they’re posting, because chances are, it’s hogwash. It would be nice to be able to filter out these highly active accounts, based on a set variable of max posts per day, and/or comments per day. Any account that exceeds that variable is filtered out, and any account below it is allowed.

Does anyone have insight on whether or not this sort of filtering is possible to achieve on Lemmy? Is anyone else interested in having this sort of functionality?

source

Comments

Sort:hotnew top

Blaze@feddit.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
There aren’t that many of us (1 year account on @Blaze@sopuli.xyz ).

Keep in mind that we could just be trying to keep the platform active, not pushing any agenda. 1000 posts in a year is 3 posts per day, so does not require 24/7 posting

source
- 9point6@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Was gonna say, I’m sat on 2.2k comments apparently in about 15 months, which is surprising to me given I probably only comment on about half the days in any given week.
  
  I will say compared to Reddit though, I tend to be more likely to comment here because there’re fewer people here and I want it to feel active enough for more people to continue joining (either lemmy in general, or just on smaller communities that don’t have a lot of activity yet).
  
  source
  - mesamunefire@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I have about half as many comments. Its a better space to be in. It feels like im talking to real people here. At least not as jaded lol.
    
    source
- scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Then you check what quality content OP is posting and… 5 comments and this post. So they’re doing their part.
  
  Lurkers who post this stuff bug me. Wanting a stream of content but are so nitpicky about it, when all they have to do is start posting stuff themselves to kick up conversations
  
  source
  - Danterious@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    It shows me 93 comments and 2 posts for me. It probably just hasn’t federated to your instance yet.
    
    ~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~ ~(CC~ ~BY-NC-SA~ ~4.0)~
    
    source
- JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I just realised I have 3K comments in just one year.
  
  source
  - breadsmasher@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    4.4k in one year. woops
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
  - Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Seems like I have 1.6K since I came here in March - that’s 7 months. It would equate to 2.7K if I kept it up at this rate for a whole year.
    
    source
- SnokenKeekaGuard@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Just made me realise I still haven’t hit 1k (on this account)
  
  source
- abff08f4813c@j4vcdedmiokf56h3ho4t62mlku.srv.us ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Ah, if only kbin.social hadn't gone done, I would too be post 1-year mark. I replaced that one with my own instance, but that makes me look younger than I should be...
  
  source
Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
We’re just trying to build an active community here, nothing else, really.

Also you made me realise i have 5.5k comment, seems like i’m a bit chronically online :/

source
- awwwyissss@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Alright there champ, that’s enough beans for you, time for a nap
  
  source
  - Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    So sad and cruel :(
    
    source
BonerMan@ani.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
In all fairness, most people with these accounts are the first migrators that keep the platform alive, if you block people that do push agendas (linkerbaan) it should be a good option instead of blocking everyone with a “older” account or a more active account.

source
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Afaik, there’s no apps that do that. You’re likely just going to have to block individual accounts

Being real though, I often have more than 20 comments a day. It really isn’t that difficult to rack up if you’re bored and have the time. I’m not much of a poster, but 10 a day isn’t too far outside of feasibility for a person that’s into memery. So you’d end up filtering out people that would likely be good to have access to over time, even if it’s rare. If you do figure out a way to do it, might want to bump your threshold up a little.

source
PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
This isn’t hard to do. I share the skepticism of some of the other users that this simple algorithm is going to give you a good feed, but I can probably knock up a quick script that can do this for you, if you want.

source
andrew_s@piefed.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
This feels like something that would be scriptable using Lemmy's API - see https://lemmy.readme.io to view and demo the endpoints.

source
- voluble@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Thank you!
  
  source
lvxferre@mander.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I think that it would be theoretically possible with a modified client. But in practice you’d filter a lot of genuinely active users out, and still let a lot of those suspicious accounts in. Sadly I think that blocking them individually is a better approach, even if a bit more laborious.

On a lighter note, this sort of user isn’t a big deal here in Lemmy. It’s simply more efficient to manipulate a larger userbase, like Twitter or Reddit.

source
Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
You can block them and over time it should get better, or you can write a script that does some checks and blocks them for you.

source
mesamunefire@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Any examples of users?

You can fork lemmy and create the feature yourself if you want. I believe it uses postgres on the official docs so in theory should be “easy” (famous last words). Im not aware of any plugin or filtering like that.

source
- BonerMan@ani.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Linkerbaan
  
  source
- voluble@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I don’t want to call anyone out individually. But I have come across accounts with 7-8k comments in the span of a few months. I don’t really think it’s worth reporting them, and don’t have the time or energy to research and block them individually, I’d just rather have them automatically muted on my end via a tool or plugin.
  
  I assumed this would be something I’d have to program myself, just wasn’t sure if it was clearly not possible or practical for one reason or another.
  
  source
  - AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    If you’re going to remove 90% of the content on lemmy, is there even a point staying on it?
    
    source
- wesker@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I’m Spartacus.
  
  source
- abff08f4813c@j4vcdedmiokf56h3ho4t62mlku.srv.us ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Hmm, but wouldn't forking lemmy require you to create your own instance?
  
  source
njm1314@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I mean if you want to block all the users that actually participate here on Lemmy then I guess you can, not sure what the point of that would be though.

source
wiki_me@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
If you can program you can probably create an instance and then a moderation bot that bans people with more then X comments or Y posts a day. maybe that would increase the average quality of content. sounds like an interesting experiment.

source
PumaStoleMyBluff@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
I just manually filter them in Sync. I don’t have a concrete rule, but if someone has multiple posts at the top of my feed in different communities on more than one occasion, there’s a good chance I’ll filter them.

source