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I've been seeing a lot of users from alien.top commenting in various threads (mainly sports) lately. They only caught my attention because they are all flagged as bots and I typically manually block most bots (not all because there are some I like). For every one of them their entire post history consists of 1-2 comments or posts. When I took a look at that instance there is nothing there at all and it also shows no users. The comments look human enough but I guess I wouldn't be surprised to learn that all the comments are LLM generated. Is alien.top just someones LLM experiment or is something else going on here?

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[-] can@sh.itjust.works 33 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Purely guessing, but maybe it's top comments from reddit?

Edit: pretty much, yeah

[-] Fosheze@lemmy.world 26 points 1 year ago

If that's what it is the the way they're doing it is beyond obnoxious because I can't just block the whole thing. If I wanted reddit comments then I would be using reddit.

[-] can@sh.itjust.works 23 points 1 year ago

Luckily in a few weeks you can block entire instances natively within lemmy. In the mean time maybe your app allows filtering?

[-] Fosheze@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

Will that also block all users from that instance? I was under the impression that it just blocked posts from that instance showing up in your feed.

Did we really need yet another reddit mirroring bot?

[-] Temperche@feddit.de 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I personally requested it because this particular bot also mirrors comments, not just posts. And the two super niche communities it posts in are completely dead on lemmy, so im trying to revive them by having at least some updates, also so people dont have to go back to reddit just to get that niche content. https://communick.news/u/rglullis set it up.

[-] rglullis@communick.news -1 points 1 year ago

As somewhat expected, alien.top was defederated. May I recommend you re-create your community in an instance managed by people with a little bit more sense?

[-] Temperche@feddit.de 3 points 1 year ago

The admin banned the whole communities! I first have to find an instance that would be okay with your software. Do you have any suggestions as to how to find one? Also, in case you didnt see, real lemmy users engaged in discussions based on the reddit comments many times already, making your idea a success!

[-] rglullis@communick.news 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

real lemmy users engaged in discussions based on the reddit comments many times already

Yeah, I know. I'm seeing the same at !main@selfhosted.forum and !emacs@communick.news. It's really cool, and it will be even cooler when I make it two-way.

I first have to find an instance that would be okay with your software.

I'm thinking of building a whole network of different instances based around specific interests. I have for selfhosted (which will be for devops in general), soccer, basketball, american football, tennis, crypto/blockchain. Maybe I should set up one for TV/Movie/Music discussion. Any good ideas for a domain name? :)

[-] Temperche@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

How about something along metacritic, as this would include not only movies but gaming too? metacritic.top or metacriticz.top ...

[-] rglullis@communick.news 1 points 1 year ago
[-] Temperche@feddit.de 2 points 1 year ago
[-] rglullis@communick.news 2 points 1 year ago

https://metacritics.zone/c/90dayfiance. Please join and make any post so that I can appoint you as mod of the community.

[-] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago
[-] rglullis@communick.news 1 points 1 year ago

I'm just finishing the setup of about 8 different instances, each focused on different themes. Any subreddit that you'd like to have mirrored?

[-] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago

Could you please list the instances? I'm interested in following this.

No subreddit I would like to follow right now, but I'll keep you updated

[-] rglullis@communick.news 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Still working on them and I definitely need a proper announcement. But so far:

Are already deployed, still need to set up the communities and the mirror connection.

[-] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago

That's very nice, thank you!

Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !90dayfiance@metacritics.zone

[-] Temperche@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

https://feddit.de/post/4691002 - done.

Also, could you make a gakinotsukai one as well?

Lastly, would it be possible for the bot not to copy posts where the OP has removed the content of the thread? There's a lot of posts like that.

[-] rglullis@communick.news 1 points 1 year ago

Done.

Can you give me an example of posts that have no content? I will take a look at those later, because now I need to put some work finishing setting up the different instances, communities and I also need to put some time into the fediverser code for letting reddit users take over their mirrored accounts.

[-] Temperche@feddit.de 1 points 1 year ago

https://feddit.de/post/4700011 and https://feddit.de/post/4689465 would be examples.

Good luck finishing to set up the instances.

I also did a gaki post: https://feddit.de/post/4701709

Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !gakinotsukai@metacritics.zone

[-] Diabolo96@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago

If it's top comment on a reddit post then yeah, they'll automatically get filtered since they are tied to their posts.

[-] rglullis@communick.news 2 points 1 year ago

Did we really need yet another reddit mirroring bot?

The idea of fediverser is to do a lot more than "another mirroring bot". The idea is to have a way that can let people "clone" their reddit profiles to Lemmy instances and seamlessly migrate away from it. Pulling content from reddit and into specific communities (where the mods have expressed interest in hosting the mirrored content) is a way to bootstrap the Lemmy community and to convince potential reddit-migrants that they can settle here without missing out on the content from the niche communities.

[-] can@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

Are these bots posting in communities from other instances?

[-] rglullis@communick.news 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The bots are only posting to communities that have explicit approval from the mods. Are you subscribing to any of those communities or is your complaint because it is showing in your "all" feed?

Edit: Instead of downvoting, please explain what is your problem with it. I will be a lot more likely to make changes if there is reasonable feedback.

[-] antik@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

These bots go against the Lemmy World rules on bots. Yes they need the approval from the moderator but they can not just import unmoderated content from reddit.

https://lemmy.world/post/1860512

[-] rglullis@communick.news 3 points 1 year ago

unmoderated content from reddit.

What if the content is moderated?

The tool I'm working on also was designed to only mirror content that is reviewed by the service administrator. They will still show up as bots, but the messages will only go through after a human has reviewed the content. It also can define what sets of posts should/should not be mirrored (e.g, no NSFW, no post from actual reddit bots, no stickied comments, self-posts or link posts only, etc)

Would that be okay?

[-] jacktherippah@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Well I guess our problem with it is that we don't want a bot clogging up our feeds with content from Reddit and we would prefer if you shut it down.

[-] rglullis@communick.news 2 points 1 year ago

Please, don't use the Royal We to make your argument. For every person complaining about the bots, I have two people asking for it and telling me that they are glad they can access content from the niche communities without having to access reddit.

Anyway, your beloved leaders at LW already defederated from alien.top, so there is nothing you have to worry about. Enjoy your sheltered life.

[-] antik@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

For everyone complaining about bots you have two that come and tell you that they are glad? I highly doubt it seeing the activity in those communities. You're not the first one to do this reddit botspam, and our actions against these have been very consistent.

You can look that up here: https://gui.fediseer.com/instances/detail/lemmy.world

You create a bot that goes against our publicly-available policy and then you get mad we don't want to change that policy for you. These rules about bots were put in place because our users requested it. And we are far from the only instance with that policy. Try to do the same on lemm.ee

Our announcement on the bot rules: https://lemmy.world/post/1860512 Another thread on Reddit repost bots: https://lemmy.world/post/4844752

[-] rglullis@communick.news 2 points 1 year ago

I am not mad. I am just saying that the tool is meant to do more than being just a mirroring bot. At the moment, it is creating bots, but eventually there will be a percentage of those who will be real users.

this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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