I know that people are claiming that this isn't an issue, but I am seeing the same. I just started blocking those communities every time I see one. They are probably just sorting their feed differently and assuming that their experience is the same as everyone else's. Blocking them (the bot, or the community) is really the only option.

I feel you. They got these bots posting results of games or whatever to each and every sports team community. But it is not one bot doing that, no that would be too easy because you could just block that, each and every sports team community got its own specifically named bot posting the exact same things.

Really messes a lot with the all/new feed.

We understand that some users in the fediverse don't want to see sports content and are frustrated with Fanaticus's game bots' daily posts.

Currently, lemmy doesn't support blocking entire instance's at a user level. Because of that limitation, I am providing a list of the current communities on Fanaticus that have active game bots and a little python script so users can block those communities.

from plemmy import LemmyHttp

# must include protocol e.g. https://lemmy.world
pl = LemmyHttp("INSTANCE_NAME_HERE")

username = "USERNAME_HERE"
password = "PASSWORD_HERE"
pl.login(username, password)

fanaticus_communities = [
    "tampabayrays@fanaticus.social",
    "orioles@fanaticus.social",
    "nyyankees@fanaticus.social",
    "torontobluejays@fanaticus.social",
    "redsox@fanaticus.social",
    "minnesotatwins@fanaticus.social",
    "clevelandguardians@fanaticus.social",
    "whitesox@fanaticus.social",
    "motorcitykitties@fanaticus.social",
    "kcroyals@fanaticus.social",
    "texasrangers@fanaticus.social",
    "astros@fanaticus.social",
    "angelsbaseball@fanaticus.social",
    "mariners@fanaticus.social",
    "oaklandathletics@fanaticus.social",
    "braves@fanaticus.social",
    "miamimarlins@fanaticus.social",
    "phillies@fanaticus.social",
    "newyorkmets@fanaticus.social",
    "nationals@fanaticus.social",
    "buccos@fanaticus.social",
    "brewers@fanaticus.social",
    "reds@fanaticus.social",
    "chicubs@fanaticus.social",
    "cardinals@fanaticus.social",
    "azdiamondbacks@fanaticus.social",
    "sfgiants@fanaticus.social",
    "dodgers@fanaticus.social",
    "padres@fanaticus.social",
    "coloradorockies@fanaticus.social",
]

for comm in fanaticus_communities:
    print("Getting community: ", comm)
    commRes = pl.get_community(name=comm).json()
    if commRes and commRes['community_view']:
        commId = commRes['community_view']['community']['id']
        print("Blocking community: ", comm, " communityId: ", commId)
        pl.block_community(True, commId)
        print("Successfully blocked community: ", comm)
    else:
        print("Failed to find community: ", comm)

In the future, we are planning on adding the game bots for the other major sports as well (they’re not in season now) so I will update this script as those bots come online.

Heres a post from fanaticus.social. Worth a look if your issue arrises in all

Weird, I never see any sports posts (and would be mildly interested in them.) What communities are you seeing them from and how are you browsing Lemmy?

I tend to browse All>New and have also encountered this. Until the new Lemmy release has instance blocking, not much to do but block each community individually. There are also mobile clients that offer instance-level filtering. I’m sure someone finds it interesting (…. I guess) so I wouldn’t request defederation, but I certainly do not need a feed with 18 auto-posted threads about sports events.

Blocking the handful (okay more like couple dozen) sports-related bots did the trick for me.

I don't mind seeing posts I'm not interested when I scroll All, the annoying part is a wall of 20+ posts, which is mainly a problem when bots are mass-reposting content (sports score for example)

But if you're really annoyed by seeing irrelevant content, there are two main options:

1. Stop browsing All or Local and switch to your Frontpage, which is only the communities you've subscribed to. It's still nice to browse All once in awhile to get turned onto new communities, but there are also certain communities you can subscribe to specifically for the purpose of seeing new and trending communities.

2. This is more porn-related, but switch to an instance that is not federated with porn-instances. For example, I'm on lemm.ee, and I only rarely see moderately-NSFW content on All or Local.

I've managed to block every US baseball, football, and MLS team. I have also gotten rid of most of the Yiff trash (man, that shit creeps me the fuck out), and the ADHD and Traps.

It's definitely not ideal. If I change devices, I will be in trouble unless this is stored server-side.

I'm a big sports guy and I rarely see random sports posts in the wild. Could OP be viewing the "all" page maybe? We had a similar issue a few days ago with Elon Posts and I wonder if it's not a similar issue here?

It took me a few days of browsing All and blocking anything sports, games and anime related and now it's far far better. They still pop up sometimes, but I make it a war effort to block them. It is exhausting, but worth the time.

I know you said you didn't want to stick to the subscribed feed, but can I suggest doing that while at the same time subscribing to the "trending communities" community so you can discover new ones. https://feddit.nl/post/5227714

I think blocking is just going to be a constant battle for you, as you'll likely need a blacklist of every sports team, sports team abbreviations, sports keywords etc. etc.

Just block them. I've blocked 20 more times the number of communities and users here than on reddit.

It's not just sports, but alot of other topics that I'm just not interested in seeing somehow dominate my feed at times. Foreign language communities that I can't even read pop up now and again. There's so many small niche communities popping up that somehow pop up in the 'Top' view for whatever reason, then you have to go through and block each on individually. Is the Fediverse so sparsely populated that literally any posts that get any sort of attention suddenly shoot to the top? I sort by Top Six Hours most of the time. I try to block them when they come up, but I feel like Reddit never had this issue, even with all the extremely niche subreddits they have. It just seems like top/trending communities aren't showing up correctly or some posts are showing up when they shouldn't.

I keep seeing [...] which I couldn’t care less about and I keep blocking the communities but they’re like thousands of millions of communities that never end. And no, I don’t wanna stick to the subscribed feed cause I wanna possibly find new communities or see posts from communities that I’m not subscribing to but are mildly interesting. I can’t think of good words to block either, without catching other communities I care about as well.

That's the fediverse for ya. The politics are relentless and the sportsball isn't that far behind. All you can do is keep blocking.

I think a sports instance would be great for this reason. Starting with the next major release of Lemmy, anyone would be able to block the whole damn sports instance and be done with it. Though as far as I know, the sports communities are spread throughout different instances, so it won't be that easy.

I just block them when I see sports communities. That mostly does it for me.