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Content jacking/reposting is a problem on Lemmy. (hackertalks.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/fedigrow@lemmy.zip
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Content jacking and top posting other people's content is really bad for Lemmy. It's also just being a dick to other people making content on the platform.

  • feed is spammy
  • divides conversation
  • chills engagement
  • makes Lemmy less friendly to posters

This pattern is very common on lemmy, and needs to stop.

This is often used to attack or force migrate conversations from a instance someone doesn't like to another instance they do like. It's offensive by its very nature.

If you want to make a better community, great, do it but not at the expense of other Lemmy posters.

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[–] [S] 3 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Fair enough, as long as your happy to keep priming the content pump. There will be some posters who washout from such tactics.

Let's take the opposite extreme. Suppose I really dislike a community and I don't want it to grow. I could make a bunch of similar communities all over the fediverse. Every time someone posts to the target community I could copy it to a new community every 15m making it look like spam, and diluting any community interaction. Basically I could dry out the human interaction by dosing the content.

If we set the norm that top posting other people's content systematically isn't very Lemmy, then we would be in a good place to defend against such dilution.

Sure, some front ends like piefed may help, but not everyone is going to be using those front ends

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    There will be some posters who washout from such tactics.

    There are also posters who find it more sustainable when there is another poster around

    Consolidation would benefit the community and likely help it grow further.

    From the space consolidation thread a couple months ago: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/42022359/18010213

    Suppose I really dislike a community and I don’t want it to grow. I could make a bunch of similar communities all over the fediverse. Every time someone posts to the target community I could copy it to a new community every 15m making it look like spam, and diluting any community interaction. Basically I could dry out the human interaction by dosing the content.

    You could. As it would be obvious that in this context you don't want to grow your community but just spam about the other one, there would probably get called out in a Meta thread in the community you dislike. People there would block your communities.

    If we set the norm that top posting other people’s content systematically isn’t very Lemmy, then we would be in a good place to defend against such dilution.

    That goes against the fundamental notion that everyone can start a community. Who decides what communities should stay, and which one should not? At the moment, people vote with their participation, everybody makes their own choices. What alternative do you suggest?

    Sure, some front ends like piefed may help, but not everyone is going to be using those front ends

    Piefed isn't only a frontend, it is a different platform.

    The Lemmy devs recently stated that this is a client problem, and that they don't plan to change that

    In lemmy-ui we’ve chosen to link the posts at the top rather than combine comment threads.

    https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/46984024/19528869

    Long term, that will probably cost them, on top of the instance-wide bans regularly discussed.

    Mbin has at similar approach where it is possible to see the number of comments on other communities:

    https://fedia.io/m/linux@programming.dev/t/2321464/New-Linux-Flaws-Enable-Full-Root-Access-via-PAM-and#comments

    The more I discuss this topic, the more I think this is a shortcoming of Lemmy rather than an issue with the people crossposting content.

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    That goes against the fundamental notion that everyone can start a community. Who decides what communities should stay, and which one should not? At the moment, people vote with their participation, everybody makes their own choices. What alternative do you suggest?

    Isn't this exactly what we are talking about? Trying to top post another community is stealing interaction, and a method of influencing which communities should not stay.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    My stance is

    • Everyone can start a community
    • Over time communities with posters who organize between themselves to keep the community alive are more likely to survive.
    • Communities can crosspost content from other communities
    • The main differentiator between communities will be how active their posters are, people are going to choose communities based on activities.
    • Thanks to community consolidation, people can subscribe to only the most active community on a topic (of course, in case of power trip, people should organize to create a new community, see previous pionts)

    What I understand your stance is (feel free to correct if I'm wrong)

    • Everyone can start a community
    • Content shouldn't be crossposted between communities
    • First community to post a content have "authorship" of that content
    • Communities that repost content from other communities should be closed. Admins should close communities that do so.
    • People will have to subscribe to all the similar communities on one topic to follow all posts related to that topic
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  • [–] [S] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Content shouldn’t be crossposted between communities

    At least not systematically, and not within a day of the original posting (so if something becomes topical)

    First community to post a content have “authorship” of that content

    It's not a dibs system, so organic collisions where two people really want to talk about something is fine. just systematic reposting of EVERYTHING from people without their consent isn't good for lemmy.

    Communities that repost content from other communities should be closed. Admins should close communities that do so.

    Not closed, the reposters should be be given opportunities to transition to their own content.

    People will have to subscribe to all the similar communities on one topic to follow all posts related to that topic

    That is a direct aspect of the lemmy model, until such a time as themed communities becomes protocol level. The only way to not have to do this is kill any similar community before it grows.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    At least not systematically, and not within a day of the original posting (so if something becomes topical)

    So only for OC content, not for news / articles?

    The only way to not have to do this is kill any similar community before it grows.

    Consolidation is an option

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