I haven't seen this, so can't speak on it. What's the difference between someone reposting the same article/crossposting and content jacking?
post
Happy with how PieFed deals with it. Lemmy often feels like a ghost town with posts having zero comments. PieFed combining them takes most of that away, and I guess it reduces any incentive to 'pinch' other people's posts?
Lemmy as a social media discussion forum is about human attention. The economy of success on lemmy is curating a audience and having their attention both in terms of voting, but more importantly, in terms of discussions.
Competition between communities is healthy and good
- Better content
- Better curation
- Better community (welcoming, etc)
Trying to "boycott" or starve out other communities by making them "redundant" by burning out human attention on lemmy is bad for everyone
- Lemmy feels empty
- Repetition of content is wasting people's time
- Dividing the conversation drives people away
If you hate a community, make a better community, don't try to burn out everyone who likes the old community.
Repetition of content is wasting people’s time
Not when crossposts are used: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/47235271/19582739
Lemmy feels empty
Dividing the conversation drives people away
Piefed solves that issue: https://piefed.zip/post/100161
All comments from 5 crossposts in a single view
A few options
- https://piefed.social/ - flagship instance
- https://piefed.zip/ - lemmy.zip team
- https://piefed.ca/ - lemmy.ca team
- https://feddit.online/
not everyone is using piefed.
And if everyone was using piefed that merges cross posts, this war against instances makes even less sense.
Mbin has at similar approach where it is possible to see the number of comments on other communities:

This issue is due to Lemmy.
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
And if everyone was using piefed that merges cross posts, this war against instances makes even less sense.
Instances still have different moderation policies. A comment could get on banned on one instance and allowed on another. Being able to see them all doesn't change that.
Another problem Piefed has solved by aggregating crossposts into a single thread.
You've piqued my interest.
How they aggregate comments? If so how they determine which one to attibute the comment?
You can see an example here: https://piefed.zip/post/100161
All comments from 5 crossposts in a single view
A few options
- https://piefed.social/ - flagship instance
- https://piefed.zip/ - lemmy.zip team
- https://piefed.ca/ - lemmy.ca team
- https://feddit.online/
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.
I have to say I haven't come across this issue too often as I basically never browse /All. But I definitely have noticed this with cm0002's personal crusade against .ml pissing off more than one poster in communities I follow.
yeah, that is exactly who is causing the pain. I was blissfully ignorant of it, until someone explained their grevience and I labeled them in voyager as a jacker, and now I see how duplicative and bad for lemmy they make everybody's experience.
So, are we all just supposed to accept the .ml instance bans? https://feddit.nl/post/16246531
I'm not the biggest fan of the way @cm0002@lemmy.world handles this, but at the same time, the usual recommendation for people unhappy with the way a community was managed was to make their own.
Also, the "authorship" issue is brought up a few times in this threads, but don't @cm0002@lemmy.world posts always credit the original author?
Examples:
After a post author has already been made aware of an alternative community and has asked cm0002 multiple times to stop reposting their original content there, continuing to do so anyway is extremely rude. Yes, the internet is free, the content is out there and there is nothing stopping cm0002 from continuing to repost it. But there is also nothing stopping me from thinking he's a fucking asshole whose efforts create more hatred and internal division on this platform than it unites us.
Some of the communities he wages war against have zero political connections (such as !crows@lemmy.ml) and have never once even approached a moment of controversy with a mod or admin.
But he is on a mission from God as a hero of the people in his just crusade against the evils of the internet or whatever, so in his own words it "must be done".
I see where you come from, but here's another perspective: what if someone wants to block .ml because of the instance bans, or because one of the admin is transphobic (https://lemmy.world/post/18236068)
That person can't access .ml communities anymore. There are a few alternatives around (!linux@programming.dev for !linux@lemmy.ml, !privacy@lemmy.dbzer0.com for !privacy@lemmy.ml etc.).
I agree that @cm0002@lemmy.world should probably stop crossposting posts from people who explicitly asked them to stop, but on the other hand most of the people probably don't mind (example of me asking someone who thought that nodoby needs permission to post a link somewhere else: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/45767421/19161995)
@cm0002@lemmy.world, maybe just crosspost content from https://old.reddit.com/r/crows/ rather that !crows@lemmy.ml
If you want to block ml then you made a choice to also give up it's content.
The ml posters are aware of other instances.
Everyone is free to use a instance that federates how they like. If people choose an exclusionary instance then they can't complain they are missing posts from something excluded.
I absofuckinglutely mind seeing redundant content in my feed. It makes Lemmy feel empty
The ml posters are aware of other instances.
Yes, but most of them just want to stay on the most active community and don't want to go through the hassle of recreating the community elsewhere. Discussion on !fantasy@lemmy.ml: https://lemmy.ml/post/25858077
Everyone is free to use a instance that federates how they like. If people choose an exclusionary instance then they can’t complain they are missing posts from something excluded.
Correct, but people are also free to want their own version of the community to thrive. Which means posting content to it.
I absofuckinglutely mind seeing redundant content in my feed. It makes Lemmy feel empty
Aren't most of the crossposts only displayed once?
For the remaining ones (usually self posts, as there is no link to identify crossposts), just block the communities that you know are only "other communities reposts"
Is your desire to concentrate people's interaction to favored instances greater then the agency of the contents original poster?
I don't think it's good for Lemmy as I outlined above. Give people informed choice, but respect their agency
If you look at that thread, people just don't care about the instance that much
I’ll go wherever the action is, I just want an active community. If people wanna move I’ll be there.
I’ve just joined the community, but I’d be happy to move across wherever.
As long as you do not go to an instance that blacklists lemmy.ml, I’m fine.
Inertia is the main reason the .ml communities are still the most active on their topics.
As long as you do not go to an instance that blacklists lemmy.ml, I’m fine.
..... isn't the one of the main rationales for the top posting because ml is blocked on many instances?
No, the rationale is to allow people to block (more like mute, Lemmy-blocking doesn't really block) lemmy.ml
If !fantasy were to switch to !fantasy@lemmy.zip
- lemmy.ml users would still be able to access it
- users lemmy-blocking lemmy.ml would still be able to access it, and see comments from .ml users
That's an improvement over it being at .ml, where the second point isn't possible
There's multiple things here.
The KiwiFarms transplants and the Destiny fans are just looking for lolcows. If crossposting memes gets a reaction, they'll focus on that until the content dries up.
That's the whole foundation of those communities: operating zealously in that pocket where they can act in eternal kategoria. The reaction is more validating than the action.
Sorry, I'm not that familiar with KiwiFarms and Destiny. Are they known for massively crossposting content to Lemmy communities?
For having communities that maximize harassment, usually within the limits of moderation efforts. The latter with malicious community rules policing and reporting, etc, especially.
The idea is to pick targets no one really wants to defend.
(...lolcows they'd be called, which was the style at the time... anyways I'm old.)
Okay, but how is that relatable to the issue discussed in this post?
Are you saying that .ml admins are KiwiFarms transplants?
I cross-post to reduce the influence of .ml comms and indirectly the instance as a whole to make it an easier decision for other instance admins to defederate because one key reason I identified that admins don't want to defederate, is because .ml still has some very large comms and some niche comms
Some highlights from the link:
"Don't worry guys, the Uyghur Genocide was REALLY just birth control! ~dessalines, .ml admin, dev https://lemmy.world/post/30580167
"See! nobody died IN Tiananmen Square, just AROUND it, so it doesn't count!!" ~ Davel, .ml admin https://lemmy.world/post/30673342
.ml admin, Nutomics continued transphobia https://lemmy.world/post/29222558
CW: Original transphobic Comment from Nutomic
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And so so much documentation on clear heavy handed censorship and bias also on the link. So much I can't even put them all here because this comment would be really long.
Sorry but I can't use .ml because I am banned for sixteen different dumb things, so this service is appreciated.
Alts are a thing: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/modlog?userId=43863
Also, are you aware Lemm.ee is shutting down at the end of the month?
Not wanting to get banned again on another alt is understandable.
Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me
One question for @jet@hackertalks.com
I've been reposting content from !buyfromeu@feddit.org and !BuyFromEU@europe.pub to !buyeuropean@feddit.uk when that movement was still very active.
There was even a !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com post about it: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/39614799
My rationale was that
- due to the current way Lemmy handles crossposts (compared to Piefed), comments of crossposts are not consolidated, so people will only see the comments from one posts, which means that discussions should happen on one single community to be seen by everyone
- there were no rules or moderation policies differences between the three communities
Wanting to consolidate similar communities is a regular topic here, with the last attempt from 2 days ago: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/47122168
But sometimes some posters just want to stick to their home instance rather than consolidate.
I've been in a similar situation for !android@lemdro.id and !android@lemmy.world, as well as !movies@piefed.social and !movies@lemmy.world . There was a regular poster who would only post to the LW versions, even though I reached out several times to them, offering them mod positions on the other communities.
They now stopped posting, so the two non-LW communities are now more active than the LW versions, but that's a bit unfortunate as it would have been better to have them continue posting on .
In those cases, should content crossposting stop?
We usually tell people "if you don't like a community, make your own and convince people it is better". Having more content usually makes a community better. And also, in a lot of cases, people just repost content from Reddit anyway.
Open for comments and discussions.
I gave you feedback about top posting movie content before.
I think it robs the original poster of interaction. If you reached out offering change and they didn't engage you have your answer
As you said there is infinite content on the internet to import into Lemmy, no reason to steal the interactions from a small lemmy.world poster
If you must do it then it's good you used the cross post feature so there is some connection back to the original poster.
So in this scenario the lw movie poster didn't get enough engagement on their content and left... That's a net negative for Lemmy
As you said there is infinite content on the internet to import into Lemmy, no reason to steal the interactions from a small lemmy.world poster
From a very practical perspective, it's faster. The crosspost mechanic, that I indeed use, is just one click compared to having to rehost an image to an external hoster, copy paste that link to Lemmy, then give credits to the OC post (most of what I do on !lego@piefed.social )
So in this scenario the lw movie poster didn’t get enough engagement on their content and left… That’s a net negative for Lemmy
There aren't that many posters around. !movies@lemm.ee had a diverse mod team, several posters, that allowed to "spread the load". Potential new posters would see that and join the community with several posters instead of one single person. Having one community emerge as "the one" fosters more conversation happening there, compared to posts without engagements (which is a complain you raised in this thread)
Link aggregators aren't microblogging. It's expected that different people contribute to a community, if posters want complete control over their content then microblogging could be a better option.
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
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:

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.
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.
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
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.
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
If it absolutely must be copied then the cross post mechanism should be used.
We literally have reposting bots for hackernews, reddit, Twitter, etc. It's nearly infinite content out there.
Hurting Lemmy users makes it harder to grow the platform
Wait, so what you're complaining about is something other than crossposts? 'Cause to me, this thread sounded like you were just bitching about crossposts.
Edit: you should copy your explanation here into your initial post itself so that we all understand what you were actually talking about.
We literally have reposting bots for hackernews, reddit, Twitter, etc. It's nearly infinite content out there.
Theft is theft. It's all shit and should be frowned upon.
Broadly I agree, I don't want to come to Lemmy to just have an RSS reader. I want to have conversations.
I think every post should be by a human, to have a conversation about something.
I want to have conversations.
Piefed allows for better conversations thanks to the consolidated comments view
https://piefed.zip/post/100161
All comments from 5 crossposts in a single view
A few options
- https://piefed.social/ - flagship instance
- https://piefed.zip/ - lemmy.zip team
- https://piefed.ca/ - lemmy.ca team
- https://feddit.online/
Yep. It's why I've blocked most repost bots. It's just a barren thread with content from elsewhere that might even not exist on the original platform anymore
What do you mean by this?
I do sometimes see a link post on Lemmy (often on some general community like !games) and copy it to (usually more-specific, like gaming genres: think copying from !games to !rpgs) communities I am active in (or sometimes ones I am not but am aware of: if I see a strategy game post I'll put it in all the relevant strategy game communities I know of), and figure it is alright because I always see a little "cross-posted to:" and the community I got it from, so I figure that is good enough for credit. Probably obvious I got it somewhere else, and easily clickable to find out where. (Or sometimes the little communities are just the communities I myself already posted it to.) Is this a bad assumption and I should stop?
I do it because I want conversation in the specific communities, and for things that could go in more specific communities to not only get talked about in one giant umbrella when the smaller niches already exist on Lemmy. Especially because I think there is a valid reason to not be on !games. Maybe you are not interested in most posts there, just some subgenres, or like me, you are sick of the ragebait-but-also-probably-true-news-so-not-off-topic-and-allowed posts.
I am fine stopping though, less work for me, and as life gets busier I have less time for Lemmy anyways.
I admit I exclude .ml from my crossposting bonanza because of all the political drama I hear about but never bothered to look into, because I feel I'll end up drawn into a political slapfight. Just look at all the comments here about .ml, whether justified or not (not sure and not about to try to figure out). I do not sub to anything on .ml and mostly look at Subscribed though, so I know I am not taking any of their content and copying it elsewhere, unless it was first copied from .ml to something I do look at. I also don't really look at the instance someone is commenting from unless I suspect trolling or we interact a lot though, so I am not being nasty to .ml users for just being on .ml, either. I know a lot of people who do not have anything to do with the political drama are there too because it is recommended as the Lemmy dev's instance, and I do not expect everyone to litmus test every social media for political drama before joining it.
I don't think you should stop, the use case you described is you WANT to have a conversation about the cross-posts you are doing. Your not motivated by trying to starve out another community. You are personally choosing what to cross post and not reposting EVERYTHING from a different community.
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