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.

  • jet@hackertalks.comOPEnglish
    1·
    1 day ago

    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.

      • cm0002@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 days ago

        I don’t target random individuals, this is about the problem with the admins of .ml. I cross-post to reduce the influence of .ml comms to make it an easier decision for instances 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

        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.

        • goferking (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          Yes scraping content like a bot is really gonna show them.

          Whats ironic is world has more censorship than ml yet you made it your home 🙃

          • cm0002@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            2 days ago

            Well it’s had a noticeable effect, .ml traffic is way down since when I started 5 months ago, .ml memes has gone from ranking 14th to near 30th

            .world does not have a censorship issue, I can confidently say after being heavily in the modlog for months now. I don’t see .world admins in the modlog micromanaging everything to push harmful propaganda.

            I encourage everyone who sees this go-to lemmy.world/modlog and put dessalines or davel in the “mod” box (one of the only instance that doesn’t have this disabled btw) and see for yourself.

              • cm0002@lemmy.worldEnglish
                0·
                2 days ago

                Prove it. I can, and have proved it to the point I have an entire megathread and there’s a thriving comm on it at [email protected]

                “Stalker behavior” implies stalking specific people, I’m not stalking anyone.

                • bonjour@mander.xyzEnglish
                  2·
                  2 days ago

                  As a victim of yours, i can say it feels a lot like stalking. Not to mention your avatar, which is directly aimed at me because i dared to complain about you reposting everything i post to [email protected], within minutes, with the goal to reduce any interaction i might be getting.

                • goferking (he/him)@lemmy.sdf.orgEnglish
                  1·
                  2 days ago

                  Prove you’re stalking the instance to pull content or that world is pushing propaganda?

                  At least make a bot account to do it so you aren’t as obviously stalking for content.

  • Coelacanth@feddit.nuEnglish
    3·
    3 days ago

    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.

    • jet@hackertalks.comOPEnglish
      1·
      3 days ago

      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.

      • socsa@piefed.socialEnglish
        0·
        2 days ago

        Sorry but I can’t use .ml because I am banned for sixteen different dumb things, so this service is appreciated.

      • Blaze (he/him) @lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        0·
        2 days ago

        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 @[email protected] 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 @[email protected] posts always credit the original author?

        Examples:

        • Coelacanth@feddit.nuEnglish
          2·
          2 days ago

          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 [email protected]) 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”.

          • cm0002@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            2 days ago

            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

            Megathread on the issue

            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

            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.

          • Blaze (he/him) @lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            0·
            2 days ago

            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 ([email protected] for [email protected], [email protected] for [email protected] etc.).

            I agree that @[email protected] 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)

            @[email protected], maybe just crosspost content from https://old.reddit.com/r/crows/ rather that [email protected]

            • jet@hackertalks.comOPEnglish
              2·
              2 days ago

              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

              • Blaze (he/him) @lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                0·
                2 days ago

                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 [email protected]: 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”

                • jet@hackertalks.comOPEnglish
                  3·
                  2 days ago

                  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

            • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
              1·
              2 days ago

              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.

                • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
                  2·
                  2 days ago

                  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.)

        • TankieTanuki [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          are we all just supposed to accept the .ml instance bans?

          I think you should. You have the remainder of the English-speaking internet in which to post popular CIA disinformation about the failed June 4th color revolution without any pushback. Why do you need this space too?

        • goferking0 [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          I have never seen them credit the original. Occasionally will see them saying it’s from an ml ask lemmy but they put more effort into bragging about taking it off an ml space than credit

                • goferking0 [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
                  1·
                  2 days ago

                  The point is doing this way removes any of the joint discussion a cross post would bring.

                  Then there’s all the other content they scrape without any tie to where they found it like news and memes.

                  In their desire to, honestly don’t know anymore what their rage boner against ml is anymore, kill ml to make lemmy more like reddit they’re making them look like a crazed ex by the frequency and speed of posting what they grabbed from othet places.

                  At this point would be more favorable if they were a mirror bot than just manually doing this

  • Agent Karyo@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    Nah ML is trash. Moving off the remaining non-tankie communities would be a good thing for Lenny as whole.

      • Agent Karyo@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 days ago

        ML is trash. It’s a septic tank of degenerates, “communist” role players and the mentally ill (e.g. Dessalines who claims that North Korea is a great place to live and that there is massive conspiracy to discredit them).

        When I first encountered Dessalines, I assumed he was a demagogue and he was knowingly lying, but it seems his word salad is actually genuine.

        I do hope that one day all ML tankies end up in a russian internment camp; it’s only fair for them to experience what they wish upon Ukrainians. The funny thing is russia is a hyper-capitalist, authoritarian, plutocratic shithole.

  • propter_hog [any, any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    2·
    3 days ago

    It’s especially stupid since karma isn’t a thing on Lemmy. Karma was fake on reddit, but people love a good mental feedback mechanism. Here, though, you’re just being a dick if you steal content.

  • jet@hackertalks.comOPEnglish
    1·
    3 days ago

    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

    • sabreW4K3@lazysoci.alEnglish
      0·
      3 days ago

      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.

      • jet@hackertalks.comOPEnglish
        1·
        3 days ago

        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.

  • cm0002@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    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

    Megathread on the issue

    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

    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.

    Whatever harm you think this does to the Lemmy-verse pales in comparison to the harm .ml and the behavior of its admins does because of its association with the devs of Lemmy and their insistence to use .ml as their personal political platform

    On the outside, bringing up Lemmy always leads to comments like “Lemmy? Isn’t that the place with a bunch of tankies?” Or “Tried Lemmy, but found it full of pro Russia crap so I left”

    • PastafARRian@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      2 days ago

      That sounds reasonable to me. Forcing a migration away from a toxic instance is a legitimate reason. Letting the users decide which one to engage with sounds like healthy Democratic federation.

      You haven’t hidden your reasoning nor are profiting. Your cause seems legit to one random user anyways.

      • bonjour@mander.xyzEnglish
        0·
        2 days ago

        They are reposting, within minutes, the original content other users provide, with the intention to reduce the interaction they might be getting, even if asked to please stop it. How is that ok, honestly i don’t get how you guys can think that way?

        I have never spent time in a social media setting where people like this were tolerated.

        • PastafARRian@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          0·
          2 days ago

          Serious question, could this be of benefit to the content creators assuming original attribution and links are preserved? Sounds like it spreads their work to instances that have defederated the original. I don’t think the reposter user sees much benefit. I know Pizza Cake comics, might buy from her website or donate, but couldn’t care less who posts them.

          • bonjour@mander.xyzEnglish
            1·
            2 days ago

            I guess, in some scenarios, but that is not what i was talking about here really. Also “even if asked to please stop it”.

  • psychadlligoat@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    Complaining about “stolen” memes on these forums is always cringe as fuck

    especially to us enlightened piefed users who get them all combined anyway

  • Blaze (he/him) @lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    One question for @[email protected]

    I’ve been reposting content from [email protected] and [email protected] to [email protected] when that movement was still very active.

    There was even a [email protected] 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 [email protected] and [email protected], as well as [email protected] and [email protected] . 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.

    • jet@hackertalks.comOPEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      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

      • Blaze (he/him) @lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        0·
        2 days ago

        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 [email protected] )

        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. [email protected] 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.

        • jet@hackertalks.comOPEnglish
          0·
          2 days ago

          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

          • Blaze (he/him) @lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            0·
            2 days ago

            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/[email protected]/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.

            • jet@hackertalks.comOPEnglish
              2·
              2 days ago

              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.

              • Blaze (he/him) @lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                0·
                2 days ago

                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
                • jet@hackertalks.comOPEnglish
                  1·
                  2 days ago

                  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.

  • sabreW4K3@lazysoci.alEnglish
    0·
    3 days ago

    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?

    • jet@hackertalks.comOPEnglish
      2·
      3 days ago

      Let’s say you make a niche post about a programming feature

      2-6 hours later someone copies your post exactly but doesn’t cross post. Now people browsing by New see the copy first and if they do see the original it feels redundant/ spammy.

      If people do talk about this niche thing it’s likely they won’t be talking in the same place.

      You as the poster won’t see the engagement with your content, you won’t see comments, and you may be less incentivized to post again