Lemmy

1. I create a well crafted post to a normal site that gets 10.000 upvotes.

2. I change the URL to a malicious site.

3. ??????

4. Profit

cross-posted from: https://halubilo.social/post/8884

Hey guys, as I'm sure many of you are already aware there's a couple of bugs that are plaguing the home page. I've made a hotfix for these bugs:

1. New posts popping up and pushing all the other posts downwards - this is more prevalent on the larger lemmy instances, you'll just be scrolling and suddenly everything's pushed down because new posts are being added to the top of the page as they're being created
2. Default "All" not working - this is more something admins would be aware of but in the site settings you can set the default "Listing Type" to "All" instead of "Local", but if you do this the home page doesn't properly load "All", it'll show you the "Local" feed with "All" selected in the tabs. Seems this feature wasn't implemented correctly in time for 0.17.4

Since 0.18 is still a little while out, and I'm sure the devs are both really busy on it (they also said they won't be making another 0.17 release), I went ahead and made a hotfix for these. I have it up on jcgurango/lemmy-ui:0.17.4-hotfix so if you're using docker you can just upgrade to that image. I'm not really sure how ansible works, so I can't help with that.

Here's the repo I have these changes on for those who want to check or build it themselves: https://github.com/jcgurango/lemmy-ui - I've based it on the v0.17.4 tag on the upstream repo.

And I guess this question is two parts: 1. Regarding the current lemmy implementation, and 2. The activityPub protocol in general

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.fromshado.ws/post/793

Disclaimer

You are responsible of cloning whatever content you decide to migrate. I suggest to keep it to posts you made originally or have been given permissions to migrate. DO NOT SPAM

Background

Following all the recent issues I caught wind of Lemmy, I was aware of the Fediverse already and been present of Mastodon for years but unlike with microblogging alternatives I don't mind losing contact with people on link aggregators.

But since I was considering also deleting or overwriting all my original submissions (lol it's all gacha memes) I wanted to keep them available somewhere else. So I migrated a bunch of them to /c/fireemblemheroes

The program

So I coded a small python script (it's actually 500 poorly written lines) that given a file where each line is an URl of a Reddit post it can parse the corresponding content and using Lemmy's API clone them into your instance.

sample execution migrating 40 posts and their comments into a local test instance

Migration of text

For the most part simply copying and pasting original and texts back into Lemmy works.

Still there's a need to clean the body to make sure inlined picture links are expanded and characters are unescaped.

Migration of media

The post might be a single link or might contain links hosted on Reddit in it's body.

If enabled, the script is capable of downloading this media and reuploading to the pictrs instance asociated with it, then replacing with the new selfhosted link. Otherwise the original link is kept.

I suggest to disable video uploading though, as most of the time pictrs will not finish handling of the file before lemmy decides to timeout the connection

Migration of comments

The script is capable of tracing all comments in the particular post and migrate them while keeping the threaded relation between parent and child comments.

It also keeps a credit of name and date to the original author. In any case migrating comments will make you hit rate limits severely, increase runtime drastically.

This option really is only intended if you are migrating your community from reddit and want to keep all the top content.

This is how an URL link looks with migrated thread comments

Migration of upvotes

This is not possible without possible affecting federation. You would require editing the database directly as obviously the API doesn't allow it.

The same happens with original posting dates.

Running it

The prerequisite is having an user to authenticate to the instance you will use and the community where the posts will be migrated to exist already. The code is located at https://github.com/Eskuero/antenna2lemmy

Clone it locally:

$ git clone https://github.com/Eskuero/antenna2lemmy; cd antenna2lemmy

Create a python virtual environment and install the required dependencies on it:

$ virtualenv env; . env/bin/activate; pip install -r requirements.txt

READ THE CONFIGURATION FILE CAREFULLY, it documents each option. Adjust it to your needs.

Execute with the following command, where "personal" is the name of the community where the posts will be migrated to and "links.txt" a simple text file containing a single Reddit url per line. They are comma separated.

$ python antenna2lemmy.py personal,links.txt

The program should start running with a curses interface to report on progress. You can disable it by passing the environment variable DEBUGMODE=1.

The full log output will be saved to migration.log on execution directory

Reminder to be respectful of the other users of your instance, just because the tool runs automated and you are essentially crossposting from Reddit spamming a lot of migrated links might get you banned

I have created some software that is capable of synchronising posts from Reddit to Lemmy. It's still a little rough around the edges, but it works as a such:

People can request new subreddits to be mirrored on !requests@lemmit.online. A bot (open source) will monitor the threads there, and if it finds a new request for a subreddit, it will make a new community on the Lemmit server, and add it to its monitored list. It will then make periodic checks to see if any new posts (it doesn't copy any comments) have been posted on reddit, and copy those over.

Users can then subscribe to those communities from their own lemmy instance, and from there federation will pick it up. Or at least, that's the theory. At the moment, federation is not working awesomely, and that is where my lack of fediverse knowledge comes in. Maybe it needs more time, or something is not so properly - I don't know.

Furthermore: registrations on this server are closed. The point of this service is not to become a community on its own, but to deliver, ehh, "original" content to all the rest of the Fediverse while it's going through a ramp-up phase. Besides, the instance is running on a pretty small vps, and I rather have this thing manage itself. There is a !about@lemmit.online community for further questions about the project itself though, in case people want to discuss it further.

So ehm... Let me know what you think :)

If posting a link to a YT video, isn't the thumbnail supposed to be shown alongside the post? It does not appear to be working or am I doing something wrong?

Think about it: Lemmy provides you with a ready-made frontend and backend

all you have to do is host your own instance of it. The following could all have been implemented as Lemmy instances, had it existed at the time:

• Reddit (www.reddit.com)
• Quora (www.quora.com)
• Stack Exchange (stackexchange.com)
• 4chan (www.4chan.org)
• Disqus (disqus.com)
• Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com)
• Something Awful (forums.somethingawful.com)
• GameFAQs (www.gamefaqs.com)
• Bodybuilding.com Forum (forum.bodybuilding.com)
• Gaia Online (www.gaiaonline.com)
• IGN Boards (www.ign.com/boards)
• NeoGAF (www.neogaf.com)
• MacRumors Forums (forums.macrumors.com)
• Digital Spy Forums (forums.digitalspy.com)
• WebmasterWorld (www.webmasterworld.com)
• AVForums (www.avforums.com)
• DeviantArt Forum (forum.deviantart.com)
• XDA Developers Forum (forum.xda-developers.com)
• WordPress Support Forums (wordpress.org/support)
• The Student Room (www.thestudentroom.co.uk)

Of course, these all have very different rules and frontends, but those can still be changed.

In addition, members of other instances can visit these forums without having to create new accounts, thanks to everything being federated.

Isn't that cool?

Libreddit does this, and it shows a pointer when you hover over the bar/header where the username and upvote count are, to indicate that you can collapse the comment by clicking.

I'm pretty sure some of them show up in my feed despite me blocking them.

i saw a user with the (BOT ACCOUNT) flair.

how do i get that? i wanna be a bot account too...

After getting a LoginResponse from the Lemmy API, it returns an auth JWT token.

I'm trying to figure out how I can get that users person_id or username so I can make a GetPersonDetails request for the currently logged in user.

Any ideas on how to do this?

I get how to view the community in my instance by searching [!community@other-instance.url](/c/community@other-instance.url), but then I have to find the specific post again.

there's an open issue which i think is talking about this, but i'm wondering what people have come up with for now. seems like a great browser extension opportunity (Lemmy Link only opens the community).

you all need to improve ur meme game

My instance works and I can interact with folks, but it's been live for several days now, and still not listed on https://the-federation.info/, and my local communities don't show up on https://browse.feddit.de/. Am I missing something?

I'm curious where everyone else has found communities to subscribe to on Lemmy.

Regarding https://join-lemmy.org/api/classes/LemmyHttp.html#resolveObject

Thanks in advance!

I am seeing posts from this community, I can seemingly create posts and replies, yet it's showing "Subscribe Pending". Is this a bug or is it actually pending?

I've created a quick script to copy your communities from one account to another. Useful when switching instances.

Wow lemmyverse.net just crossed 800 running instances of Lemmy that it's tracking!

Go check out some some communities! https://lemmyverse.net and follow a few from whatever software you are using. If you are searching from Mastodon replace the ! with an @ in the !groupname@instance.domain when you search for it or search using the full htttps://instance.domain/c/communuty in your home server search bar

@lemmy @fediverse

On mobile, no matter which instance I browse in, and no matter what I sort by (top day, active, etc.), after a bit of scrolling I suddenly get an influx of recently created posts that spams the whole page, and I can't continue scrolling because the spam just keeps going. I'm not even sorting by new.

Does this happen to anyone else? Have any of you found a solution to this yet? I mostly use social media on my phone and this bug occurs so often that it pretty much renders Lemmy unusable for me :/

Not meant as an authoritative or absolute assessment, but this viewpoint may help you come to terms with the "fragmented" nature of the fediverse and understand why it's the reason we are here (or at least why you would want to be). Lemmy and the fediverse is not "the ultimate aggregation platform" or the new old reddit in any singular or unified sense.

Digression: The fediverse, generally speaking, is an infrastructure; a network of communities across various social platforms, including link-aggregators, microblogging sites, video-streaming, forums, media-sharing, and website comment sections all over the internet. Lemmy is an animal sharing an ecosystem (the fediverse) with other animals (such as mastodon), but it isn't the fediverse, and not all animals think alike -- each platform has its own notion of what it means to interact and how you should interact -- but different species are still able to interact to various degrees.

In a similar vein, Lemmy instances are autonomous communities with their own values, purposes, interests, and, more concretely, moderation policies. An instance may choose to defederate with another instance for the same reason a "normal" website may not want to give space to content from just any other website. I like to think of federation in terms of "freedom from [lock-in/harassment/toxicity/ads/sensory assault/information attacks/tired debates/sea-lioning/etc]" while retaining the ability to continue interacting consensually with others on the network (as opposed to "if you don't like it on [centralised platform] you can leave", which usually means "you're free to leave this city and go build your own village in the Andean mountains").

Each instance separately may fill the role of link aggregator - but for members of that community (accounts on that instance) first and foremost, with that community’s values and moderation policies reflected in the perceived quality of content. The ability for an instance to federate with other instances with compatible policies is the benefit here, not an imperative or some duty an instance has towards le fediverse collective. Thus, it may actually help if you view an instance as the community, with its “communities” as its topics, or subforums if you will.

We need to remember that these sites are inherently social: the fediverse is not meant as a resilient information exchange protocol, but as a means for social groups to organise organically rather than be funnelled into the same environmentally controlled silo before inevitably being processed and sold. Part of that process (the former, not the latter) involves disagreement, defederation, migration, formation of new instances serving new niches, causes or ideals, and occasionally bad enough groups will get ostracised because they're intolerable (regardless of whether they think they're playing by the rules or not, because -- unlike on corporate social media -- on the fediverse you're allowed to simply not tolerate intolerable people).

This isn't to invalidate frustrations that arise from, for example, large instances defederating from yours when you haven't done anything wrong; there is the separate problem of a lack of portable identities, which would fix a number of inconveniences if it was a thing (to mention a few: deciding on where to sign up or settle down; migrating when a server goes down/to shit; having more than one interest/association but being forced to choose one community; even just following links to other instances). Luckily, there are reasons to think it can be done - it just hasn't been done yet.

Another popular frustration is that you often want to subscribe to a common topic but some of these are hosted by different instances, and this becomes a bit messy and unmanageable without any clear benefit, especially when the instances are not diverse enough to provide any unique flavour to the content posted. This is another fixable issue, and I suspect we'll see it implemented relatively soon.

I don't know if this is helpful for you but thanks for listening to my TED-talk.

Edit: compile error, expected ')', found EOF. Edit 2: added more paragraphs and some fluff because this became my activity today.