this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
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How can I block posts from all bot accounts of specific instance? (alien.top)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by lemmelurk@lemmy.ml to c/lemmy_support@lemmy.ml
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I do not want to block all bots. I only want to block bots from specific instance. More specifically, the @alien.top instance is using most, if not all, bot accounts with random usernames. It uses that instance to post in communities of other instances. I thought about blocking other instances. But the main issue lies with random bot accounts from @alien.top. And I cannot block individually by usernames.

What shall I do to block posts posted by random bot accounts of @alien.top instance?

Update

I looked up potentially affiliated sites connected to that instance and found these.

https://level-up.zone/ (@communick, high post rate)
https://gearhead.town/?dataType=Post&page=1&sort=New (same admin, high post rate)
https://viewfinder.pro/?dataType=Post&page=1&sort=New (same admin, medium post rate)
https://netheads.online/?dataType=Post&page=1&sort=New (same admin, low post rate)
https://healthy.community/?dataType=Post&page=1&sort=New (same admin, low post rate)
https://sfw.community/?dataType=Post&listingType=Local&page=1&sort=New (same admin, no post yet)
https://blockchained.world/?dataType=Post&page=1&sort=New (same admin, low post rate)
https://matchpoint.zone/?dataType=Post&page=1&sort=New (same admin, low post rate)
https://poweruser.forum/?dataType=Post&page=1&sort=New (same admin, high post rate)
https://hi-fi.community/?dataType=Post&page=1&sort=New (same admin, medium post rate)
https://expats.zone/?dataType=Post&page=1&sort=New (same admin, medium post rate)
https://nba.space/?dataType=Post&page=1&sort=New (same admin, high post rate)
https://athletic.center/?dataType=Post&listingType=Local&page=1&sort=New (same admin, no post yet)
https://style.land/?dataType=Post&page=1&sort=New (same admin, high post rate)
https://metacritics.zone/?dataType=Post&page=1&sort=New (same admin, high post rate)
https://academy.garden/?dataType=Post&page=1&sort=New (same admin, medium post rate)
https://foodie.rehab/?dataType=Post&page=1&sort=New (same admin, no post yet)
https://indiehackers.space/?dataType=Post&page=1&sort=New (same admin, high post rate)
https://hardware.watch/?dataType=Post&page=1&sort=New (same admin, high post rate)
https://nfl.community/?dataType=Post&page=1&sort=New (same admin, high post rate)

The instances may be hours to two months old and are run by the same admin. Some have high post rate, while others have no post yet. The ones with posts are all using @alien.top's random bot accounts. I suspect this problem will amplify.

Update2

Blocking by instance is finally working. I blocked @alien.top and @hardware.watch. Consider this issue resolved.

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[–] zeppo@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I’ve wondered wtf is up with that instance. Someone floods certain communities - apple on hardware.watch for instance - with endless tech support questions, like pages and pages of them a day. Steamdeck on hardware.watch for instance has a dozen posts in the last 5 minutes, so it’s a ridiculous flood.

A few of the accounts seem more legitimate than others and actually have a history, but most just have 1 post. The questions aren’t badly written and I wonder where they come from - don’t sound like LLM, but I just don’t believe at all that 8,000 random people signed up at this Alien instance and want to ask one tech related question and then disappear. The content doesn’t seem harmful or scammy, though, they’re all things a normal person might post. Is the content copied from reddit? Is this someone’s idea of kickstarting these Lemmy communities? It’s all a bit odd.

Anyway it’s a limited number of communities these apparent bots post to, so I simply blocked those communities.

[–] Rocketpoweredgorilla@lemmy.ca 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Is the content copied from reddit?

Yup, at least in some cases. In one of the home networking subs I've seen several questions that after a quick search were posted on reddit within an hour before they showed up here. It kind of pisses me off wasting time trying to help someone that doesn't even exist on the fediverse.

[–] zeppo@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, I answered a couple questions before I noticed something was off. I guess it’s adding content to Lemmy but it’s more an annoying waste of time.

[–] canis_majoris@lemmy.ca 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I had the same problem with lemmit.online, and with lemmit.online the owner said "yeah this is a bot, this whole instance is for reddit reposts, if you don't like it defederate from me" - which .ca did.

I can't stand bot instances or bots in general that are reposting from reddit, because it's not valuable content for the fediverse - the OP doesn't see what we're saying and if we're troubleshooting something that's been crossposted it's literally just on deaf ears.

The only bot I actually like is the ITNBot which is for ImproveTheNews - it posts neutral, pro-, and anti-stance information relevant to the article being posted, showing you all sides of the issue.

[–] zeppo@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago (1 children)

At least lemmit has a blurb that explains the content comes from reddit. Looking at alien.top itself, they do explain that it’s a page for “Fediverser” which posts content from reddit, but it’s sort of vague - makes it seem like people from reddit are signing up there to do this on purpose, but I’m not sure if that’s really how it works.

And yeah, it’s useless to respond to if the person asking isn’t going to get the reply. I’m not sure why people think auto-reddit spam would be a useful thing for lemmy.

[–] canis_majoris@lemmy.ca 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Fediverser looks like a project that's supposed to ease the onboarding process from reddit, looks like you can sign up with a reddit account to have access to Lemmy, but I am not entirely sure.

I don't really mind the size of the community these days; I feel like if we start getting more and more people from reddit we're going to get the people we wanted to avoid by leaving the place. Right now it feels like there's not a ton of content, but there's a decent amount of discussion, and it's of high quality. I feel like an easier entrance to the platform is going to degrade the experience, as shitty as that sounds.

[–] zeppo@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

Yeah, I didn’t really understand the description. You sign up by authenticating with reddit, and then it automatically connects you with the same subs you have on reddit?

I see “Your account will be activated and you will be subscribed to Lemmy communities that have a reddit counterpart.” but also “create bot accounts to mirror the original accounts on a corresponding fediverse-enabled server”. Hmm.

Right, I mean, I don’t think we’d want Lemmy to just become a clone of reddit with all the same people. Not being ran by a lame corp would still be an advantage but for now I think discourse on Lemmy is higher quality and I hope it stays that way.

[–] rglullis -4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Please, do not feel discouraged to participate. The idea of the bots is not to be a simple mirror, but to bootstrap real conversation. The next step of Fediverser is to allow two-way communication so that Reddit users can see the Lemmy content and migrate.

The reason that alien.top content seems so overwhelming now is more to Lemmy"s losing its activity than a real "flood" of bots. My hope is that people will join in to the point of balancing out, but if this is leading to the opposite effect I will have to turn off, and that will be a shame because there are hundreds of people already using it "as intended"

[–] remotelove@lemmy.ca 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Your instance is misreporting its name somehow and it was super annoying when I was trying to block it.

Is it alien.top or selfhosted.forum? Pick one please.

Also, do you manage any other instances so I can block those as well? Needless to say, I am slightly pissed off that I have replied to several posts before I saw they were bots. Some of those replies took some effort when I was trying to actually be helpful.

[–] rglullis -4 points 11 months ago

There is nothing being misreported, they are separate instances.

[–] zeppo@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I read more about the project and it seems interesting. I suppose 2 way communication to sync accounts between reddit and lemmy would be interesting... would the reddit TOS allow that? Or would the reddit admins tolerate it for long? I suppose you've looked into it.

The problem is the current state is confusing... if you look at the communities posted in by the bots, it is a huge flood of posts, like sometimes 20 posts in 15 minutes. I guess that would be different if Lemmy was more active, but it isn't yet. Also, it's confusing - one has to visit alien.top and github to have any idea what's going on, and if the account holders aren't receiving the posts, it's sort of wasting people's effort on lemmy and not creating true engagement. Perhaps a disclaimer like 'this post mirrored by Fediverser' would help.

[–] rglullis -4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I agree with pretty much everything but:

it’s sort of wasting people’s effort on lemmy and not creating true engagement

Even if we don't have two-way communication, having the content mirrored has two purposes:

  • it allows lurkers to move away from reddit and browse here.

  • it works as a prompt for conversation between "organic" subscribers.

I will add a comment to every post though (similar to how AutoModerator does) to indicate that is a mirrored comment and with general instructions on how to interact with the bots and some links to describe the project.

[–] zeppo@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Great, I think as my and other people's experience illustrates it has been a bit confusing so far, being unexplained. The byline will help a lot, I think.

Sure, it's useful as it is as long as people check into their Lemmy accounts. I suppose I would if I signed up and was aware there might be replies waiting for me on Lemmy in addition to Reddit.

[–] rglullis -4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

So, a comment like this one will be sent on every mirrored post. The only issue I see with this approach is that there is no way to pin a comment to the top of the thread...

[–] zeppo@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's cool, I think that will help explain it. I didn't realize the accounts for people on reddit were being created on lemmy automatically though. Do the reddit users even know it's happening?

[–] rglullis -3 points 11 months ago (1 children)
[–] zeppo@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It kind of changes things if accounts are automatically made and the user on reddit has no idea. From earlier discussion I thought you were saying these posts were from people who explicitly went to alien.top and signed up. But it turns out no, the content is automatically duplicated and the user on reddit has no idea this is happening - so it IS largely a waste of time to try to respond to them as they’re unlikely to ever read it.

The suggestion I’ve seen you make elsewhere for Lemmy users to message people on reddit and invite them to Lemmy is rather unrealistic, and I’m pretty sure reddit would tolerate this being automated for about 1 day after they found out about it. Reddit isn’t going to let you scrape the site and autospam members (in their view) to support what’s essentially an unauthorized 3rd party client that replaces the core function of their site.

[–] rglullis 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

If the content being posted had a real person behind it from the beginning, then it would be one less reason to treat the whole thing as "spam", wouldn't it?

It should be simple to discern: users from alien.top that have not claimed their account there are marked as bots. Once an user from reddit claims their account, they are then unflagged as bots and none of their content gets automatically mirrored (because once they claim their account, they control the password and there is no way for my service to post on their behalf)

and I’m pretty sure reddit would tolerate this being automated for about 1 day

I am not even saying it has to be automated. At the moment, I'm actually suggesting people to go do what I am doing and writing DMs on reddit to tell the original poster about the mirrored link and to let them know that they can get more answers on Lemmy.

[–] zeppo@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I know, I addressed the manual messaging by saying

The suggestion I’ve seen you make elsewhere for Lemmy users to message people on reddit and invite them to Lemmy is rather unrealistic

One problem is the communities aren't very engaging for people on Lemmy since it's this huge list of posts with no responses and no guarantee the original poster will ever see your helpful response.

So... it's not automatically mirrored after they sign up on Lemmy? I thought that was a key feature.

[–] rglullis 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

invite them to Lemmy is rather unrealistic

Why? During the summer, at the height of the protest, I was taking 15 minutes every day and sending 10-20 DMs to people on the emacs community. For better or worse, I think around 40 people responded positively.

Why couldn't a fraction of us do something similar? Specially that now we all could leverage the fact that fediverser provides a really easy way to migrate?

So… it’s not automatically mirrored after they sign up on Lemmy? I thought that was a key feature.

The key feature is the login with the automatic subscription to the corresponding communities, not the automated mirroring of the posts.

[–] zeppo@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

okay, I guess I see what problems you're trying to solve, but I don't see how it really does them that well.

These communities on Lemmy are unlikely to take off since they're not building true engagement. Signing up to Lemmy with my reddit credentials and automatically being enrolled in a bunch of Lemmy communities that are not really active isn't really better than just signing up to Lemmy normally, which is not very difficult. I wouldn't post a question in any of these bot-filled communities on Lemmy because it's unlikely anyone would see it as it would be covered up by 50 automatic posts from reddit before anyone even saw it.

I don't see the lemmy content as spam, just that like other reddit-autoposters, it's a strange form of a 3rd party reddit client. I do browse by All>New because that's how I can discover new communities and keep my feed fresh, given Lemmy's limited activity at the moment. However, pretty sure that reddit and many members would see messaging people unsolicited and promoting another site as spam.

[–] rglullis 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

These communities on Lemmy are unlikely to take off since they’re not building true engagement.

I am tracking some data, and I can tell you there are "fediversed" communities (the ones with mirrored content) growing in organic activity even when Lemmy usage is overall dropping.

Signing up to Lemmy with my reddit credentials and automatically being enrolled in a bunch of Lemmy communities that are not really active isn’t really better than just signing up to Lemmy normally, which is not very difficult.

  1. See the point above.
  2. Signing up to any service where people need to think about "what instance to join" is already one of the greatest roadblocks to Fediverse adoption.

I know, I wish people could take 3 minutes of their time to acquire some minimal tech literacy, but the truth is that the majority of social media users simply don't care enough about it to make the switch.

I wouldn’t post a question in any of these bot-filled communities on Lemmy because it’s unlikely anyone would see it as it would be covered up by 50 automatic posts from reddit before anyone even saw it.

There is already some mechanisms on fediverser software to add rate-limiting of mirrored posts. Meaning that I could set it up to post at most N posts per hour (or per day). But be honest: is there a number that is low enough for you to think that posting is worthwhile, or maybe it's just you not feeling comfortable to take initiative and post in a place where you haven't "seen" other peers?

However, pretty sure that reddit and many members would see messaging people unsolicited and promoting another site as spam.

And there will be just as many (if not more) people that are willing to ditch reddit, but are not aware of any other alternative.

Marketing should not be such an ugly word. If we really believe that the Fediverse is a better and healthier alternative to the existing social media landscape, why can't we do a little bit of evangelizing?

[–] zeppo@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I pondered this and I think it would work great for communities where OP is not asking a question and the comments don't matter - the SFW pic network, for instance. People would probably really appreciate seeing the content from subs like that without having to go to reddit. There are also so many of them that even going to reddit, I miss a lot of the photos the first time around. But the subs where OP is expecting tech help are perhaps the least appropriate for this current system and I think that mismatch is the main reason people on Lemmy had a problem with this. That, and might want to rethink the auto-account creation. Posting under one bot account would make it look less strange to people on Lemmy, and each post could have a byline explaining that it was mirrored from a specific reddit post. If that OP wanted to sign up for Lemmy via alien.top they still could, and to me it would seem less offputting than a mysterious account already having been made with my username.

With the concerns about storage and other system resource usage from federated instances, though, rate limiting would definitely be required. One post every couple hours would be okay. Some of the instances I saw when the mirror-bots were active had a post every 15 seconds or so.

maybe it’s just you not feeling comfortable to take initiative and post in a place where you haven’t “seen” other peers?

Why would I post a question in a community that is 99% bots? It's unlikely anybody on Lemmy would see it in the flood of posts mirrored from reddit. I'd be better off asking in a higher signal-to-noise ratio community on Lemmy or if I was desperate, just reddit. The excessive posts and unexplained nature that led people to conclude those instances were spam led many people to block them, which makes it even more unlikely someone on Lemmy would see my post there.

Marketing is great, but unsolicited DMs is NOT the way to do that. I'd suggest finding some other way of spreading the word.

[–] rglullis 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Agree about SFW. So much so that I created another instance for it and was finishing setting it up: https://sfw.community

Disagree about separate bots for replicating content and also disagree about not having comments. This is exactly the approach taken by the lemmit.online dev, and he was facing pretty much the same backslash as me.

About "resource usage from federated instances": I could argue that the real issue is caused by those people who are running scripts to subscribe to all communities (like https://github.com/wescode/lemmy_migrate). It's key to understand that content is only copied between instances if there is one subscriber to that community. Also, it's not like I am running a massive computing cluster or that alien.top is throwing terabytes of data every day. If the network cannot deal with the load that alien.top is generating, then it's a sign that we are not ready for more people coming from Reddit. And if we are really that not unprepared for it, then I'd rather drop the whole project and go back to the drawing board.

unsolicited DMs is NOT the way to do that

Have you tried, or are you projecting your feelings towards it?

Cold call sales still exists. Direct Mailing still exists. If companies still put a lot of money to do these things, it means that it pays off.

If you have any other idea, I'm all for trying. But if they are not at least as effective as direct contact, I won't be dropping the idea of sending DMs.

[–] zeppo@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

okay, that's all cool.

I'm speaking from my experience with unsolicited messages and marketing, as well as the general impression people get from that. Direct mail and cold call sales work sometimes, but they're often not welcome and reflect poorly on the organization doing it. I feel like doing it excessively would be likely to result in reddit suspending accounts or at least restricting message ability, plus, it would mean that for some people their first exposure to Lemmy is a message that many would see as spam (since unsolicited mail inviting you to do or buy something is the definition of spam).

[–] rglullis 1 points 11 months ago

Key word is excessively. I do not want to send mass messages, but i don't see how a group of "community ambassadors" here focusing on reaching out to posters on reddit saying "hey, I saw your post on /r/XYZ, maybe you'd be interested in posting on /c/XYZ as well? If you don't have an account on Lemmy, here is the one way to sign up..."

[–] rglullis -4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They don't exist yet. Each bot on alien.top represents a real account on reddit. If you think that their question is legit and worthy of a response, but you don't want to give Reddit even more data, the best thing you can do is respond on Lemmy and send a message to the origjnal asker to tell them about Lemmy and help them migrate.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Send a message to them how? On reddit?

[–] rglullis -1 points 11 months ago

If possible, yes. Why not?

[–] Blaze@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 11 months ago

!fediverser_network@communick.news

It's a project addressing the transition to new joiners to populated communities

@rglullis@communick.news