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submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by jet@hackertalks.com to c/fedigrow@lemmy.zip

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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[-] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 25 points 1 year 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.com 13 points 1 year 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.social 4 points 1 year ago

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

[-] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 15 points 1 year ago

I could not agree more. @cm0002@lemmy.world could maybe use a bit of self-reflection in that regard.

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 16 points 1 year ago

Yeah bro just decided to be a dick about it to random individuals.

[-] cm0002@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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.

[-] goferking0@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 1 year 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 🙃

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[-] jet@hackertalks.com 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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

[-] grue@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

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[-] socsa@piefed.social 12 points 1 year ago

Another problem Piefed has solved by aggregating crossposts into a single thread.

[-] some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 7 points 1 year ago

You've piqued my interest.

[-] Sunshine@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 year ago

PieFed has flairs, spoilers, polls, topics, feeds (like multireddits), better mod and reporting tools. All for you to check out!

[-] BrikoX@lemmy.zip 4 points 1 year ago

How they aggregate comments? If so how they determine which one to attibute the comment?

[-] sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al 10 points 1 year 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.com 15 points 1 year 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

[-] throws_lemy 6 points 1 year ago

thanks, that explains why some of my posts are also copied to other instances 🤔

[-] lazynooblet@lazysoci.al 5 points 1 year ago

If the cross post feature is used, does it merge comments as well?

[-] sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al 5 points 1 year ago

Thanks for explaining. If someone is stealing posts, then it's up to the moderators and/or admins to deal with that.

But as I said, there's a lot of people on Lemmy that think theft is okay. Hence sanctioning bots to steal content from elsewhere on the net.

[-] jet@hackertalks.com 7 points 1 year ago

At least with the bot, it's clear that this is one way communication, and usually the bots tell you where it's coming from.

But just a person copying everything, so you think they're the original creator, but they're not. Which means if you respond to that post, they're not going to respond, they don't care. They're just stealing. They're trying to move everybody to their new community

[-] Libb@jlai.lu 5 points 1 year ago

But as I said, there’s a lot of people on Lemmy that think theft is okay.

Theft happening to others, maybe. Try stealing from them ;)

then it’s up to the moderators and/or admins to deal with that.

That being said, I agree this is the moderator's job to deal with it but keep in mind that:

  • Mods are benevolent and there aren't that many to begin with.
  • One may still need to report the issue for the mod to become aware of it.
[-] Maeve@kbin.earth 5 points 1 year ago

When it's the mod doing it?

[-] sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al 5 points 1 year ago

One may still need to report the issue for the mod to become aware of it.

💯

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[-] jet@hackertalks.com 8 points 1 year 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.

[-] BagOfHeavyStones@piefed.social 7 points 1 year ago

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?

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[-] psychadlligoat@piefed.social 3 points 1 year 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

[-] OmegaLemmy@discuss.online 5 points 1 year ago

Cringe, sure, but it is still in bad taste, it's not about ownership in my mind

[-] Microw@piefed.zip 4 points 1 year ago

Tbf on some communities you get original content write-ups about various topics, not just low effort memes.

[-] cm0002@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year 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"

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[-] Elevator7009sAlt@ani.social 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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.

[-] jet@hackertalks.com 5 points 1 year ago

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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this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
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