It's an instance that crossposts posts from Reddit, except it also makes a new user for each Reddit account it came from. So if /u/hello123 made a post, it makes that post under a new account called hello123. That makes it impossible to block posting bots.

Not only that, it makes posts look like they're posted by real people, with many question and text posts being copied as well. I was very confused as to what these posts were until I realized they're crossposts.

Examples:

https://alien.top/post/263029

https://lemm.ee/u/[email protected]

I strongly believe Lemmy isn't the place for mirroring content from other websites. You can host your own alternate Reddit frontend like LibReddit, there's no reason to spam the posts to everyone using Lemmy just because 5 people asked for it. Not to mention there are already enough instances mirroring posts, this is getting obnoxious.

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[–] MargotRobbie 38 points 7 months ago (3 children)

@[email protected], let me break it down to you as simply as I can:

Reddit comments are copyrighted material.
Reddit ToS means reddit can do whatever they want with these comments, you don't have the rights to these comments.
Scraping and mirroring reddit comments to start a competitor, therefore, is copyright violation, and is illegal.
You don't even have plausible deniability because you outright admitted, multiple times, that you are mirroring reddit comments to start a competitor.
Reddit's army of lawyers can find you through your domain registrar, and will make an example out of you.
Every instance that federates with yours can also get sued for hosting copyrighted material.

Please stop.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Wasn't reddit trying to claim that they own everyone's comments pretty universally decried? As in the reason half of us are here is because they decided they owned everyone's comments (so they could sell it to the AI trainers) and users said 'fuck off, it's my comment and I'll delete it'. There are plenty of reddit rehosters already, how is this different legally?

[–] MargotRobbie 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Directly from Reddit's user agreement when you sign up for an account there.

You grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world.

So like it or not, they have the rights to whatever you post there already.

There are plenty of reddit rehosters already, how is this different legally?

Because these were noninteractive front ends, none of them with a creator who is insane enough to publicly declares that they are scraping reddit to start a competitor and explicitly to harm reddit's financial interests.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Fair point, though just because you put something in an EULA that doesn't make it enforceable or even legal. Explicitly stating that you want to take down the company isn't going to do you any favours though.

[–] uis -1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Wow, great fearmongering.

Reddit ToS means reddit can do whatever they want with these comments, you don't have the rights to these comments.

Also in some jurisdictions it is not only unenforceable, but straight illegal(Canada?).