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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Some clients see the instance name as alien.top when it is a actually selfhosted.forum. When the instance info is referenced, it's reporting back both names. Lemmy can clients see one or the other and just blocking alien.top won't stop the spammy noise.

When I try to block a post from selfhosted.forum the client sees it as alien.top. This is partially a client issue, but it is likely caused by how the instances are presented.

Nobody hates the idea of a "Reddit transition instance". We just can't stand the noise it generates and that little effort was put into identifying posts as bot generated.

You mentioned somewhere that people should comment on those posts to help bootstrap conversations. Unfortunately, that is not how this is working out and it is wasting people's time.