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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[–] AustralianSimon 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Reddit is actively working to wall their garden though.

[–] uis -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That's why mentioned federatied network bridges store all bridged messages on instance with all the metadata. This is same: bridged posts and comments are stored with metadata. So even if reddit will nuke bridge, already bridged posts will stay.

This also reduces switching cost from reddit to lemmy and turns lemmy into "continue conversation here" button. And according to guy who defined enshittification, low switching cost is how social networks gather TONS of people.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

according to guy who defined enshittification

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] AustralianSimon 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Ok but then instead of encouraging people to Lemmy you are encouraging to matrix which will have the same issue bridging to Reddit.

Seems like another bad solution.

[–] uis 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm not sure what you are implying. I was just saying that alien.top is just like bridge in matrix, why it is better to store data on instance instead of fetching it every time like frontend does and how it helps Lemmy get users.

[–] AustralianSimon 1 points 1 year ago

I think we're agreeing in that its not helpful for Lemmy.