Update: so, the responses this far are almost universally that these bots have been blocked by users of the community. There is also a general disinterest in defederating, which is on brand.

You guys wanna do a poll or something or?

Iā€™d like to lead my thoughts with a quote from the admins regarding bots within lemm.ee:

ā€œBots must not be responsible for the majority of content in any communityā€

There are two entire instances that immediately spring to mind, zerobytes.monsterā€™s b0t user, and lemmit.online. Their content is quite literally 90% bot content with 0 engagement, and they spam constantly.

Now here at lemm.ee we generally donā€™t defend from stuff, thatā€™s actually why I prefer this instance. Yes, you can block the bot users and that solves the problem, but hear me out:

These bots ruin the experience on Lemmy for new users. They spam so many posts, attempting to block them from a mobile app will usually crash the app. If youā€™re a new user coming to Lemm.ee sorting by all, you see tons and tons of empty posts.

Zerobytes is particularly egregious because it doesnā€™t even repost actual content, just thousands and thousands of links to Reddit posts. Itā€™s a spam instance, period, and I feel strongly about this.

Lemmit.online isnā€™t quite as bad, but itā€™s an entire instance dedicated to spam reposting everything from Reddit. All the posts have zero engagement, and the comment value is gone so everything decent gets buried.

Yes there are ways around this on an individual user level, but then youā€™re creating a context where thereā€™s even less engagement in the vast majority of ā€œnewā€ posts.

Anyway, thems my thoughts. Repost bots are stupid, one that drive traffic to Reddit are even worse. Thoughts?

  • sunaurus@lemm.eeM
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    50
    Ā·
    1 year ago

    Thanks for posting this, OP.

    I have heard this negative feedback regarding the repost instances many times from several users, and conversely, I have not heard any positive feedback about those instances at all.

    At the moment, my perception is that these instances universally disliked here, and as they are objectively having a negative effect on lemm.ee through effectively creating a ton of spam without any real discussion, perhaps we should indeed consider defederating. I would really appreciate if people who actually enjoy content from those instances could share their thoughts here!

    • cerevant@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      Ā·
      1 year ago

      Perhaps it would be useful to look at the subscriber numbers for these communities? Maybe contact some of those subscribers directly, since they are the ones who requested the content in the first place? I would venture that people interested in a non-interactive firehose of links is probably a lurker and wouldnā€™t respond here.

      If a lot of these communities have one subscriber, It could be that someone subscribed just to get the community on All.

      Iā€™m generally of the view that defederation to curate content is a bad idea. Iā€™ve seen suggestions to have the ability for an instance to exclude certain communities from All, or maybe Lemmy needs a semi curated Popular feed like Reddit.

      • cubedsteaks@lemmy.today
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        Ā·
        1 year ago

        I know I accidentally subbed to some when I was looking for communities to add to my feed. I need to go through and remove them now that I know what they are.

    • TexMexBazooka@lemm.eeOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      2
      Ā·
      1 year ago

      Thanks for boosting the discussion, Iā€™m curious to see if anyone enjoys these bots as well. Thanks for all your efforts šŸ™

    • Jordan Lund@lemmy.one
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      Ā·
      1 year ago

      I would really appreciate if people who actually enjoy content from those instances could share their thoughts here!

      Well thatā€™s the trick, isnā€™t it? They donā€™t engage with the bot posts, if they were enjoying them then wouldnā€™t they engage?

      • megane-kun@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        Ā·
        1 year ago

        One counterpoint is that these bots offer a way to ā€œbrowse Reddit contentā€ without giving Reddit anything. And if browsing posts is the only thing one is after, one could enjoy the content but not interact with it, not even an upvote nor a subscription (to the repost community).

        However, I donā€™t know of any way of measuring such interactions other than people telling us that they do.

        Personally speaking though, the best, or worst, or perhaps spiciest part of reddit posts are in the comments. Just the post, without the comments providing the meat of it to me is kinda empty.

        Iā€™m fine either way since I rarely, if ever, encounter such Reddit reposts from bots. Iā€™ve never subscribed to such, and I almost never encounter them in the wilds of ā€œAll.ā€

    • Kalcifer@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      Ā·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I would vote nay for defederating from them. While I personally found their content annoying, someone else may actually find it uesful. I blocked the users, and the problem was solved. This issue may arise again, however, if more spam users pop up on these instances than a single user could reasonably be expected to deal with. This could possibly, again, be fixed by the user blocking the instance, but this would have to wait for user-blocking of instances to be implemented.

      • HelloHotel@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        Ā·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Im generally on the side of reposting for archival and continuation. however, the ā€œthrow it out thereā€ half-assed ness and lack of transparency of these services make it a no deal. If I were to remake one (and ive thoght about it) a simple ā€œupload and doneā€ approach is discusting. These bots (clarified: probably should create their own instance for the task) need communal love and care to be anything but ā€œa fire hose of contentā€. I propose the following:

        1. Allow the community to control most aspects of the bot behavor.
        2. Do not upload/add to queue unless initated by a lemmy user
        3. Allow users to vote on post deletion, add resistance or disable if there are many non bot comments.
        4. Allow users to vote on the botā€™s upload speed and what gets priority (up/down vote this comment)
        5. Pin an admin post to act like a ā€œsettings menuā€ for the project
        6. Pin an unintrucive admin comment in every post to vote on actions for the post
        7. Use as little boilerplate as possable. Hide in spoiler what you cant avoid.
        8. Use one bot account for uploads, one blocked user blocks the whole service.
        9. Put human and machine readable metadata of the original and repost in a spoiler.
        10. Use 8 or so well labeled ā€œsorting bot accountsā€ to aproimate upvotes of the source relative to its negboring ccomments. Should be no more sway than Ā±8 votes. Bot votes Should be disclosed in the metadata.
        11. Call the bot somthing like ā€œreddit archiveā€ put sourceā€™s username in the post/comment body
        12. Allow off instance admins to moderate bot posts
        13. Prefix all communities with somthing like "auto: " for transparency
        14. Allow partial reuploads and omition of threads for admin/data cleanup purposes.
        • Kalcifer@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          Ā·
          1 year ago

          Im generally on the side of reposting for archival and continuation.

          Unless an instance has been built with the intention of archiving information, I donā€™t think that it should be automatically expected that an instance would be in favor of archiving posts from other platforms ā€“ there already exists services that archive internet data, and they are better equipped to do so. An instance should outline in their rules whether or not they support such types of posts.

          • HelloHotel@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            Ā·
            edit-2
            1 year ago

            I generally agree, ill add that to the post.

            Edit: oh, it was written but poorly explained that it should be its own instance.

            Allow off instance admins to moderate bot posts

  • hakase@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    31
    arrow-down
    2
    Ā·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I vote nay to defederation (as I almost always will). If a problem can be solved simply by blocking two bots, then there is no need whatsoever to resort to defederation.

    I understand your ā€œnew userā€ problem argument, but I think itā€™s really a non-issue. Lemmy already has a much higher learning curve than a site like reddit, and I think the number of people who arenā€™t put off by Lemmyā€™s learning curve but are put off having to figure out how to block two users is pretty close to the empty set.

  • TheGreatFox@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    18
    arrow-down
    1
    Ā·
    1 year ago

    Possible alternative that doesnā€™t involve defederating: Banning those two bot accounts from lemm.ee. That way, any users on those sites would still be able to participate in posts here.

    ā€¦ Though, Iā€™m not sure how many of those there actually are. Looking at the sidebar, zerobytes.monster has had 18 users in the last 6 months, and lemmit.online a grand total of 1 user in the last 6 months.

    • Rescuer6394@feddit.nl
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      11
      Ā·
      1 year ago

      i donā€™t think you can subscribe to lemmit.online, the only user is the bot, and the only purpose of the instance is to archive stuff.

    • amio@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      arrow-down
      1
      Ā·
      1 year ago

      You can always ban users. Still, instances with a culture specifically promoting those users (such as instances dedicated to reposting from Reddit, or a hypothetical instance that is hell-bent on trolling everyone) will make sure you have a steady amount of work maintaining that banning policy indefinitely. Defederating makes a lot more sense because moderator time and attention are finite resources.

  • impiri@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    arrow-down
    1
    Ā·
    1 year ago

    I donā€™t personally find these bot posts useful, and I think they clutter up the All timeline, but they arenā€™t being deceitful or anything, and there may be folks who find these posts useful. I like the lemm.ee federation policy of generally allowing everything unless itā€™s full of bad actors.

    • TexMexBazooka@lemm.eeOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      14
      Ā·
      1 year ago

      Itā€™s annoying because in some instances a repost bot makes sense, specifically where content and comments are a bit more asynchronous.

      Some kinds of news for example- having an article reposted isnā€™t really terrible because weā€™re all just going to the same article then posting comments on our respective platforms.

      But posts where op is expecting any kind of reply are dead in the water once theyā€™re posted here, they just take up space and clutter up the timeline.

  • Jordan Lund@lemmy.one
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    arrow-down
    2
    Ā·
    1 year ago

    Repost bots are no better than spam bots IMHO, but I think defederation needs to be based on bad behavior by the admins, not the accounts themselves.

    In the case of lemmit.online, yeah, they are creating a bunch of communities that ONLY the bot can post in, and the posts get no replies because whatā€™s the point in replying to TIFU or AITA if OP will never see it?

    Thatā€™s clearly the fault of the admin, but OTOH, blocking bot@lemmit.online solves the problem without full defederation.

    Thereā€™s a food community I read that gets spambots from lemm.ee all the time only posting affiliate links.

    Those get reported for spam and blocked, but itā€™s clearly not the policy of lemm.ee so no reason to defederate.

    • TexMexBazooka@lemm.eeOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      15
      arrow-down
      1
      Ā·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Iā€™m going to keep echoing this argument: just blocking the user is a shitty solution, because now new users are going to be alienated, especially if they browse by new.

      Your example of spambots posting from lemm.ee break down fast because, you said it: we ban the spam bot. Lemmit.online is nothing but spam, all the time

      If lemmit.online were a community within lemm.ee, it would be removed

      • Jordan Lund@lemmy.one
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        2
        Ā·
        1 year ago

        Oh, I definitely see the argument, but Iā€™d start by blocking everything by the bot, then if the admins decide to skirt the block with bot2@lemmit.online then the only real answer is defederation.

        • TexMexBazooka@lemm.eeOP
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          10
          arrow-down
          4
          Ā·
          1 year ago

          ā€œLet me tell you about this thing called Lemmy, itā€™s great! But first, hereā€™s a list of users you need to block to make it useable. Also, you have to do it from a web browser on a decent computer with decent internet because youā€™re going to try and load a profile with 1000000 posts.

          Once youā€™ve jumped through those hoops youā€™ll be able to see the actual content thatā€™s posted on Lemmyā€

          ^this is not a good way to bring someone into the fediverse

          • Jordan Lund@lemmy.one
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            arrow-down
            2
            Ā·
            1 year ago

            Blocking them on Voyager on Android works for me. :)

            But I think itā€™s reasonable to tell people to use the search to find communities that interest them, curate your home feed, and be aware that diving into the ā€œAll Federated Contentā€ feed will show you stuff thatā€™s a) not particularly useful or b) potentially offensive to your sensibilities.

            It took me way longer to get fed up with bot@lemmit.online than Iā€™d really like to admit, and I only blocked them when it became clear they werenā€™t going to stop. I could see other people enjoying the feedā€¦ but then why donā€™t they comment? šŸ¤”

            • TexMexBazooka@lemm.eeOP
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              5
              arrow-down
              2
              Ā·
              edit-2
              1 year ago

              Voyager on iPhone shits the bed when trying to open their user profile, zerobyte.monster is the one I havenā€™t been able to block yet

              • impiri@lemm.ee
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                Ā·
                1 year ago

                I had the same experience. I had to use the lemm.ee default web interface to block the two repost bots.

              • Jordan Lund@lemmy.one
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                arrow-down
                1
                Ā·
                1 year ago

                Huh, I went looking for it just now and canā€™t find it, so either I already blocked it or maybe lemmy.one already defederated from it? ĀÆā \ā _ā (ā ćƒ„ā )ā _ā /ā ĀÆ

                But yeahā€¦ bad administration needs defederation. Bad users need blocking/reporting.

                lemmy.world got a bunch of heat from defederating from hexbear pre-emptively, but it seems like that was the right call. Then they got ddossed after defederating from pirate communities. Not saying thatā€™s CAUSATIVE, just ā€œinterestingā€. ;)

                • TexMexBazooka@lemm.eeOP
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  3
                  arrow-down
                  3
                  Ā·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  Yeah, I donā€™t want to defed from hexbear or pirate communities though theyā€™re fun

            • cubedsteaks@lemmy.today
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              Ā·
              1 year ago

              But I think itā€™s reasonable to tell people to use the search to find communities that interest them, curate your home feed, and be aware that diving into the ā€œAll Federated Contentā€ feed will show you stuff thatā€™s a) not particularly useful or b) potentially offensive to your sensibilities.

              I was just using lemmy explorer to look for communities and didnā€™t realize some were just bots cross posting until I looked again later in my feed. I was disappointed.

  • Crul@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    11
    Ā·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    My 2 cents: Ideally, there could be other options like:

    • Better default sorting algorithm that penalizes those bot posts.
    • Filters for global feeds (mainly ā€œnewā€ in this case): you could still see their posts in their communities, but not on the global feeds.
    • (?) Default list of blocked users when you sign up on a given instance: you could unblock them if you want, but new users will not see their spam.

    Iā€™m of the opinion that defederating should be the last option but, given the current features, I donā€™t see any better way :(.

  • LostDeer@infosec.pub
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    11
    Ā·
    1 year ago

    Iā€™m at the point where I think all bot accounts need to just be banned from Lemmy. If weā€™re trying to build engagement, a constant stream of reposts or a straight up rss feed is not helping.

  • grimace1153@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    Ā·
    1 year ago

    Personally just my experience. The respost bot lowers my experience, and Iā€™ve used lemmy less because of it

  • amio@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    11
    arrow-down
    4
    Ā·
    1 year ago

    Again - why are people treating defederation as this huge, dramatic freaking thing? (I actually think I know exactly why, but still curious to hear the rationale. Dazzle me, please.)

    ā€œThis newsletter is shite, Iā€™ll stop subscribingā€. That is the level of non-drama involved. Some instances post things that are categorically uninteresting, or have users that are significantly unable to behave. Defederating them is not a punishment or ethical consideration in itself - itā€™s just ā€œI donā€™t want this automatically replicated onto my instance as a matter of routineā€. Even if it werenā€™t, the ethical onus would be precisely equally on the other part to behave acceptably once federated with other instances. That is what federation means.

    • sj_zero@lotide.fbxl.net
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      2
      Ā·
      1 year ago

      Defederation is a big deal because itā€™s a solution that acts like a bomb, indiscriminate and destructive.

      ā€œI donā€™t like thisā€ great. Lots of people donā€™t like stuff, and they shouldnā€™t sub to stuff they donā€™t like, and unsub or block users and communities they donā€™t like.

      The problem is that someone is making a final decision for everyone on that instance, about everyone on the other instance.

      Person A on instance A doesnā€™t like something Person B on instance B said. So they call for defederate. Suddenly, nobody on Instance A can see anything anyone on Instance B says and vice versa. Person C on instance A wasnā€™t offended, Person D on Instance A liked Person Bā€™s content. Persons E and F on Instance B are perfectly fine people who never did anything wrong.

      But nope, Person A defederates, and now nobody on either instance can talk unless they want to either hop around instances trying to find instances that are neutral to both(and there is such a thing as ā€œguilt by associationā€ on the fediverse so Instances might defederate just for not defederating with Instance B), or theyā€™ll need to have a bunch of accounts to get onto a bunch of different parts of the fediverse.

      Defederation in anything but the most extreme of circumstances is actively damaging to the fediverse. Prior to the reddit migration, most lemmy instances were highly trigger happy with defederation, and fairly ban happy too. Thus, the system just stagnated. People still actively avoid the threadiverse because nobody wants to be walking on eggshells wondering what incorrect political opinion is going to get everyone on their instance dumped.

      Itā€™s particularly bad with lemmy, because communities are server-centered instead of being decentralized. If youā€™re subscribed to a bunch of communities on an instance and that instance defederates from you, then youā€™re not only disconnected from the people on that instance, youā€™re disconnected from all the other people on all the other instances connected to that community.

      So rather than ā€œIā€™m unsubscribing from this newsletter I donā€™t likeā€, itā€™s ā€œI donā€™t like some of the articles in this newsletter, so Iā€™m going to force everyone on my block to unsubscribe whether they want to or notā€

    • hakase@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      arrow-down
      2
      Ā·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      why are people treating defederation as this huge, dramatic freaking thing? ā€œThis newsletter is shite, Iā€™ll stop subscribingā€.

      The problem is that itā€™s not one single person deciding to unsubscribe to a newsletter - itā€™s one single person deciding to unsubscribe hundreds to thousands of other people unilaterally.

      I donā€™t want other people deciding what I am or am not allowed to see, which is why Iā€™m on lemm.ee in the first place. There are plenty of other instances out there that are more than happy to make all of your decisions for you if thatā€™s what you want, but this is one of the very few larger instances not like that, and Iā€™d prefer to keep it that way.

  • graphito@beehaw.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    arrow-down
    2
    Ā·
    1 year ago

    User of those bots here:

    I think this whole problem stems from the lack of tools to configure bot experience. On mastodon, for example, bots can post ā€œunlistedā€ posts ā€“ which donā€™t show up in the main feed. Only subscribed people receive their posts. On Lemmy thereā€™s no such privacy toggle and admins are forced to shoot a fly with cruise missiles ā€“ by defederating instances

    Iā€™d understand if you folks decide to defederate from bot instances however Iā€™d urge you to escalate this discussion upstream to LemmyNet github for following features

    • post privacy i.e. intended reach
    • moderation tools to handle bots activity en masse

    This would be far more lasting impact on quality of global fediverse feed and efficient use of adminsā€™ time IMO

    • TexMexBazooka@lemm.eeOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      arrow-down
      1
      Ā·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Thus far youā€™re the only person in the thread Iā€™ve seen that uses the bots. How do you implement them and how do they improve your Lemmy experience?

      • graphito@beehaw.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        Ā·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Firstly, I totally understand people who find reposts annoying and I have blocked few of those because theyā€™re simply irrelevant to me

        lemmit online / hackernews reposts

        • those help drive inspiration for post making: I can snatch best ideas and post my own version on lemmy
          Itā€™s especially helpful when youā€™re maintaining inactive community where youā€™re the only poster ā€“ since inactive subs are seen as dead ones.
        • not my use case, but I see those instances as ability to combat FOMO for the users who just switched over to lemmy and getting used to its quirks. No need to snoop to reddit if its content is in your feed either way
          • mastodon got almost a dozen of such repost instances from twitter and itā€™s enormous bonus in transition from birdsite
        • if you see lemmit online posts then someone on your instance wants this content/subscribed to it ā€“ it doesnā€™t appear out of nowhere
        controversial opinion

        tbh I wish each lemmy sub would have its own bot to post content stolen from other places of internet. Almost all popular websites have ones and they do bring large audiences. Be it just memes, science news or animal photos: people stick with a website because they can regularly get their dopamine hit. ā€œNormal peopleā€ i.e. lurkers usually donā€™t care about post originality. People simply want enough good quality content

        QoL bots

        • tldr bots are generally helpful for long reads\vids and I wish they would be available as option on post creation page
        • bots for linking to invidious instances / archive.ph nonpaywalled articles: just saves time

        P.S. as a bonus hereā€™s a page about bots that wikipedia uses to streamline and automate work Wikipedia bots - Wikipedia

  • simple@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    8
    arrow-down
    2
    Ā·
    1 year ago

    For what itā€™s worth you can just block the two bots that are spamming reposts and youā€™ll never see these posts again.

    attempting to block them from a mobile app will usually crash the app.

    I havenā€™t had this experience, it blocked just fine.

  • Venia Silente@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    Ā·
    1 year ago

    Probably not saying anything new here, but my impression is that thereā€™s two different problems, or rather levels of problem, to deal with:

    For one point, Lemmy still does not have the level of activity that Reddit has, nor the types of content; this is particularly relevant for more niche subjects. I already made two magazines (ā€œcommunities but on kbinā€) for example and Iā€™m still the only poster. It sucks, and it disincentivizes posting more. Discoverability and migrability are two aspects that a repost bot can help with, because if you have an interesting subject to discuss thatā€™s already come up on Reddit (because, simply statistics, itā€™s so much more likely that itā€™d come up on Reddit), you can still have the content here and discuss it here. It can, eventually and hopefully, help bootstrap the local community to the level that a repost bot wouldnā€™t be needed.

    Thereā€™s also the issue that for the above to have value, a repost bot has to actually repost not just the opening post but also enough comments to open up a subject of discussion. So less ā€œrepostā€, more ā€œmirrorā€. A bot that only posts a link to a Reddit thread, or a copy of an opening post that usually only has a link to an external site anyway, such as news posts or art posts, is of not much help for anything.

    Ironically, this means (to me at least) a repost bot needs to be more active to be useful.

    Now, can people just crosspost or repost manually? Sure, but a bot helps with that. Not everyone is that invested on having to start conversations, not everyone has to be a ā€œcontent generation soldierā€: when I go to a library, 90% of the time is to read a book, not to make annotations on their books (before I get kicked out) let alone to write my own book.

    What does that mean for the lemmy perspective of things, from my end? Well, I donā€™t think defederating from an instance that also happens to repost Reddit (or whoever else, say, Wikimedia) content as part of their normal operations is a good idea, because by definition you are closing down to much more than that. Someone somewhere else can have come up the idea to discuss subject A; and we should not punish our own users for not having had the idea of doing so ourselves. Defederating from an instance that is dedicated to reposts, and that only does that, however, would have more sense, the more if they also engage in other spam behaviour.

    I think personally a better solution, if Lemmy can implement it or already does, is to de-prioritize link posts in the All and Local views, and have the option in searches to sort or categorize posts by the level of interaction from local users (eg.: ratio of local users discussing a post that has been made to the local instance) besides the ā€œbest ofā€ options (which I assume are valued merely by upvotes?) in search.

  • willya@lemmyf.uk
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    Ā·
    1 year ago

    Itā€™s not that serious as those instances are all literally generated from one account thatā€™s easily blockable.

  • Captain Aggravated@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    Ā·
    1 year ago

    Assuming ā€œopinions wantedā€ includes those from other instances, hereā€™s a very sh.itjust.works take regarding those Reddit repost botsā€¦

    • It might have a legitimate use as a way to read Reddit without visiting Reddit, as others have posted, on the other hand I struggle to see the value of posting questions but not answers from the likes of r/buildapc. It feels like itā€™s trying to funnel people to Reddit to see the full discussion, which I would classify as commercial advertisement.
    • This traffic is staying on its home instance, theyā€™re not posting to our communities where theyā€™re subject to our instance rules.
    • Itā€™s not exactly one user in one community but itā€™s not everyone including the admins either; thereā€™s other legitimate traffic happening there, so there may be other means available.

    On my home instance, this would require a proposal, discussion, and vote in the Agora; it doesnā€™t qualify for unilateral admin action. I suspect the vote would land Nay; Iā€™ve seen and participated in a couple ā€œHey whatā€™s up with those reposts from Reddit?ā€ threads, but nothing came of it. So I think itā€™s below our threshold for action. Do with that what you will.