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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[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 week ago (1 children)

One question for @jet@hackertalks.com

I've been reposting content from !buyfromeu@feddit.org and !BuyFromEU@europe.pub to !buyeuropean@feddit.uk when that movement was still very active.

There was even a !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com post about it: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/39614799

My rationale was that

due to the current way Lemmy handles crossposts (compared to Piefed), comments of crossposts are not consolidated, so people will only see the comments from one posts, which means that discussions should happen on one single community to be seen by everyone
there were no rules or moderation policies differences between the three communities

Wanting to consolidate similar communities is a regular topic here, with the last attempt from 2 days ago: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/47122168

But sometimes some posters just want to stick to their home instance rather than consolidate.

I've been in a similar situation for !android@lemdro.id and !android@lemmy.world, as well as !movies@piefed.social and !movies@lemmy.world . There was a regular poster who would only post to the LW versions, even though I reached out several times to them, offering them mod positions on the other communities.

They now stopped posting, so the two non-LW communities are now more active than the LW versions, but that's a bit unfortunate as it would have been better to have them continue posting on .

In those cases, should content crossposting stop?

We usually tell people "if you don't like a community, make your own and convince people it is better". Having more content usually makes a community better. And also, in a lot of cases, people just repost content from Reddit anyway.

Open for comments and discussions.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

I gave you feedback about top posting movie content before.

I think it robs the original poster of interaction. If you reached out offering change and they didn't engage you have your answer

As you said there is infinite content on the internet to import into Lemmy, no reason to steal the interactions from a small lemmy.world poster

If you must do it then it's good you used the cross post feature so there is some connection back to the original poster.

So in this scenario the lw movie poster didn't get enough engagement on their content and left... That's a net negative for Lemmy

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

As you said there is infinite content on the internet to import into Lemmy, no reason to steal the interactions from a small lemmy.world poster

From a very practical perspective, it's faster. The crosspost mechanic, that I indeed use, is just one click compared to having to rehost an image to an external hoster, copy paste that link to Lemmy, then give credits to the OC post (most of what I do on !lego@piefed.social )

So in this scenario the lw movie poster didn’t get enough engagement on their content and left… That’s a net negative for Lemmy

There aren't that many posters around. !movies@lemm.ee had a diverse mod team, several posters, that allowed to "spread the load". Potential new posters would see that and join the community with several posters instead of one single person. Having one community emerge as "the one" fosters more conversation happening there, compared to posts without engagements (which is a complain you raised in this thread)

Link aggregators aren't microblogging. It's expected that different people contribute to a community, if posters want complete control over their content then microblogging could be a better option.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Fair enough, as long as your happy to keep priming the content pump. There will be some posters who washout from such tactics.

Let's take the opposite extreme. Suppose I really dislike a community and I don't want it to grow. I could make a bunch of similar communities all over the fediverse. Every time someone posts to the target community I could copy it to a new community every 15m making it look like spam, and diluting any community interaction. Basically I could dry out the human interaction by dosing the content.

If we set the norm that top posting other people's content systematically isn't very Lemmy, then we would be in a good place to defend against such dilution.

Sure, some front ends like piefed may help, but not everyone is going to be using those front ends

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

There will be some posters who washout from such tactics.

There are also posters who find it more sustainable when there is another poster around

Consolidation would benefit the community and likely help it grow further.

From the space consolidation thread a couple months ago: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/42022359/18010213

Suppose I really dislike a community and I don’t want it to grow. I could make a bunch of similar communities all over the fediverse. Every time someone posts to the target community I could copy it to a new community every 15m making it look like spam, and diluting any community interaction. Basically I could dry out the human interaction by dosing the content.

You could. As it would be obvious that in this context you don't want to grow your community but just spam about the other one, there would probably get called out in a Meta thread in the community you dislike. People there would block your communities.

If we set the norm that top posting other people’s content systematically isn’t very Lemmy, then we would be in a good place to defend against such dilution.

That goes against the fundamental notion that everyone can start a community. Who decides what communities should stay, and which one should not? At the moment, people vote with their participation, everybody makes their own choices. What alternative do you suggest?

Sure, some front ends like piefed may help, but not everyone is going to be using those front ends

Piefed isn't only a frontend, it is a different platform.

The Lemmy devs recently stated that this is a client problem, and that they don't plan to change that

In lemmy-ui we’ve chosen to link the posts at the top rather than combine comment threads.

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/46984024/19528869

Long term, that will probably cost them, on top of the instance-wide bans regularly discussed.

Mbin has at similar approach where it is possible to see the number of comments on other communities:

https://fedia.io/m/linux@programming.dev/t/2321464/New-Linux-Flaws-Enable-Full-Root-Access-via-PAM-and#comments

The more I discuss this topic, the more I think this is a shortcoming of Lemmy rather than an issue with the people crossposting content.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 7 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That goes against the fundamental notion that everyone can start a community. Who decides what communities should stay, and which one should not? At the moment, people vote with their participation, everybody makes their own choices. What alternative do you suggest?

Isn't this exactly what we are talking about? Trying to top post another community is stealing interaction, and a method of influencing which communities should not stay.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

My stance is

Everyone can start a community
Over time communities with posters who organize between themselves to keep the community alive are more likely to survive.
Communities can crosspost content from other communities
The main differentiator between communities will be how active their posters are, people are going to choose communities based on activities.
Thanks to community consolidation, people can subscribe to only the most active community on a topic (of course, in case of power trip, people should organize to create a new community, see previous pionts)

What I understand your stance is (feel free to correct if I'm wrong)

Everyone can start a community
Content shouldn't be crossposted between communities
First community to post a content have "authorship" of that content
Communities that repost content from other communities should be closed. Admins should close communities that do so.
People will have to subscribe to all the similar communities on one topic to follow all posts related to that topic

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Content shouldn’t be crossposted between communities

At least not systematically, and not within a day of the original posting (so if something becomes topical)

First community to post a content have “authorship” of that content

It's not a dibs system, so organic collisions where two people really want to talk about something is fine. just systematic reposting of EVERYTHING from people without their consent isn't good for lemmy.

Communities that repost content from other communities should be closed. Admins should close communities that do so.

Not closed, the reposters should be be given opportunities to transition to their own content.

People will have to subscribe to all the similar communities on one topic to follow all posts related to that topic

That is a direct aspect of the lemmy model, until such a time as themed communities becomes protocol level. The only way to not have to do this is kill any similar community before it grows.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

At least not systematically, and not within a day of the original posting (so if something becomes topical)

So only for OC content, not for news / articles?

The only way to not have to do this is kill any similar community before it grows.

Consolidation is an option

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 1 points 1 week ago

So only for OC content, not for news / articles?

yeah, as a first pass, that seems to be the most contentious thing right now