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.

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] Elevator7009sAlt@ani.social 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

What do you mean by this?

I do sometimes see a link post on Lemmy (often on some general community like !games) and copy it to (usually more-specific, like gaming genres: think copying from !games to !rpgs) communities I am active in (or sometimes ones I am not but am aware of: if I see a strategy game post I'll put it in all the relevant strategy game communities I know of), and figure it is alright because I always see a little "cross-posted to:" and the community I got it from, so I figure that is good enough for credit. Probably obvious I got it somewhere else, and easily clickable to find out where. (Or sometimes the little communities are just the communities I myself already posted it to.) Is this a bad assumption and I should stop?

I do it because I want conversation in the specific communities, and for things that could go in more specific communities to not only get talked about in one giant umbrella when the smaller niches already exist on Lemmy. Especially because I think there is a valid reason to not be on !games. Maybe you are not interested in most posts there, just some subgenres, or like me, you are sick of the ragebait-but-also-probably-true-news-so-not-off-topic-and-allowed posts.

I am fine stopping though, less work for me, and as life gets busier I have less time for Lemmy anyways.

I admit I exclude .ml from my crossposting bonanza because of all the political drama I hear about but never bothered to look into, because I feel I'll end up drawn into a political slapfight. Just look at all the comments here about .ml, whether justified or not (not sure and not about to try to figure out). I do not sub to anything on .ml and mostly look at Subscribed though, so I know I am not taking any of their content and copying it elsewhere, unless it was first copied from .ml to something I do look at. I also don't really look at the instance someone is commenting from unless I suspect trolling or we interact a lot though, so I am not being nasty to .ml users for just being on .ml, either. I know a lot of people who do not have anything to do with the political drama are there too because it is recommended as the Lemmy dev's instance, and I do not expect everyone to litmus test every social media for political drama before joining it.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 4 points 2 days ago

I don't think you should stop, the use case you described is you WANT to have a conversation about the cross-posts you are doing. Your not motivated by trying to starve out another community. You are personally choosing what to cross post and not reposting EVERYTHING from a different community.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I feel you. This is quite an interesting thread to read and the different opinions in the comments.

I also think this is a problem for Lemmy. We could be better than other social media sites. Have genuine human conversations. Post high quality content that matters to us. But we regularly don't. We dump the news, re-post memes... And I mean there are people who like it. But I don't. I'm here for the comments and I'd rather talk to people than have a lot of noisy content dumped at me, burying human interaction with fabricated activity that's following some ulterior motives, like make the place seem more busy, or do some internal politics... Which may be warranted. But those aren't genuine in my opinion. It's not some other user who likes to talk to me, but someone fabricating something, and it regularly makes me feel used. Plus I'm pretty sure I see it chill engagement.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 2 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I wish people only posted things they wanted to talk about. That would mean the entire feed are possible conversations to have.

I try to only post things I'd be happy to talk about.

Maybe it would be interesting to see a poster score based on how many of their posts they don't engage with once someone makes a comment.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)

Maybe it would be interesting to see a poster score based on how many of their posts they don't engage with once someone makes a comment.

I thought about that as well. It's a bit tricky to pull it off. But ultimately I think the entire voting system on Lemmy and hence the way it sorts posts is a bit suboptimal. People upvote memes, the ragebait of the day, simple truths. Content that I find interesting or an interesting and long opinions regularly end up with 0-3 upvotes and float to the bottom. So I mainly discard what kind of scores this place has and sort by "new" anyway. It'd be really great if I had some score available to tell me if some content is what I like to read.

I wish people only posted things they wanted to talk about. That would mean the entire feed are possible conversations to have.

A hundred percent that.

I'm pretty sure we're the minority here. Most people seem to like it the other way around. (Need..more..posts in everyone's timeline.) I'm pretty sure it's also a big part of the equation of why Lemmy always stagnates and we're stuck at 45k users. We've been doing it the "re-post" way a long time now, and we can see the results of that. We shove around content because of some reasons, but we should come up with original and genuine content instead. I think what we need is foster a nice atmosphere. Genuine human conversation underneath posts with above average quality. That'd grow Lemmy and make it a better place. (And instead we dump more posts/noise, and we can see where we're headed with that.)

[–] Elevator7009sAlt@ani.social 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I am insanely guilty of the content dump, figuring it'll prove a community active, but aside from "awww!" comments on !bunnies@lemmy.world where there just is not much to build off of, I also reply to almost every comment I get because I also want to have conversations.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I think that's fine. At least from the "dump" perspective, because you're not just dumping something but tend to what you post. And you're part of the conversation so you add something of substance there.

[–] Blaze@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I think what we need is foster a nice atmosphere. Genuine human conversation underneath posts with above average quality. That’d grow Lemmy and make it a better place. (And instead we dump more posts/noise, and we can see where we’re headed with that.)

Beehaw wanted to have this kind of very curated approach, their communities aren't much more active that on non-curated instances.

If you want very in-depth conversation, maybe try to revive !actual_discussion@lemmy.ca ? It seems to fit your requirements.

You talk about original content, it is not contradictory to have both OC and reposts from elsewhere. A thing to keep in mind is that people posting OC will only do so if they get enough reactions on it. !lemmy_stitch@sh.itjust.works used to be quite busy when it first started, but the main mod who used to post a lot hasn't been active for a year, probably because there weren't enough people here to justify posting here on top of Reddit.

People upvote memes, the ragebait of the day, simple truths.

It depends. I post about things I care about. My latest post was about a new movie coming, there were 68 comments: https://piefed.zip/post/153138 , and it was a legit conversation, even though it was a repost from a new movie poster. Reposting existing content isn't contradictory with having genuine conversations.

I’m pretty sure we’re the minority here. Most people seem to like it the other way around. (Need…more…posts in everyone’s timeline.) I’m pretty sure it’s also a big part of the equation of why Lemmy always stagnates and we’re stuck at 45k users. We’ve been doing it the “re-post” way a long time now, and we can see the results of that. We shove around content because of some reasons, but we should come up with original and genuine content instead.

It's a multi factor issue.
To have genuine conversations on a certain topic, there need to be at least a minimum userbase interested in that topic.
With 45k MAU, we can talk about generic topics. The more userbase we get, the more niche topics we can have.

When I talk about Lemmy on Reddit to try to get those additional users we need, the first issues they have with the platform is the political stances of the devs, and the fact that a lot of communities are still hosted on the hosted instance (you've read cm0002 comment, so you're aware).

Lemmy has a bad reputation due to this, and while this will remain true, this will prevent us from getting more people. That's also why Piefed raises a lot of hopes.

Last potential example of growth: a niche community moving.

Db0 had a large influx of users (625) following a post on Reddit about their instance: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/37167077

!piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com is mostly reposts with news about piracy, not a lot of OC content, but it being out of Reddit is enough for people to use it.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

reply here

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 2 points 6 days ago

Preach!

What makes hackernews, metafilter, lobsters great is the community and not the posts.

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 28 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

I have to say I haven't come across this issue too often as I basically never browse /All. But I definitely have noticed this with cm0002's personal crusade against .ml pissing off more than one poster in communities I follow.

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 14 points 2 weeks ago (40 children)

yeah, that is exactly who is causing the pain. I was blissfully ignorant of it, until someone explained their grevience and I labeled them in voyager as a jacker, and now I see how duplicative and bad for lemmy they make everybody's experience.

load more comments (40 replies)

[–] propter_hog@hexbear.net 17 points 2 weeks ago

It's especially stupid since karma isn't a thing on Lemmy. Karma was fake on reddit, but people love a good mental feedback mechanism. Here, though, you're just being a dick if you steal content.

[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 15 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I could not agree more. @cm0002@lemmy.world could maybe use a bit of self-reflection in that regard.

[–] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social 14 points 2 weeks ago (33 children)

Yeah bro just decided to be a dick about it to random individuals.

load more comments (33 replies)

[–] goferking0@hexbear.net 14 points 2 weeks ago

Getting worse with them now doing it to ask lemmy posts

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 15 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (5 children)

If it absolutely must be copied then the cross post mechanism should be used.

We literally have reposting bots for hackernews, reddit, Twitter, etc. It's nearly infinite content out there.

Hurting Lemmy users makes it harder to grow the platform

[–] grue@lemmy.world 11 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Wait, so what you're complaining about is something other than crossposts? 'Cause to me, this thread sounded like you were just bitching about crossposts.

Edit: you should copy your explanation here into your initial post itself so that we all understand what you were actually talking about.

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments (4 replies)

[–] socsa@piefed.social 11 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

Another problem Piefed has solved by aggregating crossposts into a single thread.

load more comments (6 replies)

[–] BagOfHeavyStones@piefed.social 9 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Happy with how PieFed deals with it. Lemmy often feels like a ghost town with posts having zero comments. PieFed combining them takes most of that away, and I guess it reduces any incentive to 'pinch' other people's posts?

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] sabreW4K3@lazysoci.al 9 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

I haven't seen this, so can't speak on it. What's the difference between someone reposting the same article/crossposting and content jacking?

[–] jet@hackertalks.com 15 points 2 weeks ago (24 children)

Let's say you make a niche post about a programming feature

2-6 hours later someone copies your post exactly but doesn't cross post. Now people browsing by New see the copy first and if they do see the original it feels redundant/ spammy.

If people do talk about this niche thing it's likely they won't be talking in the same place.

You as the poster won't see the engagement with your content, you won't see comments, and you may be less incentivized to post again

load more comments (24 replies)

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments