I’m criticising your use of the tool in posting as well as commenting because you’re either intentionally or too stupid to realise it’s leading you around in circles e.g.

I'm also not claiming automation is the only way Lemmy can grow. I'm saying it's one tool for solving the empty-community problem. If you have a better scalable way to get thousands of mostly dead communities active, great. Build it.

Does not make fucking sense as a response to my point. Only an idiot prompt fondling their argument would think this is somehow a passable or logical reply. You’re arguing for automation, not that it’s the only way, nor did I claim you said it’s the only way. It’s practically a non-sequitur. Christ I have to restate your argument for you that’s how bad it is. It’s why your post/reply get downvoted consistently, because you value any output over all else, even if it’s trash you claim to be curated. It’s noise.

Build it? Build fucking what. Actually read what people type and understand it instead of feeding it to an LLM in a vain hope to convince people of your POV. I and most people here don’t want inorganic growth or “”tools””. If some community are empty, low traffic then people can populate them when and if there is enough desire. Do you understand that?

Also you don’t write shit, you don’t create content and you don’t curate anything. You vibe code AI to do these things for you with a minimal amount of input. Either way, I’m arguing with an LLM essentially. Cya never hopefully.

Weird organic posting built communities already how that happen?

So we must cater to this mythical lurkers?
If the content is same here as reddit what is stopping lurker just go to reddit.

You got have people making stuff here that will attract people. It's fools game to copy another platform.

I agree. That said, I'd imagine it would be easier to start new communities - and probably a new instance to host said communities - than to change things by complaining here. That's the part of what makes the Fediverse great, after all.

Because when Reddit was building its communities, it wasn't trying to pull users away from a mature Reddit that already had 20 years of content, communities, and network effects.

That's the part you're ignoring. they started when the fuck when - 2005?

Lemmy isn't starting in a vacuum. A new user can compare an empty Lemmy community against a Reddit community with millions of members and fresh posts every hour.

And lurkers aren't "mythical." They're the overwhelming majority of users on basically every large social platform. You don't build a network by pretending only the people posting original content matter.

The goal of reposting isn't to make Lemmy permanently dependent on Reddit. It's bootstrapping. Give people something to read and discuss now, build an audience, and that audience eventually produces more native posts.

You need people before you can expect those people to start creating stuff here.

Yeah bootstrapping whats the point reddit already has it and I can talk to people there.

There are people here creating stuff already how about cross posting those post with the handy cross post function of lemmy.

That way it shows little know communities into the bigger communities.

You're right about one thing: my previous reply didn't address your point cleanly.

But your actual position seems to be: if a community is empty, leave it empty until enough people spontaneously decide to populate it manually. I give that the same probability of happening like spontaneous combustion in south park https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjrwS47Z4Lc

I understand that. I just fundamentally disagree with it.

I think tools can help bootstrap communities. You think that makes growth "inorganic" and would rather wait. Fine. That's an actual disagreement.

The rest is just you repeatedly calling me stupid, lazy, fake, a "vibe coder," etc. That's not an argument against automation. It's just hostility toward someone using tools you don't like.

reddit already has it and I can talk to people there

Then by that logic, what's the point of Lemmy at all? Reddit already has communities, posts, and comments.

The entire point is having that experience without having to use Reddit. The content isn't what drove many of us away. The platform did.

And yes, cross-posting native Lemmy content is good. Do that too. These aren't mutually exclusive strategies.

Cross-post good Lemmy content. Bring in good outside content. Encourage original content. Let people comment on all of it.

The goal is to bootstrap enough activity that eventually Lemmy itself becomes the place generating more of that content.

Engagement is a metric that trying to track user enjoyment, I want more engaging posts or even posts at this point on Lemmy.

I think the main problem here, after all, is your ego. Despite your accounts and "your" "content" being deleted by different administrators of different Lemmy communities, and despite the community itself, in this very thread, telling you're wrong, you still act as if we all are a vocal minority of machiavellian Reddit secret agents working to destroy Lemmy.

It's not an honest debate if you're not ready to actually listen to criticism and do some self reflection. If all you do is to repeat these same severely flawed arguments over and over, then talking to you is like beating our head against a brick wall... it will do no good.

But I have listened to criticism. I've said volume is fair criticism, filtering can make mistakes, thresholds can be adjusted, and when someone pointed out the OC-label issue, I immediately agreed and said I'd fix it.

Listening doesn't mean I have to agree with you afterward.

And this thread isn't a representative survey of Lemmy users. It's a self-selected group of people with strong opinions, while hundreds of thousands of people created Lemmy accounts and aren't active anymore. We don't get to hear why most of them left.

You can call that ego. I call it disagreeing with you.

And I've never said everyone criticizing me is a Reddit agent. Reddit absolutely has employees, contractors, PR people, marketers, automated systems, and other people acting in its interests. Whether any particular account here is connected to Reddit is another question entirely.

Maybe it's Reddit. Maybe Twitter/X. Maybe Facebook. Or, gasp, Russian and Chinese influence operations. The internet isn't exactly famous for being free of coordinated manipulation.

My point is that Lemmy's structure makes this kind of manipulation incredibly easy. Public moderation histories, reports, fragmented moderation, and a tiny creator base give anyone trying to sow division plenty of leverage.

That doesn't mean everyone disagreeing with me is an agent. It means pretending coordinated influence operations don't exist on social media would be incredibly naive.

It's correct only when you think quantity is everything and quality doesn't matter. Do you think someone posting into a community because they think that community might like it is the same as copy pasting every post from one community into another community?

I think most people on lemmy/Piefed prefer quality over quantity.

No, the entire comment on it's own is correct. Most content on social media is from people sharing, linking, commenting on, or remixing content found somewhere else.

The comment doesn't say anything about quality vs quantity. They're only talking about the state of social media and how it is built up.

My personal opinion on sanitation's contributions is that a lot of it is spam. I'd prefer to have people manually reposting instead of this bot-like action of reposting a lot of stuff automatically, it can make communities feel empty. But all of that is aside from the comment I replied to which is ultimately correct about social media.

Flooding "Lemmy" with reposts from Reddit will make "Lemmy" look like a "tardy clone of Reddit with less discussion". Why stick with a repost platform if you can get the same content but more and earlier with Reddit? New Reddit frontend still remains browsable without login (maybe with some irritation, but anyway).

One has to act differently. To get to the sources first (or, at least before Reddit, at least sometimes). RSS feeds of publications (already worked on in PieFed), microblogging support: compatibility with Mastodon (available on MBin and now on PieFed), already existing bot comms reposting from Hacker News and Lobste.rs (both these sites have no subs and crossposting to a comm may have sense...), reposting e.g. art from Mastodon, Bluesky, cara.app...

It's not a matter of quality, but of effort.

Nobody needs you to prompt an AI and post the results. If we wanted AI generated bullshit, we could generate it ourselves without your dumb ass.

You have no skill. You have no talent. You have nothing of value to offer what-so-ever of yourself. But now you have a device that lets you cosplay as someone who has those things, and you act like you are contributing when you're really not.

Fuck off, cogsucker.

Then use your own words and not words generated by a machine.

Hey hey hey hey hey there. This person's post is LLM, and self-admitted LLM at that, but don't you insult my headers and bullet points.

I've been both dedicated, and angry enough to properly format them, and I'll do it again!

Yeah. I wonder if there could be a secondary, parallel rating system, just for people subscribed to a community, for that reason. Jokes and memes always Top their communities, because of the various main feeds.

Maybe it isn't exactly a problem that needs fixing, but I'm thinking about it, whether there might be an elegant solution.

Like a "Kudos" system, without negative ratings, that someone can send only if they're subscribed to the community.

Well, despite how slimy and disgusting everything you just said is, your position, and best future actions for you to achieve your goals, are pretty clear cut.

Start your own instance, and try to make it grow. You apparently have the experience, so go ahead.

Don't you dare complain about people's ability to defederate with you again, because it will start to sound like what you want, is to force people to consume what you decide to upload, and that's authoritarian.

Do your best, since you know so well, and attract the people who agree with you.

I can almost guarantee that if someone posted original neonazi art most lemmy instances would ban them

None of the curation comes from you. The entire curation is done by Reddit users and bots

slimeball reporting for duty
question - do they defederate just one community or entire instance?
because it sounds to me its entire instance and thats another dumb thing about lemmy.

I don't have that amount of time to spend - its the same relitigation on and on and on.

I actually agree with most of that. Those are good ideas. Do all of them.

Pull from RSS, Mastodon, Bluesky, Hacker News, Lobsters, original sources, and Reddit. These aren't mutually exclusive.

Where I disagree is treating Reddit as uniquely contaminated. If Reddit happens to surface a great article, meme, video, or discussion before we find it elsewhere, I don't see why Lemmy should refuse it on principle.

And the goal isn't to permanently make Lemmy a delayed Reddit feed. It's to bootstrap communities while building exactly the ecosystem you're describing.

Eventually I'd love for the flow to reverse: interesting stuff originates on Lemmy and gets reposted to Reddit.

nono - thats actually curation on my side, on top of curation on reddit.
my reposting implements AI curation and other stuff

I think this is exactly the disconnect: not everyone shares your vision of what the internet should become.

What's really funny to me, is you go on this say that your vision is 'correct'. Clearly people disagree with yours. Please stop using chat gpt to sound more inflated than you already are.

Not everyone wants it to be more populated for population sake. Why should I care how many MAU we have.

You say you want the good parts, but chat got isnt telling you how to keep them. By keeping it small. If you want large and popular, go back to reddit. Not every place has to be the most popular.

The lemmit.online instance already exists that hosts a single user, bot@lemmit.online, that mirrors reddit posts for a subset of sub-reddits.

I was looking into why this instance was blocked on some lemmy instances and was trying to get a discussion going
about unblocking it for lemmy.ca. It turns out of the top 10 lemmy instances only 4 did not block either the instance or
the bot@lemmit.online user:

https://lemmy.ca/post/69414850/24851333

It's moot now since reddit locked down their old.reddit.com access which lemmit.online relied on:

https://lemmit.online/post/8716662

Before this blockage I did create a new user on lemmy.dbzer0.com and subscribed to some bot communities mirrored from reddit via lemmit.online. It turned out to not be a great user experience but did lessen my need to use the reddit app for discovery as I would just visit reddit for posts of interest.

Consent should matter though?

Also, a poster of OC is a "content creator", but just offering links isn't really "creating" anything really, just spreading it around?

Kudos for trying to help. If you listen first before speaking then you may find your messages received better.

If you start your own instance, then no mods or admins can stop you from posting whatever you want. Even CSAM.

Though consent really should matter, and others could defederate from your instance if they wanted.

Mods are never going to change. Think what you could do differently to enjoy your time here better, and encourage people to like your posts more. e.g. label your account as a bot, and/or make a separate alt account for your human interactions, to allow people to recognize (and even block) based on the bot label if they want to? A bot that is properly labeled is no issue at all, it's the lack of transparency that gets people upset when it seems one way and then they get disappointed at finding that it is something else. If you are empathetic to others' sensitivities then obviously you would be better received? It's more work for you, but far less than the cumulative efforts of all people who end up having to catch you individually.

You have a right to speak, but nobody owes you a platform, nor should others be forced to listen. The consent of the governed should matter! And it will, one way or another.

Hey, there's at least two of us that use lemmy formatting for

emphasis

without relying on a LLM. Sometimes I even resort to emojis❗

Aren't you just searching for 4chan?

Seriously, I would stop doing that if I were you. Not for the esthetic or because there is inherently anything wrong with doing that. You're going to become bycatch when people look to catch bots and sloppers in a wide net.

I'll clarify a bit because I think I didn't do a good job before. The meat of places like Reddit or Lemmy isn't the posts. If posts were all we care about everyone would be using RSS instead. The meat is in the comment section, the discussion the post generates. That's where most of the new content lives, unless you want to argue that you have no original thoughts and the comment you made is some remixed content from somewhere else. So OP is correct that posts are usually people remixing content found elsewhere, but posts themselves are not how sites like this live. The post is just the bone for the meat to stick to, something to focus discussion. He is wrong in the sense that he's putting the focus on posts and essentially saying "If posts exists, discussions will happen". But the focus should on the discussions and posts serve the purpose of focusing discussion.

And that's where the quality vs quantity point comes in because there are two ways to create these sources of discussion. The first the quantity approach, which is what sanitation is doing it, by slinging shit at the wall and seeing what sticks. Eventually 1 in a 100 posts becomes a point of discussion. The other is the quality approach. Instead of automating away posting shit you do it manually. You find something you want to share and then you take the time to make a post. The manual labor does something that automation can't, it puts a human element into the post. It puts intentionality into it because you are choosing to post it in the place you think best suits for that post and you're personally invested in that post which means you're open to engage with the discussions that might happen because of this post. Automation gets rid of both of those things and actually makes it worse because it fills feeds with posts that have no human element to it. It drowns out actually interesting posts. That's actually part of my criticism of Reddit comment section because at some point Reddit comment section became flooded with low effort one-liner comments designed to get as many upvotes as possible and those low effort comments drowned out interesting threads so your ability to have meaningful conversations actually dwindled even though the overall amount of "conversations" increased. The same thing happens with posts which is why we both agree that sanitation is doing is spam. It drowns out interesting posts by filling the feed with uninteresting posts and nobody wants to shift through shit to find something interesting.

If you let the rich claim space (ways of communicating) without fighting for it, your communication will end up controlled.

Those who have the energy to throw hands (culturally), should.

There's nothing wrong with those who don't have that energy to fight, but no need to worry about others' approach, everyone does what they know they can.

If someone rejects what you're saying in bad faith just because of the aesthetics of how you're saying it, they're not worth changing your habits and ways of expression, for.

Yep, entire instance. Don't worry about that though, the difference between Lemmy and the real world, is that anyone, can make an account anywhere, so the people that actually want to see your instance, are not going to stay in an instance that defederates you.

Each single instance, has its own defederation list, basically a block list. Defederation, is only for the single instance that decides to block yours, meanwhile literally everyone else except that instance interacts with you normally.

On top of that, Defederation is only one way, which means you can still see their content! Your interactions are just hidden from their users. Those users, are users that (under normal circumstances) know about the defederation, and choose to remain in that instance. On top of that, they also choose not to make a second account in yours, for example.

(Personally, when I wanted to see an instance that mine had defederated from, I just made a second account in that instance. Lemmy clients make having multiple accounts, and switching between them, really, really easy).

People have the freedom, and the ability, to choose who they want to interact with, here. Enjoy it, find your people.

I honestly really wish you luck, and hope you create a part of Lemmy, that is missing right now.

I like meme-dumps, I use discord for that explicit purpose (meme-dump servers). I just don't want the good community driven culture of Lemmy, to be sacrificed for that.

Help Lemmy have both.

(For the record, I really respect the honesty that you're facing this whole issue with. I really do wish you the best, and hope you succeed, if you try.)

Thank you, I genuinely appreciate this response and the encouragement. Running my own instance is definitely something I'm considering, im really good on ops and dev side. OVH/Hetzner or other colo Hosting Money isn't really the constraint for me, time is. Between development, moderation, infrastructure, and everything else, I need to be realistic about taking on another thing to maintain.

If some time opens up, though, I may give it a shot. I actually really like the idea of making lemmy work for those people that tried it and left back on to reddit and making it work for both experiences. And if people don't want that, hey whatever at least content is not wiped. srslyt thanks for the thoughtful response and for actually wishing me luck despite disagreeing on parts of this.

Bye totally real account that is definitely not OPs alt.

Hey I'm trying to change that.

Believe it or not it's not. There is a proof many people create accounts, but lack of content drives them off.openly available lemmy stats numbers confirm this

That's the beauty of federation, that Lemmy is built on, that so many of the grassroots early adopters (all of us) appreciate so much: the natural diversity that makes humans tick.

Federation allows an environment to have all the different things, and be healthier for it, instead of treating the world as a limited, scarce place, where for something to exist, it has to take the place of what already is.

Those ideals are what almost all of us seek.

My disagreements with you, stemmed from that, your willingness to judge what is here, as lesser, and replaceable.

To the degree that you don't do that, I legitimately love the earnest way you think of something that is good, and decide to make it.

Good luck, and I hope you do find the time 🫡

Dumping thousands of posts from billionaire-owned social media onto Piefed/Lemmy isn't doing anything helpful.

If I wanted to see feeds full of that I'd be on Twitter, Reddit and the other garbage sources you pull your reposts from.

you get this content to attract users to lemmy, but then you can feed them all natural non-corporate controlled lemmy weird communist propaganda too. everybody wins (except corporations who loses a lot)

It’s garbage low effort ai powered reposts.

No one wins.

Wow. I really hate reposts and cross-posts, and I block the accounts that make them.
I sort of thought I was alone in that, figured other people must enjoy that crap.
I am amazed to see my exact viewpoint expressed here a couple hundred times over.

As to the point the post makes, I'm new to moderation, and I read the post because that seemed like a subject I should review.
The post looks like useless hand wringing to me.

I don't see anything worth concern with lemmy moderation.
I've pissed off a couple mods in my time on lemmy and gotten banned. Every one of them was a community I have disagreements with, and its fine that we don't talk.
I don't feel I have ever been treated unfairly. In fact, the only mod action I ever disagreed with on lemmy was reversed after I discussed it with him on YPTB.

If reddit, Facebook and x bleed cash and users - hell yes people win.

You are not doing that you’re just being annoying here.

I love this fantasy that Lemmy is powered by 35,000 investigative journalists, war correspondents, documentary filmmakers, and artisanal meme craftsmen creating fresh OC around the clock. 😂

My brother in federation, almost everything here (99.99%) came from somewhere else.

It's a link aggregator. We find shit on the internet, post it here, and argue underneath it.

You can hate reposts. Totally fair. But let's not pretend we're protecting the Library of Alexandria from Reddit screenshots.

Lemmy just isn't what you think it is. The monthly user count doesn't matter. If people wanted reddit content they would just go to Reddit. Lemmy is a replacement for the small scale human authored forums of the 2000s. Reddit killed them with embrace, extend, extinguish. Lemmy isn't a replacement for Reddit, it is a replacement for the thing Reddit extinguished.

I don't care about reddit posts and traditional social media. If I did I would just use that. I use reddit to moderate and participate in my small community with a few posts a week and I think it is going well.

If sanitation would tick this box in their settings then all their problems would go away:

But they won't, because that would let people filter them out.

Thanks for sharing!

I think there are three systemic issues that we can see here.

1. Centralization

As repeated again and again in many contexts, high level of centralization leads to instance admins having too much power over the whole space.

As things stand, if you are banned from lemmy.world, no matter what instance you are on, you might as well start over, as you'll never reach the majority of Lemmy audience. Admins protect the instance, as they should, but end up taking Lemmy with them.

This is something we can influence. If you make a new account, don't open it on lemmy.world. You'll still have full access to it, but you'll also help decentralize the space. You can also find instances with moderating policies better fitting your views - from essentially zero moderation (like lemmy.today the OP and me both come from, but there are other such instances too) to strict moderation based on various principles.

1. Permanent bans

Lemmy is very black-and-white when it comes to bans. Sometimes, a temporary ban or a warning could suffice, without permanently cutting someone out of the community or instance.

Unfortunately, this is the kind of problem that must be solved on the development side, and that's something I would suggest for !nutomic@lemmy.ml

1. Lack of proper ways to mark bots whoops, they do exist. But make it more visible!

There must be a good standardized way to mark and filter bot content, so that those who don't want to see it do not see it (again, a suggestion to !nutomic@lemmy.ml and other Lemmy contributors)

Until then, it could be reasonable to move bot content to separate instances and make respective communities there so that users could easily choose whether they want to see bot content or not.

That said, bot owners must take full responsibility for their bots and the way they may breach the community rules when posting. Moderating bot posts is a major added burden, and while we have a small amount of posters, we have even less moderators and admins. Let's respect each other, shall we?

I'm not a bot. Again with this humanity relitigation, on and on and on.