I'm not sure if it's a growth issue, or if I'm just getting tired of it personally, but the spamming of identical URLs over multiple instances is getting out of hand. Even worse when I block one post for whatever reason, only to have to repeat the task upteen number of times because one or more users (usually one) "helpfully" post the link in every tangentially related community.

Instead of that, it'd be better to have the front page (all/local/subscribed) automatically group any post of an identical URL into a single "post". In essence, each new post of that URL would create a separate discussion thread to the given community, and each thread could be listed under the "main" post similar to how crossposts currently are instead of cluttering up the front page.

This is supposed to work and I've seen it work. But so many people complain about this that I think it must be bugged and doesn't always work. Maybe it doesn't work when the posts are on different pages.

Maybe the complainers are using clients that don’t support the feature.

Is that how it's supposed to work? I use the default browser client and I've never noticed it. I have seen duplicate posts (ie the same post from the same community) on different pages. Maybe that's why.

Just came across an example of exactly what I'm talking about in my suggestion. The first post was hidden via the front page, and the second post was seen afterwards.

Userpage showing both posts, with one hidden:

Second, unhidden post still visible on All feed:

How can one block a post..?

The drop-down menu under a post provides the option to "Hide Post" or "Unhide Post", depending on its current state.

Wow, thanks. Not sure how I missed that all this time!

@dessalines@lemmy.ml @nutomic@lemmy.ml I thought this feature already exists?

I cant find these duplicate posts, can you share the URLs that you were viewing? Is it possible that these identical images actually have different URLs?

Yes but apparently its not working for some reason. My first guess is that these posts have identical looking images, but they are actually loaded from different urls.

Posts:

• https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/1866850/optimates-out
• https://piefed.social/c/roughromanmemes/p/1866843/optimates-out

Url:

Here are the posts on lemmy.ca, they both have the same image url and are also shown as crossposts:

• https://lemmy.ca/post/61638678
• https://lemmy.ca/post/61638723

So these should be grouped together without any problem, not sure why it would fail.

I don't think I can check that now, but I can say that it wasn't working like that when I added the edit about it. When they were still up on the All feed, I had run across and hidden the first post, then a few pages later, I saw the second post on it's own. If I see it happen again, I will make note of it.

Yes I don't doubt that you were having this problem, another post was also complaining about it a few days ago. It's just that I cant think of any reason why this would happen if the image urls are identical.

I wish I could help out more. I will pass on if I run into the issue again. Thanks for looking into it.

Just found one. I've hidden this link twice now, but it's popped up yet again under a third post.

URL: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/16/norway-rails-against-enshittifcation-deliberate-tech-deterioration

So the problem only occurs after you use "Hide Post"? That might be part of the problem, I suppose that deduplication only considers posts that are visible to you. Though I cant find the corressponding code right now to confirm it. Best if you open an issue in the lemmy repo.

Found it now, crosspost detection actually happens in the frontend. It only works if posts have the same url and are shown on the same page.

Opened an issue, but it will likely take a while to fix.

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/6413

That's great! Thanks again.