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Is there someway to stop this? (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 years ago by to c/mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world
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[–] 5 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 child)

It would only be spam if it was posted to communities that aren’t on topic or if the individual communities were not interested in the content posted. The way the fediverse is set up, there are going to be tons of communities that all offer similar content. If I find an article that is on topic of several communities, why should I have to pick which one I post it to? How would I choose? Why can’t I post to multiple if I’m trying to get people in all communities to see it?

Spam is typically thought of as unwanted material. As long as the things that are being posted are legit, this isn’t a spam problem, it’s really a fediverse problem that someone is going to have to find a solution to like only displaying links one time if multiple posts are made to similar communities or better yet figuring out a way to federate multiple communities into one big community where everything posted to one automatically gets posted to all of them. But that’s still not spam, that’s just redundant on-topic posts being made to proper places.

It may be semantics, but word choice matters. Especially when your suggested “solution” involves blocking people who are posting legitimate content to places. If everyone goes around blocking all the people posting content, pretty soon there won’t be any content or any people to see it and that’s harmful to the fediverse as a whole. Let’s use the correct terminology and come up with good solutions to the actual issue at hand instead of thinking of it as just needing to block a few spammers like these people are sending out dick pill emails to thousands of people at once.

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  • [–] -3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    People are saying they don't like the spam, it's ultimately the choice of the user if they do not want to see repeated posts of the same item.

    I get posting to 2 communities of the same, but if you are filling multiple communities with the same post. You aren't really adding anything. With the fediverse people can subscribe to multiple communities with what you're suggesting, if everyone were to spam posts, which this is what it is. It's spamming the same post across multiple communities. What you're going to end up with is a bunch of redundant communities with a severe lack of orginal content. Which harms the community they are posting to more than it helps.

    Why should I subscribe to both News@lemmy.world and News@SmallLemmy if the small community is just reposted content from the first community. I get what you're trying to say, but this kind of thing harms the communities more than it helps

    They can do this if they want too, but I'm not going to bother subscribing to a community with duplicate posts. That's not the point of the fediverse.

    The beautiful thing about Lemmy is you can have multiple communities co-existing, producing their own unique content and be subscribed to all of them at once. Nothing against cross-posting but this doesn't feel at all an organic way of sharing content. It feels forced and hampers discussion.

    People who are scrolling through all can see these posts, and will need to pick between 3 of the same post if they want to discuss it, It will spread comments thin. It makes more sense to just post it to one, then maybe wait before posting it again to another community.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 child)

    I don’t disagree with much of anything you said (and it doesn’t sound like you disagree with anything I said either) aside from the classification that it’s all spam. If I make one on-topic post to a community and you don’t like it, that doesn’t mean it’s spam. If I made 2 posts to to different communities, you admit it’s not spam. The problem isn’t the users who are posting, and blocking them isn’t a solution, at least certainly not a long term one. The problem needs to be addressed at a fediverse level, and not at a content creator level.

    If I send out an email to 100 of my friends inviting them to a party and they all wanted to get that email, that’s not spam. If I send out 100 emails to the same people asking them to buy essential oils, that’s spam. It’s not the amount of content that I send, it’s if the content is relevant and appropriate for the audience that defines if something is spam or not. I agree that it’s very annoying to see the same content in dozens of different places here, but to call it spam is to place the blame on the poster, and that’s not where we should be focusing the blame. Dance around it all you want, but posting on-topic content to the correct places isn’t the definition of spam. Period. The only people calling it spam are people, like yourself, who don’t know what spam actually is.

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  • [–] -3 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    When you are sending out invites to friends you aren't sending 50 invitations to all 50 of your friends. You are sending 1 invitation to 1 friend.

    The problem is the amount of which it is being reposted, and the frequency of the reposts. It's literally not good for the website if you are just spamming the same content. I hate arguing semantics. If it's repeated reposts, the word is spam. Unless you have another word for it. It is called spam that's just how it is.

    Again, you haven't really addressed what I'm saying. It's low effort to repost the same post. It buries discussion when browsing All. If there are 10 posts of the same post; conversation is spread thin. I'm not against the reposting happening, I'm against the frequency in which a post is reposted.

    If I post 5 of the same article to 5 different communities in quick succession, people are going to only click 1 of 5 articles. Person A might go to the first one, Person B might go to the third article. Both leave comments but again, because they are sent to multiple communities in quick succession the article hasn't got the same chance to see people discuss it Where as if it's posted later, someone can respond to it and an organic discussion can form because it's just the 1 article.

    I'm sorry, but to repost so quickly one after the other. It's self-sabotage. It doesn't make sense. It's not productive to the website.

    I'm not saying you can't have communities with the same content, but why the hell would I subscribe to 1 community if it has the same content as another. That to me defeats the point of a fediverse. You can have multiple communities, why do I want to go to another community that's exactly the same as another? What's the point with that?

    The problem with the fediverse is that subscribed communities isn't prioritised so most people just stick to all without subscribing to individual communities so they can see all the content they're interested in.

    Having multiple communities is great, You get to find the one that best suits your ideas of how a community should be run. If you don't like the mods you can decide to use a different one. If you want more community you can find more similarly themed communities to get more content you're interested in, but again I ask. What is the point of subscribing to Art Community 1 & 2 if Art Community 2 is just a duplicate of the first community. To me that is not the point of the fediverse.

    It's not organic to constantly spam reposts. Also I'm talking about the LITERAL definition of spam:

    "spam noun : unsolicited usually commercial messages (such as emails, text messages, or Internet postings) sent to a large number of recipients or posted in a large number of places"

    as defined by Merriam Webster

    Something on-topic can still be spam, if it's posted to a large number of places it's spam.

    Trust me, I've had a long time to get to grips with Lemmy, I got LemmyShitpost and MildlyInfuriating off the ground. It wouldn't be where it is if I hadn't posted how I did, but I learned a bit and when I say it doesn't work or help Lemmy to do what you're suggesting. I mean it.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 child)

    So this is the 2nd time you’ve mentioned subscribing to communities and asked me what the point of subscribing to multiple ones are. You are proving my point just by asking this question. If you subscribe to one community per interest then this is literally not an issue that you will encounter. This only happens to people who browse /all or search by new or generally try to see everything that the fediverse has to offer. So I’m really not sure why you keep asking me about why someone would subscribe to multiple communities because that’s not something I have suggested that anyone should do. In fact, I don’t really see much of a point in subscribing to ANY communities, but that’s beside the scope of what we’re discussing here.

    Also, I wouldn’t call what we’re discussing “reposting”. Reposting generally means that you’re taking older content and posting it again in the efforts of bringing new attention to it, either from people who are new to the community, or by people who never saw it the first time it was posted. Again, it’s semantics, but the fact that you’re calling these types of posts “reposts” really shows your lack of understanding of the larger problem here. It’s also why your definition of spam absolutely doesn’t apply here, as none of the content we’re discussing is commercial or unsolicited.

    YOU’RE the one that’s not addressing the issue here that I’ve brought up. I’ve never said that what’s going on isn’t annoying or a problem. I’m just saying (for like, the third time now, but who’s counting) that it’s an issue of blame. By continuing to mis-label it as spam, you’re placing the blame on the people who are contributing to the community as a whole. The people who are bringing content to this platform. The people who make it worth this place even existing. And by suggesting that the solution is to block those people, you’re literally suggesting to people that they remove quality content being posted to the correct places. This is insane to me that you think this is a solution.

    Look, there is a problem with the way the fediverse is set up. And it needs addressing. I’ve already suggested a couple of different ways to fix it, both in the short term, and in the long term. Your “solution” is to block anyone who is participates in more than one community just because they are trying to spark a discussion in the most places possible. I’m not saying what they’re doing is working out, but to place the blame on the people who are actually trying to make it better is just…I don’t have words for how ridiculous that is. People are using this platform as it is set up in the way that it is intended. That’s not spam, no matter how many times you incorrectly proclaim it is.

    it doesn’t work or help Lemmy to do what you’re suggesting

    Just curious, but what do you mean with what I’m suggesting? I’m not saying I like, or even agree with multiple posts in multiple likeminded communities. Hell, I actively dislike the fact that there ARE so many communities that are basically clones of each other. It’s a problem that needs to be addressed. I just said that doing it wasn’t spam. What other suggestions of mine do you think is harmful to Lemmy?

    I think the biggest issue here is just your way of thinking. You referred to Lemmy multiple times as “this website” or “this site” and that way of thinking is at the heart of the issue”. It’s not just a clone of Reddit, where everyone was on one site and everyone all has a chance to see all the same things. Every instance is different, shows you different content, and federates with other instances in different ways. It is set up to be different for a reason. There is no single thing that is good or bad for Lemmy as a whole, because Lemmy as a whole is not one single entity. Your “spam” problem is only a problem if you choose to look at as many instances of Lemmy as you can, which unfortunately is the best way to get new content for now. The solution moving forward is to curate the specific communities that you end up looking at by blocking instances that duplicate content, or hopefully Lemmy as a whole will allow for a better way to cut down on viewing repeated content across multiple instances. The solution is not to blame the people sharing content and block them from ever being able to share content to you again. Unless you’re just not interested in the content to begin with, but even then I would suggest it’s better to block communities rather than the people putting content in them.

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  • [–] -3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Your argument of semantics is not constructive to this conversation. You absolutely know what I am talking about yet you continue

    Spam is spam. The definition fits whether you like it or not I am not discussing it further.

    We are arguing over the proper use of this site. When I say site what I mean is platform and you know that. You're just arguing about that again for the sake of it. Again, not constructive. Frankly it's obnoxious

    When promoted to me by the site admins it's always encouraged to subscribe to communities. Why is it there if you people aren't supposed to use it? Why should I be forced into seeing posts from a user whose only purpose is to spam content. If all they are doing is reposting the same content over and over . What good is it for me to block multiple communities because of a single user? You're bringing a tank to a knife fight. Then that restricts me from seeing posts from an entire community based on the actions of a single individual. Whereas blocking 1 person only stops me from seeing their posts. Oh well, who cares. If a user doesn't want to see someone's posts they can block them if they want too. They are well within their rights to do so.

    Why do I have to deal with the inconvenience of seeing the same post because someone doesn't have good etiquette when using the website?

    You missed some pretty key details about how constantly posting the same post hinders it getting proper engagement. I know this shit, I have browsed this place long enough to understand that pretty well.

    You are arguing a different purpose for communities. My idea of the purpose of communities is having them as individual spaces. I have no issues if someone makes a LemmyShitpost or a Mildly Infuriating on another instance. That doesn't bother me. The two communities can co-exist. It's especially useful if it's a case of two communities instances being defederated so allowing the posts to be seen by as many people as possible.

    People are actively telling you they do not like posts being spammed across multiple communities. That is lowering the quality of content here on Lemmy. Which makes Lemmy a worse platform than alternative places. Whilst well intended it isn't a viable strategy. Not for keeping people happy.

    It just clogs up the All feed with the same post making any other posts hidden. This is not a good thing. It reflects poorly on this platform.

    Imagine if today everyone decided I am going to post an article to every news community across all instances. That would get pretty chaotic pretty fast, but I guess that's not spam to you is it?

    Anyway. I am ending my discussion with you here. I have said what I needed to say. I made my points pretty clear where I stand on this.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago

    I read the first two sentences and stopped. That’s literally what we’re talking about. If you’re not going to discuss it any further than I have no idea why you ended up typing out so much more after that. I’m not wasting more of my time finding out though.

    Enjoy the rest of your day.

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