alien.top is a new level of Reddit crossposting spam

simple@lemm.ee to Fediverse@lemmy.world – 620 points –

Whoever is in charge of that instance, STOP.

It's an instance that crossposts posts from Reddit, except it also makes a new user for each Reddit account it came from. So if /u/hello123 made a post, it makes that post under a new account called hello123. That makes it impossible to block posting bots.

Not only that, it makes posts look like they're posted by real people, with many question and text posts being copied as well. I was very confused as to what these posts were until I realized they're crossposts.

Examples:

https://alien.top/post/263029

https://lemm.ee/u/pocalyuko@alien.top

https://lemm.ee/u/ItzMeRocket@alien.top

https://lemm.ee/u/CaptainCapp-n@alien.top

I strongly believe Lemmy isn't the place for mirroring content from other websites. You can host your own alternate Reddit frontend like LibReddit, there's no reason to spam the posts to everyone using Lemmy just because 5 people asked for it. Not to mention there are already enough instances mirroring posts, this is getting obnoxious.

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marking that account as a bot unless it’s been claimed by a human would not?

This is exactly how it works. Every account is marked as a bot until the redditor claims it. I'm not sure I'm understanding your question, here.

Gotcha -- that wasn't clear from the info here.

In that case I don't really see the problem. Anyone can block bot-posts and most clients let you block instances now. If people don't want to see it, they can filter it out pretty easily.