PSA: If you're tired of political posts in Technology, block user L4s
First of all, L4s (sorry misspelled in titel) is not a real user, so no harm done here.
It's an automatic bot xposting from reddit, making this community just as bad as r/technology, which kind frankly only revolves around politics and social media platforms.
I've had the user blocked 2 weeks now, and this community is muuuuch more enjoyable and is actually about technology now.
Just wanted to share a positive experience.
The irony:
"see, I'm unbiased!β
What is a fraud farm?
Congress?
Nah, Congress is a money-laundering front.
Business schools are fraud farms
Nah, business schools are bullshit factories.
Law schools are fraud farms.
Lol
oh shit
This made me literally LOL
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https://www.arkoselabs.com/explained/click-farm/
So much fucking energy cost.. so much fucking Earth cost
I'm so tired of reddit crossposts, they're fucking useless.
I came here to avoid Reddit.
Now I get their posts like non-interactive ads.
Lemmy is basically Reddit it has all of the same community problems
I havenβt seen a single homophobic or transphobic post or comment yet. *knock on wood
gestures broadly at minorities
Did I do it?
I can't even find one in the modlog
Yeah I'm here to talk to people, not read bot posts
I forgot about those. Just blockbthe bot that posts them.
I can see how they were useful when Lemmy was smaller. But now there's enough content for me to browse that I don't miss those reddit cross posts.
You can also make it so you don't see any bot accounts at all, makes the experience 10x better.
There's a discussion about bots posting on HackerNews but feel free to comment here
What is hacker news I keep seeing titles with discussion on hacker news only place I've ever heard it
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_News
hackernews.com
I didn't realise hackernews had an actual dedicated domain name. I've only ever accessed it from news.ycombinator.com
It just redirects to that.
https://news.ycombinator.com/
HN is a news aggregator where users can find and discuss the latest news and submit content on anything that gratifies oneβs intellectual curiosity. YC alumni also post engineering, product, and design jobs on HN.
It has pretty interesting discussions most of the time, the comments are usually very technical, but you can find pretty much the average Lemmy/reddit type of stuff there.
Which for awhile, this user(L4s) insisted on not labeling his bot as such because he felt his was special and deserved to be seen above others. Only after being massively called out did they fix it. But it left a bad taste in my mouth and I've had them blocked since, including their personal account. While the setting is useful, some users still need to be called out.
Is there a whitelist for that? Some of the bots are actually kind of useful
How?
There's a checkbox in your Lemmy account settings to allow/block all bot accounts. Only works if they identify themselves as such, so it's not foolproof, but it's better than nothing.
In your account settings, uncheck "Show Bot Posts".
The one annoying thing is that if a bot replies to you (particularly the PeerTube bot) it can be tricky to clear the notification. There's no clear all button on the website, but there is in Jerboa.
I think an instance popped up recently where every human user marked thselves as bot accounts.
FYI: You can edit titles here, unlike Reddit.
Thanks, unfortunately it's not possible in my client Boost for Lemmy.
Edit: Nvm, found it through my desktop. Thanks again!
Omfg. It put up an anti Vax post about eradicating autism. Holy fk.
just ban the thing
Where?
Should I also block L4sBot?
Yeah, it's the same guy.
It was easier for me to find this guy by just going into community posts instead of a search, thanks
As an aside, you can edit your submission title on lemmy/kbin/mbin.
Thanks! I'm using Boost for Lemmy, and I can't really find the option here. Maybe it's not included in the app.
...mbin?
@ripcord yeah a small group of people forked from kbin.
I went looking for a post by them to block them. Turns out I already did.
Thank You! Honestly I think one of the things I like a lot about lemmy, and the fediverse, is the ability to easily block users, communities, and whole instances I don't want to interact with a all. Everytime someone complains about seeing too many foreign meme or whatever I wonder if they have tried the blocking features to trim down the timeline.
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How do you, as a user, block an entire instance? As far as I know only an owner of an instance can block (de-federate) another instance. I would love being able to block an instance as a user though.
Through apps before and the feature was added to lemmy v0.19
The app is fine but I'm also using webui so I would love the feature to be at the 'root' of Lemmy instead only in 1 app.
I read elsewhere that v0.19 will not bring complete instance blocking. Communities will be blocked but not the users, and it is the users and everything about an instance I want to block. I want to be able to black hole an entire instance, as if it and its users do not exist at all. I'm getting conflicting messages on the ability of v0.19 by several people and I am lost on what it will actually bring. I guess we will have to wait and see once v0.19 is out and we start using it.
I forgot about that tidbit of v19 not blocking the users.
Yeah, and it's the blocking of the complete user base of an instance that's what I truly want and seek.
Same. Instances are literally just a collection of users and they are the only reason to block one. I think the problem is the lemmy devs are mad everyone wants to block their pet communist instances because of the users there just generally being unpleasant people.
You a real one
Really odd some Lemmy choices, allowing News Aggregation Posts (Simple link and summary) from a particular user that is somehow not flagged a bot/influencer/paid. I duna know how you can post Tech News Links 10 times a day, every day, for 5 months and still be allowed to post as a "person".
I've also been accused of being a bot. I assure you all I am not.
I am merely a pathetic loser with lots of time on my hands.
Omg I had not noeall those posts were from the same bot..thanks!
L4s should be banned. Who controls it? What is their agenda?
Their agenda is "noble" (keep the content flowing here), but the reality is what the OP mentioned. I stopped going to the technology reddit sub because it was tiring to sift through the doomscrolling.
Yeah we shouldnt mirror reddit posts. If its not busy enough in a sub instance to foster news and discussion then it isnt busy. Growth should be organic.
Good tip, already blocked them a few weeks ago due to all the Musk spam, and my feed improved significantly
thank you for your service
Thanks for the tip!
Ty!
How does that bot work?
I'm not sure, but my best guess is that it scrapes top daily posts on r/technology and reposts them here.
It's a good idea for other subreddits actually, but r/technology is a shitshow.
Did that long ago, along with other repost bots, and my experience improved significantly
Done and done!
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Thanks, unfortunately it's not possible in my client Boost for Lemmy.
Edit: Nvm, found it through my desktop. Thanks again.
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Thanks for the tip! π
Done and done.
I don't know about you but I find these bot posts actually useful! And there's healthy discussion too which is the point of lemmy?
It's a fair point, but I don't believe it has anything to do with c/Technology. It belongs somewhere else.
The requirement for posts are so low, that if something is just POSTED on a social media platform, it somehow has a place in this community.