this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2026

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Time to unblock lemmit.online? (lemmy.ca)

submitted 3 days ago by SomethingWentWrong@lemmy.ca to c/main@lemmy.ca

20 comments fedilink hide all child comments

lemmit.online is a controversial lemmy server since its sole purpose is to run a bot that mirrors reddit posts to lemmy. Previous discussion 3 years ago about whether to block it: https://lemmy.ca/post/1380644

Currently it is blocked from lemmy.ca and I would like to unblock it to ease weaning off reddit gradually. If I can use lemmy.ca as my main site with links off to reddit on occassion I don't need to use reddit anymore to browse but just drop in for a specific post of interest.

The main complaint is it can fill up the all category with high volume of low interaction posts. This can be dealt with on a per user basis by blocking either the lemmit.online instance or blocking the bot@lemmit.online user.

Looking at the top 10 lemmy instances on https://fedidb.com/software/lemmy here's who allows or blocks the lemmit.online instance:

lemmy.world        ✅
lemmy.ml           ✅
sh.itjust.works    ✅
lemmy.dbzer0.com   ✅
lemmy.ca           ❌
programming.dev    ✅
lemmy.zip          ✅
lemmy.blahaj.zone  ❓
ttrpg.network      ✅
lemmy.one          ✅

all 21 comments

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[–] Shadow@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 days ago

My personal feeling is that reddit repost bots are actively harmful to the growth of the fediverse.

In my opinion there's a few general buckets of users: link consumers, comment consumers, commenters, posters. Reddit bots help the first group, and actively deter engagement by the others. When your feed is a flood of reposts and no comments, the community feels dead and you're disincentivized to comment yourself. If you do comment because you don't realize the OP has no idea what lemmy even is, then you're even less likely to comment in the future.

I honestly care less about appealing to the link consumers, since they're just lurking and not helping grow the community. We could potentially do something like refederate but add it to everyone's instance block list by default, but I struggle to see the value in that for the handful of people who might unblock it.

I'm also curious about lemmit's future as old reddit is locked down. Eventually reddit is going to start blocking however they're scraping.

That being said we consider our instances to be community led, and we're always are open to changes that the majority want.

[–] swordgeek@lemmy.ca 16 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Please no. We didn't need reddit content mirrored here before, and as the quality there drops like rocks, we need it even less now.

I fonpt want to have to continually add more personal blocks on junk.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 days ago

If we did this, you would be able to block the whole instance at once. See the blocks tab on: https://lemmy.ca/settings

[–] ryper@lemmy.ca 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

That doesn't seem like something that should ever be unblocked. Reposts from reddit should get less necessary over time.

If you want to wean yourself off reddit try following the RSS feeds for your usual subreddits.

[–] VitoRobles@lemmy.today 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Reddit has rss feeds? I thought they shut that down years ago along with every other quality of life feature.

[–] ryper@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago

It still works if you use old reddit. I still follow r/halifax with https://old.reddit.com/r/halifax.rss

[–] k0e3@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 days ago

I'd just block the instance so it's no big deal for me, but if I didn't have the option to block, then I'd say no because I didn't leave Reddit to read their shit topics elsewhere.

[–] eezeebee@lemmy.ca 9 points 3 days ago

I don't have a reddit problem to wean off. I'm over it, and I believe a large percentage of us are here because we left reddit years ago.

Making it ours and future reddit refugees' problem to block the instance seems bad, yo.

[–] breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca 9 points 3 days ago

No thanks.

[–] WizardGed@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 days ago

for whatever it's worth i would vote against it if only for avoiding any legal chicanery reddit might pull on lemmit and lemmy instances that interact/federate with it(though its not a deal breaker for me). As it currently stands lemmy.ca can claim it does not and has not interacted with lemmit and therefore would fare better if reddit comes looking to attack the fediverse/lemmy. we need to do our best to protect fedecan and avoiding businesses with big pockets and billionaire interests that would hurt or damage it seems the best way to do it. we don't need that crap here anyway, the only thing it has that I wish lemmy had is more users to update the news feeds quicker.

[–] Demigodrick@lemmy.zip 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

FWIW we (.zip) have the bot account banned. Its spammed so much the user page fails to load with the admin stuff needed to moderate it. It is by far still the largest account by posts and we've had it blocked quite a while.

The content was low quality and very rarely interacted with, nevermind that the OP obviously never replied being a different platform and all.

FWIW from .zip POV I wouldn't ever unblock it, and would not hesitate to ban a spam account like that in the future.

[–] SomethingWentWrong@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago

Thanks for the information!

Need to be an admin on a lemmy server to view the banned users using the lemmy API:

https://lemmy.ca/api/v3/user/banned

https://lemmy.zip/api/v3/user/banned

Looking at https://lemmy.zip/u/bot@lemmit.online I see the last post was 10 months ago so it looks like it was banned around then.

So instead of just looking at whether the lemmit.online instance is/isn't blocked but looking if there are recent posts from bot@lemmit.online across the top 10 lemmy servers I see:

lemmy.world        ❌
lemmy.ml           ❌
sh.itjust.works    ❌
lemmy.dbzer0.com   ✅
lemmy.ca           ❌
programming.dev    ✅
lemmy.zip          ❌
lemmy.blahaj.zone  ❓
ttrpg.network      ✅
lemmy.one          ✅

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I've changed my mind a bit since Otter's comment suggests Lemmy has some admin-accessible features I didn't know about. I personally haven't needed Reddit for several years now, and the Old Reddit redirect plugin works fine for my needs the odd time I do want to peek at a thread. My own transition period from Reddit to Lemmy was about 3-4 months, so I understand the want to wean off gradually.

I think I can support LemmitOnline's re-federation on the condition that it will not show up on any lemmy.ca user's All or Local feeds, unless that user has subscribed to the lemmit.online community or the bot. It also shouldn't show by default for logged out users.

However, I still worry if it will bring overwhelming traffic, disk or other resource use for the lemmy.ca admins from re-enabling that federation. Something to consider.

[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

not show up on any lemmy.ca user’s All or Local feeds, unless that user has subscribed to the lemmit.online community

subreddits should show in "all search" though. I like your "soft defederation/block" concept, but may require a lemmy software upgrade?

[–] Rentlar@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I agree it should show in search. To be specific about the feature I'm talking about, I'm referencing this part of Otter's comment:

It might also be possible for us to hide the communities from public feeds, so only subscribed users will see the communities and associated content. We need to explore that some more: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2943#issuecomment-1581485335

And the link leads to nutomic's comment:

There is also an endpoint to hide posts from a specific community from the frontpage (/api/v3/community/hide). Note that this isnt implemented in lemmy-ui yet.

So it seems to me it exists in the current Lemmy software but not in the frontend UI? I cannot confirm but I assume that it's adjustable through config file changes or CLI commands.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 1 points 1 day ago

I didn't know about it until I stumbled across that issue. After playing around with it, it is a possible solution but I think we would need the lemmit admins to make that change in order for it to work.

What I've learned:

right now it can be toggled by admins with a CLI command, after Lemmy v1 it will be known as unlisted and it will become a part of the main community visibility settings (public, unlisted, localonlypublic, localonlyprivate, private): https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/blob/main/crates/db_schema_file/src/enums.rs#L130
when it is enabled, only users that are subscribed and logged in can see the posts. For everyone else, you can only see the community info and post contents if you get a direct link to it

Since it is a property of the community, trying to override it on our end might lead to federation issues because of the ambiguity.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I will note that since that previous discussion, Lemmy has improved the functionality that lets an individual user block entire instances. So users that don't want to see this content can block everything by adding lemmit.online to the block list in the user settings.

It might also be possible for us to hide the communities from public feeds, so only subscribed users will see the communities and associated content. We need to explore that some more: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2943#issuecomment-1581485335

EDIT: I've looked into it some more, tldr it might work if lemmit admins make the change on their end: https://lemmy.ca/post/69414850/24859618

I do agree with this reasoning

can use lemmy.ca as my main site with links off to reddit on occassion I don't need to use reddit anymore to browse but just drop in for a specific post of interest.

When users are migrating off of old social media platforms, letting them see everything from one app reduces a lot of friction. Especially with Reddit taking steps to keep users locked in to their app (ex. Blocking logged out users, limiting old.reddit.com, killing the RSS feeds).

We've seen a lot of "mirror content from elsewhere" sites, and lemmit.online was one of the better organized cases. Every post makes it very clear that the post is a mirror / archive, so no one should mistake the bot for a real user looking for help. For example: https://lemmit.online/post/8699035

[–] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

I'd support the 'hide unless subscribed' option, but not the 'flood the feed by default unless blocked' option. We should be considering the experience for the average newcomer, and a bunch of empty inactive bot posts isn't great.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 day ago

I'd like to second recursive_recursion, your feedback is still just as appreciated :)

I will test out the hiding option and see if I can come up with a compromise that people will agree with. The general sentiment in this thread seems to be that we should not simply refederate.

[–] recursive_recursion@piefed.ca 2 points 2 days ago

Even if lemmy.ca isn't your home instance I'd say that your feedback is still important as it's quite constructive🤗

We should be considering the experience for the average newcomer, and a bunch of empty inactive bot posts isn't great.

I personally agree with this statement. This is a side note but similar to this is why I dislike users who flood the feed solely with their posts as it can make the New tab devoid of user life/activity.