I have created some software that is capable of synchronising posts from Reddit to Lemmy. It’s still a little rough around the edges, but it works as a such:

People can request new subreddits to be mirrored on [email protected]. A bot (open source) will monitor the threads there, and if it finds a new request for a subreddit, it will make a new community on the Lemmit server, and add it to its monitored list. It will then make periodic checks to see if any new posts (it doesn’t copy any comments) have been posted on reddit, and copy those over.

Users can then subscribe to those communities from their own lemmy instance, and from there federation will pick it up. Or at least, that’s the theory. At the moment, federation is not working awesomely, and that is where my lack of fediverse knowledge comes in. Maybe it needs more time, or something is not so properly - I don’t know.

Furthermore: registrations on this server are closed. The point of this service is not to become a community on its own, but to deliver, ehh, “original” content to all the rest of the Fediverse while it’s going through a ramp-up phase. Besides, the instance is running on a pretty small vps, and I rather have this thing manage itself. There is a [email protected] community for further questions about the project itself though, in case people want to discuss it further.

So ehm… Let me know what you think :)

  • Josephine@lemmy.mlEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    This rases a question, if a bot creates a new community to replace subreddits, who will mod those communities to ensure that there’s no bigotry, trolls, transphobia, homophobia etc… running wild in the comments? Who will manage these?

    • Zamboniman@lemmy.caEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Well, as the bot is the moderator, and as the person running the bot is responsible for it, I suppose that’s technically the answer. But it’s an excellent question if there are hundreds of communities created and people start posting comments in them. The easy workaround is for the bot to set each new community to read-only (by checking ‘only moderators can post’). But, that would be a bit unfortunate as then that limits opportunities to easily chat about it. I suppose cross-posting by someone that wants to comment on it is a solution.

      • Josephine@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Hmm I think perhaps a different solution to trolls/bigotted comments could be to instead of using bots as copy/paste machines and mods, we could use them as copy/paste machines and have humans mod the subs, say find some people who are interested in modding a Sublemy and then offer them bots as a tool, hell mass recruitment posts could work, I can see alot of people being interested in this as the migration moves forwards!

    • admin@lemmit.onlineOPEnglish
      3·
      1 year ago

      Yups. It’s all done by one bot though, so you’ll just have to block that to get rid of them.

      • Dick Justice@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        oh good! thank you so much for the reply. It’s beilliant dev work on your end, and certainly nothing I’d be able to pull off aas I dont have the beain capacity, but I’m just over Reddit at this point and dont want to watch them spiral. Thank you for maaking sure there’s a way to opt out!

        • admin@lemmit.onlineOPEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          I’m absolutely with you on that on. If anything, part of the reason I wanted this was to have some fresh content that I knew I was going to miss once after July 1st. Stuff like [email protected] for example. There’s a bit too much reddit-circlejerk going on right now, even here imho.

        • admin@lemmit.onlineOPEnglish
          4·
          1 year ago

          If that’s what happens, that’s what happens. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

          I’m just here to offer a service for people who Do like it.

        • kopper [they/them]@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          Defederation isn’t a bad thing, it’s just curation. Especially in this case where you’re not breaking any human<->human connections.

          I’d still prefer something along the lines of Masto’s silencing, which would get rid of instances from global feeds yet still allow follows and interactions, but upstream already has too much on their plate and I’m sure given the time something similar would be implemented.

        • Zamboniman@lemmy.caEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          I kinda get what you’re saying, but not really. Why would adding more content such as this lead to an instance wanting to defederate from that instance? There’s no users from Reddit there (and thus no comments from them) to troll, spam, or break the rules. It just adds posts.

  • Undearius@lemmy.caEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    It was just a matter of time before something like this showed up.

    I’m sure there will be a number of people that won’t be a fan of this but I think it’s a pretty innovative way to help the chicken-and-egg problem of early adoption. (No users because there’s no content, no content because there’s no users).

    Very smart to have it limited to one bot on one instance to make it easy to block (or de-federate) for those that don’t like it, but I do.

  • Zamboniman@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Just to be clear, what if there is already a community on Lemmy that coincides with a subreddit? Will it make another community on your instance? Or will it use the existing community?

    • CalcProgrammer1@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      It sounds as if this will run on its own instance, so as long as this instance is purely dedicated to mirrored subreddits there will be no conflict with communities on other instances. Community names can be reused on multiple instances and they are treated as separate communities.

    • Sibbo@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      There is no such thing as already the same community on another instance on current Lemmy. As of now all Lemmy instances can have e.g. a /c/cooking community, and they are all guns be individual communities.

      • Zamboniman@lemmy.caEnglish
        2·
        1 year ago

        There is no such thing as already the same community on another instance on current Lemmy.

        Yup, I know. Not what I was asking, though. I was asking if the posts would go to an already established community somewhere on Lemmy, and the answer is ‘no’, instead they go to a new community on the developer’s instance.

        As of now all Lemmy instances can have e.g. a /c/cooking community, and they are all guns be individual communities.

        Yup, I’m aware.

  • sunaurus@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Interesting idea! I have some thoughts if you’re open to feedback:

    Furthermore: registrations on this server are closed. The point of this service is not to become a community on its own, but to deliver, ehh, “original” content to all the rest of the Fediverse while it’s going through a ramp-up phase.

    Have you considered moderation? These mirrored communities on lemmit.online will still be getting comments from all over the federated network, and if you’re the only user and sole moderator of every community, then it might get quite overwhelming!

    Besides, the instance is running on a pretty small vps, and I rather have this thing manage itself.

    Just in case you’re not aware, your instance will need to be able to handle:

    • Pushing out posts and comments to all other instances in the network
    • Accepting comments and votes from subscribers on any instance from the network

    A small VPS might not be able to handle that!

    It will then make periodic checks to see if any new posts (it doesn’t copy any comments) have been posted on reddit, and copy those over.

    How are you planning to deal with API limits from Reddit? Without paying, at most you’ll be able to make 6000 requests per hour, which means that you’ll only be able to get new posts from the last hour for up to 6000 subreddits. It might seem like a big number, but consider that there are (according to some old posts online) over 100,000 active subreddits.

    • Zamboniman@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      The developer isn’t using the API. They’re scraping according to my question and their response to this above. However, the moderation question is a really good point. The easy workaround for this is just set every new community as ‘only moderators can post’ and then it’s just content read-only.

  • Zamboniman@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    1 year ago

    Okay, just tried it out. Added /r/bestof and it’s working. Very cool!

    I’m guessing this scrapes? Otherwise it’ll stop working when the API changes happen on July 1.

  • T156@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Is this going to break come the end of the month, when the new API changes go into effect?

    • admin@lemmit.onlineOPEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Nope, it doesn’t use the API, but relies on the RSS feed and scraping old.reddit.com And those will probably also die at some point in the future, this will probably keep working a bit longer.

  • CosmicSploogeDrizzle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Is there a possibility to release just an RSS bot? I’d love to have certain RSS feeds from various sources auto post to my community. I’m finding it difficult to find options for lemmy atm

    • admin@lemmit.onlineOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      I think @[email protected] wrote something to that effect (I’m still a mess with making proper links on here :/)

      And I also found something else that was written in java (not javascript).

      The downside from using the RSS feed is that it doesn’t contain the whole body, which my scraper does fetch.

  • csm10495@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Cool idea. I’m not sure why, but I can’t seem to get my instance to see lemmit.online, even when searching for it.

    • admin@lemmit.onlineOPEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      I’m having similar issues on lemmy.ml, not sure what causes it.

      Well… There is the thing that I had this service running on another host at some point, it got federated with quite a few instances (including lemmy.ml and some others), and I had to reinstall it. Maybe those instances have a hard time accepting the new installation?

      I’m kinda hoping it will sort itself out over time, maybe those instances just need to restart 🤞 .

    • Zamboniman@lemmy.caEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Use the search function in your instance, and you’ll likely have to click the ‘search’ button twice to bring it in. Put the original URL from the developer’s instance in the search, like this:

      https://lemmit.online/c/IdiotsInCars

      Then you should get a link for it.

      You get the 404 because your instance doesn’t know about that community yet. It has to be made aware, and then connected to it via you doing the search.

  • csm10495@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    One thing that would be nice: The links in the messages saying:

    I’ll get right on that. Check out /c/…

    Would be nice if the link for /c/… was for lemmit.online. If not on there already, they don’t work since they go to the current server’s community with the given name.

    Edit: This is open source… Here’s a merge request that I think fixes it: https://gitlab.com/sab_from_earth/lemmit/-/merge_requests/6/diffs