Programming.dev Meta @programming.dev yogsototh @programming.dev 10 mo. ago

Should we block zerobytes.monster?

First happy new year everyone! Thanks a lot for all the work provided by admins and everyone involved in this lemmy instance.

Recently I am blocking all communities from zerobytes.monster instance personally. It just appears to be a ripoff some subreddits.

As there is no way to block all communities from some instance as a programming.dev user and as I feel these communities are mostly spam. I wonder if other people share the same feeling and if programming.dev should block them?

I hope I am asking via the correct channel. I don’t think this should be reported as I might also be in the minority and other people prefer to keeps these communities copied from reddit.

10 comments

We usually hide bot communities here which would include zerobytes but my hiding system recently broke a bit due to the 0.19 update so I haven't hid any recently

I can fix that and hide the new communities that popped up

(Hiding just means they dont show on the feeds by default but show for someone if they subscribe to them)

Edit: Fixed the issues with my system and hid the main ones that appeared in the scaled feed, ill hide more as I see them

Edit #2: There is also a way to block an instance like you said by going to your user settings and then the blocks tab on web but this is one case that should be getting handled by us
- Thanks a lot!
  
  I wasn’t aware I could block an instance via my user’s setting in the web UI. But I don’t see anymore these bot generated communities in the feed now.
  
  Thanks again!
Kind reminder that you can set your default feed to subscribed only, or alternatively block the one bot that is reposting into communities on that instance
- Thank you! I didn’t realized I could simply block the bot and not every community.
FYI, I think the next lemmy update includes user level instance blocking.
- That's not really a good solution although it is a temporary workaround.
  
  Many users won't know this is a feature they can use, or how to set it up
  
  Some users use alternative instances that federate with lemmy which might not have this feature
  
  Content still gets copied and hosted on this instance which might not be desireable
  
  Besides, at the end of the day, shouldn't the admins and mods here curate the content according to the community's guidelines and spirit? If someone started spamming undesired content on a forum you're administrating, the answer wouldn't be "all the users can just block it if it's an issue". I don't think it should be the answer here either
  
  Your answer seems not to be well liked by all, but I agree that placing too much burden onto every participant will lead to less participation.
I was just exploring All to find some new communities to sub to and I ran into the same thing. First thing, I have a domain block in Voyager so that might be something your client can do if you're on mobile. Second, if you block the user bot@zerobytes.monster, I think that clears all the automatic Reddit cross posted garbage (if that instance even has actual users, they are buried too deep to find).
As there is no way to block all communities from some instance as a programming.dev user

you guys are running on 0.19.1, so there should be.

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