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 !requests@lemmit.online. 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 !about@lemmit.online 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 :)
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?
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.
So posts from reddit are going to flood the All feed on lemmy?
Yups. It’s all done by one bot though, so you’ll just have to block that to get rid of them.
That sounds like a quick way to get defederated from everywhere
If that’s what happens, that’s what happens. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I’m just here to offer a service for people who Do like it.
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.
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.
nice work!
I’m interested in having Reddit content show up in my feed when I use Jerboa, but for the life of me, I can not figure out how. Can anyone help? You’d have to explain it to me like you’re talking to either a 3 year old, or a 93 year old.
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?
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.
Yeah, the bot only operates on its own instance. So you can have !bestof@lemmit.online and !bestof@lemmy.ml.
Makes perfect sense. Thanks.
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.
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.
[!requests@lemmit.online](!requests@lemmit.online)try this style of linking instead
[!requests@lemmit.online](/c/requests@lemmit.online)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
I think @tubbadu@lemmy.one 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.
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.
