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 :)

  • Josephine@lemmy.mlEnglish
    5·
    2 years 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?

    • admin@lemmit.onlineOPEnglish
      3·
      2 years ago

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

      • SteinsprutEnglish
        11·
        2 years ago

        That sounds like a quick way to get defederated from everywhere

        • admin@lemmit.onlineOPEnglish
          3·
          2 years 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·
          2 years 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·
          2 years 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.

      • Dick Justice@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        2 years 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·
          2 years 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 !itookapicture@lemmit.online for example. There’s a bit too much reddit-circlejerk going on right now, even here imho.

  • sunaurus@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    2 years 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
    2·
    2 years 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·
      2 years 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·
      2 years 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
        1·
        2 years 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.

  • Zamboniman@lemmy.caEnglish
    2·
    2 years 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.

    • admin@lemmit.onlineOPEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      Yups. Combination of scraping and rss. With a bit of client-side throttling thrown in to stay under the radar.

      • Zamboniman@lemmy.caEnglish
        2·
        2 years ago

        Looks great so far. I like how the posts that are pulled over have both the link to the content from the original Reddit post as well as a link to the Reddit post itself.

  • Wenchette@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • admin@lemmit.onlineOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Step 1: go to !requests@lemmit.online and check if the subreddit you want has already been requested. If so, it contains a link you can use to subscribe to it. If not, read the sidebar and make a post in the request community.

      Do note that Lemmit will only copy over the starting posts, not the comments. So there is no point in requesting subs like /r/askmen etc.

      Let me know if you have any further questions, and please be specific.

  • T156@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

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

    • admin@lemmit.onlineOPEnglish
      2·
      2 years 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.

  • Undearius@lemmy.caEnglish
    1·
    2 years 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.

  • CosmicSploogeDrizzle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 years 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·
      2 years ago

      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.

    • admin@lemmit.onlineOPEnglish
      2·
      2 years 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
      1·
      2 years 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·
    2 years 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