I’ve gotten through (I believe) all the comments in the meta thread. So I want to establish a few things, first being a better definition on spam.

Spam is not “I don’t like this and its a paid product” or “I don’t like this and they used AI/LLMs”.

Spam would generally be considered:

  • Mass-posting - Posting the exact same post across a bunch of of different communities, rapidly.
  • Repetitive Content (aka karma farming) - repeatedly submitting old popular content. I’ll note that this is completely irrelevant on lemmy, this was more of a reddit issue due to karma.
  • Bot Activity / AI Abuse - Using scripts/bots/gen AI to automate posts and comments.
  • Unsolicited DMs - Mass private messages or chats to users, completely unsolicited

I’d say anything other than that deserves a followup rule, and this definition should go in the sidebar.

Regarding the promotional posts themselves, I think something like the 10% rule makes sense - no more than 10% of the account should be self-promotional material or comments within the community.

I do think it makes sense to include an exception for 100% free/libre open source projects. Partially open projects with a closed (paid) component should be subject to the 10% rule. So what I propose as the rule would be:

Promotional posts require community participation or they will be removed. No more than 10% of your posts or comments may be self-promotional, or your post will be removed. F/LOSS Exception: If your post is about a project that is completely open source & without any paywalls, it will be exempt from this rule.

Questions, comments, clarifications, and harsh criticisms are welcomed in the comments. As a reminder from my intro post, and because of some comments in the other thread, I will mention:

There are people on both sides of the keyboards, so please be respectful of others.

  • SuspiciousCarrot78@aussie.zoneEnglish
    0·
    9 days ago

    I dunno what’s happened in the last week but there’s a Lemmy wide infestation of bots and spammers.

    I think what you suggested is the right way forward. If things keep a pace, every other post will be slop. We need a (very) low bar for them to trip over.

    Dunno what can be done about false reporting and brigading. Probably nothing. The saving grace of Lemmy is you can just hide / switch off vote visibility on client app.

    I remember when karma and vote buttons became a thing and I remember thinking “oh, great idea”. No, no it was not.

    • curbstickle@anarchist.nexusOPMEnglish
      0·
      9 days ago

      Pretty much nothing aside from checking for brigading and blocking accounts, which I’d rather not get into, we’ll see how this goes