Flood of vibe-coded/slopware spam?

I’ve noticed a lot of posts lately that are just spam for slopware, often not even having anything to do with self-hosting. As sad as I am about it, I’m pretty close to unsubscribing to keep spam out of my Lemmy feeds.

Before doing so, though, I wanted to ask if there was any formal policy or rule for the community that could help cut down on thr spam, and if so, what would be most useful for me to do when I see a spam post? That I’d, is the Report button the right tool, is there some other way to let moderators know?

If I see AI slop I downvote. Shouldn’t that generally take care if it if everybody does it?

Downvote and move on. Mute accounts and communities you don’t want to see. Simple as.

Do you have examples?

Before doing so, though, I wanted to ask if there was any formal policy or rule for the community that could help cut down on thr spam, and if so, what would be most useful for me to do when I see a spam post? That I’d, is the Report button the right tool, is there some other way to let moderators know?

Rule 7 as stated in the sidebar of this community: “No low-effort posts. This is subjective and will largely be determined by the community member reports.”

So yes. Use the report tool and downvote it to oblivion.

But what’s the point of downvoting on Lemmy? It doesn’t seem to affect visibility. Or maybe there’s a setting somewhere I need to adjust?

The point is signaling to other people that it’s not worth their time. I sort by new so I often see these slop posts as well, but other readers very quickly down vote it into oblivion so if a post is older than say 15 minutes I generally will know not to read it even if it sounds interesting at first glance. A mod will come by later to actually delete it is that’s warranted, but until then down votes suffice.

Depending on your sorting method, downvoted posts will be featured less favorably. You will immediately know that a heavily downvoted post is not worth your attention. Some clients might let you filter displayed posts based on the votes.

downvote to oblivion

Even Sheogorath doesn’t want this stuff.

I just downvote and move on.

So yes. Use the report tool and downvote it to oblivion.

My instance doesn’t have downvotes, so reporting is the most effective remedy for everyone’s benefit

My instance has downvotes turned off (which I like). That action only benefits people who care about downvotes.

The better option that helps everyone is to report bad faith posts.

No. My instance doesn’t have downvotes. You downvoting a post does nothing for instances like mine.

Report that shit instead. There’s no reason it needs to stay on the Fediverse.

report bad faith posts

You’re supposed to report posts that break instance or community rules, not whatever you happen to consider to be “bad faith”. Moderators are not the arbiters of intent.

Looks like your comment is receiving downvotes just fine…

Maybe this thread is a lesson in how downvotes have a purpose and why instances turning them off is silly puritanical nonsense that serves to aid bad content more than anything else it purports to achieve.

Sounds to me like the other effective remedy for you would be changing instances. Downvotes exist for a good reason and disabling them is harmful.

I typically sort by “top six hours” and I’m barely aware of the problem OP is talking about. So yeah, it seems like downvoting works.

I fundamentally disagree with downvotes, so changing instances isn’t an option. Just report it. It helps everyone and it removes it from the Fediverse, not just pushes it to the bottom of a list by the arbitrary metric of popularity.

On your instance, yes. Those downvotes get dropped on my side, so I can’t see them, and neither can anyone else on a non-downvote instance. My proposal would address the issue of slop for everyone, whereas downvote proponents are just saying, “Yeah, well my way is better. Lemmy is only for people who do it my way.”

If this thread is a lesson in anything, it’s that the bad habits of Reddit carried over, and people are so fucking lazy, they can’t be bothered to click the report button.