The following is just my opinion.

First, my issues with this as a user. 

The project claims to try to achieve mostly 2 things:  

• Get redditors to switch
• Kick-start communities/subreddits

Personally, I don’t see how having a copy of your content history really helps in getting a reddit user to switch. 

On kick-starting communities with content, this is debatable. 

Personally, I think it instead creates somewhat of an illusion of content, a firehose of unmoderated reddit content that a lemmy user can’t really engage with because the 1M users aren’t here, not really, they’re on reddit.  You could already feel like a ghost by visiting a reddit thread a few hours old, this just ensures no-one of your interactions do anything.
Plenty of those are meant to be a discussion, in this case, one which you can’t be part of.
If I wanted to lurk reddit without any way to interact with them, I’d just go to reddit or use one of the several front-ends like LibReddit. 

The communities themselves are just bots talking to each other. An echo of a conversion that’s happening on reddit, with the odd lemmy not realizing they’re commenting into the void of reddit bots.  I know I’ve done just that a few times before realizing the OP or commenter would never get it. 

It is also somewhat difficult to deal with as a user,  because even if you block alien.top in 0.19, it won’t do anything.   You’d still have to stay on top of the new instances that pop-up and keep blocking the new ones. 

Now, my issues with this as an admin: 

This firehose is unmoderated and it is unrealistic to expect any lemmy instance to take on moderation for all the spam and gavage that inevitably comes along with it.  It is openly breaking reddit ToS.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no lost love for reddit, but such flagrant infringement is bound to attract unwanted legal attention sooner or later.  While “Reddit can suck it” is a vibe I don’t disagree with, I’d still rather not deal with their lawyers for hosting stolen content.  

The author’s comments are also somewhat problematic in that regard, they’re claiming to be “at war with reddit”, have publicly flaunted breaking reddit ToS, not caring for either their permission nor the consequences.   Even if they do implement a 2-way bridge with reddit, they’ll be insta-banned by reddit.

Seems more like a liability than a positive.

All this for 6 active users that have maybe switched. 

I’d be inclined to block them at the instance level. 

A couple of thoughts:

• More community interaction is nice, but this is like the ghost of community interaction.
• I don’t really think the stated goal of getting lots of people on Reddit to move over is a great idea. I don’t have a problem with people from Reddit coming (I came from Reddit back in June), but slow organic growth is the better way to go in my opinion, rather than trying to force it.
• What it really comes down to is that it’s spam. It might have been ok if there were an easy way to block it, or even if the coming update’s instance level blocking would work for it, but it won’t.

For some more personal opinions:

• I’m kinda sick of hearing about Reddit. I wish those of us who’ve joined because of it would move on.
• I don’t know the specific details so I may be wrong, but from what I understand this is all the work of one guy. I don’t like the idea of one person unilaterally deciding to do something that could end up heavily influencing the entire platform.

I’d vote to defederate.

1.1M bots

Jesus shit in my fuck. That’s too much! Bots shouldn’t be commenting except to facilitate human interaction, anyway. Stealing the posts from /r/topofreddit sounds fine, but there is absolutely no need to rehost all of Reddit on Lemmy.

deleted by creator

I’d vote to defederate as well. I’m all for getting Reddit users to switch to Lemmy, but I don’t think that alien.top’s strategy is a good one.

As someone with an account on that instance, I picked it because it was easy to sign up coming from reddit, and it has good federation.

Quelques communautés…
A few of them…

I see very little value in mirroring Reddit on Lemmy.

As a link aggregator, I think we’re doing fine. We seem to have no shortage of our own “Headline linking to a paywalled article no one reads” thank you very much.

As a discussion board, I think most folks will see a Reddit mirror and go “Well that’s pointless to engage with” and ignore it.

It doesn’t really help us out here, and I don’t think it makes Lemmy more attractive to Redditors, who probably haven’t noticed and might be a little alarmed at the identity theft aspect.

I’m also curious as to the load this kind of behavior puts on the rest of the Fediverse. How much bandwidth, local storage etc. of sh.itjust.works does it take to spam the All Active feed with pages of Reddit mirrors?

Aeons ago I drafted a defederation policy, which I don’t think was ever officially ratified. I’m glad to say it hasn’t come up a lot. “operated for the purpose of hosting bot accounts for the purposes of spam, scams, denial-of-service attacks, or other traffic generally unwelcome or disruptive to the Fediverse.” was number one on my list of reasons to defed from an instance.

I would call the behavior of alien.top to be spam, generally unwelcome or disruptive.

If they are keeping posts within their own instance, open the poll and I’d vote to defederate. If they have bots that are posting spam here, I actively petition to defederate.

Lemmy sucks more and more everyday.

It’s sucking fast. I’ve been blocking so much lately. Like …just pointless shit. Usually in communities that are irrelevant to the post.

Is it possible to block instances as a regular user?