How do you feel about bots automatically reposting content from Reddit onto Lemmy?
I sort by all and new and have seen a fair amount of posts from bots bringing over content from Reddit. A lot of it doesn't have much if any engagement on here and as far as I can tell even if there was it wouldn't cross back and forth between the two platforms.
The communities these bots are posting to seem to have a low amount of subscribers and with the flood of content it seems a bit like a ghost town. Almost like subscribing to the RSS feed of a subreddit.
I'm not up in arms about it. The posts are being made by only a couple of bots into subreddit specific communities (ex. AskReddit) and Lemmy gives you the ability to block communities so this isn't really showing up in my feed anymore.
The only possible issue I could see in the future is if Lemmy communities tried to link with a subreddit's. For example an instance's pc gaming community with /r/PCGaming.
I'm curious to hear how you feel about Reddit content automatically (or even manually) being posted here.
Strong disagree. The biggest part of Reddit is the comments. If you want more comments you need more people. If you want more people you need enough content to keep them engaged.
I'm 100% for posting links from Reddit over here to drive engagement.
My issue with bot posts is that they lack the authenticity that comes with an actual user's posts. Isn't it really nice when an OP sometimes responds to your comments, especially on subs like r/askreddit?
I don't think we should worry about "user engagement" and growth so much. These are just metrics that companies use to increase profit and get advertisers. People here have already pointed out that they feel more engaged on Lemmy because their submissions feel more valued in this smaller community—they don't get lost amongst a thousand other comments like on reddit.
I think the focus should be on creating a space where people can have genuine conversations, even if only a few people are involved.
I agree. Make new content already. This isn't reddit.
Or if you have to make a content scraper bot, why not say, a Reuters or AP breaking news bot instead of Reddit?
I find it annoying, much like when people copy Twitter posts onto Mastodon. I come here to get away from that stuff.
Same. I could always use something like Teddit.net to browse Reddit without a log in but you lose out on the discussion and as far as I'm concerned the same thing happens when people dump links or repost content from other platforms.
Not a fan. If it gets too much I might temporarily block those instances.
Also I have some concerns that it is being reposted with the username of the OP attached. Basically taking that user's right to be forgotten away.
I didn't consider that. Looking at the Lemmy version of /r/TIFU for example it does quote the entirety of the text and I don't think the bot is programmed to update posts for edits so even changing the text to show a filler/place holder "Deleted" text wouldn't do anything.
As of right now I don’t care because it’s in my feed for only a few communities that are trying to get started. I don’t think it’s necessary for most communities though, and detrimental to the platform for larger communities.
0 out of 10. Wouldn’t recommend.
I like the community for the interaction and not the bare content. Cross-post from Reddit just makes me not to comment because I don’t want to talk to a bot.
It's the chicken/egg problem, with no content there's no community, but with no community there's no content. Even reddit at the very beginning had bots & admins with alt accounts reposting things from digg to get the ball rolling.
So news, articles, memes links I'm fine with them copying over here, because that's content, not the community. Anything to build up content quickly helps build the community. But things like askreddit questions or other self posts should be left on reddit, that's their identity, not ours
If I wanted reddit posts I would go back on Reddit. Posting a couple here and there I think is okay but not so much for flooding the place.
I understand the why to copy content from Reddit , even more if it's eg.: a community branching out from there to here, or people who are dissatisfied there trying to rebuild here. But those things ought to be done manually to build community, otherwise you are just building up yet another glorified aggregator.
Is Lemmy not a link aggregator?
Manually, or at least selectively.
True, the other day I only had red pandas on my feed, somedays I only have Technology posts. They are annoying.
True. I was kinda wondering if they could just have limits. Like, take the top 3% of reddit posts for a given sub in a particular 24h period, and also could stay at or below a max of 20% of the postings on the lemmy forum.
Not a huge fan, but I understand the thinking.
My issue with it, is let's say there's a self post and I respond to it. Knowing it's a bot post, I still want to contribute to the community, but I know I'm unlikely to get a response. It's possible it could start a conversation here though.
I get its a way to fill the communities with content, but it feels like a half baked attempt. Or an inflation of interactions.
Not sure the right route in these early days though.
I feel like it can be done for certain things that don’t require interaction from the OP (news content, daily threads, idk) but it feels useless for some others (Questions, etc.) because there’s just no point in answering them and the chance that it starts a discussion is relatively small.
One of things I like about Lemmy is that you can create a link post and still include text and subsequent links. Even with news articles I do like when people add additional text whether it's why they're posting it, a quote/TLDR, or additional links.
That might be because it gives me the impression it's less likely to be clickbait though.
undefined> One of things I like about Lemmy is that you can create a link post and still include text and subsequent links.
yeah that I really like as well. I can like an image that provides content to the community, but also still talk in the op rather than having to say "more info in comments" or something stupid like that.
I have commented on a few of them, and it just feel super empty.
That's a good point, the communities get more content, but it isn't meaningful content. You aren't interacting with a person, unless people are in the comments on it I guess.
Wouldn't that be stealing?
They are crediting the original posts.
I think its okay to seed content from reddit to establish the tone of a new community, but I'd rather people just do 10-20 posts by hand to prevent spam. If I had bots to do it though I'd probably save myself the time and use a bot too.
After the community has a bit of seed content I think it should stop.
I get that it SUCKS when it spams on new. But give some understanding to all the people trying to start from nothing on lemmy right now so that we can have a thriving community over here (and not all go back to reddit in boredom).
Not a fan myself. Obviously people can do what they want, but if I want reddit content that bad I'll go to reddit
I think it’s useless in the way it’s being done. Barely any engagement on posts like that.
I'm probably just a loon and making a mountain out of a molehill, but this type of automation bothers me. Whoever sets it up can easily script with bias to filter out content they personally disagree with. I understand humans do this naturally without botting, but making it automated changes the speed and reach to a degree I'm not comfortable engaging with.
I think that's a bad idea. The bots will post al lot of posts but the community here won't be big enough to have many comments on the posts. Essentially it will turn this forum into an empty wasteland.
I'm not a fan, because I don't want a Reddit 2.0. Reddit is still there if you want it, though. I wanna see what this will become. I like it so far, I don't think it needs help in that way.
I'm fine with it. Both Reddit and Kbin/Lemmy are link aggregators so it's just what they do.
The only concern I have is that the bot should rate-limit itself so that there's not a desert of threads with no comments.
I have moved a couple tutorial posts of mine to their respective communities, but the mass reposting is obnoxious and pointless.
People post form Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, Software release... Reddit is no different taking from other sites. If it's automated or not matters, (IMHO). More content at this point is good. Taking from Reddit, (or any other sources), shouldn't matter. Ideally, the honorable thing to do is give the proper reference to your source, (or even better, from Reddit's source).
Ed: Spelling and formatting
Unpopular opinion: I think it's a good idea. Fediverse needs two things right now, content and a solid and easy to use UI. Without those it'll never pull people over from the already established communities. So temporarily I think yes more content is good even if it's copied over
Yes on the UI. I use kbin primarily. It has a decent UI to start with. However, I tried Lenny’s UI and it definitely needs work. Stuff loads in from the top of the page while you are scrolling down to see the content, making it hard to navigate. It needs a facelift.
I think that bots that repost automatically are lame, personally, but as long as they are clearly tagged and I have the ability to ignore anything from any bot that's fine. We had the same issue on Mastodon, I still can't figure out how to straight up block bots on there which is frustrating so instead I just filter out any posts that say "twitter" or "RT".
I don't have any issue with bots as long as they're easy to block across the board instead of individually.
I do think it's lame and that y'all are better than that.
The same way about chatgpt being used to generate messages here, it's low effort content and I prefer actual human interaction instead of mindless copy pasting. If you think something is worth posting, find the source and make the submission yourself, just blindly copying from reddit is... meh
Also don't like it
I blocked the lemmit bot and I haven't seen as much. I think it's silly. If they person who originally posted it on Reddit is now in the fediverse and wants to share their old posts, they can. Otherwise, I'm not a fan.
Do Lemmy users have the option to hide bot posts?
There is a check box for "show bot accounts" in settings, which I unchecked after blocking one of them, lol.
I have zero interest in it, and I've blocked the accounts I've seen doing it.
I want original content written by people on the fediverse, so bot reposts of Reddit content fails in every possible way.
Cut ties with Reddit. Period.
the only reason I don't block repost bot accounts is so I can downvote their posts every chance I get.
Are you doing that on communities dedicated to reposting content?
I like seeing the posts, but I am confused about 1) if I am supposed to respond to them and 2) the relation between Reddit content and lemmy content.
Having posts from Reddit on lemmy is like buying into an apple that tastes like a pear. It's not insane or awful, it just isn't an apple.
If lemmy users want to repost content here themselves, fine, but if you want to turn lemmy INTO reddit, no dang thank you
Shits me to tears. I auto assume reposts are bots farming updoots
I've been seeing it too recently and wasn't sure how I felt about it. I think i think it's a shame as there have been a few times I've seen things and began mentally composing a reply before realising there is no point as it won't start a dialogue with OP.
On the other hand, we're still a small community here and it is increasing the available content for people to view.
Hopefully, it's just a stop-gap and soon won't be necessary.
I don't care. At the end of the day I switched to lemmy beacause I couldn't be on reddit. I know we're all just getting started and it's hard to get content. I'm not gonna start complaining about reposting, it's better than the feed being empty..
I dont mind reposts from reddit or elswehere when an actual person is reposting something they like or find interesting, people on all social media are reposting memes and content from other social media, it's as natural as (not) pooping.
blocked that stupid bot.
I understand trying to get the extra content to get the ball rolling, but I don't care for the practice.
It's too low-effort and all the empty posts discourage anyone from contributing or commenting since it feels like talking to a bot (because that's exactly what it is).
I don't like it at all. It's similar to the bots who post twitter content in Mastodon and it's annoying enough there, but here it actively makes forming a community more difficult.
Good to see widespread deterrence here
I think it's a good idea. Pull the content from a centralized source and fediverse it.
How do i see who is a repost bot?
You will know it when you see it, the developer is open about what their doing. It’s not a bad thing.
I think it depends on the content. I like that breaking news like the Ukraine and Russia stuff gets posted so we can consolidate all of the updates from the fediverse and Reddit but don’t have an interest in other bot items. Some memes are good but I’m on the fence with those.
Eh, part of the issue with leaving reddit is the loss of good posts and comments from there to search for.
With the post bots, some of that will end up federated, and eventually searchable. I'm okay with that.
I just wish the bots were focused on better content. I'm seeing a lot of stuff like AITA, but not much like askhistorians, and none of the in depth comments that are often the truly valuable stuff
Just so you know there is an Ask Historians community. You likely just need to search it so it becomes linked with the instance you are in
Thanks!