I’m new to lemmy but would like your opinion about instances like lemmy.online
Useless. It separates the content from OP so they never see replies. Worse than spam, spam at least has a point to it.
An actual bot can be coded to post every few hours, or even only post if a non bot hasn’t posted in x amount of time
What’s worse is when a real human takes posts from reddit and spams them for a couple hours all over Lemmy.
I have no idea how many accounts I’ve blocked for spamming “memes” like that, but it’s safely in the double digits.
The NSFW subs are horrible about it. Someone makes a new one and then posts dozens of pictures that all show up at once.
Even worse is the “sfw” ones.
There was one account that made like 5 general ones for celebrities, and then a specific sub for every celebrity. So if he posted once, he posted 5 times in a row.
When I blocked him, there was like 100+ subs. It made browsing /all unbearable.
Worse than spam, spam at least has a point to it.
Ehh, it’s very clearly labeled for what the purpose is and it’s also easy to block (if someone is using the NEW feed and is affected by the volume of posts).
Some people want the functionality of the bot and a big part of the Fediverse is to bring control of a platform back to the user. Lemmit is providing that functionality the right way
Repost bots are a soulless, sad attempt to bloat Lemmy with content.
Looks at !Superbowl@lemmy.world vs !Capybara@lemmy.smeargle.fans.
Both are clones of their Reddit counterpart, but Superbowls has actual fresh content from users here on Lemmy, and is quite active as a result.
Capybaras is just sad reposting from Reddit. Each post has little to no engagementThe word “content” I think is the problem. I’m not here for content, I’m here for discussion.
I block them all. If I wanted reddit content, I’d still be on reddit.
They are spam bots that should be blocked instantly.
More than that, they should be banned
Banned from where? They have their own instance.
Banned from every other instance. Constant spam posting should be a bannable offence
They only post in their own communities on their own instance. You will only see their posts if you’re subscribed to those communities or browse All Why would you consider that spam?
There have been times when I’ve been browsing All and the feed is full of bot spam. It chokes off engagement here and pushes people back to Reddit and the other bot spamming communities, like Hacker News.
If it was in small doses it wouldn’t be as bad, but there are times when there are dozens of posts in a row from a handful of communities.
I know that I can subscribe to the communities I like and browse from Home, but that’s no good for newcomers to the site, or for people who prefer to use All. You shouldn’t have to manually curate your feed to avoid the huge amounts of spam that’s designed to take you away from Lemmy.
It’s a double-edged sword IMHO. On one hand, it means that people on Lemmy don’t need to give reddit any clicks / traffic in order to read the same stuff, but on the other hand, the sheer amount of reddit reposted content can easy drown out actually original content on Lemmy that might have been equally or more interesting. And if it looks like Lemmy content is 99% cloned stuff from reddit anyway, there’s no real incentive to prefer Lemmy content over reddit. Not many people actually take the time and dig deep for OC inbetween reposts.
What the Fediverse needs, is lots of original content not found anywhere else, but as long as the total userbase isn’t big enough to offer that on a consistent schedule, then copypasted content is still better than NO content at all …
Personally I dislike bots tho. If an actual human decides to repost interesting things from reddit and actively participates in discussions, that’s something I can get behind. A soulless bot just copypasting random stuff… no thanks.
The problem is that 99% of the time I have to go to reddit for information, the information is in the comments, not the original post, and those dummy get brought over
I’ve unsubbed from any comms that had them. They all become ghost towns with zero discussion.
I block all Reddit content when I see it. The bots themselves, the lemmit instances, everything.
I refuse to give Spez’s trainwreck another iota of engagement and feel anything that does, should be treated as suspect.
I don’t mind too much when it comes to news, or other articles… Even pictures and memes… Whatever.
The one that confuses the shit out of me is stuff that’s supposed to be interactive, like AMA or AITA or something. OP will never see the replies, so… Why?
Something like the news can have very different discussions depending on who is in the community/subreddit where it was posted, meanwhile, posts asking for help or something… The entire point is to give OP a solution/answer to their inquiry. Why make a bot to bring that question to Lemmy when OP won’t be aware it happened, and will have no way to know that responses have been given here? It’s dumb.
There’s still a lot of things that are being posted both to Reddit and Lemmy, and having that done by a bot instead of a person… Well, I’m not mad at it. It’s coming here one way or another.
I completely blocked lemmit.online using the handy dandy instance block feature because i just do not give a fuck about Reddit and none of the reposted content is even good.
it fills up my subscribed/all page with so much spam that I can no longer see any of the naturally generated lemmy user content, there is zero activity on any post, and nobody on reddit will see anything if I comment.
I block them because it’s pretty pointless to engage with when OP isn’t there to see your comments. On the other hand if these bots scraping reddit costs reddit money then that’s cool.
They have their uses. In the Canadian version of r/BuildAPCsale or whatever it’s called, it’s great – get the information about the sale and a link to the product.
In r/relationships, and the entire post and discussion are about OP’s problem, they’re completely useless.
There are certain niches where automated mirroring is a little useful.
Game day threads, part sales (where people need to be quick) are a couple examples.
I have most post bots blocked though (lemmit, alien, lululemon, etc.).
Like others said the downsides are that they drown out original posts and discussions with authors that never respond to comments. Consequently, the not-logged-in experience on instances that “leave it up to users to block” will appear messy and full of garbage.
I think they have their place but those automated should be contained to communities that want them, easily identified, easy to block and post rate limited to reasonable levels.
A yet to be developed feature in Lemmy would be the ability to somehow “opt-in follow” automated bot posts rather than the current “opt-out” model.
I’m of the opinion that populating lemmy with bots mirroring reddit content does not add any value to the threadiverse. Lemmy would be better served by everyone finding one article, image, video, whatever, each day and posting it in a relevant community, than by everyone setting up bots to spam the ALL feed with random content from reddit. And I try my best to practice what I preach.
I think they are important to keep the people who’d leave otherwise because of lack of content, which ultimately would effect even people who dislike the bots. I personally haven’t noticed the bots yet, but I also don’t pay attention to it much. Maybe the issue isn’t as big as someone people make it sound like? Worth reflecting on.
