People want to see more happening here. The fediverse is not quite the ghost town it was a year ago, but it's still pretty quiet, especially once you start digging into hobbies.
Of course, the good solution is not bot-driven, but human-driven. But people are lazy and think that they'd rather repost thousands of posts with a bot than figure out what links they think are good and post those.
I used to use a bot in one of my communities to help me out. Turns out it spammed way too much. Once I got feedback from the community I turned it off. I now have sources fed to me privately via RSS and then filter content based on what I think the community will enjoy and post it manually. Is it harder? Yes. But the community has more engagement, comments more, and votes positively more often since I started doing it this way. I also gain consistent new subscribers daily. I also have control over the "nozzle" so if multiple stories are worth posting but there are too many, I can sideline some for when the news slows down and post them later.
This is exactly how bots should be used on the platform. Unleashing a firehose of bot-post content drowns out user activity - using a bot to source filtered content that's actually interesting and valuable? I'm all for that.
There's something I've noticed about Lemmy, mind you I don't use any apps or whatever, just through the browser on PC, but, this one thing makes the platform feel so hollow and annoying.
Scrolling through whatever feed. All Active or whatever. You're on page 2. You see an interesting title. You click on it to read the post and comments. You click back. You're now on page 1 of the feed again. So it feels like Lemmy is really trying to be about 30 posts deep at any given time.
I've been wondering why people have been reposting Reddit posts on Lemmy. If I wanted Reddit posts, I'd go on Reddit.
I hope at least AskReddit stays far, far away. I don't need dozens of "Sexers of Lemmy, what is the sexiest sex you've ever sexed" shit every day here.
I mean there's already !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com
Which is filled with exactly these kinds of questions. Or shit like "What naughty things did you get up to today?"
It is a NSFW instance, so as long as it stays contained there I don't see the problem.
Don’t worry the repost bots spam posts from there too
/c/ihavesex
I immediately block them as soon as I realize they're a repost bot. Has cleaned up my feed nicely.
Just sucks that every new user will have to jump through hoops and block a dozen accounts before Lemmy is useable.
Not to mention that even opening some of the bot accounts pages to block them crashes the page sometimes because they have so many posts
I’m almost there, still at the internal dialogue of “oh damnit” and mild annoyance stage but haven’t quite gotten to the “do something about it stage”
Came here to say this. As seen in this thread, there are people who seem to want it, so I see nothing wrong with letting them have it. I wonder how hard it would be to implement a blocklist to make this a bit less of a hassle.
The ones that post 60 articles about every sports team from some aggregate of RSS feeds and run on a timer every 30 mins and clog up the feed are annoying as well
This is the main reason it's so annoying.
You try to scroll by new and you see a hundred posts on the same community from a reddit bot.
I don't understand why anyone cares. I'm pro-repost bot, whether a real human posts the content or not makes no difference to me, I just want the content.
The major one I've noticed/been annoyed by is someone reposting r/buildapc questions to Lemmy. None of the responses. No way to communicate to the original redditor to genuinely respond, just...here's the post devoid of all other information.
On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the most enjoyable, how would you rate that as "content?"
1 but I'd also just block that community anyway
I'd also consider the original reddit one a 1
I've used reposter bots on my hungarian meme community, since I can't make good enough memes and it's really niche. After a popular vote, I have disabled it, but unfortunately now the community is really really slow again.
Honestly, it's so easy to block accounts, so if there's only one bot in you community you should just keep it.
If they don't like it they can block it.
Yeah, the worst thing is in smal and slow communities your comment won't get any replies, and the highest chance of reply is from the op, but if it's a repost bot, there's obviously no chance of that. Just have to hope for organic growth.
Also, there are hun communities? Never found any while on here.
Yes, it's an unfortunate situation, but I was thinking of maybe reviving the bot and making it post really sparsely, like once in 2 days or something like that, but that will require a popular vote again.
Yes, there are some actually, which honestly surprised me a bit: !hungary@lemmy.world (They collected all the hun communities in a post)
"My" community is this one: !fosttalicska@sopuli.xyz
Things would get really quiet without them.
Eventually I can see getting rid of them, but for now they're keeping Lemmy active.
They’re doing the opposite.
A new user comes to Lemmy and sees nothing but the same posts they saw on Reddit, but now all of them have no comments and almost no upvotes because there’s so much of it posted to such a small environment that everything else gets drowned out.
After blocking every one of the dogshit bots I see just as many quality posts, by actual users, with actual comments.
I barely see them probably due to the communities I'm subscribed to, but to me Lemmy looks plenty active without them.
Eventually I can see getting rid of them, but for now they’re keeping Lemmy active.
Do a multitude of automated posts without comments and conversation really count as activity? Before I simply hid bot posts via settings, I'd rarely see any conversations appearing on Reddit reposts. Even now if you look at probably the most prolific bot instance/account behind this, Lemmit.online bot, you can see this for yourself.
Interesting archival project, I suppose, but it certainly doesn't seem to generate activity in terms of conversation, besides posts like this.
Do a multitude of automated posts without comments and conversation really count as activity?
Yes, absolutely. Posts are activity just as much as comments - arguably even more so, since Lemmy is not immune to Reddit's flaw of having a hundred comments saying essentially the same thing. Some subreddits have insightful comments that are worthwhile in-and-of themselves - but they are few and far between.
I have blocked them and things dont get that quiet at all.
I think it is better to have a small number of posts with real engagement than a large number of posts with no engagement on them at all
We should compile a list of the biggest repost bots so everyone can ban em
We should make a repost bot bot. That automates the reporting of repost bots. Then, watch the outrage as it posts about reposts. Botception could potentially grow from this very flashpoint.
Just use my blocklist at this point lol
The great thing about lemmy, or the fediverse at large, is that people can have control and freedom over their social media platform. Block what you don't like and subscribe to what you do like. There's no single large entity deciding what everyone should see.
The bots exist because there are people that like them for whatever reason. Maybe there are niche communities that they want to keep up with, or career/school/local communities that they still want to read about without having to open up Reddit.
why do you suck?
It's fine asking why, but like I said above, people have the freedom to customize Lemmy to their liking. Let them do what they want and customize your experience for yourself.
The drawback to this is lower new user engagement.
Face it, most people who come look at Lemmy aren't looking to block several dozen accounts and communities to make the feed useable. Most don't even want to look for communities at first, they just want to see what the vibe is on the main feed, and judge from there
If we want to draw in more users and increase engagement, we need to cater to more than just the people who are ready to customize everything before judging. There's a few possible ways to go about this, but it's very clear that "just block things you don't like" isn't going to be enough.
I realize the drawbacks to any solution here, but as it stands now, even when I block the bots I don't like, there's not enough real content and discussion, and my own engagement is decreasing. The solution is probably not to ban all these bots, but leaving it alone as it is isn't working well either
They should create their own instance so the rest of us can defederate.
that would be lemmit.online
I'm convinced that Reddit themselves are either behind those bots, or are deliberately looking the other way. Those bots posting and commenting make the site look more active than it actually is.
Need context on the question. You mean reposting stuff on Reddit or reposting stuff from Reddit?
Read some other comments and use your critical thinking cap
Everybody witness my amazing technical prowess and bot configuration skills. Repetitively.
Hah! I remember reddit
It’s difficult to build new communities. You need fresh content to attract a crowd and unfortunately the best way to do this is with Reddit reposts.
It's the easiest way to seed content but isn't the best for building a community. Communities need to be more than RSS feeds. And that missing element is a human filter IMHO. Curated content.
I don't think most people mind curated reposts at all. No one wants to see every reddit post copied over en masse. Well, I guess a some do, but they suck, as is covered in the post title.
It doesn’t seem like it is effective as I rarely see any upvotes or comments on the reposts.
Nonsense. The reposts are not content. It's just spam, which dilutes what little content we do have.
