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.
deleted by creator
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.
deleted by creator
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.
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.
deleted by creator
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
Wouldn’t that be stealing?
They are crediting the original posts.
I have commented on a few of them, and it just feel super empty.
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 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’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.
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.
