Most postings on lemmy are simply Reddit “archive” bots. Why is this so prevalent?
Because people think “content” is what makes this kind of site great. In reality it’s discussion.
To be fair, it’s both. There is no discussion without content, so having some content helps to kickstart discussion. But excessive botspam just makes it look even emptier.
Yes you need content, but without the discussion the content is just a firehose of random garbage.
…and without content, there isn’t any discussion to start with.
like i said, i agree that healthy discussion is the best, but we need something to kickstart it.
Ofc! It’s what made the platform i Refuse Entusiastically During Dis Intervention To Discuss so great!
Luckily there are a lot more users than there were a couple of weeks ago.
Blocking the bots has really gone a long way to make my Lemmy experience more enjoyable.
Is it a matter of simply blocking the users that are bots?
Yeah that’s what I’ve been doing
Blocking is good option to improve individual experience, but a flood of low effort, spammy content from bots makes a very bad first impression on newcomers.
Theres an option in your profile settings to hide bot accounts
In what client? I’m on Memmy and there doesn’t seem to exist such an option
You’re double posting.
Its not in memmy its via the lemmy web ui
Double posting??? And thanks btw
Im guessing its the memmy bug where it doesn’t seem to post so you hit submit again and then both go through
Oh crap, well thanks!
In what client? I’m on Memmy and there doesn’t seem to exist such an option
I just blocked the ones doing the reddit archiving. If a bot is annoying you just block it!
Is it a matter of simply blocking the users that are bots?
If anything is going to kill lemmy it will be these low effort content bots. Just post after post of either reddit reposts no one is replying to or random news links no one is replying to. When I scroll lemmy at night before bed 90% of the content is garbage with no comments posted to it.
It makes me want to go back to reddit in spite of it all.
ee is trying to fix that, we had a thread about bot infestations. We put rules in place for bot overrunning of feeds
Lemmit is a scourge. They claim to be trying to “bootstrap” Lemmy by providing content but so much of it is questions with no responses (on Lemmy) or Imgur links to deleted images.
I honestly wish the major instances would ban repost bots. We don’t need to literally copy Reddit to Lemmy. It’s just polluting it.
I don’t see the point in most. Like memes and news maybe but so many posts are meant to drive discussion or is a question
Day or two a go while browsing feed set to sort all and new, i saw there was a bot posting same news article three different communities, all different instances, and a another bot posting the same exact news article fourth time on the same community that allready posted.
I dont think it is necessary from bot to post same content on multiple communities.
We’re trying to build communities. A good way to do it is to have bots post content, so there’s stuff to see on our feeds.
It’s always a balancing act that doesn’t work for everybody. But the beauty here is that each individual can curate their own feed.
Edit: I misspoke, I’m not someone who actively uses of promotes bot use. I just remember people talking about this discussion previously and this was a justification used. OP asked a question, I provided an answer. It’s not MY answer, but it’s still one. Don’t shoot the messenger.
It rubs me the wrong way tbh, because it doesn’t feel authentic at all
+1 I Have blocked a good number of these.
That’s entirely understandable. That’s the thing, though. It’s hard to have a community grow on its own, organically, in these times. A large majority of users are rather passive, they don’t actively contribute by posting or commenting so much. If they don’t get enough content on a topic/community, they’ll forget it exists.
So, to build a community, you get a bot to “seed” it with content until enough people know it exists and contribute stuff themselves.
It’s weird and fucked and, unfortunately, it’s the world we live in now.
I disagree, it just leads to spam and people blocking the bots, and therefore the communities. I think things will grow organically at whatever speed. People have to realise this isn’t Reddit, and likely won’t ever be as big, and that it’s good that it won’t be.
I disagree, it just leads to spam and people blocking the bots, and therefore the communities.
Yes, I’ve blocked a number of start up communities because they’ve flooded my feed with posts. Some of them even seemed interesting and I subscribed…only to immediately unsubscribe and block after seeing it has 10 posts an hour with 0 engagement.
I think things will grow organically at whatever speed.
No it won’t. Social networks require a critical mass to get started. It’s why platforms like Uber throw money at drivers and consumers at the start - without a critical mass, it won’t work. Spez and his team had conversations with each other using sock puppet accounts during the early days of Reddit.
Fair enough, I feel that there are enough people on Lemmy now that it is past the getting started phase though. If new people come on and see bot after bot I feel that it will be a worse experience than having fewer communities with organic engagement.
I think this is disingenuous at best. You are creating a ton of content no one cares about and the result is that people are not only blocking the bot but also blocking the bot community. So if you are doing this to “create a community” the result, from my perspective, is that you are aborting the community before it ever gets a chance to start. I know that I wont subscribe to a bot community nor will I in the future go back and check out those communities to see if they are still bots. They are just dead to me at that point.
I block every bot and every bot spam community. We don’t need fake shit here. This isn’t Reddit.
We’re trying to build communities. A good way to do it is to have bots post content, so there’s stuff to see on our feeds.
There’s always ups and downs with everything. By using bots you might get subscribers, but people like me who don’t agree with being force fed robot spam will actively avoid such subs.
In fact I find it so disagreeable I refuse to donate resources so people can host spam on my instance instead of actually posting content themselves.
I would not like to be part of a community that finds auto-generated content to be of an acceptable quality.
I think the effect here is more good than bad. Nobody wants to post to a community that’s just bot spam. You’re trying to skip the small community phase in favor of faking being a previous community with bots, but that phase is essential for community development and cohesion.
I agree with you. I’m not actively promoting bot use, just explaining the thought process of those that use them.
