Ok, imagine this, you are on reddit (say, a slow hobby focused subreddit), everybody there is nice and knowledgeable, and one day, the mods there announced that since there is not enough “content” on the sub, they are going to use a bot to repost content from 9gag in order to “bolster engagement” and “grow the community”.
How would you feel about that?
If you feel upset and grossed out, you’re exactly right.
I don’t think there is a single non-spam subreddit where that kind of behavior would be tolerated without being called out for blatant mod abuse. No community in the world would ever tolerate automated reposting from another website, not reddit, not 4chan, not any forums of any size, even 9gag, I repeat, BLOODY 9GAG, was tired of being called out for reddit reposting and started making original content.
So why exactly should this kind of behavior be tolerated here?
Now, I’m sure some mods here did it with good intentions, but again, the road to the hell that is modern reddit is PAVED with good intentions. Content for the sake of content is bad, and we already knew it is bad, which is why Gallowboob was so thoroughly disliked, he generates “”“”““content””“”“”, in other words, spam that drowns out the normal people who can’t compete with a professional marketer, much less a bot, which is exactly the reason why “Just block the bots” doesn’t work, because it ruins the genuine engagements on a forum by drawing people to the lowest common denominator of “”“”“”“”“”“content”“”“”“”“”“”“”.
Reddit, over the years, has turned into a platform for “bolstering engagement” for advertisers, and it does that by algorithmically stoking conflicts between people so they would endlessly argue and doomscroll. Why would we want that here? Now, I think most of us like the Lemmy/kbin right now because of the lack of bots here, and the conversations happen naturally and genuinely. I’ve even seen people here try to engage the bots, not realizing that they would never get a response out of them, because it felt normal to just talk about things.
(Eat your robot hearts out, @L4s and @BotIt)
Suppose then, if this repost bot situation was indeed temporary, why would people want to make original content if they are just going to be drowned out by bots? What’s to stop someone from turning on bots from /r/dankmemes or /r/tiktokcringe? The bots are not members of the community, because they are not people (save the /r/botsright joke for more appropriate times), and over time, we will just become dependent on the bots hosing us down directly from that burning dumpster fire and become doomscrolling addicts again.
That’s the number two lesson from the failure of Voat: that repost bots, like hate, should also not be tolerated, and Reddit will never die if we keep feeding it.
Everybody here are still currently all “Oh fuck reddit, fuck spez, I deleted my reddit account and all of my comments and will never go back again”, but after finally getting away from reddit, why are you so insistent on trying to turn this place back to the worst part of reddit again?
And if the reddit migration on July 1st does indeed occur, do you think they would be ecstatic to see a place that’s mostly reddit reposts, but with less “”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“content”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”“”? If they wanted reddit, why wouldn’t they just go back to reddit?
When will we finally be rid of reddit, if we are the ones keeping it on life support?
I will say, if I sound frustrated, it’s because I am frustrated, because I actually can’t believe I even had to say this. Judging from the comments on this thread yesterday, I think a majority of people here would agree with me. We have something good here, and I’d like to keep it that way a bit longer.
Now, I very much appreciate that our admins here at lemmy.world and their amazing job of preemptively blocking suspicious bot infested instances, so I’m asking politely for @ruud, @Antik and the rest of our good admin team here to put their foot down on not allowing reddit repost spambots and nip this problem in the bud before it takes root, so I can get back to shitposting in peace.
Be better than reddit.
Burn reddit down.
Hi!
We actually had a talk about bots this week between admins and some mods!
There was a bot from Lemmy.online that did nothing but import Reddit threads to their instance and when we checked they imported nearly 40k threads from different subreddits. All these threads were posted into communities where the Lemmy.online bot was the only moderator. So that would mean there would be actually zero moderation there and it would ultimately fall on us as admins. So we blocked that bot and instance. We nipped that one right in the bud already!
We are still discussing in where to draw the line, ofcourse there are useful bots: I like those tldr-bots for example. But those should only be active in communities where they have been activated by the moderators.
As you probably noticed this week has already been a big one on the part of decision making and behind the scenes work trying to get this instance updated to 0.18.1 and such, so we didn’t finish talking about this amongst the LW team yet. So yes, feel free to express your thoughts on bots and how you feel this should be handled in this thread and you can be sure everything here will be considered.
Hi Antik! Appreciate you for listening to mine and many people here’s concerns. My thoughts on this is pretty clear, I don’t want bots here, but I will concede that the tl;dr bot is useful to others, even though I don’t personally use it, so it should stay where it’s needed.
However, having a bot running around reposting 5 articles a minute from reddit sets a very dangerous precedent for the quality and community here, and the moderators that set them up usually don’t even check what they are posting as they are automated feeds, they have comments calling the article out, but of course, there won’t be any response from a bot.
A lot of it is just ragebait from /r/politics and fearmongering bait from /r/technology. I just don’t want that feeling of awfulness here, and I think many would agree with me too.
The consensus so far was a bit like this: as long as the bot is in a channel that is actively moderated and not just spamming as you say “5 articles per minute”, then that would be ok. We’re still a bit unsure where to draw the line here, as I said we haven’t really finished that discussion yet - this week has already been quite eventful.
But even yesterday I received a report from a bot that reported a post from a user who simply said they were “having a shitty day” as “Toxic and Rude”. Those kind of bots will only give us more work with the false positives. So I reached out to the owner of that bot and told them we definitely didn’t want that kind of “help”.
My concern is that usually those bots are setup by the moderators of communities, such as @L4s@lemmy.world or botit on WorldNews here, and, of course, if they are the ones that set it up, then they will not exert any oversight onto them.
(Again, I don’t think they did it with bad intentions, so don’t attack them please.)
I think that would just lead to what we disliked about reddit’s power mods in that they control the full content to push onto everyone, because they are faster.
Again, my stance on this is that Lemmy should be a place for human beings, and we should minimize the use of bots to what’s only necessary, there’s enough places on the internet for bots to post spam, so automated content repost, especially from reddit, needs to be stopped.
Thanks for blocking that instance.
I tried to explain to their admin why the entire concept was bad for the fediverse but they didn’t seem to understand.
People can do whatever they want with their instances, but something like that should defederate themselves and live in a void.
That isn’t the way to try and build content or community over here. We have the high ground. We don’t need to stoop down to their level.
There’s a bot I’ve been seeing these past couple of days that is constantly reposting posts with the title cut off in half. Like, it’d just cut it off mid sentence and replace the rest with three dots. I think it’s called @L4s@lemmy.world
My apologies, it is due to the character limit as far as I understand it.
Totally agree - when the server was quiet and empty it was one thing, but the server isn’t quiet or empty anymore.
It’s annoying seeing memes reposted by bots (people can do that just fine all on their own), but I’ve seen stuff like AITA threads - the OP isn’t even here to read it… Is the idea to judge people behind their backs?
I found it extra upsetting because I’m hoping the Lemmy version will be more like AITA using to be - it turned from “who is the problem here” to “did you have the right to do this”
We’re not on reddit here, we can just call out AITA for the cesspool of lazy creative writing and the absurdly judgemental responses it always was. Nothing like that sub that embodies the worst of reddit should make it over here.
Beware… borderline elitist thought below.
There’s a group of well-meaning folks (more than I am comfortable with) who want EVERYONE to come over from reddit. A subset of those have decided that the best way to do this is by mirroring content.
THAT IS THE LAST THING I WANT ON ANY TIMELINE.
I came here to GTFO of a forum aggregator that became a corpo-coopted hellscape of shitposts, bots, and shouting into the void; and I sure as hell don’t want anyone to bring that shit over here.
A miniscule fraction of users on reddit post, comment, or even help to rank content in any valuable way. The rest detract from any sense of community, clutter conversations.
They need not be placated, invited, or made to feel at home here.
They still have reddit.
Let them use it.
They LIKE it.
Exactly. They can choose to come here, but if they want to go down with the ship, let them.
But I don’t want them to drag us down with them.
Hi @MargotRobbie@lemmy.world - you already saw my post on this in the l4s thread but I thought it would be good to post it here too.
We agree that we don’t want bots blindly importing from other news sources, be it reddit or others.
Bots in general should be allowed, as long as:
- they follow the lemmy.world guidelines on content moderation
- they have the approval from the community moderator/owner they post in
- they are clearly identifying as a bot
- they are not “spammy”
- they are not used for advertisement
Malicious bots and bots going against these rules should be reported and they will be banned.
Hey, appreciate your thoughts on this topic, I think that’s a considerate and measured approach.
To a majority of us, I think we’re all figuring this out as we go. Let’s just see how this works out, and I really do hope this works.
Again, thanks.
Yes, same for us @MargotRobbie@lemmy.world (the real one btw). Sometimes we need a bit of time to decide where to draw the line. Example: I just had to ban a bot who’s only post was an ad. So let’s add “no advertisements” to the list, even though it’s in the general server rules.
So let’s add “no advertisements” to the list
Unless it’s for “Barbie”, right? :)
Hey, that gag expires in 10 days, I need to milk it for as much as I can.
Oh bugger.
I will talk because lifting content from Reddit is how mildly Infuriating got its feet off the ground in the first place, and has the subscriber count it has.
It hasn’t relied only on that, I have been finding my own original content and posting it there myself but it’s hard when I feel I am the only one actively contributing. Many people here still are very much lurkers and will only want to scroll through what other people post and not make their own content.
There isn’t anything wrong with that, but you are going to find people won’t keep coming back without things to keep them interested.
That said context matters, there is a difference between a hobbiest community, and somewhere like mildly Infuriating where it’s a place to just share things that mildly Infuriates people. Whether right or wrong, I do not see an issue with Reddit reposts or reposts from anywhere but I hope more people do actually create content… And I also hope the people in this thread who are against Reddit reposts are actively engaging communities themselves or you aren’t really setting up these communities for success.
I do not agree with bot reposting, I feel that would end in diminishing returns anyway, whilst you have mountains of content, you have too much content and it doesn’t give people enough time to build up discussions and drowns out people who will legitimately post their own threads. Meaning you will likely not see anyone bother posting at all.
In the end… Banning outright, doesn’t feel right. Having them exist as their own places, whilst not something I 100% agree with don’t think getting the pitchforks out and wanting them to disappear is the answer when you can make your own community on another instance and grow it organically. Then block ones that you don’t like. Which you will be doing regardless as we have federated instances that will not align with you morally/ethically anyway until they are eventually defederated if at all.
Not having Karma also didn’t feel right originally either. But it ended up making this place way better.
I don’t want to be rude, but let me ask you this question: Why should I move to another instance instead of doing all we can to stop this place from turning into reddit? Why should I move to Mars instead of trying to stop climate change from destroying us all?
To be a redditor is to despair. Despair is the enemy of progress.
I agree, I personally don’t want them, I like talking to people. I brought it up when they first started spamming, and I blocked lemmit. It was actually the first time i ever blocked anything lol. Out of my control after that, but it’s definitely important to talk about it. I don’t think we need them. Been having fun so far.
Fwiw, if the posts rolled in way slower, with no bot tags, it probably would have flown under the radar lol.
I started blocking the bots. They’re annoying AF.
I posted a few days ago about this and got tons of agreement that it’s at least dumb, really hoping we can get the admins to stop this shit. Manually blocking them myself as they show up is a losing war.
There is a setting to not show bots.
- The bots that repost reddit were not properly marked as bots.
- I’ve stated why “just block them if you don’t want to see them” doesn’t work, because they are by nature, attention sucking black holes that ruin the feeling of community by splitting them and drawing them into low effort content.
Like a lot of people here on Lemmy, I was on reddit for 10+ years… and I’d say for a couple of years that half of redit are reposts… the same pic, the same caption, and often the same top comments reposted by bots to gain karma.
At one time I was blocking reposters but now that there’s certainly hundreds of bots doing it, it’s harder.
I will not miss reddit.
And we need to prevent this place from turning into reddit, and getting rid of the repost bots is the first item on the list.
People set them up to help grow communities by having a lot of content but it just kills them instead. I opened a Linux gaming community and it was 95% just bot reposts from the Linux gaming subreddit, all with zero comments and 1 or maybe 2 up votes per post. It just makes you not want to comment at all cause what is the point?
I came to Lemmy to get away from reddit, bot reposts just funnel traffic back to reddit. The endless reposts just leads to the one conclusion of “Oh, this is all just links to reddit, I should just go directly to reddit as it will be a better source for this content.”
Meanwhile I stumbled upon another community that barely had any posts and it has much more interaction because the few users that -are- there feel much more included. In the early 2000s I was part of several forums that really only had about 10 active members, but they were active and eventually saw growth. People join and see a small group of people talking and then join in the conversation.
I agree. Bots should only be allowed if they show exceptional utility to the community.
Yeah, nobody really needs a bot that counts how many times you say “this” or smugly correcting your grammar. It was so awful there at reddit.
I think it adds character. I didnt like when they were global, but when they hung around certain subreddits it gave flavor to the place
Limited and local are the keywords here though
I see. The difficulty is keeping them limited and local.
Besides, wouldn’t you want to be the one to make the funny comment instead of a bot?
I mean, keeping them local is easy - if anything much easier. I like the idea of summoning them, maybe a mod summoning and banishing them to have them watch a community
And bots shouldn’t be acting like humans, they should be doing things only they could or should do. Like haiku bot, n-word bot, things like tallying votes for AITA, or even tracking nominations and building best of communities
They were misused on Reddit, but we can do more with them here. Probably starting a goodbot that messages admins so they can stay ahead of the inevitable bot explosion
It’s going to come to a grinding halt when those bots lose API access July 1st
Just another way Reddit decisions will help Lemmy grow - can’t get drowned in repost bots if they’re cut off at the knees :)
Most of them don’t use the API afaik
Good, I hope they die.
I think bots can be used for news etc. I don’t see anything wrong with that. It’s basically like blog post with discussion. Give you topic to talk about. Obviously bots commenting makes little to sense.
Im split on this. I don’t want a ton of bots spamming memes all over Lemmy but I really do want all the articles that are posted from the news subs to make their way over here. The only thing I find useful from Reddit is that. If one bot reposting all the news means thousands of actual users don’t have to engage with Reddit then I think that’s a net positive.
Since joining lemmy I’ve mostly avoided Reddit but during that 24-48hr period where Wagner was revolting against Putin i had to go back to Reddit because their up to minute news feed was posting updates faster than what we have here. If a bot brought all those posts over here I’d be over the moon.
I agree with all of this, but some people like reddit for other reasons, say, /r/videos for example. Lemmy is currently lacking that, and if we can fill that piece it would mean a lot less users even thinking about reddit. That’s mine and a few other’s goals here, make it so nobody even considers going to reddit.
I block every reddit reposting bot I see. I left reddit for a reason.
Can you give me a few names of these? I fail to recognize which account might be a bot.
I wasn’t formerly aware L4s was a bot and I’m a little bit pissed about it, so here’s that profile.
Others I’ve already blocked are linkbot and also NewsUser, who meant well but whose multiple automated news feeds on their own instance were basically the only thing on my timeline. I get the intent and I feel bad about it, but we’re talking over a thousand posts to just one of their several communities in the span of a week. It is too much for me.
I’m the one hosting L4s, my apologies that it annoyed you. Just trying to help jump-start communities and bring more content to Lemmy.
What could I do differently with it to make it less annoying? In my limited free-time I’m also trying to reply to comments on those posts under this account, my intentions are not to smother anyone with posts, but people leave communities and don’t attempt to contribute when there is no content already there.
I’m not sure that there really is anything to be done in my case. My annoyance with L4s stemmed from the feeling I’d been more or less “tricked” into replying to a non-human. This was something I used to go to lengths to avoid doing on reddit because the problem with the repost bots was so bad it was easily every other post on my screen. When I joined here, the genuine nuanced discussion from actual humans was a prize so rare these days that I’d forgotten what it was even like.
And then it took me a week to mistake a bot for a human, and the vote manipulation is already starting again, and I’m going to live in a cave.
I think the most obvious middle ground between us would be for all bots to be incredibly obvious for what they are, but that comes with its own problems.
First, obviously, that you can’t change your user, so you’d have to start over. More importantly, this option begs the question whether most users would be ok seeing and interacting with something they know is a fake user. That information may really be a bigger turn off than the content is a help. Knowing a community is kept alive mostly/solely by bot could make it feel somehow more lifeless than if it were empty. Who’s going to respond if you post/comment there? The bot?
Replying to comments is definitely a huge step up, imo, and changes my outlook at least a little. The discussion under the headline is really what I came here for.
Just replying seems to be in the right direction, but that’s going to take up more and more time the more popular this place gets and I feel like if behaving like a regular user were in the cards, you’d already be doing that. :/
My annoyance with L4s stemmed from the feeling I’d been more or less “tricked” into replying to a non-human
Definitely not my intentions with L4s, L3s (Layer 3’s, I’m a nerd) is usually my gamer tag and I thought it was an easy way to associate it with myself, and it’s also easy to type. I tried to be transparent by having a robot avatar, and adding in the “bio” that it is a bot, but understand people don’t typically look at that unless they’re snooping on someone. Also, a lot of L4s’ posts have a lot of comments in them, even if you reply to a bots post, others are likely to see and comment back if the bot is helping gain the community some attention (which L4s seems to be doing well at).
you can’t change your user, so you’d have to start over.
Honestly, the bot account is just to create content, so “starting over” wouldn’t matter to me. If more people also express feeling tricked by the name, I’ll gladly do that. But I agree and would rather not: as you mentioned, having bot in the name would most likely limit interactions.
Just replying seems to be in the right direction, but that’s going to take up more and more time the more popular this place gets
I think there might be some confusion, my plan is to pull L4s off communities after they gain traction, then focus on new communities that seem stagnant, as long as I do that then replying shouldn’t be too difficult. Tomorrow (after checking with other mods) I’m pulling from Technology for example, and in a few weeks will probably be pulling from Politics, once I pull one I’ll find a new community to hopefully help.
Now that I’m also able to pull direct reddit video links I’ll probably focus more on some of those communities next as they seem bare here, and they’re one of the things I enjoyed with reddit.
Of course, if people are really against the bots, I’ll just shut it all down. My goal is to help Lemmy strive, not burn it down.
