As the service grows, I have noticed more and more people and bots popping up, only posting links to a news article and that’s that. Usually there is no post, no summary and nothing from the OP but the link.
What do you all think about this?
Do you think it’s a good thing, because it is providing content? Do you maybe find it annyoing and if so, why?
I myself am happy when people take the time out of their say to try to provide content, but for me it’s a bit low effort a lot of the times. Bots I tend to block immediately and people it they make it hard for me to reader other posts between all their link-posting.
But I am more curious how you all think about this and whether you consider it good or bad.
I absolutely dislike “repost bots”. I prefer communication with real people.
That’s just what a bot would say
I guess we all do, but as of now, we have to choose between lack of content or some bot content
I suppose it depends on how you define content. Usually when people post it includes some discussion. Those types of posts get drowned in the bot posts however.
Usually when people post it includes some discussion.
Indeed, but as of now, I feel we are lacking a bit of a userbase to have enough content at all times. I know the part about everyone posting as much as they can, but I guess we still need bots for a bit
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We don’t need bots. It’s concerning some people think any community /needs/ bots. That type of infinite growth mentality is wack and I don’t subscribe to it. Like you, I block almost every bot I come across and my experience only continues to improve.
I can see why some would like them. There are a lot of lurkers who just look at the content and move on without any discussion and that’s ok. For them I suppose it doesn’t matter if its a person or bot if the content is good. Doesn’t mean it’s good for the platform but if it’s kept to a limit and isn’t posting trash I not too concerned. That said those bots or people the post mentioned certainty are annoying.
Exactly, especially for small communities where the community relies or one or two posters
I feel like it will be increasingly used for propaganda, not discussion. By cherry picking articles, these news accounts will try to shape public opinion.
I doubt they’ll be turned off, it’s just hopefully we get enough real users to drown them out
Whether or not it’s posted by a bot, real users are the one commenting and voting on it. It’s not going to be useful for spreading propaganda unless it’s something the user base already believes
Hate it. If it’s a person fine, I guess, but I wish bots weren’t allowed to create posts at all. I would rather see Lemmy grow very slowly than see Lemmy become a mirror of Reddit, with shit tons of scraped posts that have little to no engagement on them. That’s not a community, it’s a newspaper. I don’t understand the “massive growth at any cost” mindset.
Counterpoint, I’m trying to find a good bot to be a matchbot for a community I made. It’s more effort than I have time to devote to posting a Pre-Match, Match, and Post-Match thread to the community with lineups, match events, and game summary. I wish a bot could take care of that so I could simply comment on the game in each thread.
You won’t believe what THIS Lemmy user said in the comments! 😱
I don’t mind the news, I absolutely hate the bots.
I said in another comment before, there’s an “AITA” bot reposting everything from Reddit, but, who are we supposed to answer if it’s a bot that’s asking? It doesn’t make any sense…
If there is no engagement (or at least something that’s educational or informational), then what’s the point?
If it was a “TIL” bot I’d probably have a harder time hating on it, but still.
…there’s an “AITA” bot
That’s ridiculous. Wonder if there’s a r/roastme bot somewhere.
I get news from the fediverse so I’m very happy with others posting news.
I don’t like repost bots though because they tend to be programmed to let non-fedizens control the agenda. Eg scraping what the people of Reddit upvoted.
My problem with it’s poor quality sources and/or content. For example: yellow journalism. I want to be informed and have good discussions, not being outraged or click baited.
I hate it. Some communities just fill up my feed with links to news articles with zero (or zero quality) comments. I either unsubscribe from these communities, or block the poster. In some cases they are so frequent, and with images that are effectively advertising. That and the zero comments, they just remind me of Reddit ads. I don’t think you can hope to build a community by drowning out any discussion with a flood of posts from news sites. If you’re the mod of a community with so little interaction, then you should be curating content and adding comments yourself.
It really annoys me, especially as there seems to be at least two lemmy instances that are 99% just a bot reposting everything from reddit… Really wish I could block whole instances
Block the individual bots. You’ll get rid of them in one go.
Oh thank you! I couldn’t figure out how to do it in the app I use (Liftoff) but with your comment I checked again and found out how!
This makes “All” so much better to explore, thank you!
On kbin you can
you can’t do that on lemmy? TIL
Hopefully a lot of the bots are a stop-gap measure while the user base develops.
At the end of the day I’d argue that the majority of people want a “Reddit like” experience, with dozens or posts with heaps of engagement. I’m happy to have news / repost bots if the end result is a more engaging comment thread / discussion.
When looking at older Reddit posts, I never enjoyed the comments where the discussion was OP focused. I’m keen to have them phrase the original question / link and then step back and let the discussion naturally form
Bots that repost suck and the trend needs to stop
As the service grows, I have noticed more and more people and bots popping up, only posting links to a news article and that’s that. Usually there is no post, no summary and nothing from the OP but the link.
I am 100% fine with this.
Not crazy about bots reposting shit from Reddit though.
I’m generally opposed to spambots and unnecessary bots.
If these bots are just, like, CNN wrote a bot to post every CNN article to a news community, that’s annoying.
But as long as the bots aren’t spammers / advertisers / just annoying as shit, it seems like they’re doing something pretty useful without causing any harm. Not opposed to it.
Oh, and the other problem on reddit ends up being that these bots farm karma to make themselves look more legitimate, as though they’re people. That’s probably something we should keep an eye on long-term.
I find most of the “news” and “technology” communities useless and boring for this reason and usually end up unsubscribing when a slew of blaaahhhhh fills up my feed. Lots of articles, stories etc just copied and pasted (or scraped) with no context, explanation, insight, commentary. Why does this matter? Why did you posts it? Why should I care?
If you texted a link to this article to a family member or friend…what would you say to explain WHY you’re sending it? Would you just send the link and the title with no other details? They would find it weird. Share it with me like we’re friends.
Its mostly useless spam, I have already blocked a few.
I have learned that the downside of moderating a political community (magazine in my case since I’m on kbin) is that I can’t/shouldn’t block bad actors because I need to be able to see their content if I’m to moderate effectively.
I understand, I used to moderate a car forum a long time ago.
