Reddit repost bots are spam, and that needs to be stopped.

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.

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"

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.

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.

Yea I think bot posting and rehosting content from reddit has served its purpose but come July should be dialed down significantly.

Even if it isn't reddit content, bot posting should be restricted. There are niche examples where it's beneficial. Eg, Daily Stock Tickers, Geolocal weather, or weekly Q&A threads, but those are clearly different than just content aggregation.

Comment bots also provide value. I agree grammar/etc bots are annoying but as long as people can easily block/delete their comments its okay. Prequel memes chat bots were hilarious and if a community wants them they should be allowed.

People are what makes internet forums fun. Keeping lemmy.world a space for human interactions is important.

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.

It's going to come to a grinding halt when those bots lose API access July 1st

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.

I started blocking the bots. They're annoying AF.

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 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.

I agree. Bots should only be allowed if they show exceptional utility to the community.

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, they are annoying to see and there is more content coming from local users now

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.

So many communities are just full of it with no comments. Pretty sure it's putting people off posting too.

People don't get it. We don't need another reddit, this fight is about putting down shitty corporate practices. People just want their echo chamber dopamine fix.

Weird part is we've had better solutions than that for a long time.

If automatically fetching content from reddit is something someone is set on, the best solution in my opinion is something like a digest bot. I.e., here's your daily/weekly/monthly post with the top threads from other communities (like reddit, or other non-federated systems). If you want to talk about any of those threads, you can talk about it in the digest post.

memes are reposts though tbh

Strongly disagree. And I don"t think that this has anything to do with Reddit in particular.

The Fediverse is designed to host many different types of content. Some content is going to be content that one person or another doesn't like.

And that is fine. Those people don't need to consume that content. They don't have to look at that content.

But they should not be trying to prevent other people from looking at that content.

In your case, it sounds like you got into a disagreement with the moderators of a Fediverse community over what content should be in that community. End of the day, their role is to make that call. You don't like it, go make another community, and if users generally agree with you, they'll come to your community instead.

Gonna play devil's advocate on this, reposts are very welcome in communities when the content is less personal and prone to discussion. The only thing that I can think of that fits this description is porn, but then again that's half of reddit.

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.

Agreed. I've seen some interesting posts, but I usually won't comment because it's just going to get spammed out by the next bot post.

I block every reddit reposting bot I see. I left reddit for a reason.

This is why I stopped development of BotIt, if people don't want it then I won't continue making it

Yeah it I wanted Reddit I'd just go to Reddit. It's not like there's any engagement in those threads either ..

I understand this perspective, but it is very biased and might just not be true for every case.
E.g. imagine someone wanting to migrate their community to Lemmy, but there are very few people following. Even if they post there, most people might stay in the origin community because there is just so much more content and they can engage with many other people. This is a vicious cycle, because no-one is there, no-one will go there.
Now, bring a repost bot in the game: Suddenly the alternative becomes viable, because the content is also available there. People are much easier able to switch because the difference is minimal. After a while, the original content increases and the necessarity for the repost bot decreases until it can be turned off. Much easier to get people away from Reddit and build a community.

Of course, this is also a specific example. And if there are existing communities with people that suddenly get spammed, that's a problem. But my point is, it's just not black and white, there can be different situations in which something can make sense or not.

Therefore I'd be clearly against blocking something like that sidewide because it can be helpful for single communities. Its totally reasonable for a community mod to block them if they personally conceive the bot to be spam for them, but yeah, I wouldn't agree with the statement that they need to be spam in general.

I'd say they need curation.

There's thousands of posts getting botted over, but maybe five of those have useful content. Most of the time, the good stuff was in the comments. All that needs doing is a team going through what the bot posts and pruning the junk.

There have been some of those posts that were more than just links to a title on reddit. And there's the image posts like from r/funny where (despite me thinking they're dumb as hell) it is content that is forum neutral. So an outright no repost bots rule isn't any more ideal than them having no restrictions at all.

Like, best of legal advice, as an example. Useless bot because all it does is link back to legal advice posts without any of the comments from BOLA these made the sub entertaining. Stuff like that can go and nobody is missing out. But, stuff like r/art, the value is in the posts, so blanket banning that is a loss.

This needs manual curation like r/goodlongposts used to have until reddit pissed off the human that was doing the curation. Curation works for aggregation and reposts.

Agree, we should start banning repost bots.

Reddit has enough repost bots as-is, last thing we need is bots reposting stuff from Reddit. Let's not become another component of the Inhuman Centipede.