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.
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. :/
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).
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.
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.