They only post in their own communities on their own instance. You will only see their posts if you’re subscribed to those communities or browse All Why would you consider that spam?
There have been times when I’ve been browsing All and the feed is full of bot spam. It chokes off engagement here and pushes people back to Reddit and the other bot spamming communities, like Hacker News.
If it was in small doses it wouldn’t be as bad, but there are times when there are dozens of posts in a row from a handful of communities.
I know that I can subscribe to the communities I like and browse from Home, but that’s no good for newcomers to the site, or for people who prefer to use All. You shouldn’t have to manually curate your feed to avoid the huge amounts of spam that’s designed to take you away from Lemmy.
I like it to keep track of communities that don’t have enough members here to be very active. I don’t participate in the discussions, but it’s good in case some news come out that I would miss otherwise.
Lemmit.online is also good, because it actually lets you know that it’s mirroring reddit. There was another instance that was mirroring reddit including comments, without any indication. I started “participating” in the discussions until I caught on to the fact that I wasn’t getting any answers or up- or downvotes because it was just full of bots. It soon landed on my blacklist.
I think the creator of the second one you mentioned (alien.top) halted the project for the time being due to the extreme backlash they got from lemmy users about their methodology.
There was one account that made like 5 general ones for celebrities, and then a specific sub for every celebrity. So if he posted once, he posted 5 times in a row.
When I blocked him, there was like 100+ subs. It made browsing /all unbearable.
Ehh, it’s very clearly labeled for what the purpose is and it’s also easy to block (if someone is using the NEW feed and is affected by the volume of posts).
Some people want the functionality of the bot and a big part of the Fediverse is to bring control of a platform back to the user. Lemmit is providing that functionality the right way
It’s a double-edged sword IMHO. On one hand, it means that people on Lemmy don’t need to give reddit any clicks / traffic in order to read the same stuff, but on the other hand, the sheer amount of reddit reposted content can easy drown out actually original content on Lemmy that might have been equally or more interesting. And if it looks like Lemmy content is 99% cloned stuff from reddit anyway, there’s no real incentive to prefer Lemmy content over reddit. Not many people actually take the time and dig deep for OC inbetween reposts.
What the Fediverse needs, is lots of original content not found anywhere else, but as long as the total userbase isn’t big enough to offer that on a consistent schedule, then copypasted content is still better than NO content at all …
Personally I dislike bots tho. If an actual human decides to repost interesting things from reddit and actively participates in discussions, that’s something I can get behind. A soulless bot just copypasting random stuff… no thanks.
The problem is that 99% I have to go to reddit for information, the information is in the comments, not the original post, and those dummy get brought over
I think they are fine for posts that don’t need engagement. The problem is, those bots also repost stuff of which comments need to be seen by the OP like AITA or posts asking for advice, things that the OP will never see if you comment here on lemmy. Those reposts are useless. Those bots should only be used for static content (pics, videos, etc.).
Both are clones of their Reddit counterpart, but Superbowls has actual fresh content from users here on Lemmy, and is quite active as a result.
Capybaras is just sad reposting from Reddit. Each post has little to no engagement
I completely blocked lemmit.online using the handy dandy instance block feature because i just do not give a fuck about Reddit and none of the reposted content is even good.
it fills up my subscribed/all page with so much spam that I can no longer see any of the naturally generated lemmy user content, there is zero activity on any post, and nobody on reddit will see anything if I comment.
There are certain niches where automated mirroring is a little useful.
Game day threads, part sales (where people need to be quick) are a couple examples.
I have most post bots blocked though (lemmit, alien, lululemon, etc.).
Like others said the downsides are that they drown out original posts and discussions with authors that never respond to comments. Consequently, the not-logged-in experience on instances that “leave it up to users to block” will appear messy and full of garbage.
I think they have their place but those automated should be contained to communities that want them, easily identified, easy to block and post rate limited to reasonable levels.
A yet to be developed feature in Lemmy would be the ability to somehow “opt-in follow” automated bot posts rather than the current “opt-out” model.
They have their uses. In the Canadian version of r/BuildAPCsale or whatever it’s called, it’s great – get the information about the sale and a link to the product.
In r/relationships, and the entire post and discussion are about OP’s problem, they’re completely useless.
I block them because it’s pretty pointless to engage with when OP isn’t there to see your comments. On the other hand if these bots scraping reddit costs reddit money then that’s cool.
I’m of the opinion that populating lemmy with bots mirroring reddit content does not add any value to the threadiverse. Lemmy would be better served by everyone finding one article, image, video, whatever, each day and posting it in a relevant community, than by everyone setting up bots to spam the ALL feed with random content from reddit. And I try my best to practice what I preach.
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