The instance is a worse version of those RSS bots that mirror random subreddits because it mirrors the comments as different bot users too. So you have to pay attention before you realise no one is going to reply because it’s just mirrored engagement from somewhere else.
Replies are going to be possible in the next release
Even if you are not yet getting a reply from OP, you can get a conversation going with other subscribers in the community. It is happening already in the bigger groups like !main and !main. Instead of writing for the OP, consider writing there to bootstrap the “organic” community
Instead of complaining about the current state of the instance, let’s be optimistic about its potential. This is meant as a tool to get the people out of reddit. The biggest things stopping more people from migrating are (a) the lack of content here and (b) people not knowing where to sign up and what communities to subscribe. Alien.top and the fediverser project solves both issues. if you are still on reddit and find a comment/post from someone who you’d like to see in the fediverse, send the OP a comment or DM telling them about how easy it is to sign up.
Why care so much about getting people out of reddit? We should just strive to improve what we have, for ourselves, and people will come in time if they like it.
Having 100s of bots posting just drowns the actual people, and honestly I prefer a post with 5 genuine comments than 200 reposted comments, especially since the quality of those comments is debatable.
Also, why would I comment in a ghost town where I know nobody will read what I type?
Some people think that you need thousands of comments and views and posts for “success”, but I feel way better hanging around Lemmy, small as it is, than I ever felt in reddit (except in some small subreddits).
Why care so much about getting people out of reddit?
It’s a moral imperative to me. I have kids who are still little, and I hope by the time they are teenagers we don’t have an internet dominated by the likes of Instagram, TikTok and Reddit.
Having 100s of bots posting just drowns the actual people
The bots are setup to only to work in very well-defined communities, and only in communities where the mods gave me explicit approval. Is there any community that is “flooded” by the bots?
I prefer a post with 5 genuine comments than 200 reposted comments.
I don’t know about your use case, but a lot of my reddit usage consisted of following technical subreddits where the discussion is quite productive. Given that I don’t want to use reddit anymore (unless if it is to help people get out of it), it makes sense to me that have the mirrored conversation as well just to be a lurker.
especially since the quality of those comments is debatable.
You can still downvote/report.
why would I comment in a ghost town where I know nobody will read what I type?
Even if it is a bot, it has the potential to actually be taken by the real user.
Even if it is a bot and not going to be taken by the real user, it will be seen by real people who are already subscribed to the community and it will help them to overcome their “ghost town” feeling.
Even if it is a bot and the community it is not followed by a lot of other users, people that follow you will see your response anyway.
Point is: we need to start from somewhere, and it’s easier to start with a “ghost town” than with no town at all.
Oooooof yeah I didn’t even think about the fact that instance might fuck up the user account number statistics. Ugh. I don’t think that’s a lemmy thing, that’s an alien.top thing.
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