What are your thoughts on bots and people posting only news articles on lemmy? - eviltoast

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.

      • tempest@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        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.

        • Blaze (he/him)@sopuli.xyz
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          1 year ago

          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

            • Lycan@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              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.

            • RogueBanana@lemmy.zip
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              1 year ago

              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.

  • empireOfLove@lemmy.one
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    1 year ago

    Lemmy, like Reddit, operates like a link aggregator, so news article spam sorted by type into sublemmy’s is sort of its “natural state”. IMO there’s not really anything wrong with it, because it’s a good way to get conversations started.

    I don’t really like the lemmit.online bot that just reposts “archive” posts from Reddit.

    • DrQuint@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      This is just another reminder that reddit didn’t start its life with comments. Reddit was just the links at first, comments came later, and yes, the first comment was complaining about there being comments and how the site would be ruined.

    • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝@feddit.uk
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      1 year ago

      I don’t really like the lemmit.online bot that just reposts “archive” posts from Reddit.

      Yeah, that was just depressing - we’ve moved on and it felt like it was trying to drag us back again.

    • PaupersSerenade@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      My main issue is title formatting. I don’t dislike the TIL bot, but I do dislike the long title being cut off in my app.

  • El Barto@lzrprt.sbs
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    1 year ago

    As long as they mark the accounts as a bot account it doesn’t bother me, if it gets too much I can just turn on the don’t show bot accounts check.

    • CaptainBasculin@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I used to run a news bot on my profile for my community, but some people PM’d me to mark my profile as bot. I also personally use my account so I don’t want my other post/comments to be seen as bot activity; and my instance did not permit creation of a second account for the bot only, what should I do to keep the bot running without having my profile marked as bot?

    • shrugal@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Imo we need to be able to differentiate between bot posts and comments. Posts can often be spamy, but comments are almost always useful.

  • atlasraven31@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • TORFdot0@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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

  • fourohfour@lemmy.fmhy.net
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    1 year ago

    As long as it’s not “spammy” and there’s actual engagement or discussion on the posts I don’t see an issue. But if the community being posted to isn’t engaging with the posts, or it’s crowding out the more interesting posts, yeah that’s not great and shouldn’t be allowed.

    • livus@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      I am a human who posts a lot of news. It’s not mainstream news though and it’s all been read and selected by me.

      Most of it is to a small niche news sub and gets little engagement yet - the 90-9-1 rule applies and we don’t have the numbers yet.

      If anyone discusses it with me I’m over the moon!

  • Dick Justice@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • incognito_15@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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.

  • redimk@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    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.

    • Botree@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      …there’s an “AITA” bot

      That’s ridiculous. Wonder if there’s a r/roastme bot somewhere.

  • monk@lemmy.unboiled.info
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    1 year ago

    There’s a voting system. That should give you an idea of whether they’re considered good or bad and of their visibility in general.

  • livus@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • Ironfist@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • Boklukchia@artemis.camp
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    1 year ago

    I used to get most of my news from Reddit, now that I don’t use Reddit I get them from here. I post pretty frequently news articles on my country’s community and think that they are a good source for a discussion.

    • ItsComplicated@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      I am also replacing reddit for news. I currently find it a bit tedious to see the same post on 2 or 3 different sites, however, there are not too many subscribers so I go with it.

      I have noticed more interactions with some of the bot posts. If I see at least one comment I check it out and have started engaging that way.

      Everything has to find the right rhythm. This takes time (and sometimes duplicate posts).

      • Boklukchia@artemis.camp
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        1 year ago

        For sure, duplicate posts are annoying but that’s the nature of the fediverse, I think some apps are trying to combat this but it would take time. Overall I’m pretty happy with my new home here!

  • rubikcuber@feddit.uk
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • ikornaselur@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    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