Do we really need these many posting bots? - eviltoast

Every day I am noticing more and posts by bots.

At first it didn’t bother me as I thought bot posting may incentivate people to comment but since this rarely happens and now I think they are just polluting the communities.

I know I can filter them but I wonder what is the general sentiment about this.

  • Sooperstition@lemmy.one
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    105
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    Not a huge fan of the reddit repost bots when we can steal content the old fashioned way by right-clicking!

  • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    66
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I really dislike them.

    I thought bot posting may incentivate people to comment

    When a bot posts the same gardian link to every news community and then do the same thing for the next article, it kills any chance for comment as the poster is never present in the thread. Example: soyagi@yiffit.net

    Many are low grade scams. Example: This user screams scammer to me chouaty1@kbin.social

    Others are just marketing spam. Example: This user is just a marketing bot posting over and over links to the same site. raven3312@kbin.social

    • starlinguk@kbin.social
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      18
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      I wish actual humans would also stop reposting shit. Karma farming is not necessary on Lemmy or Kbin.

      • El Barto@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        There is no karma on Lemmy, though. So they are appealing to good ol’fashioned spamming.

        • fkn@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          7
          ·
          1 year ago

          I mean… There is… It’s just hidden by the default UI. It’s exposed in voyager… You have 904 comment karma for example (and no post karma).

    • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      1 year ago

      Bots posting news articles is fine IMO. It prompts discussion in the comments. Most news articles posted on Reddit came from bots too.

    • Zarxrax@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      8
      ·
      1 year ago

      I think it just gets annoying when you see bots posting the same article across multiple communities, or worse, other bots reposting the same story a few days later. I don’t want to keep scrolling past the same story for a week straight.

  • chairman@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    31
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    I am ok with bots as long as:

    1. The posts are labelled clearly as such that it’s posted by a bot

    2. The account itself has some clear indication that it’s a bot

    By fulfilling this requirements, everyone can decide I’d they want to see these posts or block them.

    *** I block some bots…

    • bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      Disagree with your first point. If the account itself is labelled as a bot then that’s good enough. I’m mostly on Jerboa and it adds an icon next to bot accounts’ usernames.

      • fkn@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        1 year ago

        That’s literally their first point. How do you disagree with it when you have and use it? What?

        • eric@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          1 year ago

          The distinction you are missing is indicating the post is from a bot rather than indicating the account is a bot. The difference in that distinction is that many Lemmy readers will not indicate anywhere on a post that it is from a bot simply because the account is labeled as a bot.

  • elxeno@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    19
    ·
    1 year ago

    I block all post bots, i think they’re useless. Those on comments are fine, like the remindme, piped, link fixer, chatgpt, etc.

      • Custoslibera@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        8
        ·
        1 year ago

        It’s a joke my friend.

        And unfortunately like a frog in biology class when I dissect the joke it’s going to die, so here we go:

        Parent comment made it sound like it was very basic knowledge of Lemmy to block bots and because I didn’t want to appear dumb I added the ‘for a friend’ even though I intended that it was obvious I was asking for myself.

        The failed attempt at misdirection should have been humorous.

        • El Barto@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          Oh I know it’s a joke. But now that we’re here dissecting it (don’t take me too seriously :) ):

          The problem with the “don’t want to appear dumb” premise is that if your friend is asking, and it’s common knowledge, then you can simply give the answer to your friend because you’re supposed to know the answer already. There is no need to “ask for a friend.”

          With porn, though, the premise is not lack of knowledge, but to appear nice and clean. If you ask directly “hey what’s the link to that ass-to-elbow video?” you’ll feel ashamed. But if “your friend” is asking, then hey, you’re just the messenger.

          Anyway. That was fun to type!

  • Levsgetso@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    I don’t really like them, my feed is now polluted by bots. I’ve already blocked one that reposts Reddit content and I’ll probably beging blocking more of them

  • hitagi@ani.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    1 year ago

    I know repost bots help “fill in” the lack of user activity for some communities but it ends up feeling empty anyway. I think posts (and reposts) should be curated (in a sense) by users. Bots should assist users in creating content, not creating content themselves.

    • papajohn@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      It feels like a waste of my time engaging in a port the seeing its a bot after I started a comment. I always delete a d move along. I guess I should just block them.

  • Thorry84@feddit.nl
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    It’s really annoying when bots steal content from smaller subs where the OP is asking an actual question. I know there is a good chance OP won’t see the answers given anyways, but at least there is a chance when posting in the original thread. With a repost bot, there is 0 chance OP will see the answer. Why would I want to engage with that? It’s a total waste of time.

    Also repost bots were the scourge of Reddit, I actively blocked a lot of subreddits because they were mostly repost bots. With the lack of karma on Lemmy, I hoped the bots would stay away. But alas, it is not so.

    I also hate the obsession with Reddit on Lemmy. People have said before, it’s like going on a date and talking about your ex the whole time. Stop talking about Reddit, don’t setup bots to blindly repost shit and forget about the whole thing.

    We need to make Lemmy a success by making it an engaging place, with good content and good people. So get to posting, voting and commenting.

    There are actual good bots, but they don’t usually post, only comment. The TL;DR bot is a real nice feature to have, especially when the source is a news site with so much ads and crap I can’t read the article. Reddit repost bots should be banned imho.

  • Efwis@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 year ago

    it seems like lately, about 80% of my all feed is the same stories posted on different communities by the same bot. This, IMHO, causes loss of OC posts by users on the feed. I want to block the bot, yet some of the news stories it posts interests me so I’m actually a little torn? I like the all feed so I can find communities I might want to subscribe to, like a lot of others. However, it is hard to find that if the feed is being overtaken by one story on every other post. On the other hand, it’s nice seeing the replies from other people on the different communities. If only there was a way to have Lemmy point to existing communities with the same name upon creation.