I’ve been guilty of using one back when I first started !liesofp@lemmy.zip, !bloodborne@lemmy.zip and !sekiro@lemmy.zip but that was three years ago as someone who was not active in any communities on reddit in my around 10 years of being on there outside the occasional comment. A critical mass of active users and posts is needed for people to engage with the community, leave comments, post themselves, and I was just one guy trying to build something from nothing. I don’t have a lot of original thoughts to share, so naturally I tried a bot out to have some semblance of activity over there. People complained about the constant bot posts, I gave it some thought and removed them in the end. Things have been going pretty well with !soulslike@lemmy.zip as a combined community, but it was definitely tough to get the ball rolling.

Nowadays, I’m not too fond of seeing bot posts myself, but I wouldn’t judge people who do use some in their communities especially if it’s limited to small communities that are yet to find their footing in the Fediverse.