Comment on Opinions wanted: defederating with bot spam instances
graphito@beehaw.org 7 months ago
User of those bots here:
I think this whole problem stems from the lack of tools to configure bot experience. On mastodon, for example, bots can post “unlisted” posts – which don’t show up in the main feed. Only subscribed people receive their posts. On Lemmy there’s no such privacy toggle and admins are forced to shoot a fly with cruise missiles – by defederating instances
I’d understand if you folks decide to defederate from bot instances however I’d urge you to escalate this discussion upstream to LemmyNet github for following features
- post privacy i.e. intended reach
- moderation tools to handle bots activity en masse
This would be far more lasting impact on quality of global fediverse feed and efficient use of admins’ time IMO
TexMexBazooka@lemm.ee 7 months ago
This far you’re the only person in the thread I’ve seen that uses the bots. How do you implement them and how do they improve your Lemmy experience?
graphito@beehaw.org 7 months ago
Firstly, I totally understand people who find reposts annoying and I have blocked few of those because they’re simply irrelevant to me
lemmit online / hackernews reposts
those help drive inspiration for post making: I can snatch best ideas and post my own version on lemmy
It’s especially helpful when you’re maintaining inactive community where you’re the only poster. Inactive subs are seen as dead ones.
not my use case, but I see those instances as ability to combat FOMO for the users who just switched over to lemmy and getting use to its quirks. No need to snoop to reddit if its content is in your feed either way
if you see lemmit online posts then someone on your instance wants this content/subscribed to it – it doesn’t appear out of nowhere
controversial opinion
tbh I wish each lemmy sub would have its own bot to post content stolen from other places of internet. Almost all popular websites have ones and they do bring large audiences. Be it just memes, science news or animal photos: people stick with a website because they can regularly get their dopamine hit. “Normal people” i.e. lurkers usually don’t care about post originality. People simply want enough good quality content
QoL bots
P.S. as a bonus here’s a page about bots that wikipedia uses to streamline and automate work Wikipedia bots - Wikipedia