this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023

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Today I Learned

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TIL that the vast majority of posts in TIL are created by a bot account. (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/til

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[–] antik 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I actually had a chat with the creator of this bot, @[email protected] earlier today. I informed him that bots are only allowed when they are requested or approved by the community's moderator. I believe the creator has good intentions and he seemed to understand why it would be a bad idea to simply copy unfiltered content. You should no longer see posts of this bot outside of the communities he has an approval for.

On the other hand, I added lemmy.link to the banned instances as they were clearly just spamming, even posting TMZ ads. Their bot @[email protected] was also banned.

So, wether or not bots are allowed that is mainly up to the community moderators. As long as they follow the general rules on content moderation and they have the moderators' approval. And they have to be marked as a bot account.

[–] MargotRobbie 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah, replying to your other messages, appreciate your work here, your work dealing with the hacker was way faster than I expected. It's a little bit less than what I want, but then again, I did choose this instance because you guys seem the most reasonable and careful about making serious decisions like defederation, so I guess it's about what I've expected.

Anyways, for a community like this, where the sole mod appears completely inactive, it's not great to have a bot running completely rampant. If you can, please have a talk about this with the maker of the ChatGPT bot about this rule too, because I've seen that bot running loose in the comments on a number of communities, even those it was not really appreciated in.

Lastly, separate topic since I have your attention here, because the mods over at c/android have abandoned their positions and locked their community in favor of one on another instance despite the concerns of many of us here (some being quite vocal), and that there is still a demand since there are still activities in those threads even yesterday, I'd like to request moderating the abandoned c/android, since I was a fairly active participant when the community was active, and I'd like of think of myself as decently well liked on this instance despite my dumb shenanigans here.

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[–] newthrowaway20 80 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Same for public freakout. Some people feel you need to 'seed' a community with a bot and content... Seems dumb to me, copying everything from somewhere else. But it doesn't really bother me all that much

[–] executive_chicken 51 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I think it’s important in the beginning to help generate content and have people stay in the community. Reddit would oftentimes have a subreddit with an interesting topic, but no content which pushes people away almost immediately

[–] Stovetop 34 points 1 year ago

I will say it seems to be working. It's only because of the posts created by the bot that this community even appeared on my local feed, which helped me realize that there was a TIL community in Lemmy I could subscribe to.

[–] LordOfTheChia 11 points 1 year ago

Also theres the "1% of users generate all the content". It may take a bit for that 1% to get pulled into the community. Gotta keep that 99% entertained somehow in the mean time.

[–] jimmyjoners 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is this not effectively a link aggregation site? Why do you care if the links are bespoke human entered data? People keep bitching about this and it makes no sense to me at all

[–] LordOfTheChia 15 points 1 year ago

I think it's an important difference if the bot posts are grabbed from (say the all time top posts from that sub in Reddit) vs reposting from the same Lemmy community.

One helps preserve a historical top posts for others to enjoy if the primary community goes dark (or the image/video hoster link expires), the other just adds annoying repetitiveness.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

It's what some people want. Its not what I want. I'm happy both groups get to have what they want

[–] breadsmasher 39 points 1 year ago (3 children)

in that instance, yes. Blocking it made my feed feel far less spammed

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[–] Sage_the_Lawyer 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don't get why people here are so in favor of bot seeding. To me, that makes a network inorganic and it intimidates average users from posting since it will more than likely be drowned out by all the bots. There are plenty of link aggregators in the world if all you want is funny memes.

I prefer places that feel like a real forum, with real people, interacting in real ways. That's what used to make reddit unique to me. That's what I love about Lemmy now.

I don't care if a community doesn't grow at a rapid pace. I'd rather have thoughtful conversations from a few individuals rather than a wall of spam that stifles discussion by making it harder to find discussions, since it spaces all the content out over dozens or hundreds of posts.

If all you want to do is doomscroll, there is no shortage of places to do that. But if you want to have actual discussions with real people... I'm not even sure there's a place for that anymore with how pro-bot this comment section is.

Guess I'm the old person yelling at clouds at this point, but it makes me kind of sad to see.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Guess I’m the old person yelling at clouds at this point,

No, looking at the comments here you seem to be in the majority line of thought.

"Doomscroll" is a new one to me. I like that.

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[–] zabil 19 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Are you a bot?

Am I a bot?

Is there anyway to know. You know the saying - "I think therefore I am (a bot)"

[–] sorenant 14 points 1 year ago

I asked Bing and it said I'm not a robot.

[–] FlyingSquid 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I suggest trying to harm a human, or by inaction allow a human to come to harm. If that works, you're not a robot.

[–] zabil 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This deserves an award. But that is not the platform we find ourselves in. Rest assured though that this did cause me to chuckle.

Like a human.

[–] FlyingSquid 3 points 1 year ago

That's all the award I need.

[–] Alivrah 3 points 1 year ago

Beep boop!

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[–] venoft 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is there a list of repost bots somewhere? Would be nice to just block all of them.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Or tag them

[–] Ech 10 points 1 year ago

There's a profile option to explicitly mark a profile as a bot, and another to hide all bot accounts. Of course that only works if the first option is used at all.

[–] orientalsniper 18 points 1 year ago

I don't have a problem with as long it's for the initial seeding, it would make no sense for it to exist after we are getting an organic growth.

[–] PearlsSwineEtc 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

And that bot is blocked by me now. Any other bots doing similar work for Skynet?

[–] AFKBRBChocolate 4 points 1 year ago

The ones I have blocked to reduce post spam are:

[–] MargotRobbie 14 points 1 year ago (4 children)

https://lemmy.world/post/805180

Well, I've already made my points on using repost bots very clear a few days ago, and I still think they are a serious problem.

And the current conditions of this community is exactly what I was worried about.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Originally I didn’t see an issue with them, but I have noticed when they pop up in my feed (usually All), I don’t bother opening them, don’t interact with them, don’t comment, etc. Its not even that I have an issue with it being a bot, more that I don’t see a point when it’s not a person. It’s noise.

[–] MargotRobbie 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah, you can see the effect it has on c/politics and c/technology exactly in my response to @[email protected] on the post, and I think discussion quality has already visibly degraded there due to the outrage and fearmongering piped in from reddit, not to mention here it's basically mostly spam with little or no comments on bot posts.

And unlike the comments predicted, they didn't get turned off for any subreddit after July 1st, they just turned it on for more subreddits, exactly like I said they would.

I know the admins have a lot on their plate with last night's hack and all, but I do think this is critical in shaping this instance's culture and should be a priority to resolve.

Nobody really wants to see another r/politics.

[–] antik 2 points 1 year ago

Alright, not going to copy/paste everything here too but since you tagged me: https://lemmy.world/comment/1086848

And yes it has been a very busy time for everyone involved between the I stance update issues, the meta discussion, the hack and so many other things behind the scenes. But we try not to rush in the decision-making and stay transparant.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

We're on the same page

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[–] MelonTheMan 11 points 1 year ago

A lot of the top content on Reddit was fun and engaging, but it wasn't really important to talk about. Like ads that are actually enjoyable?

I think spamming content isn't real content anyways. Feels gross to engage with a bot

[–] Squiglet 5 points 1 year ago

Im a human bot

[–] freecandy 5 points 1 year ago

One of it's posts is right above this one in my feed :(:(:(

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