this post was submitted on 30 Sep 2023
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[Outdated, please look at pinned post] Casual Conversation

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Hello everyone,

Trying to assess how many people among us block all bot accounts using the "Show bot accounts" checkbox in the accounts settings. I got reminded yesterday that the LW rules ask for every bot account to be flagged as such, which is now the case for @[email protected] .

As a consequence, if you block bot accounts, you might not see the daily thread from now on.

If that is an issue for too many people, I will look for a solution (the first coming to mind being moving the community to another instance).

As far as I am concerned, I understand the instance rules, for me it is more an issue with Lemmy technical limitations that do not allow accounts to schedule posts. Would that be possible in the platform itself, I wouldn't have to use that bot (and https://schedule.lemmings.world, a nice tool created by @[email protected] ) and the issue would be solved.

Let me know what you think!

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

No, i don't block all bots. In fact, there are bots that i highly appreciate, like the Tl;dr bot, the bot that lists trending communities, and more.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This feels like a gpt response.

Prove you're human, solve this captcha

[–] FauxFawx 8 points 1 year ago

Guys it's me Papanca I swear I no robot 1011010101010010

[–] Linus_Torvalds 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What is the bot that lists trending communities called? Can you link the account here?

[–] Papanca 3 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I don't block them all via user settings (yet), but I've blocked every bot ive encountered so far.

I don't like or trust bot-generated summaries and prefer to read articles as the authors intended. It's also annoying to go into a post looking for a discussion and the only comment is from a bot.

Other bots are just obnoxious like the community link and piped link bots.

Then the repost bots that post stuff from the alien site just get a blanket ban.

I prefer for Lemmy to be a place for discovery and discussion, and I think it's better without all the noise and dead end posts from bots.

All that said, It's probably a risky position to rely on people not blocking bots. I also find it very impersonal and unworthy of engagement when a bot account asks how my day is going.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thank you for your feedback!

About the last paragraph, in my perspective it's basically the same thing as me asking it every day at the same time. The idea is to give people a place to share and discuss their day, which is the main objective of this community

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

Ouch, two of those bots are mine. Probably won't change your mind, but the auto tldr just analyzes the text and picks the sentences it thinks are most important - unlike most such bots it doesn't create the summary on its own, it just picks sentences straight from the article.

And the community link fixer helps by providing a clickable link for users.

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

Can't you individually block bot accounts? I remember blocking an account that was posting transcribed posts in the comments.

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

You can, but there is also the option in the settings to block all bot accounts ("Show bot accounts").

My question was addressed to people using that one :)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The "Show bot accounts" was not checked by default, I guess many people are missing the posts because they are not aware of this setting.

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

That's interesting. If yes, it might really become useful to migrate the community to an instance that allows this kind of very low volume bots.

[–] atrielienz 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes. I do block all bots via the lemmy.world settings.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Thanks for your feedback

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

If you intend to move it, feel free to move to Lemmings.world! Other than that, you might use Lemmy Schedule from your own account as well, you don't have to use the bot one, I for example use it only to schedule stuff from my account.