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Are you less likely to comment on a bot post? (lemmy.world)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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I've found that I am. I sometimes write a reply, see that it was posted by an RSS bot, and delete the draft. OP doesn't exist so what's the point?

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[–] [S] 18 points 10 months ago (8 children)

Leaving this out of the post body because it's kind of a side thought: I think RSS bots on Lemmy kind of suck. We get flooded with everything these sites post whether they're worth reading or not (and most aren't!)

"Just block the bots" is the suggestion I'm sure many have..but if an RSS bot posts an article, a human is not going to post it again so I'd miss out on the 20% of articles worth reading

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  • [–] 13 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    It used to be worse. We would have three different instances with bots reposting hackernews. One guy hosted an instance entirely for bot posting from different news feeds.

    And so many different projects trying (poorly) to mirror reddit content in obnoxious ways.

    On the other hand, the bots reposting old comic strips get plenty of discussion and don't annoy me as much, so not all bots, I guess.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    I really don't understand the appeal of bots reposting other social media sites

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    I wonder what the breakdown of discussions started from users vs. bots is. While I can see your point especially from a spam pov, one purpose of this kind of bot is to pull from other sources and get a conversation going. If no one is interested, then it just falls to the bottom. I often see posts complaining that Lemmy/fediverse isn't as active as Reddit was/is, and yet without some of this automation it would be far deader as people don't tend to start posts as much as reply to existing one. If a particular bot/community is flooding your feed too much, that can be easily be blocked, or let the mods/admin know that it needs some adjustment.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    I agree with most of what you said but it's less about the spam to me and more of how it feels hollow and uncurated. A human didn't read the article and feel like it was worth sharing, it just appears here

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    People want RSS functions but are too incompetent to use RSS or the source doesn't provide a feed. They do the best they can with what they know.

    And the rest of us suffer due to their ignorance. It's just how humans work.

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    if an RSS bot posts an article, a human is not going to post it again

    I reject your premise, on the basis that it seems like basically every article, worth reading or not, is posted repeatedly (by humans) over the span of a day or two anyway.

    Of course, I block the bot accounts, so if there are interesting articles that aren't being re-posted, I can't see them, but... I'd say my Lemmy experience is considerably better even with the presumed reduction in content.

    To directly answer your question, even if I could see them, I wouldn't engage with bot account posts.

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