Lemmy

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I wrote a bot to import reddit posts from Lemmy to help with the transition. Is this allowed? (lemmy.one)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hello! I wrote a simple bot that periodically checks for new reddit posts and posts them to lemmy, so that people migrating from reddit to lemmy can still be able to see their favourite posts, but familiarizing with lemmy.

currently the coments are not synced, but this may change in the future (perhaps)

Yes, it uses the Reddit API, so it will stop working on the 1st of July, but I think that then I can implement a sort of web scraper to access Reddit posts without the official API, so this may eventually keep working for a while.

this script is currently on my laptop so it will be offline most of the time, but if I get the approval I may host it somewhere to get it running 24h/24.

now the question... Is this allowed? having this bot running 24h/24 on large subreddits will mean a very high quantity of posts. will this cause any problem to Lemmy?

if you want a preview check out https://enterprise.lemmy.ml/c/reddit_memes, where I started syncing a few posts from r/memes

let me know your opinion on this!

==== EDIT

here's the bot source code

The bot is now running in https://sh.itjust.works/c/reddit_memes, let's try to see if it work (I hope that shit just works)

I'm a bit concerned about the legality of this, if anyone has any info please tell me!

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

Ha! I have been working on the same thing this weekend, except it uses the rss feed for posts and scrapes old.reddit.com for the details. It's written in python, but not quite finished - scraping works, automation not yet.

My plan was to have a separate Lemmy instance for this, where people can also request for new subs to be included. This would reduce the spam in bigger communities, and allow instances to block it all together if they wanted to.

Beside that, I'd pre- or postfix each post with a message it's a copy and a link to the original for copyright reasons. Moderation would be a separate story - Not particularly looking forward to that. Could make it so that if a post were flagged, it would re-aync with the original. Let reddit do the moderation :D

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

This may be against reddits TOS and may have legal consequences. But I guess mostly for the person operating the bot, and not the Lemmy instance, as long as they block the bot on request.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Do you think this may be "dangerous" for me?

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

Given their recent posture and actions, I would think yes it could be an issue for you, for sure. You’d want to check their terms of service as it may violate them. If you’re doing this for fun, add a step in the middle and get ChatGPT to rephrase every post to obfuscate their source :-)

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

I have no idea, but at least in EU you may be violating copyright by copying someone else's database (i.e. collection of data). I am not a lawyer though...

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

I Read the terms of service and what I understood is that the intellectual property of the content is the users', not reddit's, but I asked on r/legaladvices for security (there is no equivalent community on lemmy yet)

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

Yeah database protection is even for stuff that you don't own. You have then spent effort to compile the database. Which in this case is the collection of people's posts. But maybe asks lawyer if that applies in this case.

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

Thanks! I'll share any news here on lemmy

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I was thinking of something like that too, but probably never would've gotten around to implement it myself, so thanks! Could you put your script on Github or something maybe?

Also it would be great if it could copy at least top-level comments by OP, because that's often used for linking to a source.

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

Yes I'll upload the code very soon!

Also it would be great if it could copy at least top-level comments by OP, because that's often used for linking to a source.

Great idea! Thanks!