Bots of this type have appeared recently, and people are asking if it’s okay to use them. I’m not sure about this either, so I think it would make sense to ask users.

These bots follow some subreddits on Reddit and automatically post it to Lemmy when a post is created there.

I’ve seen an example site for it: lemmit.online. This instance is dedicated solely to mirroring Reddit posts to the Lemmy instance.

Maybe instead of mirroring to a community on Lemmy NSFW, we can subscribe to lemmit.online via Lemmy NSFW. This way we could have kept Lemmy NSFW free of bots. Currently, even if accepted, I believe it should be done under admin control to prevent duplicates.

Here is the poll: https://strawpoll.com/polls/PbZqRw82byN

I’m open to suggestions.

  • appyore@lemmynsfw.com
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    1 year ago

    from a ‘get as much content as possible’ angle bots are good but i think there’s a big risk of them drowning out actual posters which really takes away a lot of the fun of posting and making it feel like an archive rather than an active community.

    • chavposting@lemmynsfw.com
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      1 year ago

      Totally agree. IMO they have a limited use to get initial content seeded and then it’s over to actual members of the community to continue and develop. Other instances are focusing more on the “archive” aspect so we should let them do that.

    • Agreed. I think organic growth is better than essentially being nothing better than an RSS feed that copies content from another site because otherwise what’s the point when I might as well go to the original source in the first place. I want this community to be separate and grow into its niche on its own.

    • Padded Person@lemmynsfw.com
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      1 year ago

      For setup communities i agree, but for communities with few people right now it can be a very large undertaking to keep them alive manually, and the boost of content can really help growth for migrating communities