So, I get that someone is trying to populate this community with posts using the lemmit.online bot. And that the vast majority of us are coming from Reddit. And that AITA is a staple community that we’re used to seeing in our feeds.
However, it seems like that just copying content into an otherwise empty community is just feeding a sterile wasteland. There is almost no engagement on the copied posts, and worse: I think it will smother any actual new content that gets posted in this wasteland of copied content. (I stand corrected, after trying to post this there I found out that only mods have priveleges to post. It’s worse than I thought, and I’ll probably just block it from my feed if it’s only a Reddit echo chamber)
What do you think, AITA?
Hi. Lemmit developer/owner here.
You are not the asshole. As you are quite aware by now, the whole point of the bot/Lemmy server is to copy content from Reddit. I know the bot can be quite spammy, and I have no idea why people Request subreddits like these, let alone subscribe to them - since it doesn’t copy any comments, even when it EXPLICITLY states so in every post.
When I created the bot, I did so specifically for subs where interaction with OP and other community members is of little value, like !itookapicture@lemmit.online , !steamdeals@lemmit.online and, errr, “grown up subreddits”.
That so many people subscribe to “cliffhanger subs” (just the questions without the answers) is beyond me, but it’s a side-effect of the model / open market, I suppose. I do intend to keep improving the bot though. Short term plans are for adding some thresholds of minimum karma levels before archiving a post, and putting a sticky on each community that suggests actual, organic communities rather than this.
My end goal for Lemmit is for it to be unnecessary - that all the content people love is created here. But I do know it’s hard to let go of some of the content treasures people leave behind.
Last but not least: I sincerely encourage everybody who dislikes the bot to block it, or to ask their server owners to defederate from lemmit.online if they dislike it. That’s the beauty of the fediverse, in my opinion.
I just now saw your response. Thanks for the reasoned, thoughtful reply. I by no means meant for that post to be a personal attack against you, and hope you didn’t take it as such. I can definitely see some value for the communities that you mentioned.
I think that the freedom here is definitely both a blessing and a curse. I worry that requiring too much of new users will hinder adoption, and I really want to see the Lemmy community grow. I don’t think there is a way to change that without changing the fundamental nature of Lemmy though…
Anyway, thanks for being awesome.
Thanks for creating Lemmit! It really is a great addition for those low-interaction communities.
You are not the asshole. The purpose of that community is to have communication with humans. When a bot posts a question there, there is no reason to respond. It’s not a human asking, and the human that originally asked in another forum will never see the response. I blocked that spammy bot, and have enjoyed my feed way better since.
Same here. The lemmit bot was blocked as soon as I saw it. If people want Reddit content, they need to suck it up and go to Reddit.
NTA.
Here’s my rageposting about it a couple of days ago. https://lemmy.world/post/805180, there’s a link to a previous discussion as well.
And the admins have responded they had a talk with moderators and bots should not post without explicit moderator approval inside a community at this point, but I think they are being careful and keeping a close eye on this situation.
Oh also if it is only lemmit.online, then it’s intended to be a bot only instance to scrape reddit. Admins on lemmyworld have already decided to block it, so maybe talk to your admin about it?
You mean the !AmItheAsshole@lemmit.online community? The entire lemmit.online instance is literally meant as a Reddit post archive, as you can read in the pinned post on the instance’s main page.
You’re not an asshole, but you’re misinformed and failed to do your research.
You’re not wrong, but to be fair it didn’t seem like something I’d need to research since it just showed up in my feed, and it still seems like a rather lame thing to do when building a community. To each their own though, if people want to read Reddit on Lemmy…
I think, and I may be wrong here, but that’s for archiving things that could potentially be important. Like, for AITA, someone might asked, and another could look for answers on that situation.
To me, it just seems like archival purposes. Just think how many times you’ve searched for something, and the best result is reddit. Having all of that hosted here as well, can become a backup incase reddit, some how, fully buries itself. No point losing tons of helpful information.
Edit: I forgot. It doesn’t do comments. So, I guess some subs would be a bit more pointless saving. I can see it being helpful for others where comments aren’t really needed though, but that doesn’t happen often.
NTA, that shouldn’t rob your sleep tho, it’s something that will happen, and kind of inevitable once reaching critical mass.
Despite that, I think there is nothing wrong with wanting to migrate useful content from dedicated communities into a safer, better platform. If you think about it, that content was never Reddit’s, It was from the community, for the community.
People reposting low effort content and memes for engagement kinda suck tho.
Plus who are you helping? AITA is about engagement with the person involved.
Helping someone not be an asshole, or reassuring them that they aren’t.
I don’t see the benefit of reassuring a bot 🙃
Not yet at least… Just wait until AI gets out of the LLM stage and starts to become sentient.
AITA for ending the human species?
deleted by creator
NTA.
AITA is not about sharting funny content and then asking “am I an asshole or what”, it’s a way for the OP to invite (hopefully) honest and civilized discussion and criticism about their actions, without risking verbal abuse or being downvoted to hell. When a bot reposts an existing question without the OP’s knowledge, it loses the line of communication between OP and the community and the entire point of an AITA post. Populating the fediverse with content is important, but compromising the entire reason that content exists is not the way to build a community.
edit: sharing, not sharting. I’m not changing it because funny.
I would near guarantee that 90% if not more of that subreddit is fake posts for karma farming.
edit: sharing, not sharting. I’m not changing it because funny.
Worried for you if your autocorrect is ready to go with sharts. 😂
A bit off-topic, but AITA is a community I don’t mind if it stays on Reddit.
It’s either fake stories, people looking for approval, people who don’t mind their own lives, or arm-chair psychologists taking guesses.
Yeah I would not miss AITA.
I blocked the bot. It’s artificial
If you were truly loyal to Lemmy and not going back all the time like a sucker, you wouldn’t even know, so yes, YTA.
/s
But seriously, if you were to try to fertilize land that is desert, you would have to plant millions and millions of plants and babysit them because they wouldn’t survive on their own yet, before the ecosystem changes and becomes relatively self-sufficient. So I think copying and crossposting is a legit way to boost the community, at least for now.
I block every community that bot posts in. I don’t want to see endless posts with zero discussion or engagement from anyone. It’s just noise to me.
Personally I just blocked the bot.
As a mobile app user, I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. Memmy has the option but I don’t know if it actually works.
Go to the site on web browser and block it there. It won’t show up on your app afterwards
Thanks for the tip! I found an app (wefwef) to literally replace my habits from the Good Place and haven’t bothered to actually learn much about this place yet.
No. I see a lot of reposts in here, even with meme templates 13 years old, and I’d rather not see them at all
Yeah, a lot of these posts are like a “best of” from Reddit. If I wanted to see bots repost top posts from reddit, I would have stayed on Reddit.
NTA. I would be annoyed, too. As it was, when I was on Reddit I hated that sub. It was just made up stuff most of the time. Usually it was some version of Cinderella, Snow White (minus the dwarves) or Rumpelstiltskin. Your point about mods only posting is telling. ESH except you…
I think ITA for being the only one here that dislikes AITA period. That shit subreddit should never have migrated here. It’s just karma farming.
Well there’s no karma. It’s more genuine here.
See that up arrow near all the posts and comments?
That’s points, there’s no karma attached to you, therefore nothing to farm. You don’t need to worry about posting something potentially bad because you don’t think “FUCK MY KARMA’S GOING TO TAKE A HIT, I SHOULDN’T POST THAT” you also don’t post something like “AITA for getting mad that my gf killed my dog after winning a video game” because that would be a karma farm. There’s a counter on Reddit, not on Lemmy, for how many points you got over all of you comments and posts.
Peace
Well, this post netted OP over 400 non existent points.
This post netted OP 400 points which are attached to this post only. There’s no central counter for OP’s entire account. We use the word “karma” to refer to the latter one, which is absent on Lemmy. And lack of karma lowers the incentive to farm it with fake posts, as well as lowers “risk” of posting unpopular opinions.
Untrue. I have a growing number of “karma” points based on posts and comments when I look at my account.
