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.
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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.
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.
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
Categorically no. The point of lemmy isn’t to be a content farm. It’s to be a community where people respect each other. How can you respect anything or anyone while stealing content?
In fact I would go the other way and start banning people that are posting content they don’t explicitly have permission to post. In this day and age where more people are seeking to monetize sharing nudes, we need to protect the few free content creators we have left, whether on this platform or the former one.
Fuck people and bots that steal nudes.
That’s a fair point but what about artwork? For example hentai. Are we really expecting only OC content to appear on Lemmy? I don’t think that’s realistic at all…
I would argue that we’re no more entitled to post people’s hentai artwork as we are their nudes. More so in fact, it can take days to create hentai, only for it to be posted here with no mechanism for the original author to request it taken down.
If people really want to see other people’s hentai posted here, why not link to it? I’m pretty sure the original authors would appreciate that. Plus if they see Lemmy generating traffic, maybe they’ll join up and post stuff here directly.
That’s what sourcing content is for. All the communities I moderate require sources when possible, and proof of best effort when not.
Your suggestion would make hentai communities all but impossible for the exact reasons you already stated.
Linking only to an art page would make the communities functionally useless. People don’t come to follow a million links, open a hundred web pages, and sign up for a dozen services in hopes of seeing something they like, they come to see the content, same as in any IRL content community.
Nude photos are cheap and easy to produce, so those communities would never be starved for content, but a hentai community that only allows direct images if they’re OC would be dead on arrival.
This. 100% this
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Wish there was gold to give you.
I think we should not have them or else Lemmy will only be known as the platform that copies from others. Also there could be legal issues when the platform the content is copied from has an ill-minded CEO who wants to shutdown others.
I do you think there are grounds for attacking Lemmy or an instance for hosting all/some of reddit’s user generated content?
from a legal standpoint I can’t see how there is, reddit doesn’t own any of the content it serves. it’s terms of service do require they give the right for them to display it, but not ownership of the content
What do you mean? Just because someone has uploaded their nudes to Reddit doesn’t mean you have the right to upload it somewhere else? It’s a clear violation of copyright. And I’d suspect a sex worker advertising their onlyfans is not going to be too happy about it.
I’m responding to weather there is a risk of reddit sueing not the individual creator creating a take down request.
If an individual creator got a bee in their bonnet and decided they were OK having their posts on one forum but not the other they could request it be taken down, but reddit themselves couldn’t. I think overall since we are pulling from a free non gated site that’s a minimal issue, as people like only fans creators are using this explicitly to show people free content to get them to go to their paid content. It would be like them getting mad you reposted or shared their original post
I don’t like reposts in general and certainly not automated bots.
Lemmit is certainly useful for us who don’t want to visit Reddit but don’t want to miss on certain content, but that’s what that instance is for. So keep the bots to instances like that, and the rest of Lemmy as free of bots as possible.
I think that would be super beneficial to help jumpstart this site. Maybe at some point communities can do it the other way around, so that the „main“ branch of the community is on lemmy and can port over the follower of reddit
I would prefer it if bots only reposted approximately 10-40% of the content that receives the most votes.
If something like that should be allowed, I think it should be marked with a tag/flag/flair (if that’s a thing on Lemmy) so that you can easily filter them out if you want to.
There is a setting on an account that says it’s a bot account and I think I remember seeing it mentioned after the username in a similar way to how nsfw posts are flagged.
I voted no. My biggest concern is that Reddit’s legal team would try to take the instance down and then we would have to start all over on a different instance.
Reddit doesn’t own that content, individual posters do. They do grant Reddit a license to display it to others (in the terms of service nobody reads) but they are still the legal owners of their posts (assuming we’re talking about OC)
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An instance dedicated for NSFW replication off Reddit could be a workaround. Then at least if Reddit tries to sue it wouldn’t effect this instance’s native content.
Totally agree, great idea.
The problem that I see with that, is that these bots are mostly being used for kickstarting/seeding communities that want to turn the bots off and become a full user active sub later. Essentially it’s a way to solve the chicken and egg problem of attracting users to generate content by having good content
It is not as if an instance is a legally distinct entity.
Are they really not? Distinct from what?
it definitely is its own legal instance the people hosting the instances are responsible for the content served.
that being said there isn’t any legal risk of reddit sueing with this as they dont own the conte t so it should be fine
I vote no, subscribing would be better
As others have said, I think it makes sense to have the top 40% of posts of all time, or something like that, reposted. As a mod for several subs here, those bots would help a lot when seeding content, and could even help me crank out posts of new, relevant content in the future.
I don’t think it’s unreasonable for the amount of posts a bot can make a day to be limited. Or maybe a time frame that we allow content migration en mass like x date to x date, theb bot posting is limited.
If we leave the reposting to lemmit, people can easily opt out from it showing up on their All feeds by blocking the singular bot that does all the posts, whereas if we allow it here people would need to individually block each bot.
However, Lemmit only reposts Reddit, there is at least one bot here that reposts one of the rule34 boorus, and I’m sure other sites are to follow. Those seem to be the real issues here.
Absolutely. I’m on side of not allowing or at least bot only communities. If we mix bots and real users content with each other, we fucked up. With bot only communities, we still going to have a chance to block those communities.
Not easy as blocking one user but better than never.
For what it’s worth, as the creator of lemmit.online, I totally understand people not wanting to see automated content bots. I, for one, wouldn’t want to see them mixed with regular content. That is why I made sure to put it on its own instance, and not allow any users - so there would be minimal harm if a server would decide to defederate.
And yes, NSFW content is allowed on my server :). For more answers, see this FAQ post. For more questions, please post them in that comment thread there.
Hi. Can you reach me via matrix? We can do a collaboration. My address is @xaeg:matrix.org
Thanks for the notification of this post @[email protected].
I have created a script that would take the top (user-selectable) 0-1000 posts of a subreddit and post them to a Lemmy community. My plan was then to implement a vote threshold so that posts older than 48 hours and above a user-defined karma limit would be pulled in each time it was run - however the account login no longer works so I assume it and its posts were purged, so I’m here instead!
I do think that in order to get people engaged, we need content to draw them in. I noticed that once I’d posted 50 items across I immediately started getting subscribers to the community.
What I don’t think is right is using bots to just replicate all the content on Reddit. As a moderator of several subs, a lot of content gets removed through moderation (hence the 48 hour limit), and a lot of junk gets through but just doesn’t get upvoted (resulting in the karma threshold). Avoiding the “rubbish” would be good.
My view is that using bots/scripts to seed communities means we can kick start them into life much more quickly, and then when a critical mass of users is reached they become irrelevant and can be disabled. I don’t think we’re here to just copy and paste from Reddit - otherwise surely you’d just go there instead.
Edit: Just to comment on the poll itself. I don’t think “bot only” communities make sense - we’re not here to just copy Reddit… lemmit.online can do that. I believe we should allow bots to seed, and then let actual users take over. Unfortunately there isn’t an explicit option for that so I just went with “Yes”.
I think it’s scummy to rip off other peoples content so your site has more content. It also invites legal copyright issues. Strongly against.
Right now it’s not even possible to let you guys know of a copyright violation. Like at least an email address… regardless of botted content you really should look out for that.
I am voting a no, and have been blocking bots whenever I see them.
I understand trying to jumpstart communities, however I feel bots should be limited to 1 post every 6-12 hours if allowed at all. And honestly, I think bots reduce the quality of a community regardless, especially if you are basing it off metrics on Reddit, where the top posts in many subreddits aren’t necessarily the the nicest pictures, just the ones with the most professional setup and money to burn on bots upvoting them for exposure.
