About using bots on lemmy.today
There has been quite a few reports lately about people using bots and llms to create and upvote content. I wanted to make a post to discuss this.
In my opinion, bots are a tool to quickly create or repost content. And its how users use that tool that is important for whether or not it will make lemmy a better or worse place.
Two examples:
User A
- User A frequently visits reddit and would like to quickly share content that he thinks is actually good and would be liked on lemmy.
- He uses a bot or some other tool to do this quickly and conveniently.
- Most of the posts are generally liked by the community, sometimes ending up on the frontpage, with many comments from many different users.
- A few users are complaining about bot content but the majority seems to appreciate the posts.
User B
- User B also uses a similar repost bot or a llm to generate content, but they decide that lemmy needs a lot of content and it doesnt matter so much weather or not its actually good.
- The main idea is to repost or generate as much as possible and lets users decide what they like.
- They create 30 posts in a day, where almost none of them are actually interesting for the lemmy community. Posts have no comments, and most of them are only upvoted by other bot users.
- Many users are complaining that they now see tons of low quality posts in their feeds because of this user.
How will we moderate this
In my mind, the lemmy community is fine with user A but not user B. So it requires moderators to make a decision about the content someone is creating. Does it make lemmy better or worse for the majority?
Thats how Im thinking about this, and if you want to share your own ideas or comments, I would love reading them. If you agree, easiest way is to upvote. If you dont, I would love a comment even more so I can understand some other point of view. :)
Thanks!
Strongly disagree with this move.
I disagree with this approach, mostly because I think it risks recreating one of the things that drove people away from Reddit in the first place: heavy-handed, subjective moderation where a small number of moderators decide who is contributing the “right” kind of content and ban people who don’t fit that definition.
Lemmy needs content. Badly.
Most users on any social platform are lurkers. A smaller percentage comment, and an even smaller percentage actually create or submit posts. You need that small group of active posters because without them, there is nothing for everyone else to lurk on, vote on, or discuss.
That’s why I think users should have much more say in determining whether content is valuable. If someone reposts something from Reddit and it gets 50 upvotes and generates a discussion, clearly people wanted to see it. If another post gets ignored or downvoted, it disappears. That’s what the voting system is for.
I also think there’s an important distinction between artificially filling an empty community and drowning out an already active community.
Instead of subjectively deciding whether someone’s posting makes Lemmy “better or worse,” why not establish an objective rule?
For example: if a community is already receiving 10+ posts per day organically from 10 users, automated/reposted content from Reddit should be limited or not allowed. At that point the community has enough natural content and reposting can genuinely start crowding people out.
But if a community gets one or two posts a day - or sometimes nothing for days - what exactly are we protecting it from? An empty feed?
Once a community becomes active enough to sustain itself naturally, absolutely step back and let organic content take over. Until then, reposting good content can help bootstrap that community, give lurkers something to read, and give commenters something to discuss.
Users who don’t want to see a particular poster can also block them. Communities can remove posts that are actually off-topic or spam. And votes can determine what rises and what disappears.
Users dont need to subscribe to communities if hey don like the content.
That’s also why I’d like to understand why both of my accounts were banned. What specifically crossed the line? Was it the number of posts? Reposting from Reddit? Automation? Voting behavior? Were people actually complaining about my posts? Were my posts receiving no engagement?
If there’s a specific rule, make it clear and measurable so everyone knows where the line is.
I came to Lemmy because I wanted something different from Reddit - not another platform where increasingly subjective moderation determines who is allowed to participate.
If we want Lemmy to grow, I think we should be encouraging people willing to contribute content to mostly empty communities, not banning them before those communities are active enough to sustain themselves.
why would anyone need to manually repost news articles? its just fill and noone has time to manually post this stuff - why not just let people autorepost? - I dont see a problem with bots bringing content from reddit.
its a chicken and an egg issue - content needs to exists, then people will come. if we ban content generating bots - people will never come to lemmy.
How many accounts do you have?
Actually your sanitation account is what I would say is user A in this case. You often post content that becomes popular and engaged with. So I think that makes Lemmy better because of you. :)
The other two accounts looked like spam accounts and I didn’t know they belonged to you, since you didn’t mention that at signup, or why you wanted three different accounts.
Let me respond to your other comments tomorrow since it’s getting a bit late here. I dont want heavy handed moderation here, but I also don’t want lemmy.today to be known as an instance where we have 10 accounts generating hundred of posts with no comments. I think we need quality, not just quantity.
Lets continue this discussion tomorrow. I need some sleep first. :)
I suspect mods don’t get many compliments, so just wanted to say that your response seems logical and well thought out and your moderation is appreciated.
It was two new unknown accounts to me, showing up and posting content very quickly from reddit. I got worried that we would have even more complaints about lemmy.today generating low quality content across the fediverse, and eventually being considered a spam instance that others want nothing to do with.
You have to understand that I put quite a bit of time and money into this instance, and I dont want heavy handed moderation. What separates us from many others is that we federate with everyone, and we dont care what political views users have. I dont even care if users are sometimes upset and express it. But users who use this instance dont want User B type of content (specially from a fast posting automated tool), and banning those two accounts was an attempt to moderate according to those ideals.
What if you keep all your the posts under your sanitation username, and not spread it out across multiple accounts. That solves a lot of problems. Users can decide for themselves if they like your content, otherwise just block you.
I appreciate the work you do. You do an amazing job, brother!
Updated for relevance
You should talk to that user if you have a problem with him. What your saying has nothing to do with me or the topic of OP’s post or the conversation.
People can just block users they strongly disagree with, instead of being obsessed with them. Then the problem is solved. Good luck!
deleted by creator
lol I’ve never heard of those communities and have no idea what they’re about. I think mods should be free to ban whoever they want for whatever reason they want. I support Lemmy having all kinds of communities, and mods should be able to run them however they see fit. It doesn’t bother me.
I’m not a bot, so nothing you’re talking about has anything to do with the topic of OP’s post or the conversation.
Every single upvote here is you pretending people don’t despise your content
Who gives a shit if you’re a bot
If you dislike what I post so much, then you should block me. I appreciate you being so obsessed with me that you follow me, but OP’s post is about bots. Nothing you’re saying is true, and none of it has anything to do with OP’s post or this discussion.
Thanks for explaining, and I genuinely appreciate you not banning my sanitation account. That’s actually one of the reasons I wanted to start using lemmy.today even more - I appreciate that you don’t automatically punish users because another instance or moderator has a problem with them. I recognize this instance is more flexible than others and I experienced the difference first hand.
My concern with putting everything under one account is Lemmy’s weird double-jeopardy moderation system. I can be in perfectly good standing with lemmy.today, but still get banned from individual communities on other instances. I’ve experienced that already, sometimes without any clear evidence of spam or abuse.
If everything is under one account, a single community ban can severely limit where I can contribute. Separate accounts give me some protection from that and let me keep contributing content elsewhere instead of having one moderator’s decision follow everything I do.
I can also push a lot more content across different communities this way without one account becoming the bottleneck. Im seeing sanitation account becoming a bottleneck already.
I also understand the investment side of this because I’m not just casually dumping links onto Lemmy. I’ve put months into moderating conntent myself and a lot of time into custom software development and tooling specifically for contributing content to Lemmy.
That’s also why the double-jeopardy problem matters so much to me. A ban on one account can effectively wipe out months of work and content from a community. And unlike Reddit, there’s basically no monetary financial interest involved for Lemmy moderators or instance admins. A moderator can ban an active contributor and lose months of their future content without it costing them anything. There’s very little incentive to think twice about what that ban removes from the community. Ive seen months of content I posted - wiped out like this in one afternoon. This kills a lot of motivation for me to spend my time and contribute content that can be wiped out so easily.
Separate accounts give me some protection from having months of work and contributions tied to a single moderation decision. I’m trying to contribute more content to Lemmy and help communities grow, not turn lemmy.today into a spam source.
deleted by creator