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!

  • mrmanager@lemmy.todayOPM
    31·
    8 days ago

    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?

    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.

    • sanitation@lemmy.today
      22·
      8 days ago

      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.

    • PapaSkwat@lemmy.today
      27·
      8 days ago

      You have to understand that I put quite a bit of time and money into this instance, and I dont want heavy handed moderation.

      I appreciate the work you do. You do an amazing job, brother!

      • NewPerspective@lemmy.today
        21·
        7 days ago

        What if you keep all your the posts under your DonaldJMusk 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.

        Updated for relevance

        • PapaSkwat@lemmy.today
          16·
          7 days ago

          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!

            • PapaSkwat@lemmy.today
              16·
              7 days ago

              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.

              • NewPerspective@lemmy.today
                11·
                7 days ago

                Every single upvote here is you pretending people don’t despise your content

                Who gives a shit if you’re a bot

                • PapaSkwat@lemmy.today
                  14·
                  7 days ago

                  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.