A few months ago, I launched the Lemmit instance and bot (@bot@lemmit.online). Primarily, this was to help me stay up to date with some of the content I’d leave behind on Reddi. Additionally, I wanted to give back to the community, so I made it possible for anyone to request the archiving of subreddits to the Lemmit instance.

However, this came with some unintended consequences. Notably, the most subscribed community on the instance has been !AmItheAsshole@lemmit.online. Even though it should have been obvious that there is no way to communicate with the Original Poster, given they’re on Reddit.

The pushback against the bot and the instance has increased over time. A recent post, This bot is bad for Lemmy, highlighted these concerns. I’ve also received similar feedback from admins of major Lemmy Instances and through direct PMs.

As a response, last week I stopped accepting requests for archiving new subreddits. This weekend, I went a step further by discontinuing the archiving of a large amount of “interactive subreddits”—communities primarily centered around Q&A or communication with the Original Poster. This includes subs like !AskReddit@lemmit.online and !dating_advice@lemmit.online, as well as niche and support communities. Such discussions are better hosted on Reddit or Lemmy’s equivalent spaces.

I’ve also adjusted the post karma thresholds to curb spam posts. While this probably won’t appease everyone, it should reduce the bot’s posting frequency.

Perhaps this might prompt some admins to rethink their choice to defederate from the Lemmit instance, or the banning of the bot. I’m not expecting anyone to, and won’t take it personally if you don’t, but I wanted to give the community this update nonetheless.

In !about@lemmit.online there’s a sticky post of all the Actively archived communities on the server (including NSFW ones, since that is not public without logging in), as well as the list of communities for which archiving is now disabled.

Cheers!

  • admin@lemmit.onlineOPEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Thanks for your feedback. Let me assure you that I’m actually a giant asshole in real life ;) I do want to respectfully disagree with some of the points you make though.

    If no bots cross posted things from reddit, actual users would post them, they would get updoots, feel great about themselves, and search out more content.

    I don’t think that’s the case. There is no reason for people to not make a post, just because it already exists on Lemmit. In fact, I feel the opposite is the case: it’s making it easier to do so by cross-posting. People scour Lemmit news communities for potential useful links, and easily send them to the relevant “native” Lemmy communities.

    Cross posting bots implies that lemmy is some kind of second class reddit. As though reddit is where the content is but we’re hanging out here in protest. Lemmy’s own culture and community needs to coalesce in it’s own time.

    I would challenge you to really carefully consider what the objectives of lemmit.online are - they seem to have changed since your original “about” post (now removed ?)

    I kinda get what you’re saying with this, but I don’t agree. Reddit and Lemmy are roughly the same product - communities where texts/links can be posted and discussed. The simple fact is that Lemmy is nowhere near the scale of Reddit, and so there is less users and less content to go around. That doesn’t make one better than the other - one is more rich in content and the other more tightly knit. Some of the communities rely very much on discussions, others less so. I had always intended Lemmit to boost the second group of content/communities. Communities centered around memes/jokes/nsfw content/etc - I value those because I click on the link, read the article, and move on. I still stand by that design choice, it’s just that it is now enforced - communities like AskReddit/AmITheAsshole/AskBla are no longer archived, and requests for new communities need to be manually approved.

    Not sure which About post you mean, but the most info is still here in the FAQ: https://lemmit.online/post/14692

    Yes, users can ban bots - but we’ve all heard of the 90 / 9 / 1 rule - 90% of the people that will visit Lemmy will not log in and therefore will not curate their feeds in that way.

    Instances are reluctant to defederate from lemmit.online because doing so has the whiff of censorship - even though there’s no actual content here to censor.

    I’m not convinced of this. The largest instance, lemmy.world (where most of the “inactive” users will end up) has done this, so that takes care of them. As for the latter - I explicitly give permission to instance owners to ban the bot or defederate in the FAQ, so I don’t think the defederation stigma makes any sense here.