It seems to me that over the last two weeks, the Lemmy experience has been worsening. My front page and communities are filled with Reddit re-posting bots.
While this gives off a feeling of being active, it’s like a ghost town invaded by AI.
But if I block these bots, I also take the risk that I’m unable to participate in actual conversations between non-bot Lemmy participants.
Note that you will also block useful bots like that.
Yep, for that reason I’m blocking bots individually. Ideally they’d give repost bots a separate identifier to block them specifically, but that requires the bot-dev to denominate them explicitly. Doubt many would do that.
For the time being the bot account flag is voluntary anyway, so there’s nothing stopping a repost bot from not indicating they are one.
Block and move on is the most straightforward solution at the moment.
Maybe we should also keep being vocal about this. Individually blocking bots won’t change things for other people. And we’re in the process of establishing culture and behaviour on this platform. I personally think we should keep complaining and establish a culture of original/genuine content and not let this become a second-hand reddit copypasta. I like something meaningful instead.
What kind of bots are you referring to? I have all bots blocked, noe I’m worried I’m missing out.
There’s no such thing as a useful bot. They’re all annoying and I’m glad I can block them all.