I can see if accounts do it occasionally and organically but are accounts that exist solely to repost popular and recent posts from twitter/reddit/Facebook healthy for the Fediverse?
As you note elsewhere, these are often highly upvoted and honestly, the fediverse is so small that without those posts, I worry about how much content there would be. (We can cry that people need to post more original content until our lungs give out but…)
So, I’d say this is probably a fine tuning issue. We probably want people to choose if they want to filter out as much content from reddit as possible, bot content only, mass reddit posters etc.
There’s so much fake content being shown that people feel no need to make their own posts.
YSK that I’ve tagged all those accounts as bots on piefed.social.
Unlike on Lemmy, on PieFed people can choose to still see bot-generated posts but have them semi-transparent which makes them easy to scroll past OR interact with if you want. As well as the Lemmy option of just filtering them out entirely.
e.g. like this example:
I’ve also been thinking that a binary “this is a bot” or “this is human” flag is too limited and we need a third option - “this is a reposter” and people could choose to make-transparent, filter out or show their posts independently of the bot-or-not setting.
I suggest that you set the number at which someone gets tagged “a reposter” kinda high. Like, I post niche memes at least 2-3 times a week, but I try to pick good ones and add context if they’re obscure. But I also post weekly watch party announcements, and it’d suck if those all got graybanned.
Also… Are YouTube and Bandcamp links considered reposts? Because most music communities are made up of people posting links to songs they like.
(p.s. I’m not hating… I’m a big fan of piefed!)
2-3 times a week is nothing. 2-3 per day is completely fine.
It would only be used for the most flagrant accounts, ones with some level of automation - dozens of posts per day with almost no comments. That sort of thing.
I too find content on other networks (mostly Mastodon, occasional YouTube) and post them here. Often a few per day. But it’s all completely manual and I usually rewrite the description, add hashtags, etc. And I’ll interact with people who comment on the posts. Cross-pollination of content is normal and good.
There’s a point though, usually enabled by using some extra software tools like the one above, where someone ends up flooding their target communities, not responding to comments on the posts, looking inauthentic when they repost OC which plainly isn’t theirs and causing extra moderation work because their content is in the wrong places. Sanitation is the most obvious example of this but there are others.
Despite this, a lot of people upvote and comment on their posts. I don’t know if
- they’re even aware of who the author is. Most apps do not emphasise this strongly so it’s easy to miss.
- if they are aware then are they aware that the author is ignoring them and won’t learn from the feedback they’re getting?
… Or if they don’t care. Maybe they’re just content with the conversation in the comments without the OPs involvement. That’s valid (although not the kind of conversation I personally want to be a part of).
It’s probably a combination of don’t know and don’t care. For those people, labelling sanitation et al as a bot would seem heavy-handed. That’s why I’m leaning towards creating an in-between state, for these kinds of centaur accounts.
Thanks for the clarification!
Nothing should be reposted from twitter, nazis are fertiliser, they serve no other purpose.
There’s a way to do it, and there’s a way not to do it. If you’re reposting something that directly solicits feedback and you don’t know enough to be able to respond, that’s no fun. If you’re looking over reddit, carefully selecting interesting content, and hosting good conversation about it, that’s very healthy. Given you’re using words like “large scale” and “direct,” I assume you mostly have the unhealthy kind in mind.
Yes exactly this. When you post something you should be ready to engage with the comments
Hello I am engaging with your comment
OP noticed me!
I do because there’s a bunch of accounts that are posting a ton of posts a day straight from Reddit.
Like three hundred a day.
I struggle to imagine a way one could create 300 posts per day that would be healthy.
CombatWombat wrote:
If you’re looking over reddit, carefully selecting interesting content, and hosting good conversation about it
agreed, this signals a healthy community and i actively seek out such passionate groups. Bots blindly reposting on the other hand signals spam.
reddit bot spam is annoying
It consistently gets highly upvoted.
Definitely not. It’s one thing if the posters add context where necessary and are active in the comments (e.g. PugJesus on history memes), but there are tons of accounts that don’t interact with the comments at all and just spam posts. I think in a lot of communities, they actually crowd out the posters with OC or that would at least stay around to talk about their post.
Also, a lot of these accounts are clearly using some kind of automation for their posts, but can’t be arsed to space out their posts over time so it’s not just 10 of their posts one after the other on All.
Reposting linked content from, yes. To? No. If you still brave those wilds to find content currently lacking on fedi and post here to drive engagement. You’re exactly the type of person the feddi needs. If you’re posting links to external comment sections about said links. You aren’t helping the feddi.
It’s worst with mastodon where there are a ton of not reporters that might be mistaken for actual outlets.
https://lemmy.today/post/59276278
Nope. Everyone hates it.
Everyone upvotes it too.
Honestly, I think there is a quite large set of people who actually like the content. The guy has a point, if it’s highly upvoted on Reddit there was a lot of people who enjoyed the post.
There is also a very loud portion of people who absolutely hates it, (and I can agree that it’s a bit weird to repost content that relates to someone’s personal experience), but I think it’s actually a vocal minority. Perhaps a minority that is overrepresented in the Fediverse meta communities.
Of course it would be awesome and the best if most of the content on the Fediverse was original, but I would be concerned that it’s actually would become too much of a ghost town if the small number of accounts that post a shit ton of content would leave.
My biggest problem is the reposters aren’t sticking around to actively be part of each discussion. They want to be the hero bringing the content without helping make better discussions
I wouldn’t have a problem with it if it was labeled at a bot post so I can filter it out easily but to constantly create new accounts spamming the content is annoying as shit.
Important point.
“Posted by bot” is a whole different issue from “Posting Reddit/X/FB”
Both moral and social issues worthy of discussion… but that should be considered entirely separately.
Even if it was posted by a human if the account is doing nothing but reposting content does it matter though?
People eat McDonald’s. Doesn’t mean it’s healthy.
I often upvote a couple of posts before I identify a poster as a spammer and block them. Even if the quality of their posts is fine when considered without context, comment sections and actual original content are much more important than reposted memes and spamposting stifles those.
