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Unlabel a bot only used for scheduled daily posts to increase visibility? (lemmy.world)

submitted 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hello everyone,

I am one of the moderators of [email protected]. We use a bot relying on https://schedule.lemmings.world/ to create a post every day automatically.

I know that some users block bots because they consider them annoying, be it repost posts or features bots such as tldr or piped. Having the bot labelled as such prevents the daily threads from being viewed by users who might be interested.

I had that reasoning in the past, but had the bot banned for not complying with the instance guidelines.

I thus open this thread to see what could be done to solve this issue. Could there be exceptions to the bot labelling guidelines in this kind of cases?

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

How would it be different if Lemmy allowed scheduled post creation in the platform itself?

It wouldn't be different. Still annoying useless spam, still something I would immediatly block. It doesn't matter much whether it is a bot, a person copypasting the same thing daily, or something different entirely - it is daily spam that a lot of people simply do not want to deal with, and blocking bots gets rid of a lot of this stuff easily.

The METHOD with which the spam is posted is not the issue here, and finding a different way to automate spam is not the solution. Un-marking bots like these would only result in the necessity to manually add bot accounts to a block list to get rid of them again, but it would not magically make people interested in the spam in question just because it is shoved down their throats in a different manner.

Seriously, if you're only trying to make the bot visible to users who specifically, definitely, actively WANT to see it, then a customizable whitelist is the best option. That way, the "I don't want ANY bot spam" people aren't forced to deal with random exceptions, and the people who want to see the bot for whatever reason would be able to.

...mostly people unaware of the bot, potentially interested in the daily thread (because after all, why not) and not seeing it due to them blocking them all.

Stickied intro post in the community. "Hey just so you know, we have a bot asking you how you're doing every single day, and I'd like you to participate, so please uncheck the bot-block-box in your settings, thank you very much."

Tadah, now people will be aware about the bot and can opt-in IF they want to, without annoying the rest of the Fediverse in the process.