this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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If anything, shouldn't it be encouraged, and even automated? I'm including even the 'old' stuff from reddit here. Reddit shouldn't be the absolute owner of the content submitted by users. When I migrated here, it wasn't because of me being against reddit users, but being against reddit the company. Copying the content here actually hurts the company in sense that they don't get to then gatekeep the crowdsourced content.

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[–] [email protected] 202 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Most content that gets posted on social media is 'stolen' from another social media site. That's not really an issue.

But there are bots posting up threads from subs like AITA (complete with links to Reddit) where there's no point engaging with a non-existent OP, so the threads do not get any engagement. And they often get posted in massive batches so it fucks up your feed too.

Lemmy needs to develop its own culture and that is made harder by people trying to make it a mirror of Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 1 year ago

Also, as long as it links there, it serves the completely ass-backwards purpose of actually providing Reddit with extra traffic. Probably not a lot though, I guesss.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

Came here to say this as well. I don't mind "stolen" content. That's the only way I'll ever see it, as Lemmy is the only media I usually pay any attention to. The links though are obnoxious. I have zero interest in following it to reddit, and as you said, there's no engagement here. It's a waste of space.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

This is correct. It's worth noting that there are some communities that it's probably fine for. If you're posting news, memes or gifs, it doesn't matter where they come from and it's a much different thing than posting a question. But there are reams of bot-posted content in discussion communities that have zero comments and end up reducing engagement when people see all those.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I don't see it that way. I think it's also a problem with meme posts being automatically copied over. I really like the engament and like to interact with the community. Reading and writing comments is why I'm on a forum style website. And I wrote A LOT of them

This is my 500th comment on this account alone. I had a few others before settling on this one and I also was pretty active on reddit with over 100.000 Karma most of it in comment karma

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm also a prolific commentor. I'm unlikely to comment on something like an AITA post that was copied from elsewhere by a bot, but that hesitation doesn't apply if it's like a news item or a meme. Maybe if there are suddenly hundreds in a row I'd be less likely.

Even on Reddit, much of that kind of content originated on Facebook, Twitter, or whatever.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I've been struggling with this. I have been posting a lot to the [email protected] community to try to get it going. At one point, I thought "these are just links to deals, wouldn't it be easier to have a bot steal them from Reddit?"

But then I realized that while the links to deals have some value, it's really the community and discussion that provides value. Would you rather have a bot creating a hundred posts a day with no comments? Or a few posts made by actual people with whom you can ask questions or have a discussion?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

On the other hand. I se no issues with spamming Reddit with Lemmy links to posts.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Exactly. Don't shit on your own doorstep. Shitting on theirs is fine.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

And of course. Looks like Reddit blocks Lemmy links.

https://lemmy.world/post/3629395

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Automatically copying content from reddit is killing user interaction. I don't want to see thousands of shitty posts with zero comments and where OP isn't even a human that could react so I don't even have any intention of wringing comments

I have no problems with manually doing it though. Heck I myself do it. The difference is that I only repost what I seam to be worthy a repost.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Yeah, stuff like crossposting is one thing. People do it across communities and subreddits, so may as well post stuff on both sites so you can get inputs from both userbases.

But the automatic copying stuff is too much. I blocked the lemmit bot almost as soon as it showed up because it became almost impossible to not see content that was being copied over by it.

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

Yeah there's something about the ratio of posts to active users. If it gets too high, there's just a sea of posts with comments too diluted. A lot of subs just don't have the users to support the same level of posts that equivalent reddit subs have.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago

It's not that people think content from Reddit is stealing, it's that we don't want our feeds polluted with bots autoposting bullshit.

Why would we want a whole copy of Reddit? Reddit is a toxic pit.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Reddit will still have higher search hits and Lemmy is outmatched. Dumping content from Reddit just makes this no better than a mirror. It stops real and unique content from hitting the top and this place won't attract new users if they can just use Reddit which at this point has the content directly and is more reliable.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I've seen a number of communities that are otherwise dead without Reddit reposts, and being the most subscribed community for a given topic with the latest post being months ago is definitely not going to attract new users.

It's either don't repost, and new users won't join because of dead community, or repost and have some activity, and maybe new users will join. With dead communities, new users won't magically join, and new content won't magically get created.

One such example was the bcpcsalescanada community, which was revived due to reposts.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is unfortunately part of migrating. Not all communities can just move over. Larger ones will develop and with that side communities will start with a large enough user base. Reposting in this case still doesn't do anything other than give you the exact same content as Reddit just now it's without an interactive user base.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago

lemmit.online should serve your Reddit needs... I just find that automated post copiers or serial reposters don't add value to a discussion. They never reply to comments for example.

Lemmy flourishes by being its own thing, why would it need to perpetually be in Reddit's shadow?

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago

I'm only against reposting reddit posts with a bot.

If you see content that's interesting anywhere, by all means, bring it here.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

I'm fine with bots reposting images. Memes and whatever. Because the discussion is pretty irrelevant. What I've been seeing a lot of is bots reposting text posts. Like r/amitheasshole and the like. It pisses me off. Doesn't make any goddamn sense, the OP isn't here, you can't discuss with them. And they always lack any conversation on here. It's just spam and I report it as such.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because automated reposts just drown out all the posts that people are actually participating in. Yes you could scrape reddit and repost all the content here but lemmy doesn't have the userbase of reddit so your feed would just be full of a bunch of dead bot made posts.

But if a person deliberately reposts something from reddit in a Lemmy community where it fits and adds to the community then that's perfectly fine.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think "stealing" from reddit is fine, but the automated stuff sucks. Lemmy isn't just supposed to be a carbon-copy of reddit. Having everything flooded with reddit posts would lead to Lemmy just being a dead "Reddit archive" without original content or engagement. Just look at places like /c/[email protected] , completely dead. Lemmy doesn't even have the userbase to actually engage with such a large amount of content and having thousand of bot posts will be incredibly detrimental to the community.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

And besides, why and how would I fucking Ask Reddit on lemmy?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

This. I literally block every bot and every bot-infested community.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Some communities are dead or non-existing on lemmy while they're vibrant on reddit. Repost can only bring life to lemmy. I really don't understand the mindset of those people who don't want content or people in their community.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

We're trying to create something new here, not be a mirror or an archive of Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

If all you want is a clone of reddit, you can just go to reddit.

Lemmy is its own community with its own users and culture that will develop over time. Let it grow organically rather than trying to make it reddit Jr.

Nothing is stopping reddit users from creating content over here. But taking their content to a platform they’re not part of isn’t really fair to them, is it?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

It's kinda beat seeing a whole wall of automated reddit reposts from bots, nobody ever comments on them. But I get that there's some content we may wanna see among it. However, I don't like seeing links directly to Reddit, I'm not trying to give them traffic at this time

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I manually take content from Reddit.

I select myself what content to copy, so it's not like bots than tend to spam things.

Feedback seems pretty good so far.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

That’s because you’re doing it right. You’re not just some reddit spambot.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

I think the strength of a community shouldn't primarily be built upon content another separate community or platform produces.

Now there are givens, like major news and art which "transcends" a singular platform. But repeatedly just lifting content from somewhere else (aside from if you are the creator yourself obviously and wanting to share to different platforms) and shipping it over here isn't a good look when Lemmy wishes to be a separate aggregator from Reddit.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

The engagement is what's valuable. You can't have engagement without content, that's true. However, content without engagement is worthless.

With that in mind, if you "steal" a post from reddit and it generates engagement over here, nobody will have any problems with that. However, if you "steal" a bunch of posts from reddit and spam them over here, they probably won't get engagement and therefore only serve to clutter the feed with empty content.

It's important to remember that Lemmy and the Fediverse is a community, just like reddit is a community. Each of those communities behaves differently and has different expectations. Once you learn the community and the expectations, it becomes a lot easier to understand what you should and should not post.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

We just don't want to incentive repost bots to, well, exist.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Reddit shouldn't be the absolute owner of the content submitted by users.

And neither should you, nor anyone else here running a reddit scraper bot.

If users want to (re-)post their content here as well, awesome, but automatically scraping reddit to repost other people's content (which they then don't know about, and can't really interact with or control like it's their own content.) is just spam imo.

Create and post your own original content while letting others worry about their own content. People can make their own decisions, why should you have the right to override that?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

Not automated, but if you see something there that brings something on the table, by all means post it here. There's nothing you can really steal from Reddit, and even if there was, go ahead and make it impossible to catch you. Companies like that don't deserve any considerations from regular guys like us.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago

I'm copying my best jokes, anecdotes, and philosophical maundrings over manually, but

1 ) only my own content, and

B ) in ways that's not "go look at this thing on reddit", and of course

]I[ ) only in relevant communities or my own personal communy

So, in summary: Sourcing and curation are key to this, and automating the process is bad for both.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Are you an "expat" from Reddit or are you here to stay and help Lemmy grow and be its own thing?

Answer that.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

It sucks because I can’t interact with the OP

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (3 children)

If all this place is is a dumping ground for Reddit content then you may as well go right to the source.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

The problem is the UI of the source

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Isn't that what a lot of reddit is anyway lol, just stuff copied from other places too

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

There are a ton of people that decry reposts of any sort. I think the fact it comes from reddit given them more ammo in the sense that it came from reddit so it is even more poisonous to their pure and only new/original content online existence. If they have seen, so have you after all.

And on reddit, those folks were rampant. Like a circle jerk of gatekeepers reaching over to help one another out.

And buttercup don't like seeing things twice.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

If I see something cool I post it here. I don't browse reddit anymore but once a month I'll check reddit. If I see something cool I'll post it here.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

As long as you aren't claiming that you've made something that someone else made, I don't see a problem with it.

If you happen to see a news story break on Reddit, I hope you will post it here.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (9 children)

Reddit shouldn’t be the absolute owner of the content submitted by users.

That should be for the user in question to decide, shouldn't it?

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