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this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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Asklemmy
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The great thing about lemmy, or the fediverse at large, is that people can have control and freedom over their social media platform. Block what you don't like and subscribe to what you do like. There's no single large entity deciding what everyone should see.
The bots exist because there are people that like them for whatever reason. Maybe there are niche communities that they want to keep up with, or career/school/local communities that they still want to read about without having to open up Reddit.
It's fine asking why, but like I said above, people have the freedom to customize Lemmy to their liking. Let them do what they want and customize your experience for yourself.
The drawback to this is lower new user engagement.
Face it, most people who come look at Lemmy aren't looking to block several dozen accounts and communities to make the feed useable. Most don't even want to look for communities at first, they just want to see what the vibe is on the main feed, and judge from there
If we want to draw in more users and increase engagement, we need to cater to more than just the people who are ready to customize everything before judging. There's a few possible ways to go about this, but it's very clear that "just block things you don't like" isn't going to be enough.
I realize the drawbacks to any solution here, but as it stands now, even when I block the bots I don't like, there's not enough real content and discussion, and my own engagement is decreasing. The solution is probably not to ban all these bots, but leaving it alone as it is isn't working well either