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So, I get that someone is trying to populate this community with posts using the lemmit.online bot. And that the vast majority of us are coming from Reddit. And that AITA is a staple community that we’re used to seeing in our feeds.

However, it seems like that just copying content into an otherwise empty community is just feeding a sterile wasteland. There is almost no engagement on the copied posts, and worse: I think it will smother any actual new content that gets posted in this wasteland of copied content. (I stand corrected, after trying to post this there I found out that only mods have priveleges to post. It’s worse than I thought, and I’ll probably just block it from my feed if it’s only a Reddit echo chamber)

What do you think, AITA?

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[-] Klicnik@sh.itjust.works 125 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You are not the asshole. The purpose of that community is to have communication with humans. When a bot posts a question there, there is no reason to respond. It's not a human asking, and the human that originally asked in another forum will never see the response. I blocked that spammy bot, and have enjoyed my feed way better since.

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[-] Knossos@lemmy.world 53 points 1 year ago

Plus who are you helping? AITA is about engagement with the person involved.

Helping someone not be an asshole, or reassuring them that they aren't.

I don't see the benefit of reassuring a bot 🙃

[-] boeman@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Not yet at least... Just wait until AI gets out of the LLM stage and starts to become sentient.

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[-] rtxn@lemmy.world 44 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

NTA.

AITA is not about sharting funny content and then asking "am I an asshole or what", it's a way for the OP to invite (hopefully) honest and civilized discussion and criticism about their actions, without risking verbal abuse or being downvoted to hell. When a bot reposts an existing question without the OP's knowledge, it loses the line of communication between OP and the community and the entire point of an AITA post. Populating the fediverse with content is important, but compromising the entire reason that content exists is not the way to build a community.

[-] reflex@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

edit: sharing, not sharting. I’m not changing it because funny.

I tried to fart and a little shit came out.

[-] Obscura@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

Worried for you if your autocorrect is ready to go with sharts. 😂

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[-] jiji@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Tbh “sharting” is pretty apt for what a bot reposting AITA posts is doing lol.

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[-] Machefi@lemmy.world 34 points 1 year ago

You mean the !AmItheAsshole@lemmit.online community? The entire lemmit.online instance is literally meant as a Reddit post archive, as you can read in the pinned post on the instance's main page.

You're not an asshole, but you're misinformed and failed to do your research.

[-] iamanurd@midwest.social 6 points 1 year ago

You’re not wrong, but to be fair it didn’t seem like something I’d need to research since it just showed up in my feed, and it still seems like a rather lame thing to do when building a community. To each their own though, if people want to read Reddit on Lemmy…

[-] Resistentialism@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think, and I may be wrong here, but that's for archiving things that could potentially be important. Like, for AITA, someone might asked, and another could look for answers on that situation.

To me, it just seems like archival purposes. Just think how many times you've searched for something, and the best result is reddit. Having all of that hosted here as well, can become a backup incase reddit, some how, fully buries itself. No point losing tons of helpful information.

Edit: I forgot. It doesn't do comments. So, I guess some subs would be a bit more pointless saving. I can see it being helpful for others where comments aren't really needed though, but that doesn't happen often.

[-] mim 31 points 1 year ago

A bit off-topic, but AITA is a community I don't mind if it stays on Reddit.

It's either fake stories, people looking for approval, people who don't mind their own lives, or arm-chair psychologists taking guesses.

[-] Sinister_Grape@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

Yeah I would not miss AITA.

[-] throwsbooks@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Ugh you're right. I admit I've scrolled through AITA more often than I should, because something about it is really entertaining.

But it's like junk food, I don't really feel good when I'm done with it. More vindictive, like those revenge subs. Being off Reddit has reduced how much I see it, and I don't particularly want to go back to that.

[-] 70ms 10 points 1 year ago

TONS of rage bait, but people ate it up. 🤦‍♀️

[-] moup@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

“AITA for not going to my son’s wedding rehersal?…..”

….because I have a major surgery that day and I will die if I don’t get the surgery

“AITA for calling my wife a whore in bed?”

…she told me its her kink

[-] sab@lemmy.world 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Hi. Lemmit developer/owner here.

You are not the asshole. As you are quite aware by now, the whole point of the bot/Lemmy server is to copy content from Reddit. I know the bot can be quite spammy, and I have no idea why people Request subreddits like these, let alone subscribe to them - since it doesn't copy any comments, even when it EXPLICITLY states so in every post.

When I created the bot, I did so specifically for subs where interaction with OP and other community members is of little value, like !itookapicture@lemmit.online , !steamdeals@lemmit.online and, errr, "grown up subreddits".

That so many people subscribe to "cliffhanger subs" (just the questions without the answers) is beyond me, but it's a side-effect of the model / open market, I suppose. I do intend to keep improving the bot though. Short term plans are for adding some thresholds of minimum karma levels before archiving a post, and putting a sticky on each community that suggests actual, organic communities rather than this.

My end goal for Lemmit is for it to be unnecessary - that all the content people love is created here. But I do know it's hard to let go of some of the content treasures people leave behind.

Last but not least: I sincerely encourage everybody who dislikes the bot to block it, or to ask their server owners to defederate from lemmit.online if they dislike it. That's the beauty of the fediverse, in my opinion.

[-] iamanurd@midwest.social 3 points 1 year ago

I just now saw your response. Thanks for the reasoned, thoughtful reply. I by no means meant for that post to be a personal attack against you, and hope you didn’t take it as such. I can definitely see some value for the communities that you mentioned.

I think that the freedom here is definitely both a blessing and a curse. I worry that requiring too much of new users will hinder adoption, and I really want to see the Lemmy community grow. I don’t think there is a way to change that without changing the fundamental nature of Lemmy though…

Anyway, thanks for being awesome.

[-] notfromhere@lemmy.one 21 points 1 year ago

I block every community that bot posts in. I don’t want to see endless posts with zero discussion or engagement from anyone. It’s just noise to me.

[-] preussischblau@lemmy.ca 16 points 1 year ago

Personally I just blocked the bot.

[-] notfromhere@lemmy.one 7 points 1 year ago

As a mobile app user, I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. Memmy has the option but I don’t know if it actually works.

[-] Fortychops@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

Go to the site on web browser and block it there. It won’t show up on your app afterwards

[-] notfromhere@lemmy.one 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Thanks for the tip! I found an app (wefwef) to literally replace my habits from the Good Place and haven’t bothered to actually learn much about this place yet.

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[-] Sivar@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

If you were truly loyal to Lemmy and not going back all the time like a sucker, you wouldn’t even know, so yes, YTA.

/s

But seriously, if you were to try to fertilize land that is desert, you would have to plant millions and millions of plants and babysit them because they wouldn’t survive on their own yet, before the ecosystem changes and becomes relatively self-sufficient. So I think copying and crossposting is a legit way to boost the community, at least for now.

[-] iamanurd@midwest.social 18 points 1 year ago

I suppose I should specify that this is from the lemmit.online server. Now I’m wondering if the entire server only exists to copy Reddit content… in which case, there’s a little egg on my face.

However, I still think that it’s lame. It also underscores some issues with lemmi, in that it has more subscribers and appears to be more popular than some actual communities that you can engage with. I’m sure I’m not the only one who subscribed without realizing what exactly it was…

Alright, done ranting. Carry on! 😊

[-] Fortychops@lemm.ee 14 points 1 year ago

Blocked lemmit bot yesterday. Infuriating watching it spam “all” with trash

Just an FYI for anyone else using Memmy; the block user function does not currently work. You have to log into the website on a browser, search for the bot (@bot@lemmit.online) and block it that way. Afterwards it won’t show up on Memmy

[-] Zangoose@lemmy.one 8 points 1 year ago

lemmit.online is an instance dedicated to copying subs over from reddit just to have content. All of the communities on lemmit.online do this

[-] iamanurd@midwest.social 7 points 1 year ago

Yeah, figured that out shortly after posting and commented on it below. Still don’t like it, and I believe that it reflects poorly on Lemmy as a whole if it’s showing up in the main feed. Just my $.02 though. 😊

[-] Zangoose@lemmy.one 5 points 1 year ago

That's fair, it seems like something that would be useful to have but probably shouldn't be showing up on "all" type feeds, though I'm not sure if there is any way to fix that past just blocking communities. Maybe allowing users to block entire instances in their profiles could help.

[-] CoralMask146@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

I can see both sides of it. Sometimes, you just need a little activity to get stuff going. Otherwise, newcomers coming and seeing empty posts can turn them away

But in this case specifically (mods can only post and it's all copy-paste from Reddit), I'd block them too

[-] croobat@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

NTA, that shouldn't rob your sleep tho, it's something that will happen, and kind of inevitable once reaching critical mass.

Despite that, I think there is nothing wrong with wanting to migrate useful content from dedicated communities into a safer, better platform. If you think about it, that content was never Reddit's, It was from the community, for the community.

People reposting low effort content and memes for engagement kinda suck tho.

[-] Madbrad200@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

I blocked the bot. It's artificial

[-] MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

NTA.

Here's my rageposting about it a couple of days ago. https://lemmy.world/post/805180, there's a link to a previous discussion as well.

And the admins have responded they had a talk with moderators and bots should not post without explicit moderator approval inside a community at this point, but I think they are being careful and keeping a close eye on this situation.

Oh also if it is only lemmit.online, then it's intended to be a bot only instance to scrape reddit. Admins on lemmyworld have already decided to block it, so maybe talk to your admin about it?

[-] MrsDoyle@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

The bot did annoy me, so I just blocked it and carried on. I block other stuff I'm not interested in, so it's nothing personal.

[-] babetoduarte@lemm.ee 8 points 1 year ago

I just switched to Lemmy yesterday, and I tried finding most of the communities I followed on reddit here. Since then, I've slowly realized that some of these communities rely on this automated bot that just dumps reddit content there.

I can appreciate the effort of populating these communities, but I found it irritating most of the time, since this is content that I can not genuinely interact with, only consume.

So, I don't think you're at fault here.

[-] LillianVS@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

AITA quality went down hill because they removed the no-validation rule.

What you got was poor-faithed questions of people looking for validation about a situation where they clearly weren't going to be the asshole.

Then as it grew in popularity appealing to the general populace it encouraged people to use it for the purpose of farming karma. They would post low effort, baits. You would get astroturfing or people subtly posting their fetishes.

The only community I miss is AmITheAngel where people just laughed at some of the more extreme examples of the above mentioned problems.

[-] CrunchyBoy@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

I think a better idea to populate this page with content AND encourage discussion would be a "Best Of" style community. Don't just blindly copy everything over, but curate the best and encourage discussion around those.

Of course that would take work and I'm not doing that.

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[-] magic_lobster_party@kbin.social 8 points 1 year ago

The worst part of Reddit was all the karma farming repost bots. Let’s keep it a Reddit thing.

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[-] TicaVerde@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

I always suspected a majority of posts in AITA the sub were fiction (either human made or AI). So anything to get away from that I'm all for.

[-] nitefox@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

No. I see a lot of reposts in here, even with meme templates 13 years old, and I’d rather not see them at all

[-] everythingsucks@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

Yeah, a lot of these posts are like a “best of” from Reddit. If I wanted to see bots repost top posts from reddit, I would have stayed on Reddit.

[-] Rhoeri@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think ITA for being the only one here that dislikes AITA period. That shit subreddit should never have migrated here. It’s just karma farming.

[-] JoelJ@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Right? More than half the stories are just made up, and designed just to capture people's outrage so they comment more. It feels so toxic to me

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[-] ShadowRam@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago

majority of /r/AITA is fake,

Why would anyone want bot/fake posts flooding this place?

[-] MiddleWeigh@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There's literally no one tell they're the ass hole.

I don't think any of those people are real anyway so whatever.

I blocked the lemmit bot a week or so ago. Smooth sailing (:

[-] klemptor@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

NTA. I agree this is obnoxious and counterproductive. If there's an actual need for an AITA comm on lemmy then it should be able to grow organically.

[-] Alkider@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

what's the point of copying over stuff from reddit here? If anything, why not make a separate community for that? If it's to archive it would be better to put it elsewhere dedicated to that.

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this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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