Ask Lemmy @lemmy.world iamanurd @midwest.social 1y ago

Lemmy, AITA for disliking copied content from Reddit in the AmITheAsshole community?

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?

73 comments

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.
- Same here. The lemmit bot was blocked as soon as I saw it. If people want Reddit content, they need to suck it up and go to Reddit.
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 🙃
- Not yet at least... Just wait until AI gets out of the LLM stage and starts to become sentient.
  
  AITA for ending the human species?
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.

edit: sharing, not sharting. I'm not changing it because funny.
- edit: sharing, not sharting. I’m not changing it because funny.
  
  I tried to fart and a little shit came out.
  
  Worried for you if your autocorrect is ready to go with sharts. 😂
  
  Yep if you're sharting instead of sharing them YTA. ;)
- Tbh “sharting” is pretty apt for what a bot reposting AITA posts is doing lol.
- I would near guarantee that 90% if not more of that subreddit is fake posts for karma farming.
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- 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…
  
  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.
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.
- Yeah I would not miss AITA.
- 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.
  
  This
- TONS of rage bait, but people ate it up. 🤦‍♀️
  
  “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”
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.
- Thanks for creating Lemmit! It really is a great addition for those low-interaction communities.
- 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.
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.
- Personally I just blocked the bot.
  
  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.
- The lack of discussion isn't because it's a bot post though, nine times outta ten. I'm all for more content as long as it isn't obvious spam. The more content for me to interact with the better
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.
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! 😊
- 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
- 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
  
  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. 😊
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
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.
I blocked the bot. It's artificial
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.
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.
- 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
  
  I would say WAY more than half. Close to all.
- I see that shit on yahoo too now. Hated that sub so much.
- I remember scrolling through the older posts in that sub and there was good content once. Actual moral dilemma, stuff you could talk and discuss about. But then the sub grew and got flooded by AITA FOR NOT WANTING TO EAT BABIES ALIVE?!?!? (upvotes on the left)
- Well there's no karma. It's more genuine here.
  
  See that up arrow near all the posts and comments?
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?
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.
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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.
- 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.
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.
- A "BestOfAmITheAsshole" community sound like the right answer here. It also needs a lot of context from the comments to make it worthwhile, much like the BestOfRedditUpdates sub. And like you said, that's a lot of work that won't be easy to do with just a bot. Maybe someone can figure out a way to do it with chatgpt web.
The worst part of Reddit was all the karma farming repost bots. Let’s keep it a Reddit thing.
- Who cares? If you're seeing it again it's because enough people missed it the first time to still upvote it. Sounds like gatekeeping to me?
  
  I don’t have a problem with reposts per se - if it’s made by humans. Reddit in large part has the problem of bot accounts copying other posts, even to the point where top comments are copied too. Upvotes are also likely bot generated.
  
  I don’t want to engage with a social media where it’s just all bots, but I guess that’s too utopian to wish for.
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
- 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.
majority of /r/AITA is fake,

Why would anyone want bot/fake posts flooding this place?
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.
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 (:
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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.
NTA.
NTA. I would be annoyed, too. As it was, when I was on Reddit I hated that sub. It was just made up stuff most of the time. Usually it was some version of Cinderella, Snow White (minus the dwarves) or Rumpelstiltskin. Your point about mods only posting is telling. ESH except you..

73 comments