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Useless. It separates the content from OP so they never see replies. Worse than spam, spam at least has a point to it.

Repost bots are a soulless, sad attempt to bloat Lemmy with content.

Looks at [email protected] vs [email protected].

Both are clones of their Reddit counterpart, but Superbowls has actual fresh content from users here on Lemmy, and is quite active as a result.
Capybaras is just sad reposting from Reddit. Each post has little to no engagement

I block them all. If I wanted reddit content, I'd still be on reddit.

They are spam bots that should be blocked instantly.

It's a double-edged sword IMHO. On one hand, it means that people on Lemmy don't need to give reddit any clicks / traffic in order to read the same stuff, but on the other hand, the sheer amount of reddit reposted content can easy drown out actually original content on Lemmy that might have been equally or more interesting. And if it looks like Lemmy content is 99% cloned stuff from reddit anyway, there's no real incentive to prefer Lemmy content over reddit. Not many people actually take the time and dig deep for OC inbetween reposts.

What the Fediverse needs, is lots of original content not found anywhere else, but as long as the total userbase isn't big enough to offer that on a consistent schedule, then copypasted content is still better than NO content at all ...

Personally I dislike bots tho. If an actual human decides to repost interesting things from reddit and actively participates in discussions, that's something I can get behind. A soulless bot just copypasting random stuff.... no thanks.

I've unsubbed from any comms that had them. They all become ghost towns with zero discussion.

I refuse to give Spez’s trainwreck another iota of engagement and feel anything that does, should be treated as suspect.

I don't mind too much when it comes to news, or other articles... Even pictures and memes... Whatever.

The one that confuses the shit out of me is stuff that's supposed to be interactive, like AMA or AITA or something. OP will never see the replies, so..... Why?

Something like the news can have very different discussions depending on who is in the community/subreddit where it was posted, meanwhile, posts asking for help or something... The entire point is to give OP a solution/answer to their inquiry. Why make a bot to bring that question to Lemmy when OP won't be aware it happened, and will have no way to know that responses have been given here? It's dumb.

There's still a lot of things that are being posted both to Reddit and Lemmy, and having that done by a bot instead of a person.... Well, I'm not mad at it. It's coming here one way or another.

I block them because it's pretty pointless to engage with when OP isn't there to see your comments. On the other hand if these bots scraping reddit costs reddit money then that's cool.

I completely blocked lemmit.online using the handy dandy instance block feature because i just do not give a fuck about Reddit and none of the reposted content is even good.

it fills up my subscribed/all page with so much spam that I can no longer see any of the naturally generated lemmy user content, there is zero activity on any post, and nobody on reddit will see anything if I comment.

They have their uses. In the Canadian version of r/BuildAPCsale or whatever it's called, it's great -- get the information about the sale and a link to the product.

In r/relationships, and the entire post and discussion are about OP's problem, they're completely useless.

There are certain niches where automated mirroring is a little useful.

Game day threads, part sales (where people need to be quick) are a couple examples.

I have most post bots blocked though (lemmit, alien, lululemon, etc.).

Like others said the downsides are that they drown out original posts and discussions with authors that never respond to comments. Consequently, the not-logged-in experience on instances that "leave it up to users to block" will appear messy and full of garbage.

I think they have their place but those automated should be contained to communities that want them, easily identified, easy to block and post rate limited to reasonable levels.

A yet to be developed feature in Lemmy would be the ability to somehow "opt-in follow" automated bot posts rather than the current "opt-out" model.

I'm of the opinion that populating lemmy with bots mirroring reddit content does not add any value to the threadiverse. Lemmy would be better served by everyone finding one article, image, video, whatever, each day and posting it in a relevant community, than by everyone setting up bots to spam the ALL feed with random content from reddit. And I try my best to practice what I preach.

I think they are important to keep the people who'd leave otherwise because of lack of content, which ultimately would effect even people who dislike the bots. I personally haven't noticed the bots yet, but I also don't pay attention to it much. Maybe the issue isn't as big as someone people make it sound like? Worth reflecting on.

I block every one I see and my feed is better for it.

I like it to keep track of communities that don't have enough members here to be very active. I don't participate in the discussions, but it's good in case some news come out that I would miss otherwise.

Lemmit.online is also good, because it actually lets you know that it's mirroring reddit. There was another instance that was mirroring reddit including comments, without any indication. I started "participating" in the discussions until I caught on to the fact that I wasn't getting any answers or up- or downvotes because it was just full of bots. It soon landed on my blacklist.

id strongly prefer if the content was fully reposted/rehosted on fediverse with no credit or links back to reddit (or imgur)

since no one seems to want to do that, fuck those bots.

I think they are fine for posts that don’t need engagement. The problem is, those bots also repost stuff of which comments need to be seen by the OP like AITA or posts asking for advice, things that the OP will never see if you comment here on lemmy. Those reposts are useless. Those bots should only be used for static content (pics, videos, etc.).