this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
417 points (98.4% liked)

Today I Learned

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What did you learn today? Share it with us!

We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.

** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**



Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.



Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.

If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.

For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.

Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.



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You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.

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[–] newthrowaway20@lemmy.world 72 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Same for public freakout. Some people feel you need to 'seed' a community with a bot and content... Seems dumb to me, copying everything from somewhere else. But it doesn't really bother me all that much

[–] executive_chicken@lemmy.world 49 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I think it’s important in the beginning to help generate content and have people stay in the community. Reddit would oftentimes have a subreddit with an interesting topic, but no content which pushes people away almost immediately

[–] Stovetop@lemmy.world 34 points 1 year ago

I will say it seems to be working. It's only because of the posts created by the bot that this community even appeared on my local feed, which helped me realize that there was a TIL community in Lemmy I could subscribe to.

[–] LordOfTheChia@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

Also theres the "1% of users generate all the content". It may take a bit for that 1% to get pulled into the community. Gotta keep that 99% entertained somehow in the mean time.

[–] jimmyjoners@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is this not effectively a link aggregation site? Why do you care if the links are bespoke human entered data? People keep bitching about this and it makes no sense to me at all

[–] LordOfTheChia@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

I think it's an important difference if the bot posts are grabbed from (say the all time top posts from that sub in Reddit) vs reposting from the same Lemmy community.

One helps preserve a historical top posts for others to enjoy if the primary community goes dark (or the image/video hoster link expires), the other just adds annoying repetitiveness.

[–] Quill7513 10 points 1 year ago

It's what some people want. Its not what I want. I'm happy both groups get to have what they want

[–] breadsmasher@lemmy.world 38 points 1 year ago (3 children)

in that instance, yes. Blocking it made my feed feel far less spammed

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[–] Sage_the_Lawyer@lemmy.world 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don't get why people here are so in favor of bot seeding. To me, that makes a network inorganic and it intimidates average users from posting since it will more than likely be drowned out by all the bots. There are plenty of link aggregators in the world if all you want is funny memes.

I prefer places that feel like a real forum, with real people, interacting in real ways. That's what used to make reddit unique to me. That's what I love about Lemmy now.

I don't care if a community doesn't grow at a rapid pace. I'd rather have thoughtful conversations from a few individuals rather than a wall of spam that stifles discussion by making it harder to find discussions, since it spaces all the content out over dozens or hundreds of posts.

If all you want to do is doomscroll, there is no shortage of places to do that. But if you want to have actual discussions with real people... I'm not even sure there's a place for that anymore with how pro-bot this comment section is.

Guess I'm the old person yelling at clouds at this point, but it makes me kind of sad to see.

[–] WarmSoda@lemm.ee 7 points 1 year ago

Guess I’m the old person yelling at clouds at this point,

No, looking at the comments here you seem to be in the majority line of thought.

"Doomscroll" is a new one to me. I like that.

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[–] venoft@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is there a list of repost bots somewhere? Would be nice to just block all of them.

[–] Black_Gulaman@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Ech@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

There's a profile option to explicitly mark a profile as a bot, and another to hide all bot accounts. Of course that only works if the first option is used at all.

[–] zabil@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago (6 children)

Are you a bot?

Am I a bot?

Is there anyway to know. You know the saying - "I think therefore I am (a bot)"

[–] sorenant@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

I asked Bing and it said I'm not a robot.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I suggest trying to harm a human, or by inaction allow a human to come to harm. If that works, you're not a robot.

[–] zabil@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This deserves an award. But that is not the platform we find ourselves in. Rest assured though that this did cause me to chuckle.

Like a human.

[–] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

That's all the award I need.

[–] Alivrah@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago
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[–] orientalsniper@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

I don't have a problem with as long it's for the initial seeding, it would make no sense for it to exist after we are getting an organic growth.

[–] PearlsSwineEtc@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

And that bot is blocked by me now. Any other bots doing similar work for Skynet?

[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

The ones I have blocked to reduce post spam are:

  • @bclemmybot@lemmy.beyondcombustion.net
  • @linkbot@lemmy.link
  • @bot@lemmit.online
[–] antik@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I actually had a chat with the creator of this bot, @L3s@lemmy.world earlier today. I informed him that bots are only allowed when they are requested or approved by the community's moderator. I believe the creator has good intentions and he seemed to understand why it would be a bad idea to simply copy unfiltered content. You should no longer see posts of this bot outside of the communities he has an approval for.

On the other hand, I added lemmy.link to the banned instances as they were clearly just spamming, even posting TMZ ads. Their bot @linkbot@lemmy.link was also banned.

So, wether or not bots are allowed that is up to the community moderators. As long as they follow the general rules on content moderation and they have the moderators' approval.

[–] MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Yeah, replying to your other messages, appreciate your work here, your work dealing with the hacker was way faster than I expected. It's a little bit less than what I want, but then again, I did choose this instance because you guys seem the most reasonable and careful about making serious decisions like defederation, so I guess it's about what I've expected.

Anyways, for a community like this, where the sole mod appears completely inactive, it's not great to have a bot running completely rampant. If you can, please have a talk about this with the maker of the ChatGPT bot about this rule too, because I've seen that bot running loose in the comments on a number of communities, even those it was not really appreciated in.

Lastly, separate topic since I have your attention here, because the mods over at c/android have abandoned their positions and locked their community in favor of one on another instance despite the concerns of many of us here (some being quite vocal), and that there is still a demand since there are still activities in those threads even yesterday, I'd like to request moderating the abandoned c/android, since I was a fairly active participant when the community was active, and I'd like of think of myself as decently well liked on this instance despite my dumb shenanigans here.

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[–] MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (4 children)

https://lemmy.world/post/805180

Well, I've already made my points on using repost bots very clear a few days ago, and I still think they are a serious problem.

And the current conditions of this community is exactly what I was worried about.

[–] nan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Originally I didn’t see an issue with them, but I have noticed when they pop up in my feed (usually All), I don’t bother opening them, don’t interact with them, don’t comment, etc. Its not even that I have an issue with it being a bot, more that I don’t see a point when it’s not a person. It’s noise.

[–] MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah, you can see the effect it has on c/politics and c/technology exactly in my response to @antik@lemmy.world on the post, and I think discussion quality has already visibly degraded there due to the outrage and fearmongering piped in from reddit, not to mention here it's basically mostly spam with little or no comments on bot posts.

And unlike the comments predicted, they didn't get turned off for any subreddit after July 1st, they just turned it on for more subreddits, exactly like I said they would.

I know the admins have a lot on their plate with last night's hack and all, but I do think this is critical in shaping this instance's culture and should be a priority to resolve.

Nobody really wants to see another r/politics.

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[–] WarmSoda@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

We're on the same page

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[–] MelonTheMan@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

A lot of the top content on Reddit was fun and engaging, but it wasn't really important to talk about. Like ads that are actually enjoyable?

I think spamming content isn't real content anyways. Feels gross to engage with a bot

[–] freecandy@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

One of it's posts is right above this one in my feed :(:(:(

[–] Squiglet@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Im a human bot

[–] Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] SomeoneElse@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

I blocked that one the other day. My feed immediately improved.

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