Bots of this type have appeared recently, and people are asking if it’s okay to use them. I’m not sure about this either, so I think it would make sense to ask users.

These bots follow some subreddits on Reddit and automatically post it to Lemmy when a post is created there.

I’ve seen an example site for it: lemmit.online. This instance is dedicated solely to mirroring Reddit posts to the Lemmy instance.

Maybe instead of mirroring to a community on Lemmy NSFW, we can subscribe to lemmit.online via Lemmy NSFW. This way we could have kept Lemmy NSFW free of bots. Currently, even if accepted, I believe it should be done under admin control to prevent duplicates.

Here is the poll: https://strawpoll.com/polls/PbZqRw82byN

I’m open to suggestions.

50 points

from a ‘get as much content as possible’ angle bots are good but i think there’s a big risk of them drowning out actual posters which really takes away a lot of the fun of posting and making it feel like an archive rather than an active community.

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18 points

Totally agree. IMO they have a limited use to get initial content seeded and then it’s over to actual members of the community to continue and develop. Other instances are focusing more on the “archive” aspect so we should let them do that.

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Agreed. I think organic growth is better than essentially being nothing better than an RSS feed that copies content from another site because otherwise what’s the point when I might as well go to the original source in the first place. I want this community to be separate and grow into its niche on its own.

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2 points

For setup communities i agree, but for communities with few people right now it can be a very large undertaking to keep them alive manually, and the boost of content can really help growth for migrating communities

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34 points

Categorically no. The point of lemmy isn’t to be a content farm. It’s to be a community where people respect each other. How can you respect anything or anyone while stealing content?

In fact I would go the other way and start banning people that are posting content they don’t explicitly have permission to post. In this day and age where more people are seeking to monetize sharing nudes, we need to protect the few free content creators we have left, whether on this platform or the former one.

Fuck people and bots that steal nudes.

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9 points

That’s a fair point but what about artwork? For example hentai. Are we really expecting only OC content to appear on Lemmy? I don’t think that’s realistic at all…

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0 points

I would argue that we’re no more entitled to post people’s hentai artwork as we are their nudes. More so in fact, it can take days to create hentai, only for it to be posted here with no mechanism for the original author to request it taken down.

If people really want to see other people’s hentai posted here, why not link to it? I’m pretty sure the original authors would appreciate that. Plus if they see Lemmy generating traffic, maybe they’ll join up and post stuff here directly.

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3 points

That’s what sourcing content is for. All the communities I moderate require sources when possible, and proof of best effort when not.

Your suggestion would make hentai communities all but impossible for the exact reasons you already stated.

Linking only to an art page would make the communities functionally useless. People don’t come to follow a million links, open a hundred web pages, and sign up for a dozen services in hopes of seeing something they like, they come to see the content, same as in any IRL content community.

Nude photos are cheap and easy to produce, so those communities would never be starved for content, but a hentai community that only allows direct images if they’re OC would be dead on arrival.

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4 points

This. 100% this

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0 points

I don’t agree that a bot would steal content. Content creators need exposure and they post for free on Reddit, so why wouldn’t they want the same here?

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-6 points

Wish there was gold to give you.

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31 points

I think we should not have them or else Lemmy will only be known as the platform that copies from others. Also there could be legal issues when the platform the content is copied from has an ill-minded CEO who wants to shutdown others.

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2 points

I do you think there are grounds for attacking Lemmy or an instance for hosting all/some of reddit’s user generated content?

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3 points

from a legal standpoint I can’t see how there is, reddit doesn’t own any of the content it serves. it’s terms of service do require they give the right for them to display it, but not ownership of the content

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3 points

What do you mean? Just because someone has uploaded their nudes to Reddit doesn’t mean you have the right to upload it somewhere else? It’s a clear violation of copyright. And I’d suspect a sex worker advertising their onlyfans is not going to be too happy about it.

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19 points

I don’t like reposts in general and certainly not automated bots.

Lemmit is certainly useful for us who don’t want to visit Reddit but don’t want to miss on certain content, but that’s what that instance is for. So keep the bots to instances like that, and the rest of Lemmy as free of bots as possible.

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17 points

I think that would be super beneficial to help jumpstart this site. Maybe at some point communities can do it the other way around, so that the „main“ branch of the community is on lemmy and can port over the follower of reddit

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