Also, as long as it links there, it serves the completely ass-backwards purpose of actually providing Reddit with extra traffic. Probably not a lot though, I guesss.

Came here to say this as well. I don't mind "stolen" content. That's the only way I'll ever see it, as Lemmy is the only media I usually pay any attention to. The links though are obnoxious. I have zero interest in following it to reddit, and as you said, there's no engagement here. It's a waste of space.

This is correct. It's worth noting that there are some communities that it's probably fine for. If you're posting news, memes or gifs, it doesn't matter where they come from and it's a much different thing than posting a question. But there are reams of bot-posted content in discussion communities that have zero comments and end up reducing engagement when people see all those.

I've been struggling with this. I have been posting a lot to the !buildapcsales@lemmy.ml community to try to get it going. At one point, I thought "these are just links to deals, wouldn't it be easier to have a bot steal them from Reddit?"

But then I realized that while the links to deals have some value, it's really the community and discussion that provides value. Would you rather have a bot creating a hundred posts a day with no comments? Or a few posts made by actual people with whom you can ask questions or have a discussion?

On the other hand. I se no issues with spamming Reddit with Lemmy links to posts.

People think Lemmy should be Reddit, but when Treads Federates it will be something very different. I fully expect that Threads users will very quickly subscribe into LW communities and thus we will be something much bigger than reddit ever dreamed.