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Thoughts on (semi-)automated tool to import content from /r/python to this community? (communick.news)

submitted 1 year ago by rglullis@communick.news to c/python@programming.dev

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I'm working on a tool that aims to do two things:

bootstrap Lemmy communities with content from their "equivalent" subreddit
help people migrate away from Reddit, by setting up a bot account on Lemmy that can be later taken over by their legitimate reddit owner. The idea is that the bot account would follow the equivalent lemmy communities and "registration" could be as easy as having the reddit user sending a DM to a bot to authenticate themselves.

I'm wondering how the people here would feel about me trying out this tool by mapping /r/python to !python@programming.dev ? My plan would be to set up a Lemmy instance that could exclusively be the home for the bot accounts, and then I would handpick a few posts every day to get them mirrored here, comments included. I also have in the roadmap to have responses to let users on Reddit to be notified of the conversations/replies received on the Lemmy post.

My view of pros/cons:

Pros:

Those who are already on Lemmy but stay on Reddit because of specific, niche communities will be able to ditch Reddit entirely.
More content in the instance, which would help mitigate the common "I want to move to Lemmy, but the content is not there" complaints.
A clearer path to migration and less time discussing "where to go if we are leaving reddit?"
Admins who object to this can simply deferate from the mirror instance(s).

Cons:

If abused, Lemmy communities might start looking like they are filled with bots only. Not really my intention, this is why I am not planning to fully automate this, but also not a big issue given that admins can easily protect themselves for instances that spam too much.
It's a legal grey area (though there are so many repost bots out there and I don't see how anyone would try to enforce copyright claims) whose support is mostly on the hands of reddit users.
If people look at it as a tool to help them migrate, we can win them over. If this feels too forced, they will more likely side with Reddit and refuse to migrate.

Anyway, please let me know your thoughts.

(Also, the code is Python/Django so if anyone is interested in contributing just let me know!)

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[-] TheOneCurly@lemmy.theonecurly.page 18 points 1 year ago

I see no value in reposted content where we can't interact with the OP or any of the commenters. If you see a good link shared on the subreddit, just post it here like you would if you found it organically some other way.

[-] rglullis@communick.news -1 points 1 year ago

I have been doing that already for quite a bit of communities (just go check my profile history). The "problem" is that I am trying to automate this a bit and "sharing a link" from a self-post (common in programming-focused subreddits) don't work as well.

[-] breadsmasher@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

every other community “bootstrapped” by reposting reddit content with a bot just appears like spam. Its never worked well for any community ive come across

[-] Chais@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago

Yup. I ended up blocking a few of those Reddit import bots.
They end up creating batches of posts that can't be meaningfully interacted with, so I might as well ignore them altogether.

[-] rglullis@communick.news -1 points 1 year ago

Counterpoint: the most active emacs instance on lemmy the one where I was posting reddit links and sending DMs to the people inviting them to join.

My tool is not built to be a mass-spammer, but only to streamline this process. Notice that I said semi-automated, I will still be selecting which posts to mirror here.

[-] bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 year ago

Why not just request that r/python be added to lemmit, and then people can subscribe to that. Here's how you can add the request: !requests@lemmit.online.

Honestly, I see little value in polluting this community with reddit posts, but if you're planning on cross posting posts from Lemmit by hand, there's nothing stopping you as long as the mods allow it.

[-] rglullis@communick.news -1 points 1 year ago

I will add a FAQ in the README, it seems a lot of people are missing the part where I say that this tool brings the comment as well and has a different purpose than Lemmit. Here is a short explanation of the differences

[-] bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago

Personally, the value of the comments is to have a discussion with people, asking/answering questions, etc. If I know that replies to comments won't be read by the author, why would I bother commenting at all?

You're free to setup your own instance and sync the posts and comments. People who are interested in that can subscribe to your community on your instance. The mods might have issue if you crosspost posts with bot comments here, and I'll defer to them on policing that.

[-] rglullis@communick.news 0 points 1 year ago

If I know that replies to comments won’t be read by the author

They will. It's already on the roadmap to have send have any reply on lemmy to trigger a DM to reddit user, and there is also the possibility of having the bot on reddit to respond with a link to the Lemmy discussion.

People who are interested in that can subscribe to your community on your instance

This is not how it works. The idea is that the bots will act on the "mapped" communities. So, if the admin of the fediverser instance sets it up in a way that their bots will mirror /r/python to here, then every post that is "mirrored" will have the conversation/comments directly submitted to this community. If the instance admins do not want this, they can simply defederate from the "mirror instance" and then none of their posts will reach it here.

[-] bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 year ago

I don't have anything to add that others haven't said to you already. To answer the question in the title, I would not want posts from reddit with their comments in this community.

[-] Ategon@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I tried messaging an account I though was running it when your bots posted something to elixir but I can repost it here

Just wanted to let you know that we dont allow reposting of comments made on other platforms (both for spam reasons and tends to be a mess with gdpr). Link posts with no text are fine as long as you get approval from a moderator of a community or by one of the admins for site wide usage (and then allow moderators to opt out), and follow our bot guidelines that you can find in the sidebar on our site. Id be willing to greenlight the bot for sitewide usage as long as you remove the comments, make posts links only (links to the content, not the reddit post) and limit it to maximum 10 posts a day across the instance (max 2 in a specific community) (and also make sure you dont repost stuff already posted in the community). We have another bot called reddit x-poster that its been working fairly well with but they hang out in a couple communities like haskell

[-] jet@hackertalks.com 0 points 1 year ago

In general I'm in favor of the idea. But I think the bot should limit how fast it posts based on how much engagement the last couple post got. So if it's posting stories that get no comments no engagement then it should go very slowly. But if it posts that drives a conversation then it can post again.

This would hopefully limit the ghost town effect