I’ve found that I am. I sometimes write a reply, see that it was posted by an RSS bot, and delete the draft. OP doesn’t exist so what’s the point?
Who can tell what a bot is nowadays? There are a few ways but, most folk are not savvy enough, or do not care enough, to make the distinction.
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Much less likely.
Though I haven’t seen these RSS bots you complain about. Is this because you’re browsing ‘all’ instead of ‘subscribed’?
I do generally browse All but I see them on communities I’d be subscribed to anyway
/r ?
Whoops lol
I gotta admit reddit had better shorthand
I’m a fan of the c/whatever terminology personally
If I’m commenting on an article, I’m not just talking to the person who posted the article here. So it doesn’t really matter who posted it.
Yeah I don’t comment on them, but I don’t have them blocked bc they have stories I’d never see otherwise
No, not really. It just depends. One of the first things I blocked on Lemmy years ago was the “Lemmit” not which just copied tons of posts verbatim from Reddit. If bots are posting articles, maybe I comment. If a bot posts something discussion oriented, I’m not replying.
Huge caveat, all this is about transparent bots. If I think something is a bit masquerading as a human I don’t reply.
I actively avoid them. Im looking to more socialize around news than get the news. Basically I look for something like you get hanging and talking in a bar.
I generally block bots, and I don’t see a point to responding to their posts.
Yes. I don’t even look into the post details, just keep scrolling past
Leaving this out of the post body because it’s kind of a side thought: I think RSS bots on Lemmy kind of suck. We get flooded with everything these sites post whether they’re worth reading or not (and most aren’t!)
“Just block the bots” is the suggestion I’m sure many have…but if an RSS bot posts an article, a human is not going to post it again so I’d miss out on the 20% of articles worth reading
It used to be worse. We would have three different instances with bots reposting hackernews. One guy hosted an instance entirely for bot posting from different news feeds.
And so many different projects trying (poorly) to mirror reddit content in obnoxious ways.
On the other hand, the bots reposting old comic strips get plenty of discussion and don’t annoy me as much, so not all bots, I guess.
I really don’t understand the appeal of bots reposting other social media sites
I wonder what the breakdown of discussions started from users vs. bots is. While I can see your point especially from a spam pov, one purpose of this kind of bot is to pull from other sources and get a conversation going. If no one is interested, then it just falls to the bottom. I often see posts complaining that Lemmy/fediverse isn’t as active as Reddit was/is, and yet without some of this automation it would be far deader as people don’t tend to start posts as much as reply to existing one. If a particular bot/community is flooding your feed too much, that can be easily be blocked, or let the mods/admin know that it needs some adjustment.
if an RSS bot posts an article, a human is not going to post it again
I reject your premise, on the basis that it seems like basically every article, worth reading or not, is posted repeatedly (by humans) over the span of a day or two anyway.
Of course, I block the bot accounts, so if there are interesting articles that aren’t being re-posted, I can’t see them, but… I’d say my Lemmy experience is considerably better even with the presumed reduction in content.
To directly answer your question, even if I could see them, I wouldn’t engage with bot account posts.
You’re not wrong but if a bot-posted article is already on the frontpage, humans are less likely to post it. And if it’s news, I don’t really want to wait for the reposts
Not RSS, but we have bots that post some games to !dailygames@lemmy.zip every day. I reply to those for sure. You would miss out on those games if you’d block all bots.
I sometimes comment on rss bot posts depending on the community. I’m not replying to the bot per se, rather expressing my opinon on the the article that was posted for other users to see. I sometimes get replies from other people so it’s not entirely shouting into the void.
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Why would anyone knowingly reply to a bot? Other than to warn others that it’s a bot.
I can think of one reason. Instead of replying to the poster you can make a comment for the benefit of other readers, that could start a conversation between commenters.
This is pretty much what I do with every “upper level” comment I write. It’s almost never directed at OP, it’s meant for anyone reading it.
