So I purposed that for Lemmy and mastdon a bot that post links to YouTube videos and news articles relevant the city I live in, and I got push back on suggesting the idea. I suggesting this bot because my city isn’t big enough to pump out content everyday and the links would seed content for a Lemmy community so that its not empty.
I have looked into city subReddit and for my city links to news stories are basically non existent and big city like NYC news article links are rare, but do get engagement.
I have been told that link bots don’t help with empty communities and something about redundancy.
I do look at politics community and that’s nothing but links.
I’m asking for general perspective from both sides
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If you want to make the community feel non-empty. Make the bot post maximum once every week or two.
Anything more than that and the community will feel empty in another way. Because it’ll just be repetitive posts from a single account with barely any upvotes or comments as far as the eye can see. Like look at communities like !beds@feddit.uk. The excessive botposting with no upvotes or comments makes it feel basically more empty than anything.
I’m not against bots to populate, but prioritise quality over quantity.
Personally I worry this is sort of a chicken and egg problem. On one hand I get the idea, on paper, of automating a way to post more content to hopefully spark engagement in a small community struggling to grow.
OTOH, as a community visitor, few things will immediately tank my interest in engaging than when I see “bot” in the name of the poster. I’m not talking with a human—literally the entire point of hanging out in a community like you and I are, right now.
I think it’s a similar problem to what I see in r/blogging. People keep asking if they can start a blog and pump it full of AI content, then get admitted to AdSense or other ad networks and thus win the game of capitalism. But virtually zero ad networks will admit you that way. In fact, they all have a bunch of tech now to sniff out AI content and downrank or otherwise block it. The problem is: no one wants to read AI (bot) content because it isn’t genuine content from human beings. Which means no advertiser wants to place their ads next to AI content.
Speaking as a community manager: If you’re trying to build a community, I think the best solution is still to simply put in the time yourself. Find people who share your passion and want to help. Post the links and discussions yourself. Be the human you want to see in the community of humans you hope to build.
I think it’s fine as long as:
- Your bot is clearly marked as such
- It only post to communities where it has explicitly been made welcome, either after you talking to the admins or in a community you run
A lot of people, myself included, are hesitant to take the time to look at content if nobody took the time to manually share it. But for a use-case like you mentioned, for a local community that is too small to be established naturally any time soon, I think it could make sense. Especially for local news — YouTube videos should maybe still go through a human screening before being shared.
That’s my five cents, anyway. :)
Even if it’s just links, taking the time to find them yourself and post them is a useful step, since relevant doesn’t always mean insightful or interesting.
Also, you’re not completely tied to links. Make/ask for recommendations, life pro tips, etc.
I’d be finding publishers and YouTube accounts for the bot to make post from. I do plan on publishing the bot so other people can do it for their cities, if I consider it a good idea.
I have one running in !beds@feddit.uk as otherwise there would be nothing in it other than the odd article I’d post manually. The idea is that I will remove it if the community grows enough that the bot is just adding noise. At the moment there’s minimal engagement, but I find it useful as I see the local news rather than looking for it elsewhere and having to post it.
This looks pretty ideal in my opinion.
It runs off of RSS feeds. Here if you want to look/use as inspiration: https://github.com/chris-y/rsstolemmy I’m not sure if that’s the latest version but it should do the job.
The problem with using a bot to post vs posting things you find interesting is that the bot doesn’t match the level of interest. But because we have the option to hide bot accounts you can absolutely use bots to populate your community with content and those that dont like it can block the bot or have disabled bot accounts altogether.
