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?
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
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.
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.
Ive got bots blocked.
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.
That’s how I feel but I still find myself not wanting to contribute to bot posts
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Yeah, it’s the choice thing that gets me. The websites would like you to read every article no matter how irrelevant it is, I like when topics I don’t read about outside of lemmy are human-curated.
I immediately block bot posts
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.
Yeah, bot posts are good IMO for things that are like once per day or less. More frequently and it can end up being spammy. OTOH, I’ve browsed all a few times and seen interesting posts from HN that I then went over and read, so there’s something to be said for that too. Maybe if there was a more nuanced option, like “don’t show me bot posts unless they’ve been upvoted by a non-bot” or something like that. Or maybe if bots reposting from elsewhere did that filtering beforehand, like top 10 per day or something
I appreciate that your posts. Feels better knowing a human is sharing something
I don’t mind those. It’s really just the articles, like zippybot posting every stupid RPS headline
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.
RSS bots definitely get replies. The comments section on Lemmy is often just a space for discussion on what was posted but when it’s a bot, I never want to “start the conversation”
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.
There are some accounts that explicitly label themselves as bots, though. So on those, you’re basically guaranteed to never receive any response or engagement from OP.
Yes because I have blocked and filtered out all the article bots
How can you tell?
Post histories are fairly easy to see- if they have zero comments it’s a dead giveaway.
Also many bots on fedi are obviously labeled as so in their username
Why does it matter? If they don’t think something is a bot, how could they be less likely to reply if it’s a bot?
I have the settings set to not show bot posts.
Settings>Don’t show bots
If I discover an account hiding their bot status, I block them, any account connected (“created by user this and that”) and consider blocking all subs it posts in as they’re most likely a bot infested narrative manipulating shithole.
Definitely.
Yes. I don’t even look into the post details, just keep scrolling past
