I think it’s great that so many people want to build and grow Lemmy, but why are we doing it by copying over Reddit content? It didn’t seem as bad when it was funny pics or memes or whatever, but now I’m seeing discussion threads, which doesn’t make sense to me.

I can kind of see it if a Reddit mod decides to move their forum from there to here, and wants to start with their existing content, but otherwise I’m not sure this is a good thing.

What do you guys think?

  • inasaba@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    I’m personally archiving some of the great content from my community on Reddit because it meant so much to me, and to lose it would be a shame. I think it’s important for us to preserve the foundational content of our communities.

    • lps2@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      Curious what tooling you’re using. I think they all have the 1000 post limit but I at least found BDFRX easy to use to back up my sub’s 1000 most recent posts and am just looking to host that and link to it in a future community here on lemmy

      • inasaba@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        I am PMing users on Reddit to ask permission to reshare their OC, and then manually posting here once I obtain it. It gives me the chance to give the posts a pass for typos and such, which is nice.

    • AFK BRB Chocolate@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      If it was a user who posted content there and decided they’d rather have it here, that would make sense. But this appears to be bots scraping Reddit subs for content and copying big chunks here. I don’t know about you, but I’m not likely to respond to that kind of post. I don’t think it fosters discussion or helps us.

      • L3s@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I’m doing it with communities that need a jump start, and it seems to be sparking conversation in those posts. However, I’m not grabbing discussions for them to come over.

        L4s@lemmy.world currently trying to help /c/technology and /c/til

        Edit: also trying not to spam, it checks top posts once an hour, and only will post one link an hour to each sub.

  • Tugg@lemmyverse.org
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    1 year ago

    There could be a few reasons.

    • They want to copy over their favorite content.
    • They want to try to attract more people to a community by bootstrapping content.
    • They are trying to artificially inflate their instance for nefarious reasons.

    Personally, I think adding some of your favorite Reddit posts is fine as long as you don’t blindly copy over everything from a subreddit. I have a couple communities that I brought over that I like, but without content, they mean nothing.

    • CoderKat@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      The importance of jump starting can’t be understated. Most people will go to the community that has content. If a community is empty, a lot of people won’t even start participating in it. Plenty of people who make posts want them to be discussed, so they’re only looking for active communities.

    • AFK BRB Chocolate@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      I think I have a bit of a bias against trying to make Lemmy a copy of Reddit, but I also feel like it doesn’t make sense to copy old discussion threads. Someone asked a question on Reddit and got an answer. We don’t need that duplicated here, in my opinion.

      Again, i think a mod relocating their community is a different situation.

    • Eeyore_Syndrome@sh.itjust.works
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      1 year ago

      Although when I see such communities not having any replies to reddit share/RSS/bot on Lemmy communities`, work days or a week it starts to feel like that fire 🔥 isn’t starting.

      • lozunn@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Don’t forget that the real migration has not even started, assuming there is going to be one - one week to go for that to begin.

  • Steve@compuverse.uk
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    1 year ago

    Lots of people like to collect things. When they move, they want to take their collections with them.

    • assa123@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      And there is so much knowledge deposited in reddit that it would be unwise to let its future on the hands of gold seekers. I wish we had more time for the backups, and that those that overwrote their posts and comments can share that lost info here.

  • struds@sopuli.xyzB
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    1 year ago

    I think it’s a great way to get things started. People coming to check things out and seeing content are more likely to stay and create their own content.

  • ic33@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It’s a factor that supports getting to critical mass, but should be used in moderation.

    Reddit founders incessantly posted stuff from Digg and created fake conversation threads.

    • chiisana@lemmy.chiisana.net
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      1 year ago

      Most content driven platforms have the same problem and initial practice due to the chicken-and-egg problem. If you don’t have content, users not gonna come; if users aren’t there, they won’t be submitting content. So to kick start a community, you’d need a group of vocal users contributing a lot of content and interacting with them.

  • Eeyore_Syndrome@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I’m not loving the RSS/Reddit bot posts really, I’m personally blocking a lot of such lemmy-bots.

    I’m a fan of people sharing links and starting conversations or showing off an interesting/shiny thing with the communities themselves.

    To…maybe be not Reddit for a change. 🤔

    Then again I’m an elder Millennial and remember live journal and myspace.

    I mean I’m here weening off reddit as well.

    Could see the benefit of temporarily posting reddit moderator/pin posts or such. Emphasis on temporary.

    But the daily influx of such stuff when I attempt to view All as New is certainly a journey.

  • AnonTwo@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    transitional period i’d assume to make it easier for people to ease in, when the content they’re expecting still flows in

  • danielton@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I don’t see it as a problem since a lot of people are nuking their Reddit accounts, and I’d guess most of us are Reddit refugees.

  • NXL@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    When googling information i usually end the search with “reddit” as Reddit makes it harder to view without signing in to the app i want to be able to google with the word lemmy instead so having the information here is helpful

    • Kwik@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      @nxlemmy
      Only difference here is maybe some posts don’t originate on an instance with the word Lemmy in it. It could be kbin or feddit or beehaw, etc.

      We gotta find out whatever the best search term would be for the Fediverse.

  • Undisclosed@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I don’t know about this one. I mean Reddit memes don’t always originate from Reddit, time and time again id see old internet content from 12 years ago from ifunny or 9gag etc.

    I also think that if a lot of the users have been in a Reddit tunnel for a long time, of course they’re going to think similarly… questions even on Reddit get repeated ad nauseum (e.g “redditors, what is the most nsfw thing that’s happened to you” and people commenting about actual OHSA stuff instead of sexy stuff= haha).
    I’m not entirely sure humans are capable of have original thoughts 100% of the time. Probably not even 20%. That’s especially true if they’re getting all their info/humor from the same places.

    Memes are memes!

    • Boz (he/him)@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      Slightly off topic, but OMG I would absolutely love a community that’s “NSFW, but actually OSHA violations.” It would probably be a pain in the buns to mod, though.

  • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I would imagine so that the information is not lost forever when many accounts get deleted or they nuke their comments and then delete their account.