I can see if accounts do it occasionally and organically but are accounts that exist solely to repost popular and recent posts from twitter/reddit/Facebook healthy for the Fediverse?

  • Rimu@piefed.socialEnglish
    4·
    2 days ago

    2-3 times a week is nothing. 2-3 per day is completely fine.

    It would only be used for the most flagrant accounts, ones with some level of automation - dozens of posts per day with almost no comments. That sort of thing.

    I too find content on other networks (mostly Mastodon, occasional YouTube) and post them here. Often a few per day. But it’s all completely manual and I usually rewrite the description, add hashtags, etc. And I’ll interact with people who comment on the posts. Cross-pollination of content is normal and good.

    There’s a point though, usually enabled by using some extra software tools like the one above, where someone ends up flooding their target communities, not responding to comments on the posts, looking inauthentic when they repost OC which plainly isn’t theirs and causing extra moderation work because their content is in the wrong places. Sanitation is the most obvious example of this but there are others.

    Despite this, a lot of people upvote and comment on their posts. I don’t know if

    1. they’re even aware of who the author is. Most apps do not emphasise this strongly so it’s easy to miss.
    2. if they are aware then are they aware that the author is ignoring them and won’t learn from the feedback they’re getting?

    … Or if they don’t care. Maybe they’re just content with the conversation in the comments without the OPs involvement. That’s valid (although not the kind of conversation I personally want to be a part of).

    It’s probably a combination of don’t know and don’t care. For those people, labelling sanitation et al as a bot would seem heavy-handed. That’s why I’m leaning towards creating an in-between state, for these kinds of centaur accounts.