A few months ago, I launched the Lemmit instance and bot (@bot@lemmit.online). Primarily, this was to help me stay up to date with some of the content I'd leave behind on Reddi. Additionally, I wanted to give back to the community, so I made it possible for anyone to request the archiving of subreddits to the Lemmit instance.
However, this came with some unintended consequences. Notably, the most subscribed community on the instance has been !AmItheAsshole@lemmit.online. Even though it should have been obvious that there is no way to communicate with the Original Poster, given they're on Reddit.
The pushback against the bot and the instance has increased over time. A recent post, This bot is bad for Lemmy, highlighted these concerns. I've also received similar feedback from admins of major Lemmy Instances and through direct PMs.
As a response, last week I stopped accepting requests for archiving new subreddits. This weekend, I went a step further by discontinuing the archiving of a large amount of "interactive subreddits"—communities primarily centered around Q&A or communication with the Original Poster. This includes subs like !AskReddit@lemmit.online and !dating_advice@lemmit.online, as well as niche and support communities. Such discussions are better hosted on Reddit or Lemmy's equivalent spaces.
I've also adjusted the post karma thresholds to curb spam posts. While this probably won't appease everyone, it should reduce the bot's posting frequency.
Perhaps this might prompt some admins to rethink their choice to defederate from the Lemmit instance, or the banning of the bot. I'm not expecting anyone to, and won't take it personally if you don't, but I wanted to give the community this update nonetheless.
In !about@lemmit.online there's a sticky post of all the Actively archived communities on the server (including NSFW ones, since that is not public without logging in), as well as the list of communities for which archiving is now disabled.
Cheers!
Thanks for bringing this to my attention, I'll defederate the instance. I think the entire concept is fundamentally flawed. I want to see organic content. I want to interact with people on social media. If someone finds interesting content on Reddit, they can repost that content here manually, and talk about it with others. Bots are what I hated most on Mastadon, I won't let them ruin my Lemmy experience.
Can't blame you for that. Personally, I still think it excels at content where communication with OP is irrelevant, like !itookapicture@lemmit.online, !todayilearned@lemmit.online or !dataisbeautiful@lemmit.online. And by far best example of this, if you look at the subscriber count, is nsfw content.