I've done something like this, with RSS feeds. Read !meta@rss.ponder.cat to see the existing communities, and how to add a feed to an existing community.
The concern about spam is real. A lot of these exist, for example one for Hacker News and a whole instance for Reddit, and a lot of people including myself don't like those. I agree with you that it's a good idea but it's necessary to be careful that it remains a useful seed of content and not an overwhelming spew.
What I had in mind was a system that [...] could produce continually fresh posts to communities
So you want low effort posts, generated automatically.
Nobody needs that. Such posts should neither be created nor read.
Automated posts are waste of human time.
(But it is done already).
Posts, homie. Not comments. That's kinda the focal point I think I failed to explain properly. Lemmy has very low volume of posted content but far better discussions about the posts. Each is obviously being compared to the last I was on reddit. I also had this in mind of expanding the breath of communities with content. Right now there is a fuckin hero in the NFL community who is what idiots would say is doing God's work. Manual providing individual highlights as the come in from Twitter or wherever his source is, for every game as they're being played. That. Shit like that is exactly what I had in mind to automate. I just assumed it could also be catered to any multitude of communities that act as reddit's creators intended, to have a place that is a front page to the internet with minimal human perversion or moderating outside of coment sections
Posts, homie. Not comments.
I have understood that. I was talking about posts.
I've got bots turned off. Mostly because organic conversation can and often is stifled by bots. The lack of the karma system doesn't change that. Over-inflated posting and downvotes still abound here and people dog pile on that even though there isn't a karma system reward. They still get a dopamine hit from upvoting/downvoting, and they still get one from seeing upvotes etc. So in that realm it doesn't matter that an algorithm isn't boosting some content. Not when people can use bots to drown out other people or whole discussions.
People have posited this idea before. The community generally doesn't seem to like this idea.
So if you notice the user push back from the oldest of the three posts to the newest definitely quieted down in the newest post. Also as multiple people and myself suggested is to allocate all the automation to itsnown accessible instance that users can pull from or block themselves same as it is now.
As for the issue with bot comments, I'm not suggesting to change anything thst would cause Lemmy to allow bot users comments. I 100% agree that would be the worst.
What I would most like to see is a solution to bring more content to the more niche communities that are obviously struggling to keep relevancy due to the low volume of active users not providing enough content in their own to keep these niche communities active.
How do you plan to prevent bot user comments? I think that's an important part of how this goes. Several users (including myself) have had hit and miss success with blocking instances. Block evasion is absolutely a thing here with users too. I really do want to understand what the plan is for implementation, if the communities and instances are going to be warned, and if this instance will have admins and moderators and most importantly tools to combat some of the problems I foresee from this.
I dont know how they do it now but I assume there is something because I have oy seen a couple bot responses but they've were on point and not spam.
An assumption isn't good enough. If you want to implement this you'll need a plan. It won't be successful unless the community interacts with it.
So, you don't want bots regurgitating thoughtless comments, but you do want bots regurgitating thoughtless posts?
You do know why Reddit's content went to shit, don't you? That's right, bots regurgitating thoughtless content.
When Reddit stopped supporting third party apps, some people who moved to Lemmy did use bots to try to transfer content from Reddit to Lemmy.
Unfortunately, Lemmy users are kinda like Luddites when it comes to bots and AI. They're tools that can be very beneficial of course, but Lemmy users treat them all like they're literally worse than Hitler despite the great value of the content they were transferring. The hate, reporting, and blocking of bots and bot accounts was so bad that most people that operated them just gave up completely, and I don't blame them.
Look, I don't like bots that advertise as much as the next guy, but Lemmy has a serious drought of content, even now. And I mean real, valuable knowledge content. I certainly was not and still am not opposed to bot transferring data from Reddit or forums to Lemmy. But this is where I must admit, I am a serious outlier when it comes to Lemmy user demographics.
Yes you just outlined exactly what I was failing to describe. Mama said it's not our fault I came out so dumb it's all the lead paint's fault that she ate when she was pregnant with my little brother.
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