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where is an OK place to experiment with bots? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 1 year ago by maengd@sh.itjust.works to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I used code from a github repo to make a lemmy repost bot from a reddit sub.

I tested it out, it seemed OK. So I let it run over night.

When I got back I found out it had been posting the same thing over and over again every few minutes. The account was banned for spam. But in the meantime it was very annoying to people. Also, there are a bunch of posts that can't be removed because it's impossible to remove federated stuff.

Is there a responsible way to test this stuff?

I don't want to make spam, be annoying, etc. I feel bad about the spam bot.

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[–] redballooon@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Ideally posts and comments are somewhat in a relationship. For a community with little traffic, posts will occur scarcely, and few subscribers will add and read comments in their time.

If the community has few subscribers but many posts, any commented posts will be scrolled down so much that engagements stagnates.

So yes, you are right. If a small community has a single human poster who posts all the time without commenters engagement, it’s the same problem.

But a bot almost guarantees that any community it posts runs into that situation. You can’t automate human engagement.