Should we clone reddit posts?
Should we clone reddit posts?
From a technical and legal standpoint, ignoring ethics and dignity, is there anything preventing us from scripting a scraper that recreates reddit posts in a lemmy instance? Like maybe top 50 posts of the top 20 subreddits, without comments. I think it would help convince people to join, since the major argument for sticking with reddit is that it has more content. Thoughts?
lemmit.online already has this and I blocked the communities of that instance because I don’t want Reddit content…I want Lemmy content.
If you do decide to do it, use a bot specific instance with bot specific communities. Don’t flood existing communities with bot content.
I don't like the idea. It seems like those fake websites that scrape stackoverflow and SEO to ruin Google search. Avoiding those sites are among the reasons people type "reddit" into searches. People want authentic interactions and I think mirroring reddit into Fediverse lacks authenticity and undermines its authenticity. Content here should be from people who are here.
If someone wants to assimilate content from reddit into something new and post it here that's good. That means the person is here and can be interacted with.
If someone wants to repost their own content here, that's also fine. They are here to interact with.
I just really think it's a bad idea to deliberately build a ghost town and think people will move in.