Jerboa @lemmy.ml UnmeltedByRain @lemmy.world 1y ago

Is there a way to filter out bot posts?

Not comments are fine, but I don't want to see posts without real users behind them.

21 comments

In your profile there is an option for bots.

Show bot accounts

Try toggling that. It seems to be on by default.
- I believe that toggle is just for "bot accounts" which if checked just marks your account as a bot.
  
  EDIT: ignore me. There's a bot account toggle and show bot accounts. Idk why I didn't notice that before. Apologies
  
  You also check from the bottom up?
- I feel like this setting would be a lot more useful if it was per community. Plenty of sports communities use bots to set up gameday discussion threads that I don't want to miss, but I DO want to miss the ocean of garbage reddit reposts drowning out actual human interaction.
  
  Which isn't a critique of your very relevant suggestion, but rather a lament that people think that communities somehow get better when robots are posting junk no one reads.
  
  This is the kind of thing I'm thinking too. Long run it's not a big deal, because I can just scroll past the bot posts.
  
  If it doesn't exist: https://github.com/dessalines/jerboa/issues
  
  You can create an Enhancement request.
- Appreciate the help.
What is your definition of bot? Even if you toggle the "I'm a bot option" off you can still access the API using a programming interface. Thus you are able to run a bot even if its account has not been defined as a bot.

It is probably possible to create a client (like Jerboa or Lemmy-UI) that is able to hide messages from accounts that are defined as a bot. But if a account hasn't been defined as a bot, its messages will still show up, even if they are written by an automated script.
- Exactly. And bot accounts tagged as such are probably actually helpful bots, unlike the bots masquerading as people.
Not sure how effective it is but under your profile settings there is a box you can uncheck that says "Show Bot Accounts"
- Thanks, I'm dumb for not seeing that.
I get why you might want to, however there are a decent number of bots right now working on posting up content to Lemmy from either reddit or a stockpile somewhere. I'm working on a bot right now for my private instance that would post a few stores up pictures a day of my dog until it exhausts it's supply just to start stimulating my feed more. That's just an example from me, but the way I see it bot content posters aren't the worst for the health of Lemmy right now as it continues to grow.
- It's really the cross posts from Reddit I was hoping to avoid. Yours sounds fine.

21 comments