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The Linux distillery Reddit readers rage at thankless Linux Twitter-bot
The Linux distillery Reddit readers rage at thankless Linux Twitter-bot | Reddit readers rage at thankless Linux Twitter-bot |
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| by David M Williams | |
| Monday, 13 July 2009 | |
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Reddit readers can discuss the linked-to page as well as indicate their approval or disapproval by voting up or down thus effectively allowing the community to collectively filter out the dross while promoting stories that have greater interest and accuracy. The mechanisms behind Reddit are similar to those employed among other well-known social networking sites such as SlashDot and Digg. Linux readers discovered this weekend that a Twitter bot, using the Twitter name Linuxalive was simply trawling the Linux subreddit and tweeting stories as they appeared on the front page. This was first pointed out by user “aperson” and repeated across various other topics. Some discussion ensued about whether this was acceptable or not. On the one hand, some argued, that’s the nature of content aggregation and RSS scraping and happens throughout the Internet. Plus, others noted, there are bots reposting or tweeting Reddit content already. Yet, not all felt it was so innocent particularly because while other bots do exist, they had the courtesy to include a link back to Reddit in their tweets or postings. Linuxalive, by contrast, does not do so. Although it is pulling its stories from Reddit it links directly to the linked-to story and bypassing Reddit entirely. Searching Linuxalive’s Twitter history it is interesting to note many examples of Twitter followers appreciating the stories being tweeted, for instance Dragontrainer thanks Linuxalive for the tips being so freely given out. Elsewhere, other Twitter users pass on the links that Twitteralive issues, ascribing credit to Linuxalive. It didn’t take long for some self-styled community justice to take its course. Please read on to page two of this story to find out what happened but please note it contains links to pages that contain words and concepts that may cause offense. You do not need to follow the links to appreciate the events that transpired. |
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