Hey @praetor , could you tag your mirror accounts as bots, as they are bots ? Thanks !
@RGrunblatt Thanks for asking. In what sense are they bots?
@praetor They are automated accounts that are not handled by humans, copied from twitter feeds. My interactions with mirror accounts are not replicated to them, it's effectively one way !
@RGrunblatt So you call "bot" every account which crossposts a human's account?
@praetor In particular when they are not handled by the human in question, which therefore has no way to add « manual » content, yes !
@RGrunblatt I see. How widespread is this view of what is a bot?
«Enabling the bot flag will add a bot icon to your profile. This icon will let others know that your profile may perform automated actions, or might not be monitored by a human», says https://docs.joinmastodon.org/user/profile/#bot .
Because people seem to have vastly different concepts of what "bot" means, so far I thought it better to explicitly state in the bio what these accounts are. What benefit does the "bot" flag offer?
@RGrunblatt I see your instance has a rule (6) that adopts this definition of bot. That's definitely your prerogative.
https://social.sciences.re/about/more
I'd be willing to adapt to this rule but what if other instances have incompatible rules? Do you know of other instances using the same rule?
@praetor I don't really know, I was just wondering if you had something against the switch :)
@RGrunblatt I'm not personally against it, and I don't like that I'm currently not in compliance with your instance rules. I just have no idea of the effects of the change, so I'm a bit uncomfortable about it.
I'd like to reduce the replies from people who think the person might be reading them. But I'm not sure that someone who doesn't read the bio would read and understand the bot flag.
Besides, is https://social.network.europa.eu/@EU_Commission a bot too, under your definition? (Did it ever post something manual?)
@RGrunblatt BTW just now I'm shutting down several accounts, which will be redirected to their equivalents on #EUvoice. This might reduce the volume of non-compliant posts you get.
@RGrunblatt Interesting distinction, so you think I should do this first of all for accounts in the name of individuals? (They're mostly MEPs and former MEPs.) It's an idea. I'm also not exposing those on the account directory, so they're already treated differently.
@RGrunblatt Now I'm wondering how I'd even do this.
I can use Wikidata to make a list of individuals vs. non-individuals. (Not sure it's worth it.)
Setting the bot flag doesn't seem supported by my crossposter:
https://gitea.robertoszek.xyz/robertoszek/pleroma-bot/src/branch/master/config.yml.sample
I don't see an option in the CLI:
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/admin/tootctl/#accounts-modify
So I'd probably need to change the flag directly in the database. 😬
meta
@RGrunblatt Sooo. #Mastodon marks #bots as actor_type "Service" whereas other users are "Person".
The #ActivityPub specification envisions 5 core actor types: Application, Group, Organization, Person, Service.
https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-vocabulary/#actor-types
Is other #Fediverse software like #Pleroma fine with using "Service" for accounts about a Person or Organization?
Dear #MastoAdmin and #FediAdmin, does your instance have any hard rules on (not) using the "bot" flag for #crossposting?
meta
One issue of an excessive usage of the "bot" flag is that #Pixelfed users cannot follow #Mastodon accounts marked as #bots.
https://github.com/pixelfed/pixelfed/issues/2098
You're correct, the cross-poster doesn't set the bot flag as of now. Feel free to open an issue requesting the change, I initially saw it as a choice for the end-user to make during their Fedi account creation.
If you have a huge volume of users to change, other than editing the database you could perhaps use the API endpoint /update_credentials with your admin bearer token:
https://docs.joinmastodon.org/methods/accounts/
@praetor @RGrunblatt in mastodon is very easy. Settings > profile
And its the second tick.
@praetor For institutions account, it's a bit different in my mind : for some reason, even if institutions account are managed by humans somewhere, I have no expectation of interaction with them. But you're right, it's probably automated too !