Why aren't we just stealing all of the top content from Reddit and posting it here?

There's just no need anymore. Lemmy has boomed, and we have our own content. Reddit is not really relevant anymore.
- I mean, the content here lately is 15 year old memes.
  A lot of the boom is people that were too lame to get karma on Reddit so they spam dumb things here now and get upvotes because everyone is still in “upvote everything to help the community” mode.
  
  Admittedly I've blocked the meme communities in my feed - but that's not what I wanted from Reddit or I want from here.
  
  I think you hit the nail on the head, but personally, I stopped upvoting “to help the community” a while ago. Lemmy seems to be doing fine now so I’m not against downvoting at all either.
  The people upvoting those crappy 15 year old memes aren’t against downvoting either, because when I mentioned how terrible the memes were I got downvoted.
  
  And before that it was beans. We have our own rich meme history
- the only content on reddit is bots reposting shit... and Spez playing the sad trombone.
  
  Steve is playing with his penis on the reddit front page? And he thinks anyone will pay for that? 🤣
- Maybe. I'm finding the Lemmy content and platform features lacking personally. Some of my favorite subs don't have an analogue here, and the clones here are significantly smaller and therefore have less content. I see great potential though, which is why I think "stealing" content is a sound strategy to grow. I find it interesting also, because there are two reasons people use Reddit: The content and the platform. One of those things isn't actually owned by Reddit. So Lemmy has the distinct advantage in that there is already a good platform in place, and all the good content of Reddit (and half of it's value) can be moved over here.
- I feel you. I still think it might be worth stealing what is worth stealing, if you know what I mean. There's definitely still good content creators over on Reddit.
- I just checked Lemmy stats - how is it possible that we lost 400 000 users recently? If people check it out and leave for good, wouldn't that still be counted in the user base?
  
  There were a bunch of fake accounts created, and there has been effort to remove them
  
  Probably has a lot to do with the shitpost meme communities fucking up the feed. I’d bail too if I didn’t think that shit will dry up once the kids find something else to do.
  
  On top of the other explanations, it's natural that many, if not most, who decide to check out alternatives don't stick around for various reasons.
  They might not have found the right instance for them (or even realized they were supposed to).
  They might not care enough about the new state of reddit to leave, after all.
  The communities that kept them on reddit in the first place may not exist here so they have no incentive to stick around.
  The bugs, growing pains, quirks, and rough UX might have outweighed perceived benefits.
  They may have been put off by the model or culture for whatever personal/ideological reasons.
  They might still be using fediverse platforms but isolated by fediblocks or by their own choice.
  They may or may not reconsider in the future, or their usage of the internet may have changed entirely (so they're out of the game, so to speak).
  We should just keep doing what we think is best for the kind of communities we want to see emerge and thrive here. Growth for its own sake is not helpful or valuable.

The counter question is: why would that be an improvement?
For me, the stuff with the 3PAs was just a final straw; there were lots of ways Reddit had gone downhill from when I first joined several years ago. I was happy that they was finally a workable alternative that was young and could potentially grow without the bad things about Reddit.
My ex wife is an ex for a reason, I'd never ask my wife now to try to be more like my ex. We can do better.
- A number of people made bots to copy stuff over from Reddit, and that didn't seem to create any more engagement in most cases, so I don't see that as helping. I made my account here June 12th, so not that long ago, and the amount and variety of content has increased a lot. Too many memes for my tastes, but the place is clearly still growing. I think it's doing well, considering.
- Very well said.

Because then we are just a cheap reddit clone. I'd rather see Lemmy continue developing on its own terms.

- Adding on to this: I’d rather see the Fediverse not become just Reddit 2.0. I personally very much like the vibes and communities we already got going on already.
  
  I really, really don't want the current Reddit where admin allows blatant adverts in posts, racism and homophobia and bans people who encourage protests.

Theres plenty of bots doing that
- fun fact, if you block the bots when you see them they go away :)
  
  Fun fact, if you change the setting in your account to not see bot posts then they go away :)

Back in the days of shopping malls, you could travel and go to a mall in any city, and it would be virtually the same as a mall in any other city: same stores, same (or similar) restaurants in the food court, same teenagers trying desperately to impress each other… all shoved into a slightly different layout. It was kinda bleak. One reason we don't just copy our content from somewhere else is that we don't want to re-create this nightmare hellscape on the internet, where every new social network is a slightly different skin on the same content.
Lemmy is not Reddit. Please let Lemmy continue to not be Reddit. If you want to fuck Reddit, do it by not going to Reddit. Reddit doesn't own the content, but the contributors do. (Read section 5 of the Reddit terms of use; when you post on Reddit, you retain ownership of your content and grant Reddit license to it.) When you repost their content without permission, you're not fucking Reddit; you're fucking them.
- Help me understand how reposting fucks the content creators? They are simply having their labor exploited by Reddit. They aren't being compensated for their work, and a billion dollar company is reaping all the financial benefits.
  I feel like with all the protests the real core issue, or what people should be angry about was not really hammered home. Reddit is a business and Lemmy is not, right? Reddit's business model relies on labor exploitation of not just the content creators, but the moderators. Reddit expects these people to work for them, but provides no pay and on top of that shows a general disregard, contempt and disgusting for those people who allow them to exist and make their execs rich. That is what I find most disgusting, and feel like this point was just glossed over by everyone that was pissed off by the whole api thing.
  
  So what you're saying is, Reddit is fucking creators by not compensating them, but when you take that work and repost it without compensation, it's ok?
  Besides, the great thing about Lemmy is that it's not Reddit. It has a whole different vibe. I think it's worth maintaining that.
  
  Because they own the content and control over how it is distributed. They chose to grant it to reddit, and you have decided that also grants you a license, although it actually doesn't. You are taking it anyway which violates their rights to control their content and who may distribute it.
  I agree with you that the users are being exploited by Reddit, but that doesn't mean that we can come in and further exploit them in the interest of trying to avenge them. That should be (and legally is) their choice to do or not to do.
  And I also agree with you that the exploitation is the issue. The API stuff just shined a light on it (or should have anyway, but I also agree that it became just a footnote in the story).

Because we’re not Reddit?

I wanted to the first few days I was here, but the subs I would have done it for already had nothing being posted because all the content finders/makers left and started posting here in the reciprocating communities. The only thing left on Reddit are the dregs I wouldn't even stop and get a better look at the thumbnail of while I scrolled.
I don't want to spam Lemmy with trash.

I don't see how it would 'fuck Reddit'. Do you mean it would draw more people to using Lemmy/Kbin? Or have I misunderstood? Because that's definitely not going to happen.
And if you want to see that stuff just go back to using Reddit.

In the past few years, a huge proportion of posts that made it to the front page are same stuff reposted over and over again. Maybe it's good to have a fresh start.

Because we're not 9gag. Lemmy is supposed to be better not derivative.
- It's a link aggregator, there's nothing wrong with that.
  
  I don't count posting a link you saw on Reddit as "taking top content from reddit and posting it here" so much as taking top memes and text posts. I do think bots should not be the ones doing it though, users should post links they find interesting. If that link came from Reddit it's functionally no differerent than if it came from the Yahoo news page or the outlet itself.

Honestly… even before the meltdown, content was mostly crap.
For kbin/lemmy to be useful; it needs to be its own thing. Emulating crap is just crappier crap.

How dare you suggest reposting things from other websites! I have never been so shocked and scandalized in my life!

So, you don't see the bots?
- I might have turned that off day 1.
- If anyone didn't get what OP mean, some Lemmy communities repost reddit content while providing link to original reddit post and name the original author. One such community is todayifoundout

What's Reddit? ^-

Couldn't it just be under some kind of hierarchy so people who don't want to see it could avoid it, and those who want to tap in to get their content fix but keep off reddit itself...
I worry about lemmy not giving people enough of what reddit provides and people driftng back. I know I haven't yet managed to get lemmy to provide me the fix I was getting from reddit, yet. Part of that might be because I need to move my subscribed subreddits over, but for most people that is quite a barrier to stay here.
Don't get me wrong, I want this to succeed, 1000%, and I agree with many arguments here about reposting can screw things up, but maybe we need to think about how we will maintain our momentum if people are still going to check reddit regularly because lemme isn't yet providing their fix.
For me, because I'm not getting the content I want, I'm just not going there, but I know I'm missing things and want it to improve.
- I know I haven't yet managed to get lemmy to provide me the fix I was getting from reddit, yet.
  I feel the same. The content is absolutely limited right now. I've been switching back and forth for a few days, and the content is just better over on Reddit. Even if a lot of it is reposts, it's still quality content that will draw in fresh eyes. I get in here and scroll through all filtered by hot, and very few posts are drawing me in.
  I worry about lemmy not giving people enough of what reddit provides and people driftng back.
  I know it isn't. Which is pretty much the reason for my question. If there isn't a constamt stream of quality content, people will just stop coming here.

Wait, you guys aren't?
Ummm....
Neither am I! Totally! Not one bit... after all, far be it from me, a humble peon, to pull traffic away from the content Spez has claimed as his personal fiefdom.

I just went and saw the top all time feed of r/all and.. I'm good. Rather not pollute this place like that.

I think the key will be the adoption of all the sub-reddits coming here and producing the same quality content they do there.
- I agree. I think that's going to be the only way this shit works. I want it to work, but there needs to be more of a plan and effort than shitty memes from 2010. Everyone keeps saying "this isn't reddit this isn't reddit", we'll then why is the best content here on subreddit clone communities with the same banners and same rules? This needs to be more like Reddit, because that is only reason all of us are here.

Well, plugging my own ragepost a couple of days ago: https://lemmy.world/post/805180, that and the linked discussion from here on NSQ should give you a good idea of the arguments against it.
- I agree in general, though I like lemmit.online. That keeps everything separate - it's almost archiving, really.

Seems like you haven't been to Lemmit

There are some game community I often visit still on Reddit.
Example: r/fallen London r/sunlesssea
I doubt that mod will move to Lemmy anytime. It is the community they build for business. Moving to Lemmy is risky move.