Why picspam and repost accounts are bad
You've seen them on Twitter, you're seeing them on the fediverse: accounts with names like "AmazingNature8" or "HistoryPix", or occasionally human-sounding names like "Massimo" and "Veronique". Popular topics include nature and wildlife photos, historic images, relatable memes, fine art, and so on.
They repost photos or memes that have gone viral elsewhere, like Twitter, Instagram, or Reddit. The text of the post is scraped as well; google a distinctive sentence and you'll turn up a previous post. Credit, if it's ever given, is a handle with no URL or indication of what social network it belongs to. Tellingly, on the fediverse, there are virtually never image descriptions.
I loathe these accounts. They are the pink slime of the Internet.
Since I end up having to give this spiel every time I raise the alarm about such accounts, I'm putting it down here in a more permanent place.