They should not be a thing. At least not until there is already consistent active discussion threads happening for a given series. If I want to discuss a new chapter of something, and there isn’t a post already, I will make one.
As it is now, the dozens and dozens of empty discussion posts only drown out the few posts by people who DO have something to say.
They also show up in my subscriptions as a wall of spam, and do the same for “all”. One post is enough to facilitate discovery of the community, a dozen does the opposite.
Made a separate comment, but I’m not sure of the size of this community, and am an outsider to it, but:
“It also removes the competition around being “the one” that posts the discussion thread each chapter.”
To your point as OP:
For less popular titles with low levels of interaction (like my isekai trash that I love so much, such as “So I’m a Spider, so what?” or Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation), being “the one” probably encourages interaction more, as the person will receive notifications, and be more likely to respond. If it’s not popular, people are probably less likely to respond to a bot, as there probably is no one discussing.
That said, if bot posts are serving as a notification of new chapters, people may be better served with a master list of RSS feeds for each title to follow, though doubt many use RSS readers nowadays.
I would not automate series that only have the one thread starter.
Anyone who likes a series isn’t going to rely on lemmy for chapter release notifications, what I meant to say is that for these people, an auto post is like a notification and will therefore prompt immediate engagement.