Does anyone else notice an uptick of extreme troll accounts?
I swear, every time most of the time I see someone being particularly rude, ignorant, and inappropriate on a post (usually political in origin, or they swing it to being political) I click on their profile and see it has been created that same day.
They are only there to sow discord. Only to piss people off. Idk if we can just report them (for what?) but I'd like to try exposing them before responding and interacting..
I am guilty of gobbling up the bait. I've started looking at profiles of people that piss me off exceptionally and noticed they're burner bot loser accounts.
I guess i just want to say I've noticed it!
Voyager has a setting to show a baby emoji next to the name of a user if their account is less than a month old and an account age. Probably one of the best features I've ever seen for immediately recognizing troll accounts.
There's already an issue on lemmy-ui for it.
Love this comment from that GitHub page...
The only problem though is a lot of time astroturfers/bots create accounts and then just let them sit idle for 6-9 months before using them.
Maybe you could combat that by deleting inactive accounts that seemed to never have been used.
But they can get around that. It's a never ending battle against that kind of stuff.
Yeah exactly.
The filtering would had to be more sophisticated, instead of an age by date, maybe an age by number of posts within an amount of time, etc.
But astroturfers/bots can work with that too, to a certain extent.
nice. would love something like that on a web interface.
Voyager started as a progressive web app. vger.app. I prefer it to Lemmy’s interface even on computer.
I love that he called it "vger"
👀
I’m a big dumb. I’ve been using the Voyager app for a while and knew about the web app but never clicked I could use that on desktop.
Is voyager an app like Sync?
Yes, and no ads either.
Yes
For now, because Lemmy is relatively new. There's a reason many bot farms run accounts that are unassuming, "normal" people. Accounts that are established have value. They can then sell those accounts to another group who needs to sew discord. The older Lemmy is, the less useful the new account icon will be.
I find at least one commenter with a new account on almost every post with more than 5 comments.
They tend to be negative.
Think I'm going to start welcoming them to Lemmy, note their activity to date, and ask them nicely what might have brought them to join. (If they are real, glad to have them, but I have found most Lemmy members came here from Reddit, not to make accounts to post in News or Politics or such places trolls would like.)
Until Lemmy updates to identify new accounts ala Voyager, I think that would be helpful to inform other users they may be talking to a troll.
There are approximately 433k accounts but only 48k Monthly Active Users.
It's hard to believe that many of posts and comments are often the newest accounts, and though they will change tactics to using older accounts, at least it's more work for them.
I recommend others do the same.
So, now that you spend half your time on Lemmy being a narc, have you considered moving on to actually contributing meaningful comments and content, or are you content with just being a stool-pigeon that harasses new users?
(Checks your comment history)
Ah, so just the same comment over and over again for weeks on end. Fucking spammer...
Hey look, a new very active account, talking shit about... Hmmm....
Nazis, trump, cops, Russians, gays, etc!
Yeah, people like you are why I point it out new accounts.
And from the way you communicate rudely here, to me for saying "Welcome" to new members, illustrates a great point that you don't seem to be someone worth talking to, likely by anyone.
Have a great day, and looking forward to Welcoming your next alt.
Memba reddit comments circa 2016 election? I memba.
Washington Post gift article - Russian trolls target U.S. support for Ukraine, Kremlin documents show
Oh me too! I ‘memba!
I don’t know if 50k people, at least a third of whom are outside of the US is a big enough target or if I’m being naïve in thinking that
I was thinking the same thing. It’s definitely not a coordinated propaganda thing. Some people are just assholes. And they like to troll.
But who knows, maybe someone, somewhere, knows about lemmy—some government/interest group—and think it’s worth it because it can be accessed through mastodon, blue sky, etc. The fediverse seems to be a relatively popular subject these days. So, I dunno. Maybe.
But I think some people just suck and think trolling is a good pastime.
It’s already getting like that over there. That’s why I’m here now. The last straw was a “Reddit Recommendation” that I join r/InternationalNews. I took a look around, and it was a hotbed of anti-Israel and anti-America content. There was the video of the university detonation from January 20th, posted that day and pinned to the top. When I commented on the date and provided the source, I was downvoted to oblivion, and eventually banned.
The sub was #7 under recommended news subreddits.
Being anti-Israel is based.
The government, not the citizens, as per usual.
Yep, Israel is not Jews, and Jews are not Israel.
Beyond that even: not all Israelis share the way of thinking of the Government of Israel.
Plenty of decent people even in a country which has for decades been heavy in nationalism, delusions of inherent racial superiority and generally Zionist indoctrination.
They're probably the minority rather than the majority though.
I also do not view Israel as Israelis, or Israelis as Israel. Just like most of the US hates BOTH Biden and Trump, yet those are our options.
Nah yes their citizens too. Have you seen the video of them literally jumping clapping and cheering the destruction of people's homes?
The working class of every country has their respective 1%ers that need to be dealt with. Non violently, through electoral reform preferably.
Fuck first past the post voting. Intentionally limiting the number of viable options to pick from is NOT democracy.
Bibi is basically a centrist in Israel so I dont think that holds up. eg the humanitarian aid at some border crossings are being picketed by Israeli chuds. Sure there are some good Israelis but they aren't the norm.
You're not going to have much of a better time here if you like Israel and aren't critical of the US. Lemmy is full of socialists lol
I’m educated enough on the history of the history of the conflict to know nothing about it is simple to resolve. The only strong opinions I have are Netanyahu =/= Israel and Hamas =/= Palestine, and hatred for an entire group of people is racist and ignorant.
The government’s job is to represent me. As a US citizen, it’s my job to criticize them when they don’t. I owe them no loyalty. They owe me representation.
You should look a little deeper into the history of modern Israel and Zionism. It's always been a colonial project that necessitates genocide of the local population. I'm not going to get further into it here as it's not really the place for this and people have already done the work. If you haven't seen shaun's video id recommend at least giving it a watch. I'll leave the iron wall as well. It's a short essay from one of the founders of Zionism. His views were quite explicit and highly influential at the time and his legacy is obvious in modern Israel. And lastly The Hundred Years' War on Palestine. It's a good book that plainly lays out the history of the Zionist colonial project from 1917-2017. I'm only halfway through it but it's worth your time. Or just watch the video, it's cites both the essay and book (among other things) and ties it all together very well.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
shaun's
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
If you work for a living like the vast majority of us do, it isn’t the government’s job to represent you, and it never was. The US was born of a bourgeois revolution, and the Founding Fathers formed a bourgeois democracy, which was never meant to represent the working class, and never has. Princeton University Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy
Recommended by who though? Spez, that's who. Race-baiting works to increase "engagement" e.g. clicks and comments, thus it continues.
fuck u/spez
anti-Israel and anti-America content is cool actually
Welcome to a hotbed of anti-imperial, anti-colonial, and anti-settler content 😂 If you’re looking for pro-imperial core content, you’ve come to the wrong place.
I deleted my 14 year old account after enough BS on Reddit
Going there with no account but not really on private mode so i got recommendations for regional subs
canada_sub keeps getting pushed. That sub is an alt right neo nazi echo chamber in which the founder and head mod admitted to astroturfing himself with multiple accounts to push hateful topics.
Reddit is intentionally pushing misinformation and hatred for metrics to prop up the ipo
I mean, Israel hate is a relatively common position these days.
Of course there are less than intelligent people that think “anti Israel…okay, so fuck the Jews!” Like, no. Fuck those people. And in a social media environment, nuance isn’t allowed. If it sounds like maybe you might be possibly on “the other side” of a popular issue, fuck you there is no room for understanding. It’s a huge problem. I’ve noticed more conversations on lemmy that don’t fall into that trap as easily. But, that does seem to be changing somewhat.
It’s not entirely social media, that’s just people. But I do firmly believe social media has made this problem exponentially worse.
I mean, it seems like you and I would disagree on the Israel/palestine issue. But we’re here discussing the discussion surrounding it. On Reddit, that literally never happened to me.
It doesn’t matter if it’s popular. It’s still racist or nationalist. Just like people who say “fuck Palestinians,” you’re labeling an entire nation or group for the actions of their leader(s).
As an American, am I Biden or Trump? No. I’m an American. I should not be held accountable for the actions of the leader of my nation, even more so if I voted against them.
Netanyahu won his last election with 64% of the popular vote, and is currently polling at 15% popularity with the Israelis.
Hamas won the last election with 44.45% of the popular vote (similar to Trump, they won without popular majority).
I’m just saying words matter. “Fuck Israel” means all Israelis. I think you may just mean “fuck Benjamin Netanyahu.” In that, you’d likely have support of most of the world.
Eh. It’s actually different. The popular position is that Israel the state is committing genocide. That’s not he same thing as saying “fuck Palestinians.” Because people aren’t saying “fuck Israelis.” They’re saying fuck Israel for what they’re doing.
You seem to be implying the nimrods who, as I explained earlier, lack the concept of nuance and take anti-israel positions to the illogical extreme of just becoming antisemitic. It’s the same type of people who were assaulting anyone of Asian descent during Covid. You can’t lump everyone who was being careful not to get sick in with the people who were pushing old Asian women down the subway stairs.
What. No. It absolutely does not. That’s you being overly sensitive and basically misunderstanding a message. If I say “fuck the US” in the context of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, that doesn’t mean “fuck everyone from the US.” Thats such an illogical conclusion to come to.
Also, I don’t know where you got your numbers, I can only find these figures about Netanyahu’s approval ratings in Israel:
And this:
https://en.idi.org.il/articles/53305
This one survey is the source for those numbers, and it doesn’t paint as clear of a picture of not supporting Netanyahu. Now, this doesn’t mean anything about antisemitism. That’s always wrong. But my point is that, first off, you seem to be skewing numbers to make a point, unless you have data I can’t find. Secondly, you also seem to be falling in with that group of people who can’t grasp or don’t operate with any nuance. I can say fuck people who support the genocide, whether they are in Israel or elsewhere in the world. Because…it’s fucking genocide. That doesn’t mean I get to generalize about them and hate hem for unrelated qualities, like their religion or skin color. But I can hate their beliefs about what’s happening. It’s all about nuance. It’s very fucking important.
Israel is a nation. There is no nation of Palestine. That’s why I wrote “nationalist or racist.” Either way, the sentiment is the same ignorant hatred that is propagating the war.
You’re conflating a Palestinian statehood poll with Netanyahu’s favorability. Israelis are protesting in the tens of thousands in the streets against Netanyahu.
So fuck Netanyahu and Hamas. Just keep your prejudices away from the Palestinian and Israeli people.
But that doesn’t change anything. If anything, wouldn’t that make it different than saying “fuck Palestine?” Because you’re basically saying fuck the idea of a Palestinian state. But if you say “fuck Israel,” you’re very clearly designating the state itself as the problem.
Also, I wasn’t conflating those figures. I was citing a more recent poll that gave more context, as well as updated job favorability numbers. The poll you’re citing isn’t measuring favorability, but percentage of Israelis that want Netanyahu to “stay in office after the war in Gaza ends.”
But that’s my entire point. There isn’t prejudice in saying “fuck Israel.” You’re projecting that onto the message. Your entire thing started with complaining that people are “anti-Israel” in a community. So I’m really just not even sure your point anymore.
It’s never too late to learn the difference between a people and a state.
I think r/InternationalNews was mainly created as a place to discuss issues free from the rampant Zionism of r/WorldNews.
Happy to have people on Lemmy but I have to say, Lemmy as a whole seems way more anti-Israel than reddit right now. Although to be fair outside of r/WorldNews and a few other places, the general mood does seem to be shifting away from Israel pretty hard.
For me this is nice to see, because fuck Israel right to hell, but you'll certainly see the same type of content here. I like that if people don't like it they can make their own community or even an instance, and also that people are generally more free to disagree here (partially due to lax moderation I guess). You should have never been banned for that comment by the sound of it, absolutely stupid.
My old comments would have had me banned a hundred times over today.
Jesus what kind of shit did you used to say lol
I was fresh off the bus from 4chan and is was the same culture in the early days.
100%. I've been saying it over and over. It's election season on the internet, division aplenty.
Current Contenders:
found the egocentric, ethnocentric American!
(adjusts tone and verbage to current audience) Sounds like neo-libralism to me!
Tankie‽
Biden, Trump : Old, Fascist
Beans and denim?
Palestine vs. Isreal
Ukraine vs. Russian
the rights of (insert oppressed group)
Individual/State rights
Linux
Abortion
LGBTQ
Oil/Nuclear/Fossil/Coal/Renewable
Climate Change
Class-gap
Sustainability
Equality
....Fight!!!
Round 2 ...
hmmm
Stay blissful my friend.
But yes, American social media platforms are targeted during American elections, so you aren't ignorant about one thing.
A first round contender, I see
Every time I hear that 2024 is a big election year for the world I don't really understand the stats.
Like if everyone has 4 year terms then generally a quarter of the world's population will have an election every year.
Not every country has four year terms. Also, elections can be triggered early for various reasons.
Not every country has elections either.
What other terms are popular? 3 years ?
Mainly 5 year terms, but I can see on the list some 6 and 7 year terms as well.. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_term_limits
☝️
There's a very easy way to stop division: Have a set of values based in reality, and use that to determine what is not up for debate. The first thing a good troll will do is push at the fabric of what is acceptable and erode the community from there. Some people are inherently unreasonable and therefore shouldn't be listened to. Give them a chance to see the light and if they refuse, give em the yeet.
The reason why neo-nazi communities are so quick to fall apart is because their values are not based on reality, so all you have to do is point out a single contradiction and then watch as they passionately debate themselves into increasingly splintering groups. My favorite that sits on the mantle of shit-stirring pot is "Trump is pro-Israel" which absolutely decimates any far-right community it touches.
Is it? Or is it just election season in a couple of specific countries, and not elsewhere....
Just sayin :P
Use the report button when you see those, it's the quickest way for them to be noticed by mods and admins.
People don't report shit, then complain stuff goes unmoderated.
Like, you don't have to report every single comment a troll makes, but at least report one so a mod looks at it.
Edit:
Here's a good example. An account I have blocked replied to me. If they go into a sub I moderate and start acting like a jackass, I'll never know because I have them blocked.
The only way I'd see it, is if someone reported it.
This is why, when I was a reddit moderator (r/Firefox), I never blocked users even if they were absolute trash to me. I always thought of that as a severe limitation of the platform, there should be a setting to show blocked user's content (labelled as such) in communities you moderate.
Lol i see their downvote. that one really hates you
People do report stuff, get yelled at by the mods, and then get banned by the admins for abuse of the reporting system, or mod abuse for getting clarification.
So if you do what you are supposed to, you get banned.
Would be better if moderation was actually taken seriously and the admins don’t excuse terrible mod behavior.
Those sound like extremely edge cases and are not a good reason to not justify not reporting anything.
Moderators are volunteers and most of them simply want to make their communities better, so they do take these reports seriously. Plus at this stage Lemmy lacks robust tools to help them accomplish this. The very least general users can do is flag problem comments and accounts to help them out.
There’s posts about mods complaining about users using the report button as a “super downvote” you go to those posts, there are people legit trolling in them and the content is still there.
The excuse is, Lemmy needs content, so they are very loose and liberal in applying moderation like that against users that add content.
I’ve had an admin defend a mod when I reported them with “they aren’t as bad as some of the others”. So Lemmy admins know they have moderation issues, if they fix it, they lose their content and their free labor. So they just turn a blind eye and let the mods do what they want, which is quite frankly nothing. And when asked they report you to the admins. They really only deal with illegal stuff unfortunately, since they have to or they can get in shit personally.
Trolls unfortunately add content, which is desperately needed. Some communities deal with it, larger let it go for discussion and metrics sake. Lemmy isn’t perfect, and we should be able to discuss its darker side.
Are you talking about Lemmy.ml specifically or Lemmy in general?
Ugghh that’s a good point, this was .world for admins, but the moderation issues seem to be non instance specific.
Also makes me wonder if some of the trolling is dealt with and its federation issues then…
Still, the amount of trolling comments, and users being banned for pretty frivolous things isn’t a good look.
There's also a fine line between legitimate trolling and having unpopular or dissenting opinion. I've seen plenty of threads where 2 or more people are arguing about a given topic, and while the unpopular opinion isn't being inflammatory or breaking any rules, they still get their comments removed after being down voted into the ground. It's happened to me as well.
My only contention with this is finding a way to foster conversation without censoring opinions just because they're not widely shared. As long as the argument is in good faith, mods shouldn't be removing content they don't agree with, only those that are inflammatory, overly insulting, blatant trolling/shilling, or breaking community rules.
I think it depends. You can be a really polite Baptist preacher being very earnest in !196 about how you think people should behave, and that’s just not what they want. Even in a discussion thread, writing a nonspecific defense of FGM, for example, is going to be offensive enough to probably disrupt the conversation, and I can see removing it.
I’m not suggesting that’s what’s happening; just saying that I like your idea, with some tweaks
Trolling is simply noise and garbage to dispose of when it becomes an attack on the person. It brings nothing of value and it diminishes the value of everything else it pollutes.
What mods/admins are doing this? I would not stick around a community or instance run like this. Luckily with the Fediverse, you can choose what instances or communities you want to go to, you're not stuck in the same way you were on Reddit. Use that power - don't let abusive mods/admins be your host.
Unpopular opinion but I rather downvote. I want to see people’s bad opinions instead of pretending they don’t exist.
The whole of Lemmy is, in general, severely under-moderated.
Part of it is personnel (being a moderator is a crappy job and we don’t have the people to do it) but it’s also ideological. A lot of people here believe that allowing disruptive speech is better than suppressing expression.
That’s a choice and we live with the consequences.
I mean, let's be clear: The choice lies with the users. If users want to allow disruptive speech (or what's worse), they can go to the instances/communities that allow that kind of speech. If not, they can go to other instances/communities that have stricter moderation.
You don't have to personally live with it - go somewhere else if you don't like where you are right now.
This place is like a black mirror episode. "It's okay, just block the Nazis and it's like they're not there terrorizing and indoctrinating others, bc I can't see it"
I don't mean each user needs to block people, I mean go to instances and communities that are well-moderated.
Yeah. Maybe if mods weren't constantly removing factual information as "disinformation", you'd have a point.
But again, you choose your mods. If you think your mods are being unreasonable, use other communities with better mods - or start your own community and become the better mod yourself.
It's a "this type of website" problem, not limited to one page or instance.
Hmm. Maybe? I'd like to think it's possible to do a website of this type without those problems. But I could be wrong I guess.
I have been spending relatively more time on Bluesky now you mention it. They way they do block propagation is just 😘👌
What is block propagation?
I’m not super sharp about the details, but if you block someone, by default other people don’t see their replies on your stuff. There may be more features but I’m not sure.
Anyway, it remains functional even when overrun with shitheads because not everyone needs to block everyone.
I see.
I feel like defederation is the tool for this on the Fediverse. But just to be clear, when I said "go somewhere else if you don’t like where you are right now" I didn't mean go away from the Fediverse, I just meant another community or instance basically.
I would argue that defederation is a completely fucking brain dead way to deal with bad faith users.
And the “fediverse” has no answers here.
How come? I mean if there is a concentration of bad faith users on an instance or maybe the instance attracts such types because it has no rules or directly encourages such behaviour, is it not good that other instances can choose not to interact with that instance?
Try being a bad faith actor for a week and see how much defederation affects you.
It’s just drama fuel that does nothing to improve the quality of discourse on the network because it’s trivially bypassed.
It only punishes users with permanent identities, that is good faith users. Trolls just move. They do it all the time anyway to evade blocks.
But isn't that the case on all platforms? How can you get around this? Could the Fediverse do better somehow?
Listen, it’s clear you have not given this much thought. That’s ok. But I feel I’m wasting my breath here.
Sorry, I'm not trying to convince you that you're wrong or anything, I'm genuinely curious what you think. I'm curious if there's a way to do better. Sorry if I offended you.
Yep! Imo it’s the only way to beat trolls. If you suppress it, your still giving it attention and publicity. Your also playing into their game that they will claim you sensor truth.
Imo if you tell someone: “yeah, come to lemmy, voice your opinion. We won’t ban you but if we mostly disagree and ignore, clearly your idea was not with its salt”.
Shoutout to Voyager, for automatically marking new accounts with a baby emoji. It’s a feature ripped straight from Apollo, and it should honestly be the standard.
This app has a lot of great features, it actually convinced me to sign up.
Wefwef also has it.
Wefwef is Voyager under a different name. It’s literally the same app.
Is there a reason to have one over the other?
I was going to say I would be happy if just the Lemmy website allowed you to filter out comments based on the age of the account of the comment being made, but a lot of times accounts are created then are left dormant for sixish months and then are used for nefarious reasons.
Yeah, even filtering by karma/post count/comment count isn’t a perfect solution because karma farming bots are 100% a thing. It’s one of those “you can slow them down but you’ll never stop them” scenarios.
Ya, Lemmy is speed running the worst things about Reddit but struggling to build the niche communities that would make people want to hang around.
The thing that's making me kinda want to leave is it feels like even more of an echo chamber then Reddit was, especially when you see someone calling for the death of someone at least once a week or so
Quite often see people getting downvote bombed and dogpiled for having different political opinions
I left reddit because I fucking hate the company.
But I'm not happy here because I fucking hate the users.
Great summary.
Me even typing a response to your comment make me 70% more likely to get banned in the few hours.
It's infectuous
Yes but not that much I see the communities are starting to materialize but many that are a 1 to 1 copy didn't took off sadly the Warframe one is a good example, but you see the pixel dungeon one is going great even Evan00 (the dev of shattered) is buzzing in and the helldivers2 is starting to get to the frontpages. I guess the fediverse moves in a more organical way? Regarding the trolls is normal is a "ladran Sancho" situation, we are getting more people in and that includes idiots. Sadlly/Luckly idiots comes in the full spectrum of races backgrounds and preferences.
I have seen this as well. Thankfully Voyager flags accounts under a certain age, so there’s an immediate visual indicator that an inflammatory comment may be just a troll.
That's a neat feature. I will request that gets added to sync.
Is this on per default? How to activate it?
Thanks
AFAIK it’s on by default. I’m using the most recent iOS version, if you’re not seeing it I’d ask in the voyager community.
Just installed due to this thread.
On by default. Nice feature
Huh, interesting. Voyager's one of the Lemmy apps? Is it for iOS too?
Lemmy.world actually host a voyager instance at https://m.lemmy.world/
Yeah, it’s an iOS app.
I see. The symbol is an yellow baby
The ones that stand out to me are the ones that take offense at mundane things, because they're looking at it through a skewed mental filter. As far as I can tell, they're genuine. I don't know what to make of it, so I just make liberal use of the block button.
Also worth pointing out that the best way of reading this thread is looking at all of the removed comments in the modlog. Lol.
Now I’m really curious. How do you read those comments?
There's a link at the bottom of each and every Lemmy page.
You can search by community/post/user.
On Kbin and Lemmy instances, the link is called "Modlog" at the bottom of the page in browser. I don't use any Fedi apps so I don't know what it looks like there.
You can see all of the deleted comments every day. I recommend everyone to look at the Modlog at least occasionally. You get a real pulse on how each community is moderated and you can make a better informed decision on where you actually want to hang out.
Is this something publicly accessible or do you need to be a mod or host an instance?
You can put /modlog after the instance URL, e.g. https://lemmy.world/modlog
I just did and some of the stuff is wild. Not gonna quote or reference anything for my account safety, don't ask.
This is so fucking good. I was so sick of shadowbans and not knowing what went down on reddit.
Only banned once because i supported ukraine to much, doing pretty good.
Guess that was probably on an lemmy.ml community?
My only complaint with the modlog is that it doesn't say which moderator performed the action. It just says "mod", so there's no way for a community to make sure particular mods aren't just going rogue.
The Modlog is (or should be, in theory) accessible on any Lemmy/Kbin instance. However, it is on an instance by instance basis whether the Modlog shows full information for each moderator action. Like you said, some instances will only show "mod" but others will provide the names.
To be honest, I haven't been looking at the Fediverse a whole lot lately, so I can't recommend which ones are the best and most transparent. At one point in time, the Lemmy.world Modlog did provide full info but it seems that they have changed that in recent months.
Just go to the instance website and there will be a link to the modlog usually at the bottom of the page.
https://lemmy.world/comment/9277737
Two downvotes for just supplying a link to a comment that answers the question, so that copy/paste is not done?
I guess we're not supposed to be helpful anymore. /shrug
I absolutely love the mod log. Some days I just read through that instead of the regular Lemmy posts.
It's not just an entertaining read, it's a valuable resource to look at to determine if mods in certain communities are over-moderating. Imo for months, mods in many of the largest communities are far overstepping their roles and not just "moderating" their communities but actively censoring opinions they don't like.
Agree. Honestly that's where I find the entertainment from, actually looking at how the mods actually do their moderating, the kind of reasons why they give.
It's interesting to compare the moderation that happens between the different communities too.
Nope, I'm loving Lemmy.
Some people don’t get this:
If your communities are filled with polarized nonsense, your people suck, not your tech.
Right now, people’s suckyness worldwide is at an all time high.
It rocks! And if it gets shitty where you're at, just go to a new instance and you can stay!
Is this the last migration?
Yes, Im also glad im not the only one who noticed this. But it also seems to be they disapper after a few days too, maybe instance mods banned them or they just got bored.
Assholes are everywhere, but yeah, it's been happening slowly but surely ever since lemmy has gained more users (which makes sense).
I'd really like to know the ratio of assholes to regular people out of every 100 people 😂
An ever increasing ratio because assholes drive out non assholes.
Dead Sea effect in action.
Good theory; makes sense
Unless you have mods that aren't afraid to drive out the assholes
I noticed votes related to political comments are suddenly shifting to the right which was different just 1 week ago.
Absolutely this. We are in for a ride!
Some threads have a handful of interactions that seem less than genuine, yes. Usually political and derailing and spoil the thread.
We’re about 6 months away from the US presidential election so it doesn’t surprise me.
I fit your definition. Now lemme 'splain:
For thirty-five years I have heard nothing but radical right fascism spewing hate, lies, vitriol, slander, and violent rhetoric- over the airwaves, cable, and now social media- and without the slightest bit of challenge or pushback. The amount and volume increased when they figured out it pays big money. The people who listen have never known that it was for entertainment; they are being edged to violence just like Ruwandan radio did.
Liberals have been major pussies and doormats about this because they have no idea who they're dealing with. They cannot be reasoned with or appealed to through humanity. The radical fascists' free speech rights do not exist and are not to be defended; there is absolutely nothing to gain there and everything to lose. As I said, liberals have no idea who they're dealing with.
For all the unchecked violence and damaged caused by the radical fascist shitbags to our daily lives, our long term properity, and to safety and security in general, I absolutely attack them with all the violent and vitriolic slander I can muster to pay back for thirty-five plus years of the same. This is the route every one of you should take, because they all think you're a bunch of pussies and they take great joy in running you over. They must be made to fear even being seen in public, and beaten down like rabid dogs when they are. They are enemies of freedom, enemies of humanity, and enemies of all that is good in the world.
Never feed the trolls, the only winning move is to downvote and move on
Nothing is as maddening as writing an elaborate troll post only to be completely ignored.
I do all my riling people up on Reddit though because that site is collapsing anyway and a shell of former self. Hard to bring yourself to respect it and not throw some spicy fake made up posts into the wild and see what happens
So you speak from experience?
Yes.
Dammit
Report if they break the rules, block if they're bad enough.
You should report them as trolls in any case, most instances on Lemmy have rules against trolling in general, further violations beyond that just add to the initial violation of trolling.
A counter-philosophy I subscribe to is call out the BS but don't go back and forth. If you let the trolls be this can bring more trolls. Call out the bad behavior and move on so it isn't accepted but they also don't get the satisfaction of engaging in an argument.
Yeap... Lemmy is getting to Reddit form faster than expected
How long til Lemmy hivemind?
Couple more rounds of enshitification I presume. The IPO got me to move. I guess it wasn't fun posting on reddit anymore now that I'm making spez money
Honestly? Probably a couple months or so.
It already exists it just depends on your instance.
Plenty of group think moving through posts and competing with other group think.
Yes. Especially in subs like “Canada” or any post involving Canada in any way
It does not matter what the topic of the thread or conversation is. It can be about how Canada loves puppies. And there will be random 1 or 2 liners from new accounts making political comments heavily pushing specific agendas. Even completely unrelated
Lots of random anti government misinformation and one liners pushing a specific party misinformation and narrative. Our how we’re some 3rd world collapsing country
It is not natural. Same thing occurs also on Reddit.
As soon as anyone starts arguing in bad faith I just block them. I don't really care what they have to say about me for my argument.
The only problem with blocking is they still see your comments you make, and can respond to them negatively, and you have no way of defending yourself because you haven't seen their comment.
My wish would be for blocking to prevent those who are blocked from reading comments from the blocker.
I would love better blocking. But I understand the costs of doing that in a truly federated environment. I'll just settle for not caring what they actually say about me. The whole point of the trolling is to get a rise out of someone.
Stopping viewing on a per-account basis doesn't make sense to me, since people don't need accounts to view any content in Lemmy, therefore it's trivial to bypass by logging out or fetching the discussion information without logging in from a custom frontend. What would be better is simply stopping them from interracting, just like what happens with bans, they can still view but all interractions are simply dropped or disallowed.
I wish you could set a personal minimum "karma" and age requirement. Like I don't want to hear from anyone with an account made in the last week. And no one with karma below zero.
It's not really a high bar, it mainly blocks people who get banned all the time.
How do you even see karma?
I dunno. It was there before. Maybe just total their last 5 comment scores. So it's easy to just not be a dick all the time and get through the filter.
But how would one acquire karma if no one sees their comments?
Also automatically shadow banning new users will mean cool people that come to the site will get the impression that it sucks and leave and never come back.
You could just block users with a total < 0 points for those comments.
Yeah, it's extremely easy to not be blocked.
Oh the cool people are long gone /s
Karma is easily falsified on the lemmyverse though. I have a maintenance user and a normal user on my server, I can use them both to vote, and thats just easy and not even intentional.
I think I'm seeing something different, although also synthetic in nature.
It seems like companies or brands are in here (and probably on any social media) actively controlling the message about their brand. People make a post or comment about a specific thing (or person) and you get pre-packages responses, similar in nature and argument.
It makes you feel like it's tin foil hat time, but I've seen different accounts proporting the same exact experiences about a product, which are super specific in nature.
I could see that being a part of a company trying to actively "control the message," but it makes you question the authenticity of a lot of posts or arguments. Is that person really standing up for this thing with a questionable history, or are they a paid shill?
What would be a safe space from this though? A forum small enough to stay under the radar? I enjoy larger platforms like this because of the diversity in content and viewpoints, but not if it's a haven for corporate messaging or agencies controlling a narrative.
Am I joining the tin foil hat club here, or has anyone else seen similar?
I disagree. This place isn't big enough. The nerdiest people I know don't even know what it is. I worked at a Dev tools company and I spoke to devs all day and everyone is still on Reddit. Nobody corporate cares enough to spend that time here, especially in what's pretty much an overblown Linux dick-sucking-competition forum. The fake libertarians are ripe for alt right indoctrination however. That, plus the wannabe commies and fake leftists, Russia and China can pickup a few votes from the West here and there.
Wait, tankies and libertarians are fake, and China and Russia are interested, but corporate isn't? I'm not sure this position is coherent
I hope you're right
No, not really.
I guess I'm lucky. I must subscribe to more or less of an echo chamber. Fuck trolls.
Part of the attraction of this place is that it is like things used to be for the most part. Freedom of expression has always been a double edged sword that all of us have to be responsible for. When you start asking others to police an environment, youre giving up that freedom not just for those you find distasteful but for yourself as well. If you simply excercise due diligence in your consumption, you can easily learn what is comfortably digestible and what will give you a heart attack
It's almost the European Parliament and US presidential elections. Just today our national crisis centre heightened the threat level after a presumed Russian threat mail was send to Wallonian schools yesterday.
All they want is attention. I simply don’t give them the satisfaction of a response. They get bored and move on.
Do they just want attention? Or are they malicious actors from those that consider Lemmy competition?
They're malicious actors, but reddit is just as bad right now. It'll die down to more organic hate after the elections.
Even if they’re malicious actors, they want attention just the same. They want to lure you into a bad faith “debate” so they can spread their propaganda. Either way, the solution is the same - ignore them. Don’t give them the opportunity to reply and promote more bullshit.
China and Russia trying to step up the political discord between people ahead of the election in November.
i think that it's a lot more likely that a few people are just making burner accounts to be dicks on the internet than some weird QAnon-esque conspiracy theory that both the Russian and Chinese governments are not only aware of a tiny reddit clone but also are actively employing people (who all happen to be fluent in english) to create fake accounts and convincingly imitate westerners all in order to slightly increase political divisions in america for a few thousand people by having arguments about already incredibly contentious issues.
Thank you! Like, this isn't how foriegn influence campaigns work. Believing the jerk you're arguing with is a Russian agent might make you feel like you're in a Tom Clancy novel, but the odds are it's just a dweeb with multiple accounts. Foriegn influence campaigns make sock-puppets to repeat the same 5 talking points on as many communities as possible, and maybe have a few canned replies. They don't fight with the same person in a 20 reply thread over the course of 2 days.
It's not a "QAnon-esque conspiracy theory". Russia's online influence in American politics has been fairly well documented. That being said, I think it's somewhat unhealthy to assume everyone who says something controversial is dishonest or a troll. Not good for discourse.
im not saying governments dont astroturf or anything, i meant it was a QAnon-esque conspiracy to assume that there were paid shills and bots around every corner and the vast majority of anti-american sentiment comes from a Russian cabal or something, especially on a comparitively tiny online space like lemmy. Like i've fairly frequently seen the accusation that lemmy is filled with paid actors / bots working for various countries from people just because they've suddenly been exposed to views that they've never really encountered before.
The general consensus is that yes, Russians do troll. The conspiracy comes from the fact that EVERYONE you have a bad interaction with is a troll. No, a vast majority of Americans are just really shitty people and there's a really good chance your argument is an organic one.
"The Russian and Chinese oligarchs are taking over!" - Western oligarchs probably
Gamergate and Russiagate, we're bringing back 2016, apparently.
There's a group of conflict bots that show up every day, around the same time.
Then throw in a mix of astroturfers from certain countries trying to steer conversations away from one direction and into another direction.
Finally mix in comments from one of the extreme edges of the political spectrum, that repost the same kind of posts that support their extreme views almost daily.
Lemmy admins have some work to do.
Yes, and not just in comments, but occasionally when you sort by new, the same one loser (they use either the same pfp or a name with a sequential year or something, I can't find them in my blocked list, those accounts must have been purged) will post extremely racist or transphobic shit, almost like they want to get banned on sight to reinforce their delusions of persecution). There have also been targeted attacks on the autism communities with someone just posting the r slur over and over again. Report and block is the only thing to do really.
Either way, this is typical of any even moderately progressive space, but the more radical you go, the more bigots and trolls will come to smear their shit all over the space, it's an inevitable result of the overinflated sense of entitlement that comes with privilege.
We are effectively in an information war with Russia, and that's really driving up the trolling. Not that every troll is a Russian bot, but they are really driving the trend and giving inspiration to terrible people. A lot of it is also laundered garbage from anarcho-capitalist "think tanks".
They are probably created by Reddit to make everyone lose interest in Lemmy /s
Tell me about it.
Hexbear seems to have chilled out a bit, but I've seen people from non-leftist instances pretending to be leftist and arguing worse than the typical tankies.
We can expect this with any system that grows in size, becomes popular right? I don’t know the science behind it, but communities over a certain size naturally create subcommunities or attract partisans, antagonists, anarchists with a tendency to troll for fun. It’s the way of things.
Communities need an auto mod to limit age of accounts.
That’s big talk from a 5 day old account! 😜
Checks notes: I don't know what you mean, I'm 2024 years old
That's why huge instances are bad, they can't moderate all those users (I am on a bigger instance myself tho don't judge me).
Why yes, we even had a balrog...
I believe THIS is exactly what is being talked about when they say "Russian troll farm"
Nazis have been attacking Lemmy for quite awhile now. They've only really been finding success on a few problem instances, though.
Is it still shit and exploding heads?
I think the latter is blocked on ml but I think any conscious entity can see the former for what it is.
I have not seen this. Can you link to some examples?
.ml is very obviously like 20% right wing trolls pretending to be leftists. Literally everyone on the fediverse can see it except for the admins who protect these trolls because of Poe's law blindness.