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…
This is urgently needed for the upcoming elections.
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.
Voyager started as a progressive web app. vger.app. I prefer it to Lemmy’s interface even on computer.
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
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.
im not on lemmy but I see regular buy drugs here, how to change your flight booking (no idea how that scam whatever it is works), or for some reason random keyboard characters like a person randomly banged on the homerow keys. may not be paid but apparently someone thinks the fediverse is worth crapping up.
Oh i doubt that. According to a few people I’ve spoken with i’m a paid troll.
That aside it’s good to be suspicious that any reasonably populated online space has is share of astrotrurfers. Hell, remember snowdens revelations shows federal agents had fuggen World of Warcraft and xbox live accounts
No one is paying troll farms to go comment on lemmy though
Could you tell that to the c/politics commenters who seem to think russian shills lurk behind every rock?
I don’t really think political spending is going towards Lemmy trolls, much less like…national propaganda spending. Shitty advertising bots maybe.
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.
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
Recommended by who though? Spez, that’s who. Race-baiting works to increase “engagement” e.g. clicks and comments, thus it continues.
So are you racist or a nationalist? There’s a difference between criticizing Netanyahu and Biden, and entire nations of people.
it was a hotbed of anti-Israel and anti-America content.
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 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.
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.
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 …
- found the egocentric, ethnocentric American!
hmmm
The year 2024 is notable for the large number of elections, with 8 of the world’s 10 most populous nations (Bangladesh, Brazil, India, United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia, Mexico) voting; countries that are home to nearly half of the world’s people will hold elections in 2024. Around 2 billion voters - approximately a quarter of the world’s population - are expected to be heading to the polls this year.
Stay blissful my friend.
But yes, American social media platforms are targeted during American elections, so you aren’t ignorant about one thing.
Every time I hear that 2024 is a big election year for the world I don’t really understand the stats.
Around 2 billion voters - approximately a quarter of the world’s population - are expected to be heading to the polls this year.
Like if everyone has 4 year terms then generally a quarter of the world’s population will have an election every year.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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”
You don’t have to personally live with it - go somewhere else if you don’t like where you are right now.
I have been spending relatively more time on Bluesky now you mention it. They way they do block propagation is just 😘👌
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.
Yea, I have gotten comments removed and banned several times from lemmy.ml for disagreeing with literal and easily disproven Russian propaganda. You don’t even need to be pro anything, just disagreeing with Russia does it.
You think moderators remove those comments? (/s)
Protip: by replying to a comment on many apps, you can see the content of the comment. This can be very useful.
Anything much outside of the mods’ pro-Russian, pro-CCP, pro-Hamas narrative on /c/worldnews is frequently removed and the user banned. Pro-Western users have a strict bigotry standard applied, while anti-Western users can say anything.
I noticed somebody who wrote “death to amerikkka” was given official mod sanction (saying that it was a country not a people group) so I made the same comment about the CCP.
Comment removed. Banned.
Confirmed.
Uses the racist abbreviation used by nazis
Gets banned for like 3 days tops
“This is oppression. I’m being oppressed.”
gatt dayum dogg shut the fuck up. amerikkka is the global hegimon who bombed tens o million and razed half the globe. china is already sanctioned to shit but still gives out $$$ to poor ass countries. bruv you on a crusade for western interests lmao “anarchost”. i guess the US state department is anarchy now innit? LMFAOOOO
Yup! I had a comment removed from lemmy.ml because I said something nice about the USA. I had another comment removed because I said something not nice about CCP.
A lot of people here believe that allowing disruptive speech is better than suppressing expression.
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”.
