So we’ve seen the complaints and the reports and boy oh boy are there complaints and reports.
I’ve discussed the account with the other mods and admins multiple times, and while we agree the volume is a lot, it doesn’t point to a botfarm or multiple people using the account.
Obsessive? Absolutely, but not technically rule breaking… Until today.
Today they indescriminately posted the same story three times from three different sources apparently solely to flood the channel showing a decided lack of judgement.
It’s a valid story from a valid source, the original has been kept here:
https://lemmy.world/post/21098916
The others have been removed as duplicates.
I’m also applying a 15 day temp ban on the account.
“15 days? That’s oddly specific! What’s in 15… OH!”
Are you familiar with toxoplasmosis? The disease that mutates into different forms so a bunch of different animals can host it and pass it along.
This is a long article but it’s really good, it’s worth a read and it predicted a lot of the discourse of the last decade: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/
The sort of gist of it is this: the more grey area / ambiguity in a topic, the more we pop our own identity into our stance on it. And so if that thing is controversy, we argue about it so much more if there’s room to self-insert our identity in that grey area. It spreads and spreads to a bunch of different hosts. It becomes a meme via argument by infecting a bunch of hosts to pass it along.
And that’s Monk.
Pretty early on, it was very clear that they had no actual understanding of the topics they were talking about. I tried in their first few weeks to engage with them and so did others. Only to find nothing there. No opinions, and all counter-arguments were clearly copy & pasted off of Wikipedia. Things like “we have X amount of members in Maine”.
Please.
Eventually they stopped trying to engage altogether, and instead moved into a deliberate pattern of line-toeing retorts. None in good faith. But, more importantly, never with enough substance to interrupt the ensuing argument, while simultaneously always enough comment traffic to perpetuate the thread.
Monk is a memetic toxoplasmosis source vector. Through pure ineptitude or irony, I think they’ve accidentally turned more people against third parties than for them, but maybe that isn’t their goal.
Even now there’s an undercurrent of “I don’t think I even disagree with them”. Well, how could you? They haven’t said anything worth disagreeing with, have they? What have they said, though? Not much. Nothing recognizable as an opinion in defense of the third party articles. Often, just enough to establish a veneer of plausible deniability.
It’s a sophisticated form of trolling and it’s recognizable to anyone with a long history of community management online. There are some people who never seem to be directly at fault for things, yet every single time you remove them, the temperature goes down.
You don’t need to actually build a case against these people to know that the equation is simple: when they’re around, everyone is angry. When they aren’t, people get along better.
Anyway, my point is this: you can tell who is contributing in good faith and who isn’t, because they will attempt to say what’s on their mind. It might be the worst take you’ve ever heard in your life, but it has a concretion to it. Monk has no concrete substance, they simply like to stir the pot.
upvoting for well articulated nuance
Absolutely agree with this and for this reason, in my opinion, they really should be instance-banned. They contribute nothing that anyone else isn’t already doing. And they’re absolutely doing it in bad faith.
So good riddance to bad rubbish.
Agreed. They are being intentionally passive aggressive and they are trying to create discord in this community. They often say that they expect downvotes.
IMHO, if a user is repeatedly trying to get a rise from other users, then it’s time to go.
It’s like a little bother holding a finger to your face and saying “I’m not touching you.” They’re following the rules and not hitting their sibling, but know they’re being a pest.
You’ve pretty much nailed it.
Good they have been trolling us for a while. Also, thank you for your efforts and you are appreciated.
I dunno if it’s trolling. It’s deluded and obsessive demonstrating a lot of free time, but, like, they’re passionate about it.
I mean, they have some magical thinking and logic and I don’t think their actions are actually pragmatic towards their goals, but I’m fairly certain it’s genuine.
Either way, this was the right move.
Edit: ehhhhhh some other comments have shown they were acting like a troll fairly consistently. Maybe this should have been done sooner.
That’s the consensus from the admins and mods. They have shitty opinions, but having shitty opinions is not a TOS violation.
They constantly troll anyone who responds to them. It’s sheer flame bait with every comment.
All of the posts and comments that user makes are universally Down voted, and pretty much everyone here hates this user. Why on earth you won’t ban them permanently is beyond any of us.
I appreciate that you want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it’s obvious that they’re main goal is to provoke Arguments. Pretty much everyone in the affected communities, like news and politics, can’t stand the person. Nobody wants them there.
Please permanently ban them, at least from those communities.
I think this is balanced and fair. I don’t think they demonstrated any supremely shitty opinions, i.e. racism, bigotry, but their presence was incredibly annoying and they didn’t really participate in useful conversations and moreso used the reply box as a soapbox to say a lot of nonsense.
Moreover, I think banning until the election shows an understanding and restraint by the administration team that is commendable.
Nah. I’ve dealt with these kind of people since BBSs. They’re trolls and get a kick out of the responses.
They usually have multiple “hidden” agendas.
First and foremost is to get a rise out of people to get engagement so their message resonates negatively and then is surfaced and viewed by the impressionable.
Second is to cause strife within the community.
Third is to get that strife to get people to shift to their viewpoint
They are trolling. They love the negative attention here is just one example of it “Wait, do I have 81,000 downvotes now? I thought it was 45,000?! Can you double check. I wanna put the correct number of downvotes in my profile. The link you provided isn’t working for me. Thanks for the updated stats, friend! :)” They purposely post more mild posts and then like today they went for the triple post of troll material. They are playing a lot of people right now. Don’t be one of them.
Yeah, they are literally bragging about being a troll in their profile when they boast about their downvotes.
Exactly there intentions are right there for anyone to see.
Pretty wild this is even being debated.
That’s a much more recent turn. Not that long ago they were asking why they were getting such negative engagement. I think they decided to cling to ideology and take the negativity as an affirmation of their position. Make no mistake, I’m not asking for them not to be banned or anything. I have 100% left community that they’ve been apart of. And will not lament their absence. I don’t think it’s clear trolling.
This is what falling for a troll looks like. Giving excuses for their trolling behavior as if the troll is really just responding to their environment despite the troll being the one who initiates the conflict.
That’s just it though. In a weird sort of way they don’t tend to initiate it. Look at it closer. Try to find an instance of them commenting on a post to community that wasn’t their own. Or did not mention them in some way. It’s oddly rare as f***.
If their whole intent was to feed off metallic replies. Why would they create and moderate many many different communities to which they post some of the same s*** and get very little response? Often still getting ratioed on what little response they do get. That’s a lot of extra work for not very much troll food.
If you choose to Define them as a troll. You still have to admit they’re one of the easiest trolls in history to avoid. Which should make you question the label. The behavior is much too erratic and unpredictable for something like a simple troll. Much more indicative of something like mental illness and a bad response to being bullied
Try to find an instance of them commenting on a post to community that wasn’t their own.
That is just trolling with home court advantage. They put out the honeypot and get to argue on their home turf for the most part, although they also posted to c/politics.
Much more indicative of something like mental illness and a bad response to being bullied
‘Just responding to their environment.’
That is just trolling with home court advantage. They put out the honeypot and get to argue on their home turf for the most part
That’s a REAL stretch. I’m not saying they aren’t fucking annoying. They’re really, FUCKING, annoying. But being annoying doesn’t imply trolling. I’ve met people who’s basic speaking tones and patterns annoyed me. But it was less something they did intentionally and more a malfunction of who they were. And in this case, despite monk making a spectacle of themselves. People sought them out far more than monk intruded elsewhere.
I won’t miss them. But some of the behavior has definitely been obsessive and bullying towards them. Regardless of their actions or what you think of them personally. Maybe you like that fact. Maybe you don’t. For me personally though it feels like pretty shitty behavior all around and no one to really root for. When I stopped engaging with them. I stopped having issues with them. They didn’t follow. Didn’t harass others the way they were harassed. That’s not justifying or defending their behavior. Whatever lessons they learned they learned the wrong fucking thing. There’s no question about that.
I think the bigger issue here is the indiscriminate obvious trolling.
The fact that it took “bad judgment” and not the reading between the lines for their sealioning and bad faith arguments and faux “friend” comments points towards the need for strengthening our community standards.
Allowing people to come in and troll under the guise of “I’m following the rules lolololol” makes the mods look like rubes.
When it comes to moderation, I’m of the opinion that it should never be a “read between the lines” interpretation. If we’re going to take action as severe as a ban, it should not be open to interpretation.
For example, I remember a comment that was reported and removed for referencing the whole disingenuous question “when did you stop beating your wife?”
Reported and removed for call to violence, and I had to explain to the other mod that “no, no, they’re making a point about asking disingenous questions…”
Post was restored.
When it comes to moderation, I’m of the opinion that it should never be a “read between the lines” interpretation. If we’re going to take action as severe as a ban, it should not be open to interpretation.
The problem with this is that it allows people to ride the line of what is acceptable and get away with things that effectively poison the platform with toxicity.
It’s very similar to what Trump did, and now look at the state of the entire US politics system now.
By allowing people to toe the line by not technically breaking the rules, it still adds to the overall toxicity of Lemmy.
Yes, but when there’s literally thousands of posts and comments to build the “between the lines” data within a 30-day time frame what excuse is there?
When somebody is trolling so hard that it’s causing strife within your community it should be addressed. Identify the behavior that isn’t desired and enforce existing rules around it or create a new one and warn the person that they need to operate in good faith within the rules or they will be ousted as an antagonistic troll.
In cases like that the default position is to allow the downvotes and individual user blocks to do the job.
The problem with individual user blocks is that if someone submits enough of the links in a community, blocking them means blocking most stories and discussions so you can’t really read or participate in the community without leaving them unblocked.
Which makes your community toxic and your job harder.
How many reports did you get and have to filter through and ultimately ignore? If that’s not an indicator from your community that something needs to change you’re not listening to our needs.
My default is to be more lenient because I saw how badly heavy handed moderation can go from 15 years on reddit. ;)
Too many times what’s “toxic” or not was decided by… well…
That was my comment. I’m both a little embarrassed that got referenced after so long, but was also impressed in the moment that someone took the time to actually understand the context in which it was made.
So, I’m torn on the issue of what the appropriate course of action would be in the instance of UniversalMonk, and when it should have been taken. I see the validity in your argument in regards to not moderating in the gray area due to the abuse & power-brokering that comes along with it.
At the same time, in order to create a healthy community long-term I think there needs to be some way to enforce a more black & white standard that dissuades people from engaging in this kind of behavior because it drives away legitimate users who care about the platform.
I don’t necessarily have a good solution for that, and again I do appreciate the complexity of the situation from a moderation standpoint.
Firstly, thank you for that ban. Did you notice the duplicate section in my comment? Low effort comments, dismissiveness, refusing to engage in good faith even when someone treats him very respectively, and copy-pasting the same responses many times is only one of several signs this is a troll. This behavior breaks rule 4.
No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
I do not understand how anyone could possibly look at the evidence I provided and say “nah, not a troll”.
For your convenience:
Top 10 duplicate (total 617 exact and 318 fuzzy, 70% or more similar) submissions from [email protected] found.
-
'Thank you!' x 27
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11735366
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11735955
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11743878
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11817818
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11982633
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12027686
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12216542
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12307738
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12309396
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12311578
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12950616
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11735320
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12212813
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12787248
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12787595
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12788399
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12798832
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12804112
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12804403
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12815359
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12859415
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12884524
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12923452
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12937851
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12937855
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12996083
- https://lemmy.world/comment/13002846
-
'Yep!' x 24
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11999485
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12119855
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12249835
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12366231
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12478780
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12650451
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12698185
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12765375
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12765376
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12795033
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12805136
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12805530
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12815339
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12882018
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12909916
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12923437
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12938868
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12328732
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12348685
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12521594
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12610600
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12713610
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12820772
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12894213
-
'k' x 23
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11737773
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11737891
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11737972
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11737995
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11738086
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11738218
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11738246
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11743946
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11753322
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11753367
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11755099
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11755388
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11756415
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11756623
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11756683
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11756731
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11756770
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11756847
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11757001
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11757808
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11757813
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11757863
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12428142
-
'Agreed!' x 21
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11714325
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11794705
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11872168
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12089887
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12132035
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12264458
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12317444
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12323502
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12453161
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12516191
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12805534
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12840119
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12909898
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11904886
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12131410
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12270853
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12278119
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12278155
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12323465
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12693001
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12966982
-
'I don't know what you mean.' x 20
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11757556
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11757557
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12238257
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12400823
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12565188
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12583929
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11735566
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11737157
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11888568
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12311040
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12360057
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12395133
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12420111
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12421236
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12421321
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12439696
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12525488
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12563842
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12564780
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12582076
-
'I don't have to explain anything to you. Thanks!' x 14
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12398666
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12495296
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12366227
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12367327
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12419420
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12428146
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12457183
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12486020
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12599998
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12600030
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12613040
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12770794
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12787046
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12820767
-
'Right?' x 13
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11776872
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11850443
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12492449
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12493392
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12626401
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12649851
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12650242
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12786095
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12804035
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12805992
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12871852
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12911508
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12939450
-
'Every vote for Harris is stealing a vote from thir...' x 12
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12460202
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12472234
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12476989
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12477047
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12478029
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12478783
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12478790
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12492462
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12492508
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12492607
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12492644
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12521576
-
'Exactly!' x 11
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12227814
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12351305
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12516482
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12657136
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12805096
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12850788
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12899417
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12920864
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12323618
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12559965
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12820815
-
'To cut through the nonsense and save everyone time...' x 10
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12287124
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12287210
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12307518
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12307643
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12317493
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12317539
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12317831
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12328262
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12328273
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12338170
I get that, but hear me out… it’s just as likely that they’re an obsessive compulsive, possibly on the autism spectrum, who can’t stand letting someone have the last word.
Now, I’m no clinical psychologist, I’m not competent to make that diagnosis, but I’m sure you’ve also seen arguments between two people incapable of letting it go.
So if I want to copy paste the same non-response 26 times, I will not get banned for it, as long as I don’t say overtly mean things? I would absolutely assume that would get me perma banned if I kept doing it.
As long as it’s not a non-sensical response and seems to fit the comment chain, I don’t see an inherent problem there.
Example:
“Well, we agree to disagree.” full stop. Discussion ended. No, I don’t have an issue with that.
If the thread is 52 comments and that’s posted 26 times, that is a dead thread. There is an inherent problem with that.
Posting should be an attempt to create discussion. If the poster tries to end discussion in the comments, that’s just making noise. Eventually, a community of just noise will die.
Do not treat neuro divgerent people with training wheels.
I’m neuro divgerent and it pisses me off when people treat me differently. Yeah, I’ve got my shit, and I often need things explained to me with clear guidelines, rules, and expectations.
But one thing my neuro divergence doesn’t grant me is the ability to act like a shit stain and get away with it while prodding everybody around me antagonisticly.
The response here is not about whether their behavior was socially acceptable, but whether it was an indication of a fake account being run by multiple people or a script or something.
I’m personally suspicious due to all those cut and pasted replies, but I suppose it’s possible that’s just an indication of obsession as well. I’ve saved text for a comment reply before, but it was because the text had a lot of citations and I was tired of refinding them each time. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of reason to save and repeat “I don’t have to explain anything to you. Thanks!”
Are you trolling us now?
Am I allowed to speculate about the mental health of other users as well I wonder, or is that just reserved for mods?
I want to second this. I understand the mods prefer a case-by-case approach, but I think that leaves a very specific pathway for bad actors to exploit. Monk was posting a purely insane amount of comments along with a very high but not as insane number of posts, and almost all of it was low-value, and often copy-pasted from a previous comment.
Do the mods even have easy access to the kind of data your script was pulling? I think that may be part of the issue is that the mod tools with Lemmy are lacking/limited.
The number of comments/posts makes me think they’re getting paid per comment or post (or maybe per reply?)
In any case, I still find it funny that in one of their earlier posts I called Stein a Russian stooge and they took personal offense to that. (for a moment, I wondered if maybe they were stein.)
I am not entirely sure what tools they have, but yeah the script was just pulling data from the public api. Anyone can write this script, and I will open source it if folks are interested. It could be good to have a set of tools similar to this one which mods could run with minimal effort.
He had a standard copypasta for people accusing him of being a troll. If that’s not trolling I don’t know what is
Ha! Yeah - in fact it evolved and expanded to the extent of almost all of his interactions being simply copying and pasting his responses ad nauseum. Very rarely saw him say anything he hadn’t already parroted back dozens and dozens of times. I kinda get why some people accused him of being a bot, because it’s hard to imagine a human deriving anything out of those sorts of interactions.
-
Oh holy fuck it’s only 15 days away! Anxiety!
Also having seen the guy, makes sense you can’t ban bad takes (or at least, shouldn’t) but my sense is he just likes to be infamous. Hell, this is a post about his banning, even! He’s probably loving the attention.
Still, I’ve got my Lemmy heroes — obsessive posting can be used for good, like a certain maneuver named after a certain starship captain.
Yeah you’re right. Notice no one is trying to get those folks banned
HOW do you post here 1.9k times in two months? I have like 7 posts in over a year and I feel somewhat active.
I’m not complaining about any decisions mods have made, I’m legitimately asking cause that seems crazy. 32 posts a day is a LOT.
32 posts a day is a LOT.
Honestly, that’s not even that impressive… It’s only 4 posts per hour over a 8 hour work day, which is completely achievable if Internet trolling is your hobby of choice.
What’s really impressive is the number of comments. I won’t speculate on Monk’s motives (out of fear of running afoul of this community’s rules) except to say that they seem extremely motivated to argue with anyone and everyone who posts a disagreeing comment. Their tactic is to bicker with any dissenting voices (without actually engaging with their arguments) to the point of exhaustion so that no one will bother engaging anymore — a very specific strategy I have to imagine is designed to shift the Overton window a particular way.
Fortunately, their efforts seem to have been mostly ineffective given the number of people around here who continue to call out their BS. So keep fighting the good fight, I guess!
I told them in PMs that, as a mod, I self limit to 3 posts a day for fear of being seen as putting my thumb on the scale and influencing the discourse.
And that’s in the groups I mod(!)
He’s over that by a factor of 10+
I don’t know what his deal was but anyone who is that gleefully belligerent when confronted by people who don’t like what he’s doing isn’t really anyone I want around. Coincidently, I blocked him today. I don’t think he was doing anything wrong other than sheer volume of one-note posts. But I got tired of all the comment sections being about him. And I think I’ve absorbed enough of his point of view for a time.
For all I know he was just trying to keep folks riled up enough to vote. But those posts didn’t add to the value of the community IMO.
For a while I didn’t block them b/c I wanted to see what and how much they were posting. The shtick was indeed getting old and after seeing the glut of posts today, I blocked them. Enough is enough and I know what they are about.
Trolling. Trolling and disinformation.
