Does anyone else notice an uptick of extreme troll accounts?

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.

Memba reddit comments circa 2016 election? I memba.

Use the report button when you see those, it's the quickest way for them to be noticed by mods and admins.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nope, I'm loving Lemmy.

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 😂

Some threads have a handful of interactions that seem less than genuine, yes. Usually political and derailing and spoil the thread.

I noticed votes related to political comments are suddenly shifting to the right which was different just 1 week ago.

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.

We’re about 6 months away from the US presidential election so it doesn’t surprise me.

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

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.

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.

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?

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

I guess I'm lucky. I must subscribe to more or less of an echo chamber. Fuck trolls.

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.

No, not really.

All they want is attention. I simply don’t give them the satisfaction of a response. They get bored and move on.

You shouldn't have to do a fucking DOD level background check on someone typing shit on the internet...

Prolly lots of bots...

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.

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.

They are probably created by Reddit to make everyone lose interest in Lemmy /s

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.

Tell me about it.

China and Russia trying to step up the political discord between people ahead of the election in November.

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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).

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.

Nazis have been attacking Lemmy for quite awhile now. They've only really been finding success on a few problem instances, though.

Why yes, we even had a balrog...

I believe THIS is exactly what is being talked about when they say "Russian troll farm"

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".

I have not seen this. Can you link to some examples?

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Yeap... Lemmy is getting to Reddit form faster than expected

Blocking news and politics subreddits is a big help. The absolutely retarded statements made there will drive a guy nuts.

100%. I've been saying it over and over. It's election season on the internet, division aplenty.

.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.

No, Sounds like someone who can't give a counter arguments, and instead reverts to crying about trolls, bots, and calling for the opposite side to be censored.

It's those god damn cracka ass crackas taking up the black mans freedom of speech

Yes. I hardly look at Lemmy any more. It’s so toxic

Nothing wrong with someone disagreeing with you at all. Plenty of dictators throughout history hard-lining group think.

Report troll accounts, for actual people you dont have torespond to every post so just ignore or at minimum be respectful, you can even attempt critical thought: you might just be wrong.

yes and its awesome.

lemmy needs more troll accounts and we should all be trolled more