politics
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UniversalMonk Lemmy Stats:
Account Age - 2 Months
Comments - 3,000+
Posts - 1,300+
Average Comments Per Day - 50
Average Comments Per Hour - 3.125
Average Posts Per Day - 21.66
Average Posts Per Hour - 1.35
(Numbers are assuming that UniversalMonk is a single human who sleeps 8 hours per day)
Either this is a dedicated basement dweller who has no life other than shitposting tankie propaganda like it is their fucking job.
(Or, and I think this is more likely)
This is a coordinated, and malignant effort by a group of bad faith actors to coopt the political discourse on Lemmy in an attempt to drown out real discussion, and turn this place into the tankie equivalent of 8chan for pro-Putin LARPers.
I think basement dweller is much more likely. Let's not forget, trolling is fun at a certain age. It's a recreational activity, engaged in as a way to enjoyably pass the time. This is why the advice always used to be to not interact, and just starve them of any engagement so it stopped being enjoyable. To not feed them.
That stopped working when real effects also became achievable, but we shouldn't forget that the first motivation is still there. Just because ignoring them won't make them go away now, because they're trying to actually work on a nebulous goal, doesn't mean it ever stopped being fun.
I mean, is it so hard to believe, when we used to get regularly DDoSed and even occasionally hacked, that we'd also pick up some dedicated trolls from time to time? It'd frankly be pretty naive to think we'd be so lucky, if someone has ever spent any time in the seedier corners of the internet where these things come from.
It's that fun aspect we have to remember. I mean, I disagree with ozma, Linker, jimmydore, lots of people very regularly, but they're not stringing out dozen+ long comment chains just trying to irritate the person they're interacting with at whatever moment. They're not trolling, they just have strong opinions. It's specifically that having fun at other people's expense thing that makes this one different. And frankly, it's very common on the internet, just usually not so much in moderated spaces, when the mods are being appropriately responsible. The rest of the internet is still out there though, can always go spend some time on 4chan's /pol/ if you need to see the sorts of things we're dealing with. Maybe a LoL lobby, I hear those are lovely. Maybe the comments sections under some Gamergate youtuber's videos, or Ben Shapiro or someone.
Plenty of places you can find people that just want to have a good time at your expense. For fun, with just a side dose of fuck-the-world.
It is clear they should be banned already.
I think it does bring up some larger issues though. Like should limits be placed on accounts. Do we really want users like this? Are they adding to the experience?
Ban because you disagree with them? And you people say that Republicans are authoritarian.
Try harder please. I have read several articles posted by OP. They clearly have an agenda and have engaged in a lot of trolling behavior.
So the question is having an active troll/propagandist really good for the community. Maybe you could argue that they generate engagement or that we need to protect people's right to disagree.
The community should carefully weigh this moving forward. If accounts that act like bots are allowed then this place will follow in the footsteps of Digg or Reddit.
Personally, I would have already set them straight as a moderator. I have never been impressed by edgy people who add very little to the conversation.
The mods and admins have actually discussed their account multiple times.
The consensus is, yes, they have shitty opinions, but having shitty opinions is not against the TOS.
The links they post are legitimate links from respected sources.
So, no, nothing bannable or removable here. The comments and downvotes do their job exposing just how shitty their opinions are.
I don’t think anyone has a problem with shitty opinions. I think the bigger problem is a pattern of behavior that impairs the community.
Overall you have a user that disrupts the community in a variety of ways and contributes nothing of value - especially in their comments. I think at least a temporary ban has been justified for quite some time.
Thank you for calling this out in detail. I think that copy pasting responses several times easily qualifies as trolling and the massive amount of them doing this makes it no question. This alone should be enough.
They should be banned from the instance. I can't quite follow how it's controversial unless some of the mods are letting their politics stand in the way of observations anyone can easily make in a couple of minutes. There is nothing redeeming about this account. They are spreading bad ideas in bad faith, and frankly it shakes my faith in the platform that they can get away with it Scot fucking free. It's disgusting.
Makes perfect sense about the links. Now their conduct of being defensive/borderline trolling in all the responses is not okay.
Thanks for bringing me up to speed.
So what about the trolling behavior in comments?
People do not complain about his posts, let me repeat that, his posts are not the problem. Nobody cares about his opinions. Nobody minds that he likes third parties, that part is fine.
It's the behavior in comment sections that is the problem. How is it that we have a rule 4 that prohibits trolling, but we allow a user who consistently exhibits comment behavior intended to simply irritate whoever is interacting with them? Low effort, consistently full of logical fallacies, frequently misrepresenting himself and others, etc. These indicate a troll.
Again, it is comment behavior that is the problem. How many of his comments need to be removed before it is identified as a problematic account? I think we deserve some transparency here.
Where and how do you draw the line with regards to trolling behaviors in comments sections?
edit: Let me quote him from just below here, where he replied to someone replying to you right here:
Does this add anything to a conversation? Does this further discourse in any constructive way? Does this encourage people to positively participate in our community?
I appreciate your effort here. It seems like the answer is that this user gets special treatment. Maybe it's a mod or admin's alt and no one is brave enough to stand against it.
I think they're just erring on the side of free speech in general. They've always been fairly lenient with comment behavior that isn't extremely blatant. Since they don't seem to understand the nature of these things, we sort of have a responsibility to educate about it.
I know I have pointed out trolling/suspicious behavior by this account a few times. The mods I've talked to never seem to care and just tell me to block them, as if that actually solves the problem.
That's part of the problem too. They don't understand what a dedicated troll's real long-term goals are. Good on them for never having been one, but I'd rather have a rare example of a healthy large internet community than a trolly one.
I mean, when I try to explain this to mods (I have more than a couple of times) I get crickets. They don't seem particularly concerned as a whole.
The problem we have is not with bad opinions.
If I were to copy paste the same response across many threads, intentionally antagonizing users and making that obvious, what is the secret to having that not be considered trolling? Because apparently op somehow discovered how to achieve that. This user is making it beyond obvious. They intend to troll users, and they're putting a lot of effort into it. Can you help us understand what makes that okay?
I think actively trolling people by arguing in bad faith or through astroturfing like this is definitely poisoning the community. It shouldn't be tolerated for tolerances' sake. And I'm not saying to just ban people you don't agree with. I'm saying people who obviously just post to poke the bear, so to speak, should face discipline for trying to turn Lemmy toxic.
Liberals don't like leftists in general because we make them feel like bad people. That's why they try so hard to morally lash out at us whenever they can. They understand that many of the policies they advocate are unethical, but can't oppose a system they benefit from, so they tear us down and lash out at us.
Where do you come up with this stuff? You really put a lot of assumed beliefs/motivations on large groups of people. It’s like you’re deep in echo-chamber talking points designed to divide subgroups, but have never actually talked to “Democrats” or “liberals”.
Hint: outside of fringe communities discussing socialist philosophy, in the US “left”, “liberal”, and “Democrat” are nearly synonymous to most of the public.
Just because the general public believes something doesn't make it correct. US democrats believe they are on the left side of the political spectrum, but by every measurable aspect they are firmly right wing, and moving further to the right
You have some interesting beliefs for sure.
Liberals who are most often defined by equality typically align with the so-called left. Although it is important to point out what country you are from can drastically alter this perception. I was born and raised in North America.
The right which is often synonymous with conservatives have pushed back against racial and gender equality. They believe in rigid hierarchies keeping control through rules that bind others but not themselves.
I get the feeling you probably believe in a lot of right wing propaganda. Hence the whole inflicting moral outrage on others being such a boogey man. It really isn't as conservatives have no problem ignoring it.
They talk as if they are aligned, but vote as if they are not. They put BLM in their social media profiles, then voted for the people that created the necessity for orgs like BLM to exist. They cried about kids in cages, then voted for the architect behind them.
Kwame Ture
So you think that leftists only pay a lip service to equality? That is a valid criticism given by leftists themselves.
It is important to keep in mind it was the progressives, which includes liberals and leftists, who are the ones responsible for desegregation and just about every other social justice issue in our modern times.
They did not do it by force either. They convinced people and used their social currency to cause voluntary change in the hearts and minds of people as well as policies in the government.
In the US, trying to lay the blame on them for family separation and caging children is pretty far fetched. Did they play some small part in it? Probably.
It was not their policy and to be frank they would have never had to take a centrist position if the conservatives did not try to make it into a political issue in the first place. Conservatives have used their grievance culture of hate to turn people against each other for far too long.
So Kwane Ture's biggest criticism is the liberals don't try hard enough? That because they don't tear the institution down they are just as bad as the oppressors. That because they see it is wrong and try to make a change that they are actually taking power away from the oppressed.
This is all a common criticism in the vein of Malcom X and many before and after him. It of course ignores that the progressives are actually made up from the oppressed. That everything we consider part of what makes life livable nowadays is because of progressives.
We would already have cheap or universal healthcare, equality of the sexes, elimination of discrimination, reformation of policing, living wages, free education, and a slew of other amenities if the conservatives did not decide to turn all these issues partisan.
The fact that the Democratic party marched to the right is the response of 60+ years of hateful propaganda spewed from the conservatives to divide our populace. They are the ones responsible for dragging the country right.
Having said all that I do agree with his sentiment. The progressives have grown complacent. We still don't have a equal rights amendment added to our constitution. We won't protect the rights of 50% of our society. As a man with four daughters it is very disheartening.
Letter from a Birmingham jail has entered the chat,
One of the men at the head of the civil rights movement tends to disagree with you. If liberals were among those that were fighting for desegregation in every other social justice issue of our modern times, this scathing review of white moderate liberals would not have been necessary. And if that were true, After the Civil Rights laws were passed, he would have still had an overwhelming approval rating, his approval rating amongst liberals was less than 25%.