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!”
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.
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.
Yeah, the typical line crossers, racism, bigotry, hatred, genocide denial, etc. get you on the fast track to a ban and they avoided all of that.
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Genocide denialism and bigotry are WAY worse than just being uncivil. I’m fine with a chamber that doesn’t allow bigotry. If you think that makes it left-leaning, that says a lot more about the right than “free speech”.
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than there is for demonstrably antagonistic behavior. Lemmy is veering too strongly toward curating a list of acceptable opinions and too far away from enforcing civility standards, if you ask me. That’s a surefire way to create an ironclad left-leaning echo chamber.
I would argue exactly the opposite.
First of all, fuck “civility” rules, which in my experience (back on Reddit) tend to result in polite bad faith comments (sealioning etc.) being tolerated while comments calling out bad faith for the toxic behavior it is get removed.
Second, facts are not opinions, and it’s hardly Lemmy’s fault if Colbert was correct about reality’s bias.
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Well, it’s always been left leaning, look at .ml ;)
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It’s certainly not genuine good faith engagement. But yeah not obvious “trolling” no matter how dismissive and off putting their responses can be. They have some sort of personal need for engagement. And way too much free time to pursue it in. Two things combined with unwillingness to understand or acknowledge the arguments other people make. That come off so toxic.
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Just because it can be, doesn’t mean it is. It’s absolutely taken on more trollish overtones of late. They weren’t always this way. If you want to go dumpster diving, months ago there were moments and posts of introspection.
It’s not healthy behavior regardless. But I can understand it. I don’t tolerate Leninist/tankie hypocrisy, and feel pretty self righteous calling them out on it. Viewing their silent down votes as affirmation. It would be easy to behave similarly to them. Pestering etc. Hell I have done it in the past. And if I was a person prone to the magical thinking of dogma and ideology I probably still would be. But I value my time, logic, and reason much more. And enjoy it much more to engage with someone, that even if we don’t agree in the end. We don’t talk past each other. But focus on actually having a fruitful discussion.
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Only after you define a patronizing. And explain why you’ve chosen to ignore what was said. I literally said it’s taken on trollish tone recently. But I don’t believe it’s their actual MO. To be clear I’m not arguing that they should not be banned or trying to defend them. I honestly think there’s much more to suggest mental illness going on there than gleeful trolling. But I see that it’s wildly important for you personally to only see them definitely as a troll. Despite the fact that being undaunted and a bit spammy is the biggest accusation that you have. I honestly am getting much more trollish vibe from you than I have ever gotten from monk all the times I disagreed with them and pointed it out. Which to be clear I’ve largely stopped engaging with them at this point because of the uselessness.
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Looking at some of their threads, the trolling type behavior seemed directed at users who were already fairly antagonistic to them to begin with, then it turned in to trolling back and forth all the way down.
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.
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.
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Pyfedi / piefed.social has a take on this that you might find interesting.
For example, pyfedi allows for anonymous voting, but I believe there’s a planned change (if it isn’t already implemented and live) so that folks with a low reputation (from too many downvotes) can’t use it. By default, comments and posts with too low a reputation are also hidden. This is handled automatically by the software, so no human moderator or admin has to do anything - if enough people downvote, the system enforces the consequences automatically.
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