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!”
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.
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
'Yep!' x 24
'k' x 23
'Agreed!' x 21
'I don't know what you mean.' x 20
'I don't have to explain anything to you. Thanks!' x 14
'Right?' x 13
'Every vote for Harris is stealing a vote from thir...' x 12
'Exactly!' x 11
'To cut through the nonsense and save everyone time...' x 10
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.
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.
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.)
There are multiiple Stein Stans in the community who report anything remotely anti-Stein, even (especially?) when it’s true.
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.
Mod tools are pretty limited.
We have a queue of reported posts and reported comments, from there it’s a manual lookup of user history in their profile and on the public modlog.
For actions, we can remove comments and posts, lock posts, ban users temporarily or permanently, feature posts in the community, and promote users to mods.
Thanks for that. Kinda what I figured. I may work some more on tools to help. Would you be interested? Specifically in simple scripts you can run after a pretty easy setup and running a single command typically.
Anything that helps, sure!
That would be awesome of you.
Here is the tool: https://codeberg.org/p00perNickel/lemmy-user-stats
Let me know if you have any issues with it!
Thank you!!
How did you generate this report?
It’s a script I wrote. I’m planning to open source it soon. Should I send you a link when it goes up?
Yes please!
Here is the tool: https://codeberg.org/p00perNickel/lemmy-user-stats
Let me know if you have any issues with it!
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.
https://neurodivergentrebel.com/2021/09/15/autism-obsessive-behavior-why-i-cant-always-let-things-go-as-an-autistic-person/
https://www.asd-forum.org.uk/forum/index.php?/topic/28892-arguing-with-other-asd-people-someone-always-has-to-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.
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!”
Ditto!
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.
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?
While I understand your concern because I knew someone who was like that personally, that person’s ability and desire to constantly respond caused them a significant bit of distress, often replying to people with something like, “please stop replying because I feel compelled to say something in response.”
Maybe shutting a user up every now and then would be a net positive.
“please stop replying because I feel compelled to say something in response.”
Modding at that point kind of becomes:
I’d rather be on Snoopy’s side than Lucy’s. ;)
Mental illness aside - respectfully, if spamming isn’t considered against the rules, I kind of consider that bad moderation.
Hmm… that is a good take. (Somewhat scarily, that also seems to describe me really well.)
Being on the spectrum could also explain a higher than typical screen time. I’ve been on these online communities in the past, and there are folks there who get online as the first thing they do when they wake up, and then go offline just right before bed. (There are good reasons for it of course - when you crave social interaction but the only medium that you can handle it is using a computer, then this sort of thing becomes more understandable.)