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.

There's already an issue on lemmy-ui for it.
- Love this comment from that GitHub page...
  
  This is urgently needed for the upcoming elections.
  
  The only problem though is a lot of time astroturfers/bots create accounts and then just let them sit idle for 6-9 months before using them.
nice. would love something like that on a web interface.
- Voyager started as a progressive web app. vger.app. I prefer it to Lemmy’s interface even on computer.
For now, because Lemmy is relatively new. There's a reason many bot farms run accounts that are unassuming, "normal" people. Accounts that are established have value. They can then sell those accounts to another group who needs to sew discord. The older Lemmy is, the less useful the new account icon will be.
Is voyager an app like Sync?
- Yes, and no ads either.
- Yes
I find at least one commenter with a new account on almost every post with more than 5 comments.

They tend to be negative.

Think I'm going to start welcoming them to Lemmy, note their activity to date, and ask them nicely what might have brought them to join. (If they are real, glad to have them, but I have found most Lemmy members came here from Reddit, not to make accounts to post in News or Politics or such places trolls would like.)

Until Lemmy updates to identify new accounts ala Voyager, I think that would be helpful to inform other users they may be talking to a troll.

There are approximately 433k accounts but only 48k Monthly Active Users.

It's hard to believe that many of posts and comments are often the newest accounts, and though they will change tactics to using older accounts, at least it's more work for them.

I recommend others do the same.

Memba reddit comments circa 2016 election? I memba.

Washington Post gift article - Russian trolls target U.S. support for Ukraine, Kremlin documents show
Oh me too! I ‘memba!
I don’t know if 50k people, at least a third of whom are outside of the US is a big enough target or if I’m being naïve in thinking that
- I was thinking the same thing. It’s definitely not a coordinated propaganda thing. Some people are just assholes. And they like to troll.
  
  But who knows, maybe someone, somewhere, knows about lemmy—some government/interest group—and think it’s worth it because it can be accessed through mastodon, blue sky, etc. The fediverse seems to be a relatively popular subject these days. So, I dunno. Maybe.
  
  But I think some people just suck and think trolling is a good pastime.
My old comments would have had me banned a hundred times over today.
- Jesus what kind of shit did you used to say lol
It’s already getting like that over there. That’s why I’m here now. The last straw was a “Reddit Recommendation” that I join r/InternationalNews. I took a look around, and it was a hotbed of anti-Israel and anti-America content. There was the video of the university detonation from January 20th, posted that day and pinned to the top. When I commented on the date and provided the source, I was downvoted to oblivion, and eventually banned.

The sub was #7 under recommended news subreddits.
- Being anti-Israel is based.
- You're not going to have much of a better time here if you like Israel and aren't critical of the US. Lemmy is full of socialists lol
- Recommended by who though? Spez, that's who. Race-baiting works to increase "engagement" e.g. clicks and comments, thus it continues.
- anti-Israel and anti-America content is cool actually
- it was a hotbed of anti-Israel and anti-America content.
  
  Welcome to a hotbed of anti-imperial, anti-colonial, and anti-settler content 😂 If you’re looking for pro-imperial core content, you’ve come to the wrong place.
- I deleted my 14 year old account after enough BS on Reddit
  
  Going there with no account but not really on private mode so i got recommendations for regional subs
  
  canada_sub keeps getting pushed. That sub is an alt right neo nazi echo chamber in which the founder and head mod admitted to astroturfing himself with multiple accounts to push hateful topics.
  
  Reddit is intentionally pushing misinformation and hatred for metrics to prop up the ipo
- I think r/InternationalNews was mainly created as a place to discuss issues free from the rampant Zionism of r/WorldNews.
  
  Happy to have people on Lemmy but I have to say, Lemmy as a whole seems way more anti-Israel than reddit right now. Although to be fair outside of r/WorldNews and a few other places, the general mood does seem to be shifting away from Israel pretty hard.
  
  For me this is nice to see, because fuck Israel right to hell, but you'll certainly see the same type of content here. I like that if people don't like it they can make their own community or even an instance, and also that people are generally more free to disagree here (partially due to lax moderation I guess). You should have never been banned for that comment by the sound of it, absolutely stupid.
- I mean, Israel hate is a relatively common position these days.
  
  Of course there are less than intelligent people that think “anti Israel…okay, so fuck the Jews!” Like, no. Fuck those people. And in a social media environment, nuance isn’t allowed. If it sounds like maybe you might be possibly on “the other side” of a popular issue, fuck you there is no room for understanding. It’s a huge problem. I’ve noticed more conversations on lemmy that don’t fall into that trap as easily. But, that does seem to be changing somewhat.
  
  It’s not entirely social media, that’s just people. But I do firmly believe social media has made this problem exponentially worse.
  
  I mean, it seems like you and I would disagree on the Israel/palestine issue. But we’re here discussing the discussion surrounding it. On Reddit, that literally never happened to me.
No one is paying troll farms to go comment on lemmy though
- im not on lemmy but I see regular buy drugs here, how to change your flight booking (no idea how that scam whatever it is works), or for some reason random keyboard characters like a person randomly banged on the homerow keys. may not be paid but apparently someone thinks the fediverse is worth crapping up.
- No one is paying troll farms to go comment on lemmy though
  
  Could you tell that to the c/politics commenters who seem to think russian shills lurk behind every rock?
- We do it for love
- It's more like the far right is bored and doesn't have anything better to do than troll on the internet.
- So the record is correct here?

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

There's a very easy way to stop division: Have a set of values based in reality, and use that to determine what is not up for debate. The first thing a good troll will do is push at the fabric of what is acceptable and erode the community from there. Some people are inherently unreasonable and therefore shouldn't be listened to. Give them a chance to see the light and if they refuse, give em the yeet.

The reason why neo-nazi communities are so quick to fall apart is because their values are not based on reality, so all you have to do is point out a single contradiction and then watch as they passionately debate themselves into increasingly splintering groups. My favorite that sits on the mantle of shit-stirring pot is "Trump is pro-Israel" which absolutely decimates any far-right community it touches.
Current Contenders:

found the egocentric, ethnocentric American!

(adjusts tone and verbage to current audience) Sounds like neo-libralism to me!

Tankie‽

Biden, Trump : Old, Fascist

Beans and denim?

Palestine vs. Isreal

Ukraine vs. Russian

the rights of (insert oppressed group)

Individual/State rights

Linux

Abortion

LGBTQ

Oil/Nuclear/Fossil/Coal/Renewable

Climate Change

Class-gap

Sustainability

Equality

....Fight!!!

Round 2 ...
- found the egocentric, ethnocentric American!
  
  hmmm
  
  The year 2024 is notable for the large number of elections, with 8 of the world's 10 most populous nations (Bangladesh, Brazil, India, United States, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia, Mexico) voting; countries that are home to nearly half of the world's people will hold elections in 2024. Around 2 billion voters - approximately a quarter of the world's population - are expected to be heading to the polls this year.
  
  Stay blissful my friend.
  
  But yes, American social media platforms are targeted during American elections, so you aren't ignorant about one thing.
NIt's election season on the internet

Is it? Or is it just election season in a couple of specific countries, and not elsewhere....

Just sayin :P

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

People don't report shit, then complain stuff goes unmoderated.

Like, you don't have to report every single comment a troll makes, but at least report one so a mod looks at it.

Edit:

Here's a good example. An account I have blocked replied to me. If they go into a sub I moderate and start acting like a jackass, I'll never know because I have them blocked.

The only way I'd see it, is if someone reported it.
- Here's a good example. An account I have blocked replied to me. If they go into a sub I moderate and start acting like a jackass, I'll never know because I have them blocked.
  
  The only way I'd see it, is if someone reported it.
  
  This is why, when I was a reddit moderator (r/Firefox), I never blocked users even if they were absolute trash to me. I always thought of that as a severe limitation of the platform, there should be a setting to show blocked user's content (labelled as such) in communities you moderate.
- People do report stuff, get yelled at by the mods, and then get banned by the admins for abuse of the reporting system, or mod abuse for getting clarification.
  
  So if you do what you are supposed to, you get banned.
  
  Would be better if moderation was actually taken seriously and the admins don’t excuse terrible mod behavior.
Unpopular opinion but I rather downvote. I want to see people’s bad opinions instead of pretending they don’t exist.

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.

That’s a choice and we live with the consequences.

I mean, let's be clear: The choice lies with the users. If users want to allow disruptive speech (or what's worse), they can go to the instances/communities that allow that kind of speech. If not, they can go to other instances/communities that have stricter moderation.

You don't have to personally live with it - go somewhere else if you don't like where you are right now.
- This place is like a black mirror episode. "It's okay, just block the Nazis and it's like they're not there terrorizing and indoctrinating others, bc I can't see it"
- You don't have to personally live with it - go somewhere else if you don't like where you are right now.
  
  I have been spending relatively more time on Bluesky now you mention it. They way they do block propagation is just 😘👌
- Yeah. Maybe if mods weren't constantly removing factual information as "disinformation", you'd have a point.
A lot of people here believe that allowing disruptive speech is better than suppressing expression.

Yep! Imo it’s the only way to beat trolls. If you suppress it, your still giving it attention and publicity. Your also playing into their game that they will claim you sensor truth.

Imo if you tell someone: “yeah, come to lemmy, voice your opinion. We won’t ban you but if we mostly disagree and ignore, clearly your idea was not with its salt”.

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.

This app has a lot of great features, it actually convinced me to sign up.
Wefwef also has it.
- Wefwef is Voyager under a different name. It’s literally the same app.
I was going to say I would be happy if just the Lemmy website allowed you to filter out comments based on the age of the account of the comment being made, but a lot of times accounts are created then are left dormant for sixish months and then are used for nefarious reasons.
- Yeah, even filtering by karma/post count/comment count isn’t a perfect solution because karma farming bots are 100% a thing. It’s one of those “you can slow them down but you’ll never stop them” scenarios.

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.

That's a neat feature. I will request that gets added to sync.
Huh, interesting. Voyager's one of the Lemmy apps? Is it for iOS too?
- Lemmy.world actually host a voyager instance at https://m.lemmy.world/
- Yeah, it’s an iOS app.
Is this on per default? How to activate it?

Thanks
- AFAIK it’s on by default. I’m using the most recent iOS version, if you’re not seeing it I’d ask in the voyager community.
- Just installed due to this thread.
  
  On by default. Nice feature
I see. The symbol is an yellow baby

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.

The thing that's making me kinda want to leave is it feels like even more of an echo chamber then Reddit was, especially when you see someone calling for the death of someone at least once a week or so

Quite often see people getting downvote bombed and dogpiled for having different political opinions
- I left reddit because I fucking hate the company.
  
  But I'm not happy here because I fucking hate the users.
Yes but not that much I see the communities are starting to materialize but many that are a 1 to 1 copy didn't took off sadly the Warframe one is a good example, but you see the pixel dungeon one is going great even Evan00 (the dev of shattered) is buzzing in and the helldivers2 is starting to get to the frontpages. I guess the fediverse moves in a more organical way? Regarding the trolls is normal is a "ladran Sancho" situation, we are getting more people in and that includes idiots. Sadlly/Luckly idiots comes in the full spectrum of races backgrounds and preferences.

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.

That's some fucking ableist bullshit, not everyone is neurotypical you know. Fucking bigot.
- You are really proving his point, eh? Or are you being silly and trolling him? I seriously cannot tell.
- forgot the /s

Also worth pointing out that the best way of reading this thread is looking at all of the removed comments in the modlog. Lol.

Now I’m really curious. How do you read those comments?
- There's a link at the bottom of each and every Lemmy page.
  
  You can search by community/post/user.
- On Kbin and Lemmy instances, the link is called "Modlog" at the bottom of the page in browser. I don't use any Fedi apps so I don't know what it looks like there.
  
  You can see all of the deleted comments every day. I recommend everyone to look at the Modlog at least occasionally. You get a real pulse on how each community is moderated and you can make a better informed decision on where you actually want to hang out.
Is this something publicly accessible or do you need to be a mod or host an instance?
- You can put /modlog after the instance URL, e.g. https://lemmy.world/modlog
- Just go to the instance website and there will be a link to the modlog usually at the bottom of the page.
- https://lemmy.world/comment/9277737
I absolutely love the mod log. Some days I just read through that instead of the regular Lemmy posts.
- It's not just an entertaining read, it's a valuable resource to look at to determine if mods in certain communities are over-moderating. Imo for months, mods in many of the largest communities are far overstepping their roles and not just "moderating" their communities but actively censoring opinions they don't like.

Nope, I'm loving Lemmy.

Some people don’t get this:

If your communities are filled with polarized nonsense, your people suck, not your tech.

Right now, people’s suckyness worldwide is at an all time high.
It rocks! And if it gets shitty where you're at, just go to a new instance and you can stay!

Is this the last migration?

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 😂

An ever increasing ratio because assholes drive out non assholes.

Dead Sea effect in action.
- Good theory; makes sense
- Unless you have mods that aren't afraid to drive out the assholes

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.

Absolutely this. We are in for a ride!

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

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.

A lemmy.world account with a spine? 😳😳😳

God damn, color me pleasantly surprised!
- Yeah that's a new one. They deserve a better class of fed.

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

So you speak from experience?
- Yes.
Never feed the trolls, the only winning move is to downvote and move on

A counter-philosophy I subscribe to is call out the BS but don't go back and forth. If you let the trolls be this can bring more trolls. Call out the bad behavior and move on so it isn't accepted but they also don't get the satisfaction of engaging in an argument.
Report if they break the rules, block if they're bad enough.
- You should report them as trolls in any case, most instances on Lemmy have rules against trolling in general, further violations beyond that just add to the initial violation of trolling.

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.

The only problem with blocking is they still see your comments you make, and can respond to them negatively, and you have no way of defending yourself because you haven't seen their comment.

My wish would be for blocking to prevent those who are blocked from reading comments from the blocker.
- I would love better blocking. But I understand the costs of doing that in a truly federated environment. I'll just settle for not caring what they actually say about me. The whole point of the trolling is to get a rise out of someone.
- Stopping viewing on a per-account basis doesn't make sense to me, since people don't need accounts to view any content in Lemmy, therefore it's trivial to bypass by logging out or fetching the discussion information without logging in from a custom frontend. What would be better is simply stopping them from interracting, just like what happens with bans, they can still view but all interractions are simply dropped or disallowed.
I wish you could set a personal minimum "karma" and age requirement. Like I don't want to hear from anyone with an account made in the last week. And no one with karma below zero.

It's not really a high bar, it mainly blocks people who get banned all the time.
- Karma is easily falsified on the lemmyverse though. I have a maintenance user and a normal user on my server, I can use them both to vote, and thats just easy and not even intentional.
- How do you even see karma?

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

How long til Lemmy hivemind?
- Couple more rounds of enshitification I presume. The IPO got me to move. I guess it wasn't fun posting on reddit anymore now that I'm making spez money
- Honestly? Probably a couple months or so.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

No, not really.

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

Prolly lots of bots...

I just blocked a user, because I just kept seeing their name pop up and commenting on 'everything'

Account created 9 months ago with 15000+ Comments That's like 60 comments a day.

Bot or not, someone with that many comments a day needs to go outside and experience life before posting their opinion on fucking everything.
- Was it Flying Squid? I see them comment multiple times in nearly every thread I'm in.
  
  EDIT: 30,000 comments in 10 months. Jesus.
- I might be able to do 60 in a day but not consistantly over 9 months.
- Hey man, some people just shit post at work all day... and have a crippling addiction.
- What’s even funnier (sadder let’s be honest), is some of them are memed like they are some god in some of these communities they spam relentlessly.
- I feel attacked!
  
  (j/k, keep up the good work)

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

Do they just want attention? Or are they malicious actors from those that consider Lemmy competition?
- They're malicious actors, but reddit is just as bad right now. It'll die down to more organic hate after the elections.
- Even if they’re malicious actors, they want attention just the same. They want to lure you into a bad faith “debate” so they can spread their propaganda. Either way, the solution is the same - ignore them. Don’t give them the opportunity to reply and promote more bullshit.

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.

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.

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.

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

Tell me about it.

Why yes, we even had a balrog...

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).

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

Is it still shit and exploding heads?
- I think the latter is blocked on ml but I think any conscious entity can see the former for what it is.

Communities need an auto mod to limit age of accounts.

That’s big talk from a 5 day old account! 😜
- Checks notes: I don't know what you mean, I'm 2024 years old

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

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

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.

The problem is that there are trolls here and rage baiters.

Having an argument with them is their goal as it opens up discussion for them to contribute nothing and spread more division.

They aren’t trying to have a discussion but use the comment chain to spread shit for others.

The user here never called for opinions to be censored. He called for action against trolls and bots who intentionally try pushing false narratives and division

The fact you immediately jumped to argue about censorship rally evidence your own point for being here and that’s to be a shithead too

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

But you made a post less <2 days ago, and commented over 50 times just this past week

So, did you just VERY recently start "hardly looking" or something? Or are you just trolling/full of ~~shit~~ bologna?. No hard feelings or anything, but damn; low effort. Be better
I sympathize for you. I suggest for you to block users you find toxic.
- Thank you. The one sympathetic voice in a sea of frothing idiocy

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.

Your comment downvoted just shows that Lemmy isn't any better than its alternatives.
- Just shows how hateful some people are.

yes and its awesome.

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

Thank you very much, @bloodfart@lemmy.ml for bringing the troll's perspective to the site!
- 🫡
  
  But I’m not even trolling. It’s good that people get trolled. It’s good that people don’t take the internet very seriously.