this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024

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249

A note on Universal Monk: (self.politics)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by jordanlund to c/politics

182 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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!"

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[–] [email protected] 85 points 2 months ago (4 children)

Are you familiar with toxoplasmosis? The disease that mutates into different forms so a bunch of different animals can host it and pass it along.

This is a long article but it's really good, it's worth a read and it predicted a lot of the discourse of the last decade: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/

The sort of gist of it is this: the more grey area / ambiguity in a topic, the more we pop our own identity into our stance on it. And so if that thing is controversy, we argue about it so much more if there's room to self-insert our identity in that grey area. It spreads and spreads to a bunch of different hosts. It becomes a meme via argument by infecting a bunch of hosts to pass it along.

And that's Monk.

Pretty early on, it was very clear that they had no actual understanding of the topics they were talking about. I tried in their first few weeks to engage with them and so did others. Only to find nothing there. No opinions, and all counter-arguments were clearly copy & pasted off of Wikipedia. Things like "we have X amount of members in Maine".

Please.

Eventually they stopped trying to engage altogether, and instead moved into a deliberate pattern of line-toeing retorts. None in good faith. But, more importantly, never with enough substance to interrupt the ensuing argument, while simultaneously always enough comment traffic to perpetuate the thread.

Monk is a memetic toxoplasmosis source vector. Through pure ineptitude or irony, I think they've accidentally turned more people against third parties than for them, but maybe that isn't their goal.

Even now there's an undercurrent of "I don't think I even disagree with them". Well, how could you? They haven't said anything worth disagreeing with, have they? What have they said, though? Not much. Nothing recognizable as an opinion in defense of the third party articles. Often, just enough to establish a veneer of plausible deniability.

It's a sophisticated form of trolling and it's recognizable to anyone with a long history of community management online. There are some people who never seem to be directly at fault for things, yet every single time you remove them, the temperature goes down.

You don't need to actually build a case against these people to know that the equation is simple: when they're around, everyone is angry. When they aren't, people get along better.

Anyway, my point is this: you can tell who is contributing in good faith and who isn't, because they will attempt to say what's on their mind. It might be the worst take you've ever heard in your life, but it has a concretion to it. Monk has no concrete substance, they simply like to stir the pot.

[–] Ghostalmedia 49 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Agreed. They are being intentionally passive aggressive and they are trying to create discord in this community. They often say that they expect downvotes.

IMHO, if a user is repeatedly trying to get a rise from other users, then it’s time to go.

It’s like a little bother holding a finger to your face and saying “I’m not touching you.” They’re following the rules and not hitting their sibling, but know they’re being a pest.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago

You've pretty much nailed it.

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[–] SacredHeartAttack 77 points 2 months ago (3 children)

HOW do you post here 1.9k times in two months? I have like 7 posts in over a year and I feel somewhat active.

I’m not complaining about any decisions mods have made, I’m legitimately asking cause that seems crazy. 32 posts a day is a LOT.

[–] jordanlund 42 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I told them in PMs that, as a mod, I self limit to 3 posts a day for fear of being seen as putting my thumb on the scale and influencing the discourse.

And that's in the groups I mod(!)

He's over that by a factor of 10+

[–] [email protected] 32 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I don't know what his deal was but anyone who is that gleefully belligerent when confronted by people who don't like what he's doing isn't really anyone I want around. Coincidently, I blocked him today. I don't think he was doing anything wrong other than sheer volume of one-note posts. But I got tired of all the comment sections being about him. And I think I've absorbed enough of his point of view for a time.

For all I know he was just trying to keep folks riled up enough to vote. But those posts didn't add to the value of the community IMO.

[–] KnightontheSun 24 points 2 months ago

For a while I didn't block them b/c I wanted to see what and how much they were posting. The shtick was indeed getting old and after seeing the glut of posts today, I blocked them. Enough is enough and I know what they are about.

Trolling. Trolling and disinformation.

[–] very_well_lost 39 points 2 months ago

32 posts a day is a LOT.

Honestly, that's not even that impressive... It's only 4 posts per hour over a 8 hour work day, which is completely achievable if Internet trolling is your hobby of choice.

What's really impressive is the number of comments. I won't speculate on Monk's motives (out of fear of running afoul of this community's rules) except to say that they seem extremely motivated to argue with anyone and everyone who posts a disagreeing comment. Their tactic is to bicker with any dissenting voices (without actually engaging with their arguments) to the point of exhaustion so that no one will bother engaging anymore — a very specific strategy I have to imagine is designed to shift the Overton window a particular way.

Fortunately, their efforts seem to have been mostly ineffective given the number of people around here who continue to call out their BS. So keep fighting the good fight, I guess!

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Good they have been trolling us for a while. Also, thank you for your efforts and you are appreciated.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (17 children)

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.

[–] jordanlund 27 points 2 months ago (13 children)

That's the consensus from the admins and mods. They have shitty opinions, but having shitty opinions is not a TOS violation.

[–] EleventhHour 40 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

They constantly troll anyone who responds to them. It’s sheer flame bait with every comment.

All of the posts and comments that user makes are universally Down voted, and pretty much everyone here hates this user. Why on earth you won’t ban them permanently is beyond any of us.

I appreciate that you want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it’s obvious that they’re main goal is to provoke Arguments. Pretty much everyone in the affected communities, like news and politics, can’t stand the person. Nobody wants them there.

Please permanently ban them, at least from those communities.

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 2 months ago (7 children)

They are trolling. They love the negative attention here is just one example of it “Wait, do I have 81,000 downvotes now? I thought it was 45,000?! Can you double check. I wanna put the correct number of downvotes in my profile. The link you provided isn’t working for me. Thanks for the updated stats, friend! :)” They purposely post more mild posts and then like today they went for the triple post of troll material. They are playing a lot of people right now. Don’t be one of them.

[–] spankmonkey 39 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Yeah, they are literally bragging about being a troll in their profile when they boast about their downvotes.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 months ago

Pretty wild this is even being debated.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Nah. I've dealt with these kind of people since BBSs. They're trolls and get a kick out of the responses.

They usually have multiple "hidden" agendas.

First and foremost is to get a rise out of people to get engagement so their message resonates negatively and then is surfaced and viewed by the impressionable.

Second is to cause strife within the community.

Third is to get that strife to get people to shift to their viewpoint

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 months ago

It's amazing how many people forgot about the classical "get a rise out of everyone with shitty arguments" troll, or forgot that the way to deal with them was to ignore and ban on sight. Fuck, I was practically in diapers when Usenet and BBSes were a thing and I still remember "don't feed the troll."

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[–] [email protected] 64 points 2 months ago (18 children)

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.

No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.

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.

spoiler 'Thank you!' x 27

'Yep!' x 24

spoiler 'k' x 23

'Agreed!' x 21

spoiler 'I don't know what you mean.' x 20

'I don't have to explain anything to you. Thanks!' x 14

spoiler 'Right?' x 13

'Every vote for Harris is stealing a vote from thir...' x 12

spoiler 'Exactly!' x 11

'To cut through the nonsense and save everyone time...' x 10

[–] [email protected] 51 points 2 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] Archer 46 points 2 months ago (1 children)

He had a standard copypasta for people accusing him of being a troll. If that’s not trolling I don’t know what is

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago

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.

[–] FuglyDuck 23 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.)

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 months ago (6 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] jordanlund 8 points 2 months ago (5 children)

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.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loaded_question

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago (11 children)

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.

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[–] gofsckyourself 21 points 2 months ago (1 children)

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.

The problem with this is that it allows people to ride the line of what is acceptable and get away with things that effectively poison the platform with toxicity.

It's very similar to what Trump did, and now look at the state of the entire US politics system now.

By allowing people to toe the line by not technically breaking the rules, it still adds to the overall toxicity of Lemmy.

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[–] taiyang 34 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Oh holy fuck it's only 15 days away! Anxiety!

Also having seen the guy, makes sense you can't ban bad takes (or at least, shouldn't) but my sense is he just likes to be infamous. Hell, this is a post about his banning, even! He's probably loving the attention.

Still, I've got my Lemmy heroes

obsessive posting can be used for good, like a certain maneuver named after a certain starship captain.

[–] Burn_The_Right 22 points 2 months ago (1 children)

like a certain maneuver named after a certain starship captain.

Ahh, yes! The Janeway Shuffle!

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[–] Roflmasterbigpimp 34 points 2 months ago (1 children)

That boii went super saiya-cringe mode.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 2 months ago (1 children)

[–] Rhoeri 25 points 2 months ago

This is a perfect representation of them.

[–] Doomsider 33 points 2 months ago

"I'll keep posting what I want, when I want, where I want, and respond to people how I want. Whether it is "working" or not. Thank you!" - Monk

This is when I realized it was all in bad faith and I stopped giving him the benefit of the doubt.

[–] Ghostalmedia 33 points 2 months ago (3 children)

I’ve handled users like this similarly in some of the communities I head up here. I try not to touch the content unless it is obvious misinformation and that violates instances rules. That said, if their content and or comments are clearly intended to create discord, pester, or pester in a passive aggressive manor, then they get the boot.

I wish we had some sort of sort filter that hid aggressively downvoted content and comments. That way the “knights of the new” could bury problematic content.

People don’t like the idea of mods having to censor users, but they also don’t want their feed full of downvoted posts or infighting.

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[–] Diplomjodler3 27 points 2 months ago (16 children)

Maybe some kind of rate limiting would work for cases like this. Anyway, i doubt we'll see that one again after the 15 days are up. At least for the next four years.

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[–] Rhoeri 25 points 2 months ago

You gotta know they’re absolutely loving this shit right now. An entire post dedicated only to them? Where they are the topic of discussion? That’s probably the biggest badge of honor someone like them could earn here.

I’d wager it’s bookmarked and will be read several times a day for months to come.

[–] SatansMaggotyCumFart 24 points 2 months ago (8 children)

The Dark Monk is going to write some erotic friend fiction about you, jordanlund.

[–] SatansMaggotyCumFart 23 points 2 months ago (3 children)

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Good, thank you for addressing this! I think the temporary ban is a perfect solution. I only care about this because of how close we are to the election, and this solves that problem.

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