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.
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?
Why would defending my views or opinions not be ok? Other people defend their opinions, why shouldn’t I be able to? Plus if you are that annoyed with me, you can block me and not see anything I post or comment.
Outright trolling which you all have only moderated a portion of
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.
I don’t have to explain anything to you or anyone else. Feel free to stop responding and commenting on my posts if you don’t want to hear replies from me. Thanks! :)
Right, because you’re a hypocrite. “Don’t reply to me if you don’t want to interact” but then repeatedly dives into deep conversation threads that didn’t include you to add your useless cut-and-paste copypasta du jour. You’re obviously looking at the post history of some individuals, following them around and injecting yourself where you are not wanted. You know who does that? Trolls.
Well, don’t reply to me if you don’t want to interact. And what makes you think I am looking at your post history? I posted this article and I was reading the discussion thread. What are you even going on about?! lol
If you don’t want a response from me, then you don’t have to talk about me or to me. Your choice, friend. Thanks! :)
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:
I don’t have to explain anything to you or anyone else. Feel free to stop responding and commenting on my posts if you don’t want to hear replies from me. Thanks! :)
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.
Yeah I’ve been growing a little frustrated as well, as my tone in that earlier comment probably indicated. But a troll isn’t the only stubborn person around here, and I actually care about this community and the broader Fediverse project.
I agree, they don’t seem particularly concerned, which is why I’ve steadily pivoted more towards general conversations on what trolling actually is, what the classic trollface.jpg really represents, and methods by which it seeks to accomplish its goals. If this or any other community I’m active in is going to allow these behaviors, it won’t be able to claim ignorance of how it all works.
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.
If these articles are from legitimate news organizations, calling it “poking the bear” doesn’t really make sense. I’m not even posting the articles directly—just links to them. And let’s be real, the actual news sites get way more attention than we ever will here. So if you’ve got a problem with the content, take it up with them.
Besides, are people who post a ton of pro-Harris content “astroturfing”? Or do you think what I post is “poison” simply because they don’t match your opinions?
How is posting articles from news orgs “trying to turn Lemmy toxic”? So is posting pro-Harris articles “toxic”? Also you do realize I post pro-Harris articles too, right?
1: You are “poking the bear” because everything you post to this community is pursuant to getting Harris to lose the election, either through pro-PSL or Green articles (via the Spoiler Effect), or through explicitly anti-Harris articles. That’s the pattern behind your posts, it obviously doesn’t matter how reputable a source is to you so long as you can flood Lemmy with this content. “Take it up with them” is a copout for your behavior because you choose to post their articles here.
2: You clearly don’t know what astroturfing even means. What could pro-Harris posts even astroturf for?
3: Repeatedly posting articles about getting Harris to lose the election and arguing in bad faith in defense of why that’s actually good for advancing socialism in the US is toxic because it’s literally incorrect. And when pointed out, you say you don’t actually think a second Trump term would be all that bad for you. It’s patently obvious what you’re trying to do on here, you’re trying to get leftists on board with neo-fascism and accelerationism to enrich yourself.
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.
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.
often defined by equality typically align with the so-called left.
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.
While the liberal is part of the oppressor, he is the most powerless segment within that group. Therefore when he seeks to talk about change, he always confronts the oppressed rather than the oppressor. He does not seek to influence the oppressor, he seeks to influence the oppressed. He says to the oppressed, time and time again, “You don’t need guns, you are moving too fast, you are too radical, you are too extreme." He never says to the oppressor, “You are too extreme in your treatment of the oppressed,” because he is powerless among the oppressors, even if he is part of that group; but he has influence, or, at least, he is more powerful than the oppressed, and he enjoys this power by always cautioning, condemning, or certainly trying to direct and lead the movements of the oppressed.
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.
liberals and leftists, who are the ones responsible for desegregation and just about every other social justice issue in our modern times.
Letter from a Birmingham jail has entered the chat,
I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
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%.
As I already alluded to this is a common criticism still being made by liberals about their own movement today. Not sure who you are trying to convince as I think it is mostly true.
Martin Luther King won out over his more radical race war baiting counterparts. Was peace and goodwill the best way to move civil rights forward? I think it probably was but it will never make everyone happy, particularly those who had nothing to gain and had already lost everything.
Also please show me the movement that is doing what the liberals could not. Things are better than they have ever been before. But that does not mean they can’t get worse or shouldn’t be better than they are.
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
But I’ve posted articles that are critical of Trump, Stein, and Harris, as well as articles praising each of them. How come you don’t mention those articles?
So, if you’re assuming I agree with every viewpoint in the articles I post, how does that even work when I share so many conflicting perspectives?!
I also created and mod a political news community where people have posted articles praising Harris, criticizing Stein, and trashing me—yet I still leave those up.
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.
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?
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.
Why would defending my views or opinions not be ok? Other people defend their opinions, why shouldn’t I be able to? Plus if you are that annoyed with me, you can block me and not see anything I post or comment.
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.
I don’t have to explain anything to you or anyone else. Feel free to stop responding and commenting on my posts if you don’t want to hear replies from me. Thanks! :)
Wasn’t talking to you, bud.
Feel free to stop responding and commenting on my posts and comments if you don’t want to hear replies from me. Thanks!
But I was talking to you, friend. Thanks!
Right, because you’re a hypocrite. “Don’t reply to me if you don’t want to interact” but then repeatedly dives into deep conversation threads that didn’t include you to add your useless cut-and-paste copypasta du jour. You’re obviously looking at the post history of some individuals, following them around and injecting yourself where you are not wanted. You know who does that? Trolls.
Well, don’t reply to me if you don’t want to interact. And what makes you think I am looking at your post history? I posted this article and I was reading the discussion thread. What are you even going on about?! lol
If you don’t want a response from me, then you don’t have to talk about me or to me. Your choice, friend. Thanks! :)
Troll and a hypocrite, got it. Thanks.
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.
Yeah I’ve been growing a little frustrated as well, as my tone in that earlier comment probably indicated. But a troll isn’t the only stubborn person around here, and I actually care about this community and the broader Fediverse project.
I agree, they don’t seem particularly concerned, which is why I’ve steadily pivoted more towards general conversations on what trolling actually is, what the classic trollface.jpg really represents, and methods by which it seeks to accomplish its goals. If this or any other community I’m active in is going to allow these behaviors, it won’t be able to claim ignorance of how it all works.
It’s admittedly a big topic though.
Thank you! (I mean, kind of…lol)
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.
These are pretty much my thoughts as well.
If these articles are from legitimate news organizations, calling it “poking the bear” doesn’t really make sense. I’m not even posting the articles directly—just links to them. And let’s be real, the actual news sites get way more attention than we ever will here. So if you’ve got a problem with the content, take it up with them.
Besides, are people who post a ton of pro-Harris content “astroturfing”? Or do you think what I post is “poison” simply because they don’t match your opinions?
How is posting articles from news orgs “trying to turn Lemmy toxic”? So is posting pro-Harris articles “toxic”? Also you do realize I post pro-Harris articles too, right?
1: You are “poking the bear” because everything you post to this community is pursuant to getting Harris to lose the election, either through pro-PSL or Green articles (via the Spoiler Effect), or through explicitly anti-Harris articles. That’s the pattern behind your posts, it obviously doesn’t matter how reputable a source is to you so long as you can flood Lemmy with this content. “Take it up with them” is a copout for your behavior because you choose to post their articles here.
2: You clearly don’t know what astroturfing even means. What could pro-Harris posts even astroturf for?
3: Repeatedly posting articles about getting Harris to lose the election and arguing in bad faith in defense of why that’s actually good for advancing socialism in the US is toxic because it’s literally incorrect. And when pointed out, you say you don’t actually think a second Trump term would be all that bad for you. It’s patently obvious what you’re trying to do on here, you’re trying to get leftists on board with neo-fascism and accelerationism to enrich yourself.
So what about the Anti-Trump and Anti-Stein articles that I post too. What bear am I poking when I have posted those?
And how exactly am I trying to “enrich” myself?! What?! lolol
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.
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%.
As I already alluded to this is a common criticism still being made by liberals about their own movement today. Not sure who you are trying to convince as I think it is mostly true.
Martin Luther King won out over his more radical race war baiting counterparts. Was peace and goodwill the best way to move civil rights forward? I think it probably was but it will never make everyone happy, particularly those who had nothing to gain and had already lost everything.
Also please show me the movement that is doing what the liberals could not. Things are better than they have ever been before. But that does not mean they can’t get worse or shouldn’t be better than they are.
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
https://lemmy.world/post/20349566
Anti-Stein/Pro-Democrat article I posted. Check the downvotes and the comments.
https://lemmy.world/post/20281854?scrollToComments=true
Anti-Trump article. Check out the comments. So you don’t think I had the right to reply?
https://lemmy.world/post/20405177
Yet another anti-Stein article I’ve posted. Heavily downvoted.
So what is my agenda again? Please explain.
But I’ve posted articles that are critical of Trump, Stein, and Harris, as well as articles praising each of them. How come you don’t mention those articles?
So, if you’re assuming I agree with every viewpoint in the articles I post, how does that even work when I share so many conflicting perspectives?!
I also created and mod a political news community where people have posted articles praising Harris, criticizing Stein, and trashing me—yet I still leave those up.
https://lemmy.world/c/politicsunfiltered
I could have removed them. Seems like a lot of conflicting viewpoints for you to imply I have some agenda.