Phew! This last day there have been some pretty toxic comments on Aussie Zone from people from other instances.
Is it just me noticing or have there been more than usual today?
Starting to understand beehaws move to a more private setting a while back.
^note: i’m not calling for anything, just venting my spleen^
I, for one, support more activity and more viewpoints being presented.
Getting pretty sick of every social media platform turning in to an echo chamber as people (or algorithms) filter out everything they don’t agree with.
I agree with @OmanMkII@aussie.zone. More voices is great, but only if they’re actually engaging in good faith. Launching into an argument saying abortion is murder is prima facie bad faith, but I tried engaging with that user multiple times just in case they were just ill-informed, until it became absolutely clear they were not veering away from their predetermined script.
While I do agree, and more representation is excellent for a healthy debate, it was also quite a rude awakening this morning to read a “fuck you evil people and your abortions” type comment. I think we need to be very careful blocking whole instances, but some people can just fuck off. Maybe more tools for moderation could be beneficial?
It would be interesting to see if we could have admins alerted on early indicators of spam/bots/idiots, e.g. an account made in the past few days has a high downvote ratio, or a dead account suddenly starts high volume comments/posts. Not sure how you’d do it exactly, but it would be interesting to take a look at the application logs and see if it could be fed into a SIEM platform to create these alerts. Then again there’s probably a much better way I don’t know haha.
maybe they aren’t even people, maybe they are political bots
and not all bots are new
and they may even be made by humans en masse then used as bots
and not all bots are new [] and they may even be made by humans en masse then used as bots
Yep. There were some famous cases where accounts of deceased people on twitter started posting in support of a US political campaign. If a person is caught in a data breach and they’re vulnerable to credential stuffing, then their account can be hacked and sold to the highest bidder to turn into a political bot.
Huh. I was busy yesterday and wasn’t on the site much. I saw that post but some unconscious factor made me skip it. Probably a history of every post on the topic for the past 20 years all regurgitating the same talking points over and over.
Looking at it now, I doubt I’d have stepped in if I had seen it. I think the downvotes did their job and the person wasn’t being abusive or anything.
That said, the report button is right there if someone is breaking site rules - don’t hesitate to use it.
Na, the users i saw were all stating their opinions and they were essentially fine, no rules were broken in my eyes.
It just struck me last night that the way they delivered those opinions was pretty toxic.
I’d thought about this a bit. Prefacing with I like an open discussion…
My conclusions all boiled down to: We’re a relatively small community, so it wouldn’t take much for us to be overwhelmed.
Whether it’s people, organisations, or nations, whether they are acting in good faith or not.
But, that’s just, like, my opinion, man.
We’re a relatively small community, so it wouldn’t take much for us to be overwhelmed.
You are correct, we are small. But I do have a contingency for brigading. I’ve not had to put it to the test, yet - but I think we can handle a brigade descending on us. For a start, I have a “Nuke Post” button that will kill a post outright. That will likely suffice in most cases.
Worst case: I can go thermonuclear and flip federation. Instead of a list of blocked “naughty” instances, I can move us to a list of “nice” instances and block everyone else aside from the site for a time. I should review that list, I haven’t updated it since about March.
The Admin tools are a bit rudimentary. Like the Internet in the 70’s and 80’s, Lemmy was set up on the assumption that people are cool and not out to ruin everyone’s day. But there are some tools there to provide us with some shelter from a storm of bad faith actors if we need them. I’m hoping they’ll continue to mature as Lemmy itself does. And by the time we need stuff like this, there are better options than effectively going dark to much of the Fediverse in case of emergency.
Thats actually really interesting to know you have a contingency there. The second option sounds a little like what beehaw must have done.
Everythings cool over a White Russian, or two.
I’m sorry to hear that, you’re one of my favorite instances (that I come across in passing)
Hello,
Not an Aussie, sorry to see you guys facing such trolls
But then we also get people like yourself who are always awesome to hear from! :) So swings and roundabouts.
Double this. Trolls are worth the great people I meet. For every cunt there’s a beautiful stranger to share a coffee with
It the tragedy of the commons. It is inevitable. Anything good is always ruined by the bad behavior of a few.
It isn’t too bad currently compared to other platforms due to the low traffic. There are many richer targets for manipulators and crazies where they can reach a wider audience.
I’ve noticed people from other instances seem to come here with the worst possible takes
Yeah, although i better stand on my high horse, my takes are also a bit shit, lol!
Part of it is definitely that context matters. I’ve noticed that when well meaning North Americans enter the discussion, they tend to apply their own context, or haven’t the correct info.
Good example was that person who was, well meaning and nonetheless made a valuable contribution, but had incorrect info about the submarine fleet.
