Today I noticed a huge wall of spam from UniversalMonk from 2 different accounts and didn't initially think much of it and blocked their communities but more spam came from different communities.
At this point I checked and saw that they had created several communities which then led me down the rabbit hole to discover that their posts had almost entirely covered the new posts page of both sh.itjust.works and lemm.ee. Later on I discovered that they're posting right-wing propaganda and misinformation from breitbart, foxnews you name it.
He's already caused and stirred shit 2 months ago and clearly I can see why now.
At this point it's difficult to believe that UniversalMonk will learn proper netiquette in: not post spamming, being considerate to others, and not sharing right-wing extremist content that no one wants.
I think UniversalMonk is a real person with significant mental issues. Most of the influence campaign accounts have a consistent MO, and part of the game is low effort. They want to maximize the impact with as little investment of typing and thinking as possible, because they have however-many other accounts to run and they have a quota of comments they need to write. They just have a very particular way of interacting on Lemmy that doesn't change all that much from one account to another as far as I can tell. He tries way too hard to be a normal-pattern influence operation. I think his accounts take way more work than it would be worth it to spend if he were paid by the hour. It would also be better just to have 10 accounts and have his spam of posted stories get spread out among all 10 of them instead of all comes from one.
Whether UM is a right-winger who is deliberately trying in his own insanity-tinged way to sow discord and hurt the left, or he's sincerely pursuing some cartwheeling internal compass that I'm not privy to the details of, I don't know. But I think he's a real human who is representing himself more or less authentically. Not truthfully. But all this fanatical stuff he types up is in my opinion pretty authentic to who he is as a person, if that makes sense.
you have no proof for any of this.
Absolutely correct. You also don't have proof that I'm not a dog. You can still be reasonably confident that I'm a human, and talk accordingly, based on your best belief and understanding.
so maybe you shouldn't smear people baselessly
UniversalMonk you mean? Hm... maybe not. Mostly I just talk about his actions, and how they negatively impact everyone else on the network, and how it's appropriate to react to his behaviors. I do think about his motivations, and my read on him and why he's doing these things, but maybe it is out of line for me to be talking about his mental state when the truth is that I have no idea.
I wasn't intending to be putting him down, actually. More saying that in that aspect he is being real. I have some sympathy for him, and at least partly, I was trying to express that there. But you're right, speculating about something like that when I really have not the slightest idea about it is maybe not an appropriate thing for me to do.