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!politics@lemmy.world had UniversalMonk in the run up to the American election. They have about 15 alts, posted an average of 16 articles a day just on the main account, and would pointedly refuse to engage with any discussion of the actual content of the article in the comments. They were banned for "Indiscriminate posting of duplicate stories from different sources to flood the channel."
That's not this community, of course, but I think it is proof enough that it's not an unreasonable concern for OP to have
EDIT: @PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat is right that Monk substantially ramped up their post count in the month of October, being typically 6+ per day. I was mistaken about point 1 for that month, although I stand by that other months like September, they were about 3 per day.
I'll note that I consistently called out Monk to the point that multiple comments of mine lambasting them got deleted (the mods were just being fair and enforcing the rules consistently; hats off).
However, there are some points you've failed to take into account:
(Most important) Monk posted to /c/politics at most about three times per day. This is realistically the bare minimum amount you'd want as a cap on posts per day. You can go back and check this for yourself; the overwhelming majority of their posts were on communities they created and moderated. Checking the month of September, the exception I saw to this was September 8th, where they posted four. This rule would have done absolutely nothing to deter their propaganda campaign.
As your own comment notes, making alts is a trivial matter, especially assuming you're more subtle about the angle you're pushing than Monk was. That I was aware of Monk for months but knew and heard nothing about these purported alts is, to me, evidence of that.
Every single post by Monk was heavily downvoted because everyone knew what they were doing.
The main problem with Monk was their comments, wherein they would engage in essentially copy-pasting Gish gallop responses. The moderators knew banning Monk would've made the community healthier because of this exact behavior but refused to take action.
Even if the problem had been the quantity of the posts to /c/politics (it wasn't), the moderators would've been able to use their discretion to ban Monk instead of a blanket ban on frequent posts.
TL;DR: Monk's problem on /c/politics had nothing to do with and could not have been stopped by such a rule proposed in the OP.
This is way off. During the October run-up when Monk was trying hard to influence the election, he was posting 10-15 times a day, which is about as much as anyone ever posts.
That's how many times only to the politics community, no other place, on each of those days.
This part, I 100% agree with. Discretion is always a part of moderation, and the fact that they didn't exercise discretion and common sense with Monk (and in fact actively protected him by banning people who he egged into conflicts with him) doesn't mean that we should set some kind of new discretion-free policy that will impact the heavy posters who do bring something good.
How can Lemmy influence an election?! Hardly anyone has even heard of Lemmy. How on earth can you think that Lemmy would influence an election? Didn't Universalmonk say he was voting Green Party anyway? How is that influencing an election?!
I don't think Lemmy had any particular influence on the election, no, because of the small number of people here. I actually don't think UniversalMonk is part of any influence campaign, personally, although there is no way to know. I just said I thought they were trying to influence the election, not that there was any detectable impact from it. Certainly as soon as the election happened, they switched from promoting Rachele Fruit relentlessly, to promoting conservative ideology just as relentlessly, which would seem to indicate that the Rachele Fruit stuff was purely a tactical front because of the election.
In a broader sense, separate from this individual user, it is absolutely well-documented that there are foreign influence campaigns distorting social media to promote electoral outcomes operating on a massive scale. I think that is why Trump got elected, and I think it's why the far right is experiencing this massive surge right now all over the world, and liberal democrats like Biden, Trudeau, Scholz, and Macron are dealing with these insurgencies against their power which they're not coping with well at all. I think the problem is actually vastly understated in the media. I think it's one of the most powerful forces shaping world events right now, and it barely gets more than a footnote while the effects are talked about all the time in how politics is changing and new policies that are coming about because of it.
I am very surprised, as it sounds like you are, that it is on Lemmy. But also, it is very clear to me that there are influence campaigns on Lemmy, even if UM is not part of them. For whatever weird reason they decided that a few tens of thousands of MAU was enough to get someone involved in it. I think most people have a sort of anecdotal sense that it's happening, based on the various tides of propaganda that come across from time to time, and I've seen users fuck up in ways that unambiguously indicated it (a random example being someone who claims to be American and preaching nonstop about Democrats, then using non-American numbering and then not understanding it when it's pointed out to them that Americans don't punctuate their numbers like they just did.)
My main point about the election is that Lemmy, I guess like literally every other social media outlet except maybe Signal or something, had influence campaigns operating on it. Any given group of a few tens of thousands of people was laughably too small to influence the election. But, by casting a wide net, I think they produced quite a significant impact on the election, and I do think Lemmy was a part of it.
I just looked him up, and he still promotes her and mods a community based on her political party. His profile seems to rage against the duopoly, so seems he is firmly still in third-party mode.
Maybe, but if that's true, I think it happens on both sides of the political spectrum. Just as many Democrats engage in that as Republicans.
Also, Lemmy is overwhelmingly left-leaning. So in that case, isn't Lemmy part of that surge trying to influence the campaign? They were heavily promoting all things Democrat, and heavilly downvoting anything that was third party or republican.
According to your logic, and your numbers, Lemmy is part of that influencing agent. And it seems to be trying to continue to influence things.
And since Lemmy is part of a political influence scenario, then that means you are too. As am I.
I do not think that American Democrats or Republicans are capable of running an operation that is anywhere near this successful. They are, for the most part, corrupt idiots. I'm talking about foreign influence campaigns which are designed to destroy the US by getting Republicans elected, not Republican influence campaigns which are designed to win by getting Republicans elected.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ4-ajeeFzY
Fair.
But most of those were him actually replying to comments he received first. So I don't think that counts.
Also, please give us a count of your daily posts and comments, because I see you way more than I ever saw him.
Actually, no, this isn't correct. Go to Page 4 of Monk's post history, and you'll see that indeed all of those numbers are posts to /c/politics. @PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat was correct here; I was checking the wrong month.
Fair enough. But how many of those were posts vs comments?
And if the comments were him replying to people conversing with him, does that count? Because I see a lot of people mad that people post WITHOUT engaging in the comments under the post.
So which is it? Should people reply to people commenting on their posts or no? Because I'm looking at Universal Monks post history on world, and the vast majority were him just replying to people that commented on his replies and his posts. In other words, he was answering people asking him stuff and saying stuff about him.
If no one would have replied to his posts, then his comment history wouldn't be so large. And since they weren't ignoring/blocking him, they they were engaging in conversation with him. So does that count as spam or trolling?
I'd argue that he INCREASED community engagement.
I just posted the numbers of philipthebucket. Should he be banned? Is he a spammer troll based on the number of comments and posts? over 2,000 comments in 7 months is a shit ton of commenting. I'm not saying he should be, but he would be severely limited under a limited post rule as well.
No, no, you're misunderstanding: every single number you see in Philip's comment was 1) a post and 2) in /c/politics. You can go look for yourself as I suggested. For instance, when Philip's comment says "2024-10-19: 6" that means (and you can go verify using the means I described on desktop) that Monk posted 6 times to /c/politics that day. That excludes comments.
Ahh, ok. But again, I'd say there are other posters who post almost as much and don't catch the flack that he does.
Not that I am arguing with you, since I think you and I both agree there should be no limit.
I feel that since the vast majority of comments that Monk made were replying and answering comments he was receiving, it's just community engagement and not detrimental to the community.
I also don't even see 9 posts a day as a big thing. That's like one post an hour for an average day. I read WAY more posts than that online during a day.
It's a feed the troll thing. I see everyone talking about how he was such a troll, but look how few people actually blocked him, and would engage him.
And he's still around, and I only commented two his posts a couple of times, so I really don't care. But I just see his name come up all the time, and I never see anything that he did that was nearly as horrible as people imply.
I see MUCH worse in c/politics now than I did back then. I see outright nazi comments, calls to violence, etc.
UM never did any of that. As far as I can tell, everyone was pissed because he refused to back off saying he was going to vote third party--which now isn't nearly as terrible to say as it was then. But I realize that's veering off-topic for this discussion.
Oh okay, everything about you (from the propagandistic posting patterns to running heavy defense of Monk who you should know nothing about as < 2-week-old accounts to your long, copy-pasted, Gish galloping comments to the abject nonsense you spew to your general writing style) tells me you and barrygoldwater are just ban evasion alts of Monk. In that case, piss off.
How did you see "MUCH worse now than back then" when your account is 11 days old? Riddle me that.
I purge my accounts and come up with a new username every couple of months. feel free to go to c/privacy to find out why that's a good idea on lemmy. no ban evasion as I have never been banned under this username or any other. I don't know what gish galloping is
Fair enough!
Great points! Have my upvote.
UM was a case for moderators to use their discretion, not a blanket ban for everyone who posts a lot.
There are a couple accounts that do a lot of heavy lifting for these communities in a fair and balanced way.
I still see him all over Lemmy.
That’s because your instance didn’t ban them.
I feel bad for them whenever they pop out of containment again but I really enjoyed their erotic friend fiction they would write.
Good! It appears that most instances didn't ban him/her. So you all didn't do anything to dissuade him and he probably posts more than ever under alt names and instances. lol
Seems you all fed the troll. And he probably loves that you are still talking about him.
Most instances in terms of user base did.
Also are you allowed to use pronouns like that?
"Most" instances didn't though. Not only that, it takes a few seconds to create an alt username. So he/she probably didn't stop posting in here at all.
No, probably not.
The admins at world and most of the other large instances usually ban their alts pretty quick though which is probably good for UM’s mental health.
Looks like he's on almost 30 instances though. And new ones being made every day. He appears just as busy as ever.
Thirty instances you say?
Meh, guesstimating. I don't know the actual amount. I did a quick search and it was just a fucking page full of his name on different instances. I didn't really care enought to do an actual count. Do you know the actual count?
I’m not sure but last time they popped up they were ranting about other people impersonating them so maybe they aren’t all theirs?
Or maybe they got back into the drugs again and just are paranoid and forgetful.
I don’t know and I don’t judge.
I don't know. I didn't look that deeply into it. I just see that you guys talk about him a lot.
I think many of us on Lemmy pity them and I think that’s why they come up in conversation.
Ahhh, ok. Sure. Well, I'm sure they laugh about it a lot since they are mentioned a lot. If they are the troll you all say they are, then you all seem to be feeding them a lot.
It must be odd being caged off from the rest of Lemmy and just looking in and seeing people talk about them.
I’m not sure that’s exactly feeding trolls though.
But they're not caged off. They are posting all over. And if they have all the alts many believe they do, then they are even on instances that "banned" them. lol
Getting a comment or two off before getting that alt banned isn’t doing too much.
But if you don't know who his alts are, how can you say that?
Did I ever say I don’t know which alts are theirs?
lol ok whatever you say guy
It’s pretty easy to go back on my comments and see if I ever said that though.
I know you’ve only been here for ten days so if you click on my name you can see my post history or in this case you can scroll up the thread to review what we’ve talked about.
How would this rule prevent alts? Seems like it would encourage their use if anything
This is an excellent point, added to the cons list in the body text
It's not an unreasonable concern, no. But I'd rather the community be active and growing than address something that's not currently an issue.
So the banning seems totally ineffective. And Trump would have won anyway. So again, banning was totally ineffective and did nothing but spurn him on to post from more alts.
If you all would have just let him do his thing, you could block him and then never see his stuff.
But you all decided ban, he spread out amongst instances and usernames and now posts more than ever. lol
Was this comment meant to be a reply to me? You seem to be arguing with a bunch of things I never said
Well it seemed to me that you were explaining why he was a bad poster. I never said you said those things, I'm just saying that those things didn't have an affect on him.
I mean, I suppose that was the reason he got banned, right? So people wouldn't have to see his stuff. But there are probably more people now than ever because he just spread out.
If he would have just stayed here, people block him, never see anyting. Banning him seemed to have made him spread out everywhere.
...cool? I never said the bans were effective, so I don't understand why you're responding to me as if I did.
I didn't say anything about UM somehow influencing the American election either
My problem with UM is that they post disingenuously, evidenced by their refusal to actually engage with the content they post when asked about it
Fair enough.
But there is no rule that says people have to engage with the content the post about. In face, the vast majority of posters I see don't engage much about their posts. Some people like to post shit, then do other things. Not everyone is down for some discussion.
I am allowed to dislike someone for their actions without there being a written rule about it
And I am as well.
And now he just posts to other communities. Banning didn't do anything to stop him, while Trump still won. Banning him just spread him out even more. It's also very easy to just create new usernames. He probably has lots of alt usernames. So he can still post anywhere he wants to.
Banning did absolutely nothing to stop him. I still see his all over Lemmy. Welcome to the fediverse.