Is the bot/troll situation getting worse?

It feels like the amount of both, divisive posts and ghoulish comments is rising again.

One could argue that the world has a lot of divisive stuff going on and lemmy just talks about it. But the way people post about stuff seems more oot and hateful than it has been in the past.

Not saying it is that but if I wanted to bring the Fediverse down or at least keep my customers from going there, I would sow this stuff as much as I can.

I’m blocking ghouls left right and center atm but if I ever asked a friend to join lemmy, I’d hate to think of what they would see that I dont anymore.

Do we need stronger moderation?

  • Maybe ban politics from c/memes?
  • Become a little more stringent on “dont be a jerk” rules in communities?

One thing that really bothers me is the collapsing “discourse”. Trying to mend fences and keep the conversation between sides going ime leads to nothing but downvotes and shitstorm.

I feel like a little more interaction (instead of intervention, at first) of the moderators would do wonders there.

Thanks for reading this rant. Have a nice day.

CherenkovBlue,

Out of curiosity, can you specify the topics or give specific examples of this shitty behavior you speak of? Without examples it is impossible to determine if you are discussing behavior that is straight-up pathological (e.g. name-calling) or people having a different opinion.

haui_lemmy,

Okay, I did mention it in another comment but I didnt do so in the main post. Thanks for pointing it out.

I‘m talking about name calling, ad hominem attacks, ridicule, twisting words, bad faith arguments. So, mostly abusive language/rhetoric, not disagreement or different opinions.

umbrella,
@umbrella@lemmy.ml avatar

how do you differentiate what you perceive as bad faith vs disagreement and differing opinions?

i frequently see simple disagreement here being painted as bad faith when its just… disagreement.

MaximilianKohler,

And to the contrary, I’ve seen people claiming blatant bad-faith behavior as “just disagreement”.

haui_lemmy,

Wikipedia:

Bad faith (Latin: mala fides) is a sustained form of deception which consists of entertaining or pretending to entertain one set of feelings while acting as if influenced by another. It is associated with hypocrisy, breach of contract, affectation, and lip service.

Here are some nice examples. I can’t come up with a perfect example rn. www.grammarly.com/blog/bad-faith-good-faith/

It boils down to essentially playing devils advocate just to shut someone up.

umbrella,
@umbrella@lemmy.ml avatar

i know what it is, i was asking for more specifics about what you see on lemmy.

haui_lemmy,

I‘m not sure I understand your question. Do you want me to come up with examples from lemmy?

CherenkovBlue,

Yes

Lath,

In any given public space, the pendulum swings endlessly. Or is it just a wrecking ball? Can't tell.
Anyway, nothing lasts forever. More so for human relationships else the divorce rate wouldn't be as high as it is.
As products of knowledge and emotions ranging from zero to Infinity, the variety will always divide one from the other at some point. Even twins can grow to dislike each other, let alone complete strangers.
So asking for uniformity is a lost cause from the start. Civility is enforceable up to a point. And chaos is unreasonably violent.

The obvious solution is compromise. Some like to give and take in turns, others to merge opinions into something that all sides agree to or something no one wants. Yet nothing is guaranteed to work because we simply aren't built that way.

Individuals will individualize, eventually. Willingly or not.

Quetzlcoatl, (edited )
@Quetzlcoatl@sh.itjust.works avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    haui_lemmy,

    I completely agree. Thats why I like the fediverse so much.

    But if your favorite radio station started to host lets say very divisive content more often, wouldnt you be a little upset since they had been a stable installation in your life? Would you not call at the station and feedback them? Would they not want to hear if something they did was a very bad move from their audiences perspective? I know I‘d want to know if my customers/audience was very upset with me, ideally before I‘m alone, screaming into the void.

    Just my take ok this :)

    IndiBrony,
    @IndiBrony@lemmy.world avatar

    A shitty Duran Duran song? You take that back!

    Unless you’re talking about modern Duran Duran, in which case please continue.

    awwwyissss,

    That analogy doesn’t work for malicious state-managed LLMs.

    lvxferre,
    @lvxferre@mander.xyz avatar

    I’ve been noticing the same sort of behaviour that you’re talking about. And while I don’t know the cause, I don’t think that it’s caused by trolls or bots. Instead I’m guessing a few potential factors:

    1. Demographic concentration in general purpose, lax moderation instances, tailored to attract your typical Reddit user instead of more reasonable people.
    2. Lemmy+Kbin users being proportionally more combative, entitled, petty, and/or whiny, due to how people reached this platform.
    3. “Powerjanny” mentality being inherited from Reddit, specially given the likely higher proportion of former Reddit moderators here.
    4. General lack of mod tools, forcing moderators to take sub-optimal decisions on how to handle users and content.
    5. Normalisation of witch hunting, making people walk on eggs to avoid being confused with witches, and assuming that the ones not walking on eggs fly on a broom.
    6. Normalisation of stupidity, and subsequent normalisation of oversimplifications, assumptions, genetic fallacies, phobia against uncertainty, decontextualisation, etc.; with those things either making the stupid act in a hostile way, or others act in a hostile way towards the stupid.
    7. Natural reinforcement of behaviour in social groups.

    This is already a rather large wall of text and I’m trying to be succinct, but feel free to ask further reasoning on any of those points.

    Disclaimers to avoid replies to this comment that would exemplify itI’m aware that I’m not exactly “gentle” towards users showing stupidity, thus being part of the problem, and in no moment I even implied to be “above” it. By “stupid” I’m clearly referring to able people who behave in an irrational way. I am not talking about disabled people. In fact “the stupid” is better seen as a set of user behaviours than as a specific group of people.

    haui_lemmy,

    Good points. Thanks. I see your comment as very reflected and although pretty honest (which is generally frowned upon here I guess) its not mean imo. I like it.

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.online avatar

    Very good points, thanks for sharing.

    echo64,

    People here are blaming politics. I don’t think that’s it. The quality of comments and discussion here has taken a massive nosedive for the past four months or so, no matter what the topic is.

    I think it’s pretty simple, the terrible won. Everyone who wants good quality discussion left quickly when people started to act terrible. They didn’t come back. So now we’ve created the toxic enabling environment that is enabling it hard today.

    You can fix it with moderation, but that’s a lot of work, and people get really angry.

    I’m pretty close to just cutting my losses on lemmy. It’s heading in the same direction as reddit but with less moderation, and simply because it’s smaller, the awfulness is more visible.

    redcalcium,

    Some people do actively looking for fights instead of having meaningful discussions. I noticed them less and less now though, so either the mods got them, or they blocked me because I often call them out, or maybe they stopped frequenting smaller communities.

    haui_lemmy,

    I can see that. I will probably just start blocking communities and instances that have one of the extreme stances (either freeze peach absolutism or why you not outraged?!)

    I‘m not going to leave lemmy or the fedi since there literally is nothing else, and especially not something with this much potential.

    GBU_28,

    Strongly recommend using the block more. Be your own mod

    echo64,

    that works for me, but I want to have good conversations with others, that’s kind of the point. Blocking terrible people doesn’t get that to happen

    awwwyissss,

    Agreed, except I don’t think people starting to act terrible was the main problem. I think it’s mostly bots.

    MBM,

    It feels like Lemmy has also become less… diverse? At this point I think the default assumption is that every user is a white, cishet, male, tech nerd from the US, which wasn’t as much the case in the earlier days.

    rglullis,

    Everyone who wants good quality discussion left quickly when people started to act terrible.

    That, and the fact that simply there isn’t enough good discussion to begin with. This community kind of has movement because it’s a meta-topic, but for everything else it’s mostly "let’s pretend we are superior than redditors because we found our way here and “let’s pretend we are not in Reddit for all the other niche communities that we are still interested.”

    I think the biggest mistake in the execution of the protests is the effort was spread around “going dark” for as many subreddits as possible. It would be a lot more effective if we got one big-ish niche and told them “let’s focus all our efforts to get you out of Reddit and migrate completely to any other alternative.” Go for something completely random but with commercial interest, like /r/sneakers, and if a moderate success of getting 15% of the user base to Lemmy would translate into 500k signups.

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.online avatar

    That, and the fact that simply there isn’t enough good discussion to begin with. This community kind of has movement because it’s a meta-topic, but for everything else it’s mostly "let’s pretend we are superior than redditors because we found our way here and “let’s pretend we are not in Reddit for all the other niche communities that we are still interested.”

    That’s a real issue. Hopefully it will get better over time, but sometimes at the moment it feels like shouting into the void.

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.online avatar

    I’ve seen two trolls recently, but you can see them from very far away, and they post in general ask communities like AskLemmy or No Stupid questions.

    On smaller communities, they are not around that much. And I don’t go to news or politics communities.

    haui_lemmy,

    Can relate. I will probably have to just leave communities that enable this sort of behavior.

    amio,

    Being a jerk is extremely subjective - someone could brand you much worse than that just from a polite disagreement from your side, that they don't want to deal with. Aside from anything else, this is a highly "techie-y" space with a ton of strongly held opinions and ideals, and misunderstandings when communicating/discussing them happen. A lot. It will keep happening. People will look like asses without necessarily doing so intentionally.

    Now, outright trolling, spamming, shitting on discussions with obvious bad faith participation, consistently derailing unrelated threads with one's hobby horse, obvious flamebaiting and so on... great. Reporting and removing more of that should be a priority everywhere.

    Banning politics from any non-political community that can be persuaded to do so also sounds like a great idea on general principle. Politics is poison (particularly what passes for it in the US), and it would be polite to not shove it down the entire fediverse's throat. Every geographical sub is politics, every news sub is politics, there are dedicated politics and politicalmemes communities, and still it's fucking everywhere else also. Asklemmy and NoStupidQuestions are full of thinly veiled soapboxing (which leads to a lot of awfully stupid questions). People who want to JAQ off to politics can easily make their own community for that (that way, the rest of us can block it, as intended), or else keeping it in their pants would've been kinda polite, idk. Seems odd to insist on posting political stuff everywhere.

    haui_lemmy,

    Your post is one hell of a ride. It starts very lenient and then says exactly what I was trying to say but worded much better. Thank you very much. That is both a very good explanation and one I happen to agree with fully.

    Because I‘m an admin IRL, autistic and sometimes rude myself. But namecalling, trolling and shitting on peeps is too much even for me. I feel like saying that using certain brand is a stupid idea is rude but no big deal while going on about people and groups makes me squirm.

    Have a good one. :)

    amio,

    Thanks, and you too. :)

    nicetriangle,
    nicetriangle avatar

    Yeah I've encountered a few accounts lately who either have mental health issues or are bots designs to stir discord. Their entire posting history is divisive shit stirring.

    Funny how every 4 years the internet gets markedly nastier. I wonder why???

    haui_lemmy,

    Yes. Exactly what I‘ve seen as well. The election year thing might be the reason though. I know a couple people with mh issues. They’re no problem. These accounts either belong to severely deranged individuals or bots.

    GBU_28,

    Not discrediting mental health issues, but being “severely deranged” is a mental health issue

    haui_lemmy,

    I had to check because I used the word meaning something else. You are correct. It is described as losing grip with reality, turning mad or insane. That would by definition be a mh issue.

    What I meant was hurting others on purpose, e.g. for fun or other means. I dont know a good word for that. Maybe evil, abusive?

    To be clear: I dont discriminate based on mental health issues, only on intent.

    nicetriangle,
    nicetriangle avatar

    Yep I remember this pattern of behavior distinctly from last time.

    One of the big ones that sticks out is you start seeing a lot of people claiming to be democrats or left aligned showing up all of a sudden and being big time concern trolls and talking about sitting out the election and/or claiming that there's no difference between voting democrat or republican, which is demonstrably absolute horse shit.

    And just a lot of added vitriol. It seems like even politically unrelated discussions get meaner and more argumentative. I expect it's just gonna get worse as we get closer to November. It's only the beginning February. Ugh.

    haui_lemmy,

    Yeah, I‘ll just block communities now instead of people, until morale improves. :)

    Thanks for elaborating. I enjoyed reading it.

    One thing that makes me sad about lemmy is that if you find people with „based“ opinions, longer/more regular discussions with them seem impossible. I used to talk to folks in reddit pms a lot when i was at my worst. Helped me immensely.

    Well, have a good one.

    Varyk,

    Nah, things seem okay. I’ve noticed more politics misinformation since it’s an election year.

    haui_lemmy,

    That might be the reason for what I‘m seeing. Everything seems very politicised.

    Ashtear,

    Toxic discourse in large Internet communities predates Reddit, even. It’s been a thing since before there was the web, becoming significantly more likely to find once you get to a critical mass of people.

    It’s a good time in the political cycle to find and contribute to niche communities. I almost never come across this kind of thing because that’s where I hang out.

    haui_lemmy,

    Good tipp! Thanks! I‘ll try that.

    sturlabragason,

    Half of the traffic everywhere is bots:

    statista.com/…/human-and-bot-web-traffic-share/

    haui_lemmy,

    Holy father christmas! Thats dystopian. Thanks for mentioning it.

    EndlessApollo,

    It’s been a little terrifying seeing a shit ton of supposed liberals acting like trump supporters and just general assholes the last couple weeks. Calling anyone who disagrees with them or questions anything about biden fascists, going out of their way to say hurtful ableist shit, calling pro Palestinian protestors Russian plants (one person even calling for them to be executed), chanting “FOUR MORE YEARS!” whenever Israeli genocide is mentioned, lots of really MAGA-type shit. Besides the last thing though, I’ve hardly seen any of this irl. I’ve just assumed liberals have taking a sharp right turn into reactionary shit, but maybe some/a lot of it is a conservative psyop or something. Idk, I still think it’s mostly authentic unless proven otherwise, but if I were a hate group on 4chan or a russian troll farm trying to make leftists not wanna vote for democrats I’d be doing exactly this

    haui_lemmy,

    Thanks for chiming in. That indeed is scary.

    Astroturfing is a very common thing nowadays btw. There are many cases that even made the news: businessinsider.com/astroturfing-grassroots-movem…

    Sorry for linking that site. Feel free to google others.

    I will start to really pay attention what communities these shitty posts in my feed come from and both report and block them in my instance. Lets see if that helps.

    rimu,
    @rimu@piefed.social avatar

    Try to find an instance that bans trolls?

    haui_lemmy,

    I am on my own instance and I ban them but if someone joins world, they’re f*cked. I feel like the communities are very lenient which is fine in normal situations but when peeps start shitting on others (be it religion, ideology or others) they should act. Just my two cents though.

    rimu,
    @rimu@piefed.social avatar

    Yeah.

    I guess we can't just direct friends to "Lemmy" in general and instead should direct them to beehaw.org, or your instance, or wherever there is the kind of moderation we agree with. From there our friends can see a filtered view of the communities on lemmy.world.

    If the biggest instance has a libertarian mod policy that does mean "more selective" instances need to put in more work but on the positive side it does provide a more diverse pool of people and content to sift through.

    haui_lemmy,

    Makes sense! Thanks for pointing this out. TIL :)

    Blaze,
    @Blaze@discuss.online avatar

    Interesting view, thanks

    Stamets,
    @Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

    Politics is banned from c/memes@lemmy.world

    And speaking as a mod, report things. The vast majority of things I’ve dealt with as a mod were ones I saw myself or things friends sent on discord. People need to utilize the report function more often if they want moderation on things. We’re not psychic.

    As for being more stringent on the not being a dick rule, no. There’s a base level of civility we expect but if we start getting super stringent on what constitutes being a dick, that’s imposing moderator will on community and its what most of us left reddit to get away from.

    Lastly, it’s the Internet. Assholes exist everywhere. You are not going to escape it, ever, if you’re using public servers. It’s pretty much required to accept that fact just to use the Internet. Moderators do not exist to prune and preen social media to make it more comfortable for people. We remind people to follow the rules and act upon those who do not. If you’re not breaking the rules then we’re not going to “interact” because we have our own lives and our own posts we are interested in.

    MrGG,

    Hello again Mr. Stamets! ❤️

    Stamets,
    @Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

    <3

    Lifecoach5000,

    Are there any app notifications or email options to let yo know about reports? I modestly mod a couple subs and I have never found a way to reliably get report notifications unless I log in through a browser based front end.

    Thekingoflorda,
    @Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world avatar

    I heard that someone was developing a tool to enable this

    Stamets,
    @Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

    Personally not familiar with any but I can ask around. I’m just always on PC.

    TurboDiesel, (edited )
    @TurboDiesel@lemmy.world avatar

    imposing moderator will on community

    Rich, coming from the mod that banned me because I called him out on a shitty joke.

    Stamets,
    @Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

    I don’t remember you but the modlog says you were banned for homophobic comments. So I’m gonna go ahead and say that nah, you weren’t banned for calling someone out on a joke 👍

    TurboDiesel, (edited )
    @TurboDiesel@lemmy.world avatar

    You posted a misogynistic meme, I said “i thought we left that in 2023,” and apparently you didn’t like that so you called me a bigot and banned me. None of what I said was homophobic or bigoted. I just didn’t like your meme because it seemed like the millionth time one of us has made an “ew women” joke and it’s tired and shitty to women. So you said I’m homophobic and banned me then told me to fuck off basically.👎 Which cut me off from participating in the largest LGBTQ+ safe space on Lemmy. So yeah.

    Stamets, (edited )
    @Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

    …riiiiiight. Or, and this is way more likely, you were banned for saying homophobic shit. Which is why it says banned for homophobic content. I’m going to go with the modlog reason 👍 I’ve yet to see someone on Lemmy who had something like “homophobic comments” added to their modlog ban be for no reason whatsoever.

    You were cut out of that safe space because you inherently made it less safe. Of course you’re not allowed in if you’re going to go ahead and make it worse for everyone else. What insane arrogance.

    I’m going to go ahead and go back to forgetting you exist now.

    Edit: oh wait no I do remember you. You kept insisting the meme was misogynistic and then started making generalizations. The meme in question? A dude gagging with the text “When the gay porn shows an ad of a woman masturbating”. Yeah. Not even remotely misogynistic, which other people pointed out to you and why you were downvoted. You then doubled down and made homophobic generalizations. That’s why you were banned. Because you were actively stirring shit and making a safe place inherently less safe by slinging generalizations at the entire community.

    Wouldn’t have remembered if you didn’t double down on that misogyny accusation.

    TurboDiesel, (edited )
    @TurboDiesel@lemmy.world avatar

    I mean, I have screenshots, but k. Funny how I’m now at least the 3rd person to take issue with you and your temper tantrum mod style.

    And please, show me the comments where I made “homophobic generalizations” and "doubled down. I made literally ONE comment. Was it snarky? Yes, but it was in no way what you’re characterizing it as. It’s also funny how none of that appears in the modlog.

    I’m going to go with the modlog reason

    That you chose to purposely mischaracterize what I said.

    And finally, feel free to check my history, I think you’ll find it pretty damn spotless, which is a hell of a lot more than I can say for you.

    schmidtster,

    lol they banned me for misinformation for calling theirs out. Deleted all the comments to control the dialogue as well.

    Said I had proof during another exchange (they started) but the comments are deleted, admin came (yay I kinda thought) said the logs are public. Asked the mod (stamets) to show the deleted comments and the admin to show the log, or atleast how to access it, and banned again.

    This place is worse than Reddit for this shit right now, you have an admin lying and hiding stuff for a mod, one they put as moderator for a bunch of communities. Thats not fishy or anything……

    I would love to see this “public mod log” because their doesn’t seem to be a way to see (ALL) deleted comments on the current one.

    I fully expect another ban for this, for no other reason than Stamets is a thin skinned mod who doesn’t have the emotional capability to mod, and antagonizes Lemmy users and uses their mod powers (abuse) to hide it. Its a fucking shame really, admins are letting it happen too, excusing it in a lot of cases.

    TurboDiesel, (edited )
    @TurboDiesel@lemmy.world avatar

    I’ve said my peace, unfortunately not much more I can do. I’ll let him go Lord over his little fiefdoms as he wishes. The whole experience has totally turned me off of Lemmy TBH; I’ve literally never had this kind of issue with a mod here or on Reddit.

    PakledBrain,

    Stamets is the worst kind of power user. Spams garbage everywhere, argues with everyone. Fragile as glass.

    TurboDiesel,
    @TurboDiesel@lemmy.world avatar

    Ok honestly thank you for that. I kind of gathered that from his pretty much only shitposting and attitude in his comments. Idk why but being banned because of him really bugged me.

    PakledBrain,

    Yeah you’re not crazy. He is provocative and cries transphobia when called out for it. Then deletes the comments that make him look bad.

    haui_lemmy,

    Thanks for elaborating. I didnt know the report button is not used often. Good advice. Will do just that.

    As for moderation:

    I‘m a mod myself (both here and on reddit) and I don‘t necessarily agree that its imposing to ask people for civility if a discussion gets heated and kneejerk reactions start popping up. But I‘m thankful for every mod that does the good work and even more so for you openly commenting about it. You’re doing important work.

    Then there is „the internet“ which I think is like the world. If we were in a postapocalyptic hellscape, we‘d have no rules, no communities. Only fight to survive. But we aren’t and we do have communities and rules. Therefore, I‘d say we‘re still responsible for the stuff that happens in our tavern (for lack of a better analogy). Are we to keep the guy in the corner from saying things we dont like? No we shouldn’t, but we definitely should keep him from starting a bar fight.

    This is just my opinion. Feel free to debate me on it. :)

    theneverfox,
    @theneverfox@pawb.social avatar

    I’d love to debate you on it, but you’re not giving me much to work with.

    Generally, a mod willing to debate me is a mod I want around

    haui_lemmy,

    Trying my hardest not to make others regret opening the app. Both for my answer and stuff that I could have moderated.

    MBM,

    that’s imposing moderator will on community and its what most of us left reddit to get away from.

    Now I’m curious how common this is, because it’s not at all why I left. I left to get away from Reddit the company. If anything I think Reddit subs tend to be moderated too leniently (which is good for Reddit, because hate is engagement)

    Stamets,
    @Stamets@lemmy.world avatar

    That’s fair. It depends on the communities. Places like Tumblr and Pics had effectively no moderation which left the entire place just a shithole. But then you had places like WorldNews and StarTrek where the mods became specifically known for stirring shit and causing a boatload of problems. Hell, one particular moderator of StarTrek is the reason that so many other communities splintered off.

    For me it was a lot of heavy handed moderation. The lack of moderation was frustrating too, don’t get me wrong, but I guess the communities I was most active in were ones where people were constantly pointing out how the moderators were terrible people.

    MBM,

    Right, that makes sense. I’ve managed to avoid most of that, except for two cases where a mod grew tired of the sub and decided to ruin it. One of them involved turning it into an unironic Mussolini fan sub so at least there the admins stepped in.

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