this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
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Because I feel it's relevant if people are coming into the community misrepresenting themselves as leftists and posting please-don't-vote memes alongside Biden-is-old-and-in-trouble-in-the-election news stories, over and over and over again, to engineer a particular result. I feel like there's some level of indication that that's going on.
It's with good reason that non-identified bots, and sockpuppets, are disallowed in a lot of places. We can all come together and have a discussion, and you can say whatever you want, but an important part of maintaining the integrity of the discussion is that you can't come in and deliberately manipulate it by misrepresenting the source of your postings. Certain social networks can be substantially degraded by the influence of shills distorting the organic conversation; it's happened plenty of times before.
Maybe this is all some kooky conspiracy theory of mine, but it seems weird that there are particular users that post a constant stream of a-little-out-of-place posts with a singular political slant, so if I see someone doing that, I get curious about their account. There are some other odd features of these accounts too (e.g. they are the only accounts I have ever seen specifically bring up some sort of personal "qualifications" -- like where they're from or "I'm far left" or "I'm a gay man" -- as a defense against someone who's disagreeing with them on something, instead of just talking about the non personal facts of what they're talking about.)
IDK, maybe I'm nuts and this guy just really likes posting "please don't vote" memes. The truth is I have no idea and maybe it's unfair to be throwing accusations around. That's why I phrased it as a question. But it does seem odd.
I see it, too. Had an issue with one account with they/them pronouns in the username, in the profile is a Spotify of copy pasted (no organized favorites) albums by bands with famously transphobic audiences.
There is an entire subreddit called AsABlackMan that started from a white republican lobbyist forgetting to switch accounts on Twitter.
It’s absolutely worth checking the profile and history of a suspected troll. They have trouble maintaining the illusion or they need to signal to other trolls, either way there’s almost always clues.
Are you by any chance talking about the trans activist who just started [email protected]? Because I noticed that user, too, if that's who you mean. Surely just one of those super passionate politically engaged people who wants to spread their message about how important it is not to vote. I meet those folks all the time.
One example:
There were some posts over on the 196 board targeting Taylor Swift as the enemy because “all billionaires are bad” as though it was a reason and not an excuse. One account was named essentially ’Aryan Ozymandias’ and after calling this out, I found and commented about his posts painting bill gates as another enemy, while never bringing up any pharmaceutical or oil tycoons. My comments were removed, but are still viewable in the mod log and I got replies for days after from the support troll accounts trying to keep the drama going. Seems obvious to me, but the mods took Aryan Ozymandias’ side and that’s a shame for the biggest group on a trans-positive server like Blahaj Lemmy.
Oooooh
You just made something click for me, a little unrelated to what you were saying. Maybe it's pretty obvious but it hadn't occurred to me before.
So: The initial observation was agreeing with you that some of the most lefty communities here are also some of the most simple-minded in terms of being tribal, supporting "our guys" instead of "their guys," not being open to a situation with any level of nuance or where "our guys" actually did something bad, or anything like that
The part that clicked: As a consequence, it would make perfect sense for the troll accounts to go out of their way to cloak themselves in overt LGBTQ identity so that they get placed automatically into "our guys" and start with that level of protection and approval from the sometimes overly-simple-minded community
And behold, the two accounts I was talking about above are one who goes out of his way to let people know he's gay, and an account that posts a heavy helping of generic trans activism alongside their anti-voting message
Call me Charlie Kelly, I guess
Sounds about right. The Arymandias account was on a mission to tell the LGBTQ community to boycott anything related to her. This was genuinely only a few days before the wave of ai generated porn of her over on Elon’s unmoderated playground. Looks like the most valuable resource of this next century will be a functional ’bullshit’ filter.
I take a quick check through people's post histories for context, but generally I don't assume they're bots. I just want to make sure they're drinking propaganda instead of having just one or two bad takes.
I respond with much more vitriol to the former than the latter.
I agree a look at someone's posting history can sometimes give a lot of insight to their character.
I just assumed you'd be able to find something more recent if it was that obvious.
Not that it matters, but I became suspicious of this user a while back, and saw that post I-don't-remember-when; I didn't just today do an extended scour through their history.
But again, it's not that relevant to the central question; I think looking in detail into someone you suspect of being a shill is a sensible thing to do.