this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2025

319 points (92.8% liked)

Fediverse

28938 readers

1380 users here now

A community to talk about the Fediverse and all it's related services using ActivityPub (Mastodon, Lemmy, KBin, etc).

If you wanted to get help with moderating your own community then head over to [email protected]!

Rules

Posts must be on topic.
Be respectful of others.
Cite the sources used for graphs and other statistics.
Follow the general Lemmy.world rules.

Learn more at these websites: Join The Fediverse Wiki, Fediverse.info, Wikipedia Page, The Federation Info (Stats), FediDB (Stats), Sub Rehab (Reddit Migration), Search Lemmy

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

319

I'm Calling For the Fediverse to Ban UniversalMonk (lemmy.ca)

submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

148 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

(page 3) 49 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 days ago

oh, that tard's still around? I blocked him months ago.

I can affirm my experience has been all the better for it, so yes, the rest of the fediverse should throw the Nazi out of the bar.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago (1 children)

And [email protected] too while we're at it

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Agreed.

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] [email protected] 52 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Here's the thing: without this thread, I might never have become aware of this user or their activities. Are you sure that what you're doing isn't counterproductive and giving them more undeserved attention?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I can see what you mean by that although for this case in an odd manner you actually want to highlight this problem.

This is another parallel system that was shown in this crazy GDC talk: 1,500 Slot Machines Walk into a Bar: Adventures in Quantity Over Quality

For background context Alex Schwartz and Ziba Scott launched premium mobile games to the Google Play Store in 2013 which unfortunately didn't "help in making our money back and being able to make enough money to make the next game". After having explored the storefront and finding nefarious apps and junk reskined clones everywhere they decided to intentionally flood the Google Play Store with junk slot machine games as a joke/experiment.

"There was a point in here that I don't think was drilled home as hard as it could have been which was... if people are sneaking by with garbage the thing that we did was to put a huge neon sign with an arrow pointing at ourselves and the garbage next to us; illuminating the entire underbelly of dark weird App Store shit and so the idea that if you do it at scale clearly they're(Google's) going to notice and clearly they're(Google's) going to change the terms of service slowly to ice you out.

Hopefully others went down with us in the wake of that. Like we provided the perfect targeted spot to drop the missile uh so hopefully, hopefully that helped get rid of duplicate apps that were also in the area."

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 days ago

I agree with you. In this case it's time to bring this up. I quietly blocked monk months ago because I was tired of seeing his shit in my feed, but I didn't want to bring attention to his inflammatory posts. But that clearly hasn't worked on a wider level. He's still posting sketchy stuff and annoying other people here. Sometimes you have to call people out and the wider community has to act, even at the risk of drawing attention to the problem users.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 3 days ago

Barbra Who???

[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Everyone wanted to know how it would go for the "I just want people to support a 3rd party" folks after the election... Well, now you know!

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Apologies I don't really understand what you mean by that

I'm guessing this is a referral to the US election?

[–] [email protected] 46 points 3 days ago (1 children)

He was banned on lemmy.world for excessive Jill Stiein/3rd party spam prior to the election and the discussion at the time was "What will they do after the election?" Well, now you know. Right Wing all along.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 days ago

ahh I see
Thank you for the clarification👍

load more comments (3 replies)

[+] [email protected] -35 points 3 days ago (5 children)

So u want to silence someone for their beliefs. Let em speak and if u dont like it block em and downvote them.

Free speach does not mean u have a right to not be offended.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Right to speech != Obligation to listen.

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] [email protected] 36 points 3 days ago (8 children)

Sure, I'll take the bait. It's not at all an issue of his beliefs. Plenty of people on Lemmy think that we should vote for third parties, plenty of people on Lemmy think that... I don't know, I blocked UM so long ago that I can't even really remember what his beliefs were. I think he thought Biden was doing a bad job. I don't think that is some weird heretic belief on Lemmy that will get you banned. Nothing he had to say was ever the issue.

If every time someone gets on the bus, they sit down next to random other passengers and start pestering them about Jesus, loudly and without fail, no matter how much the person clearly doesn't want it, and then when multiple people tell them to stop, they start crying about religious discrimination, yell at the whole bus, say they won't be silenced, show up the next day with a whole backpack full of pamphlets about the first amendment, concoct elaborate disguises to be able to sneak back on the bus once one bus driver finally has had enough and bans them, all the while setting up this incredibly loud consistent whining sound about how they're being persecuted because of their Christianity, it was never about the Christianity.

You can be Christian on the bus. You can also be Jewish or Muslim. You can wear a headscarf, you can talk to your friends about Jesus, together on the bus. Likewise, you can be anti-Biden, or pro-Biden, or pro-socialist, or whatever you want to be, on Lemmy. When you become so incredibly obnoxious about your style of interaction that the entire community has agreed that you're causing a problem, and then instead of being open to feedback and continuing to say what you think, but in a fashion that is productive and respectful of everyone else, you instead double down and say you won't be silenced and send threatening DMs to your critics and start making a whole bunch of new accounts when you are banned from multiple places, it is time for you to go. Because you had your opportunity to tone it down and integrate within the social contract that makes the place function, and you explicitly and proudly chose not to.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Very astute response!

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago (3 children)

Well said, and great example.

load more comments (3 replies)

load more comments (6 replies)

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (4 children)

So u want to silence someone for their beliefs.

Allowing people to spout whatever nonsense and cause harm to others is reckless at best, ignorant and insane at worst. I'm old but not old enough to have dementia.

Free speach does not mean u have a right to not be offended.

The argument of free speech so hollow, I've seen it used by right-wingers as a rallying cry when in reality free speech is free yes but simutaneously it does not mean free of consequences.

He's in violation of our TOS and probably several others which reminds me @[email protected] you'll want to see the last image with dumbass Zuck at the top

load more comments (4 replies)

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 35 points 3 days ago (7 children)

It blows my mind that the admins of UniversalMonk-affected servers don’t just ban him on sight.

Guys: You’re being too nice. I get it, you want to be inclusive. But you have to draw lines. Someone doesn’t have to be telling racist jokes or something, in order to be clearly and unapologetically a net negative to the community in every possible sense. And, showing them firmly to the door doesn’t have to be a complex or “objective” process when that happens.

load more comments (7 replies)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Forgot about that guy. They have the honor of being my first ever block.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

How long have you been here? a day without a block is a day I probably wasn't online for long.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I've never blocked anyone.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah me neither.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

while there's plenty of people on my list too I'd say the majority are just foreign language communities.

Blocking shit you don't want to interact with is significantly easier than finding stuff you do, and makes the internet a much nicer place.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I like the internet to be a chaotic place.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

it can be chaotic without being upsetting

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 74 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (7 children)

They are at best a one-person propaganda shop, and at worst part of a targeted influence campaign by other actors.

I've written many times on this user in the lead-up to the US election, when there was cumulative evidence they were spamming content meant to split the left vote. I welcome moderate or right-leaning good faith discussion, but this user is not that. They sealion any responses with canned / apparently-LLM-assisted non-answers to legitimate constructive comments and debate, apparently to drive up "engagement" on their posts. I've read probably 30 threads where this happened - they do not answer direct questions or engage in actual debate, but immediately go into "I'm a victim" mode and turn the debate into a performative martyred "oppression" by everyone else. Effectively every response by them I've read is a misdirection and nonsense.

My strongly held opinion is that they are a bad faith actor, no matter what their motive or tools actually are. They are literally the only Lemmy user I've come across that I can say, without reservation, deserves a perma-ban.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 3 days ago (5 children)

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.

[+] [email protected] -14 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

I didn't analyze his posting habits all that closely because I'm not obsessed with stalking and persecuting everyone who thinks differently from me, but it's always been apparent to me that he's a real person with ahem an unconventional belief system, to say the least. He seems to come from an era before the internet, when people didn't care as much what other people thought of them. Some people don't neatly fall into the buckets of left wing and right wing, as currently defined by the mainstream media. That's a good thing, imho.

As far as I can tell, he mostly just posts to communities that he created, and if OP wants to hunt around and subscribe to those communities and read the posts, that's their problem. He actually seems like a pretty nice guy imo, reminds me of my uncle who believes all sorts of wild conspiracy theories but is ultimately a stand-up guy in his daily life.

To address the alleged ban-worthy offenses directly @[email protected]:

post spamming

He can spam as many posts as he wants to the communities that he created, although 2-3 posts per day doesn’t even remotely qualify as spamming. If you choose to subscribe to them and refuse to block him, you have only yourself to blame.

[not] being considerate to others

Is it considerate to hunt through another users profile for reasons to permaban them from all of Lemmy? Is it considerate to LARP as a mod in service of a personal grudge? I think you could actually learn a few things about being considerate from Mr. Monk, he seems quite polite in most interactions.

not sharing right-wing extremist content

Fox News and Breitbart are not extremist content, they are mainstream news outlets regularly consumed by a frighteningly large proportion of the American population. It is what it is, I'm not happy about it either but you can't simply label everything you don't agree with as extremist content.

I will not be banning users simply because some of their beliefs could be described as right-wing. If those beliefs lead them to treat other users in a hateful or toxic manner, that's another story, but I see no evidence of that.

On the other hand, banning users for stirring drama and harassing other users is always an option. I don't like to ban anyone, but I would argue this kind of behavior is far more problematic than Monk's behavior.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 days ago (13 children)

As far as I can tell, he mostly just posts to communities that he created

After spamming many others and getting banned, and then sending harassing DMs once he was no longer able to post most places he hadn’t created. And then creating new accounts on new instances so he could get around bans he had received on the old accounts.

I will not be banning users simply because some of their beliefs could be described as right-wing

If only someone would take some time and kindly put together an effective analogy for why the issue is not his beliefs.

Is it considerate to hunt through another users profile for reasons to permaban them from all of Lemmy?

If anybody had to hunt to find him, he wouldn’t be an issue. There are plenty of accounts quietly posting their own brand of weirdness to their own weird communities, and it is always fine.

OP actually specifically brought up that the impetus for this post was seeing a whole new fresh batch of UM spam in some definitely not private community.

Your whole comment reads like an example from a narcissistic personality disorder handbook, about how to create a whole alternate reality that makes whatever-it-is justified, and then act so reasonable, and so confused, about how anyone in the alternate reality you described could ever think something negative about whichever person it is, when all they did was…

load more comments (13 replies)

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (10 children)

They were directly PM’ing people and being aggressively antagonistic. This is what ultimately got them banned. Then they ban evaded, and created communities to troll.

I suppose it should go without saying but I’ll say it anyway- they stirred up drama during the election and specifically targeted democratic voting, claiming to be in support of third parties-

Only to come out of the other end as a conservative propagandist. This is the definition of bad-faith trolling and is absolutely grounds for being banned.

If you run an instance, you’re free to protect them all you wish. But elsewhere, they should be banned.

load more comments (10 replies)

load more comments (4 replies)

load more comments (6 replies)

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 days ago

I had actually forgotten about that guy. I blocked him a few months ago because I got tired of his incessant and biased spam.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Based on the number of dislikes I have to imagine that someone out there might have made reports which were probably and unfortunately 'handled/managed' by UniversalMonk as that's how the current moderation system works:

Currently [as of Jan 12, 2025]
If a report is sent, both the community moderator(s) and admin(s) are able to see and handle the report.

This has the unfortunate side effect where if the moderator has no qualms and dismisses the report it can become unlikely that anyone would know what's going on.

The user who made the report might then unfortunately think that the admin(s) are condoning the post/content that's shared on their platform which might not actually be the case.

At this point I'm just going to ask that: if anyone has any posts or comments that they'd like to report, please feel free to also shoot me a Direct Message (DM). I'm going to preempt and say that while I can't promise that I'll respond immediately, I can at least guarantee that I'll reply back saying that I have seen your message.

[–] [email protected] 151 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (8 children)

That mf is still around? And now they're spamming right wing nazi stuff, despite definitely for sure being a legitimate honest 3rd party Jill Stein Stan? My gosh, say it isn't so!

There is nothing for them to learn about "netiquette", they are a cancerous wart intentionally participating in bad faith with the entire fediverse.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 3 days ago (1 children)

And now they're spamming right wing nazi stuff, despite definitely for sure being a legitimate honest 3rd party Jill Stein Stan

I fucking knew it, I commented once that he was a secret MAGAt supporter spreading FUD and bLuEMagA crap. Looks like the mask fell and guess I was right lol

[–] [email protected] 31 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

oh I always knew it- maybe a week or two after they started spamming, I caught them posting 3 or 4 times in the /c/conservative comm with some VERY overtly racist articles. They did a great job ignoring me when I started calling them out on it though, very strange.

Edit: Here it was, they spammed a bunch of stuff, including that one particular article in the middle about Oregon's housing assistance program being only for illegal immigrants (an outright lie that only existed for racist purposes):

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 days ago

They're such fucking cowards.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I think UniversalMonk was a supporter of the PSL and claimed to have voted for Claudia De la Cruz. ~~You know, the woman who is FURIOUS that the US isn’t doing more to support Israel’s war in Gaza, and promised to rectify it and really give them the green light and finally get them all the weapons they need, if she won the presidency.~~

(Edit: I was wrong about this. De la Cruz, as far as I can tell, opposes Israeli genocide and US support for it and supports Palestinian liberation.)

Like I say it blows my mind that he is still allowed anywhere on Lemmy. Not at all because I don’t think someone should be able to support the PSL, but because he is clearly lying for malicious reasons when he says that, among many other things.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 days ago (1 children)

When has Claudia De LA Cruz ever said that? As far as I know the PSL has been one of the main organizers for pro-palestinian protests in the US especially where I live along with the Palestinian youth movement. Claudia and her running partner usually at said protests. She is literally on canary mission a site used to try and silence anti-zionists. I know nothing about the person you and OP are talking about, but it seems you are just making stuff up about Claudia. If anything other than Jill Stein she was the ONLY pro-palestinian candidate(to my knowledge).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I think you are completely correct. What was I thinking of? I was sure that UM was supportive of some politician who was rabidly pro-Israel, but I thought he said he was voting for De la Cruz. You definitely seem to be right about De la Cruz being pro-Palestinian, though.

Edit: I did remember right, as far as UniversalMonk, but I was unfairly slandering Claudia De la Cruz for which I apologize. I randomly ran across it when reading the modlog just now. He voted, according to one of his deleted comments in the lemmy.world modlog, for the Socialist Worker's Party, meaning Rachele Fruit.

As the SWP candidate for U.S. Senate from Florida last fall, Rachele Fruit spoke out against the Oct. 7 Hamas pogrom in Israel and in defense of Israel as a refuge for the Jewish people at a rally at the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach Oct. 10.

“The Socialist Workers Party is part of the continuity in the fight against Jew-hatred that goes back to V.I. Lenin and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. Socialists should never support any crime against humanity in the name of revolution,” she said. “Those who call themselves ‘socialists’ and who champion Hamas and other terrorist proxies of Iran will easily find themselves allied with future fascist forces.”

That's important enough to go on their overall "here's what our candidate is about" page. It's not a specific story about the war in Gaza.

https://themilitant.com/2024/02/24/meet-the-socialist-workers-party-2024-candidates/

There's also this:

https://themilitant.com/2024/10/26/defend-israel-as-a-refuge-from-jew-hatred-pogroms/

I can't find the part where she was very upset about the United States not doing enough to support Israel in the war, but I thought I saw something about it. Anyway, she's on Team Israel.

load more comments (1 replies)

[–] [email protected] 51 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It seems like every other day they are posting from a new instance.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 3 days ago (4 children)

Because they keep getting banned

load more comments (4 replies)

load more comments (5 replies)

[–] [email protected] 26 points 3 days ago

Seems like he does get banned frequently by mods, given he has like 10 accounts created on a number of servers in the past few months

[–] [email protected] 46 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Eh, I just had a run-in with them again.

Trying to get every instance to ban them is a little crazy tbh, and I think you're right that their entire goal is a blend of trolling and misinformation.

It isn't crazy because they're acting in bad faith. It's crazy because just lemmy is already too big to try and organize a lemmy wide ban. Trying to get a fediverse wide one applied ain't happening.

Best you can do is report them for the spamming in the instances they do it on.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Best you can do is report them for the spamming in the instances they do it on.

I've made a separate comment here that explains why this might not work as they are the moderator for the communities that they created.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Reports don't just go to mods, they go to admins as well. And you can usually contact admins in other ways on most instances.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Reports don't just go to mods, they go to admins as well.

You're not wrong. Again however if the mod dismisses the report, the admin(s) would be unaware of the report unless they check the All tab. On P.D. anyways the report queue defaults to Unread, not sure if that can be changed on the newer instance versions.

And you can usually contact admins in other ways on most instances.

Again true, however [a user who's already made a report] is it highly likely that they'd message the admins for an update? maybe?

It's a non-zero possibility, but for my own report experience I actually just send a report and forget about it (unless I'm personally looking and pondering the reports queued on P.D's report page, earlier last year I tried to send messages to users who made reports saying thank yous or updates on what happened to their reports).

For any users here please comment if you've asked for an update I'm actually genuinely curious what the frequency is.

Edit:
Ah right I just remembered that I wanted to request for a feature that community moderators can't dismiss the report that's made about them. This is the same copyright loophole system that exists in Youtube.

"The claimant gets to review the dispute, the guy who wants to have my song; he gets to decide if he actually owns my song."

This is the same contradictory system in a slightly different manner:
The defendant gets to review the dispute, the guy who's been reported; they get to decide whether to accept or reject the report.

I noticed this paradox earlier last year when I made some terrible posts and asked the P.D. team to review the reports made on me as I didn't want to fall into this trap.

[–] [email protected] 49 points 3 days ago

I wouldn't care so much if he wasn't such a bitch about it. You want to post that stuff than own up and admit it. Fucking cryptofascist.

load more comments