millie

I'm specifically talking about an exploitable vector that can be taken advantage by any number of people or organizations, so it's not really about particular users. There are examples, to be sure, but pointing them out or accusing them of working for anyone in particular would be counter-productive. Not only would it distract from the subject at hand, but they can literally make an infinite number of sock-puppets so it doesn't really matter unless you feel like playing an absolutely exhausting and fruitless game of whack-a-mole.

I'm seeking to illustrate the behavioral pattern, the weakness that it exploits, and the damage it can do, which I expect to have much more efficacious results.

Oh. Welp. At least it reduces their engagement.

It could also be AI generated responses with similar prompts. Or a call center with specific guidelines for tone and content. Or some sort of remote platform with guidelines for posting. I know there are call centers full of scammers and the same was true of bot-farm employees at some point, probably still.

It is pretty fascinating. But yeah, the odds of ever getting a real answer are pretty low unless there's some sort of whistleblower.

But hey, I bet said whistleblower could start a pretty profitable career in independent investigative journalism if they did provide that information to the right people, or if they self-published successfully. Just a thought, if such a person happens to be reading this!

A lot of them are probably literally the same person.

Hopefully it serves to further demonstrate my point. It certainly has solidified its legitimacy for me.

It's also very helpful of them all to come draw attention to themselves so those who wish to identify and block them have an easy opportunity.

I'm under the impression that they can't reply to them directly.

That's quickly becoming my approach. Point it out and then immediately block them and stop engaging. Once you block them, they can't keep following you around spamming the same noise.

I would argue that people who hold genuinely socialist views who laser focus on disempowering the left are nothing more than useful idiots for authoritarians and can safely be sorted into the same box as actual infiltrators and parasites. The intent of individuals isn't nearly as important as combating the behavior that's being exploited.

Absolutely. Conservatives have, unfortunately, sailed straight past us on political effectiveness in recent years. We're spending our time wringing our hands about doing the right thing and cajoling one another into doing the same. Unfortunately in a lot of cases modern leftism favors atomizing based on who a particular segment sees as having sufficient moral purity over solidarity. Meanwhile, conservatives don't really care about much of anything other than maintaining a socially conservative status quo. They'll even let people they hate pretend to be part of the club if they debase themselves enough to be politically useful. At the same time, they'll viciously attack anyone who isn't politically useful to them.

I'm not saying we ought to abandon our principles or start viciously attacking anyone who doesn't toe the line of being politically useful, but we need to remember how to build coalitions and think strategically.

So, everyone actually doesn't have to do the same legwork. If most of the posters in a community block someone, that person won't be able to post in most of the threads in that community and won't get the engagement they're looking for.

Whether they're trolls or whether they're useful idiots, I say block them. Not only that, actively encourage others to do the same. If we take to blocking these people on sight the moment they start spouting this bullshit, they very quickly will see threads full of "# additional responses" that they can't actually see or respond to.

In some cases it might actually be worth reporting them, too. A lot of them go well beyond the rules of the communities they're engaging with, but I've also seen at least one instance where a very prominent cuckoo-poster got chased off the instance by the staff. He was basically told to knock it off or leave and he chose the latter. Good riddance.

So run for office or find a candidate who might and help them get to that position.

Voting for a third party, unless it's in a small local election where they might actually have a shot, will do literally nothing but get us a Republican.

If you're still sitting here in April of 2025 and saying that the Democrats are the same as the Republicans, though? Get the hell out of our nest.

Yep. It's a damn mess.

I don't claim to know how to make them be honest about their motivations or, in the case of those few who are genuinely being taken in by this garbage, wake the hell up and realize what they're throwing away. But I know that having the idea out there in the open in a digestible way can at least help some people get a better view of what's going on. Maybe they'll follow suit and block some of the worst ones. Maybe they'll rely less on social media for their perspectives on the world and realize that Lemmy isn't the exception to its toxicity just because it's open source.

We need to be more aware of them than we have been, though, because it's getting worse.