Try harder please. I have read several articles posted by OP. They clearly have an agenda and have engaged in a lot of trolling behavior.
So the question is having an active troll/propagandist really good for the community. Maybe you could argue that they generate engagement or that we need to protect people’s right to disagree.
The community should carefully weigh this moving forward. If accounts that act like bots are allowed then this place will follow in the footsteps of Digg or Reddit.
Personally, I would have already set them straight as a moderator. I have never been impressed by edgy people who add very little to the conversation.
The mods and admins have actually discussed their account multiple times.
The consensus is, yes, they have shitty opinions, but having shitty opinions is not against the TOS.
The links they post are legitimate links from respected sources.
So, no, nothing bannable or removable here. The comments and downvotes do their job exposing just how shitty their opinions are.
I don’t think anyone has a problem with shitty opinions. I think the bigger problem is a pattern of behavior that impairs the community.
- Copying and pasting the same low effort text multiple times in replies
- Refusal to engage in good faith discussions/interactions
- Excessive volume of low quality posts and comments
- Rampant sealioning in comments
- Outright trolling which you all have only moderated a portion of
Overall you have a user that disrupts the community in a variety of ways and contributes nothing of value - especially in their comments. I think at least a temporary ban has been justified for quite some time.
I don’t have to explain anything to you or anyone else. Feel free to stop responding and commenting on my posts if you don’t want to hear replies from me. Thanks! :)
Thank you for calling this out in detail. I think that copy pasting responses several times easily qualifies as trolling and the massive amount of them doing this makes it no question. This alone should be enough.
They should be banned from the instance. I can’t quite follow how it’s controversial unless some of the mods are letting their politics stand in the way of observations anyone can easily make in a couple of minutes. There is nothing redeeming about this account. They are spreading bad ideas in bad faith, and frankly it shakes my faith in the platform that they can get away with it Scot fucking free. It’s disgusting.
So what about the trolling behavior in comments?
People do not complain about his posts, let me repeat that, his posts are not the problem. Nobody cares about his opinions. Nobody minds that he likes third parties, that part is fine.
It’s the behavior in comment sections that is the problem. How is it that we have a rule 4 that prohibits trolling, but we allow a user who consistently exhibits comment behavior intended to simply irritate whoever is interacting with them? Low effort, consistently full of logical fallacies, frequently misrepresenting himself and others, etc. These indicate a troll.
Again, it is comment behavior that is the problem. How many of his comments need to be removed before it is identified as a problematic account? I think we deserve some transparency here.
Where and how do you draw the line with regards to trolling behaviors in comments sections?
edit: Let me quote him from just below here, where he replied to someone replying to you right here:
I don’t have to explain anything to you or anyone else. Feel free to stop responding and commenting on my posts if you don’t want to hear replies from me. Thanks! :)
Does this add anything to a conversation? Does this further discourse in any constructive way? Does this encourage people to positively participate in our community?
I appreciate your effort here. It seems like the answer is that this user gets special treatment. Maybe it’s a mod or admin’s alt and no one is brave enough to stand against it.
Makes perfect sense about the links. Now their conduct of being defensive/borderline trolling in all the responses is not okay.
Thanks for bringing me up to speed.
The problem we have is not with bad opinions.
If I were to copy paste the same response across many threads, intentionally antagonizing users and making that obvious, what is the secret to having that not be considered trolling? Because apparently op somehow discovered how to achieve that. This user is making it beyond obvious. They intend to troll users, and they’re putting a lot of effort into it. Can you help us understand what makes that okay?
Liberals don’t like leftists in general because we make them feel like bad people. That’s why they try so hard to morally lash out at us whenever they can. They understand that many of the policies they advocate are unethical, but can’t oppose a system they benefit from, so they tear us down and lash out at us.
You have some interesting beliefs for sure.
Liberals who are most often defined by equality typically align with the so-called left. Although it is important to point out what country you are from can drastically alter this perception. I was born and raised in North America.
The right which is often synonymous with conservatives have pushed back against racial and gender equality. They believe in rigid hierarchies keeping control through rules that bind others but not themselves.
I get the feeling you probably believe in a lot of right wing propaganda. Hence the whole inflicting moral outrage on others being such a boogey man. It really isn’t as conservatives have no problem ignoring it.
often defined by equality typically align with the so-called left.
They talk as if they are aligned, but vote as if they are not. They put BLM in their social media profiles, then voted for the people that created the necessity for orgs like BLM to exist. They cried about kids in cages, then voted for the architect behind them.
While the liberal is part of the oppressor, he is the most powerless segment within that group. Therefore when he seeks to talk about change, he always confronts the oppressed rather than the oppressor. He does not seek to influence the oppressor, he seeks to influence the oppressed. He says to the oppressed, time and time again, “You don’t need guns, you are moving too fast, you are too radical, you are too extreme." He never says to the oppressor, “You are too extreme in your treatment of the oppressed,” because he is powerless among the oppressors, even if he is part of that group; but he has influence, or, at least, he is more powerful than the oppressed, and he enjoys this power by always cautioning, condemning, or certainly trying to direct and lead the movements of the oppressed.
Kwame Ture
https://lemmy.world/post/20349566
Anti-Stein/Pro-Democrat article I posted. Check the downvotes and the comments.
https://lemmy.world/post/20281854?scrollToComments=true
Anti-Trump article. Check out the comments. So you don’t think I had the right to reply?
https://lemmy.world/post/20405177
Yet another anti-Stein article I’ve posted. Heavily downvoted.
So what is my agenda again? Please explain.
But I’ve posted articles that are critical of Trump, Stein, and Harris, as well as articles praising each of them. How come you don’t mention those articles?
So, if you’re assuming I agree with every viewpoint in the articles I post, how does that even work when I share so many conflicting perspectives?!
I also created and mod a political news community where people have posted articles praising Harris, criticizing Stein, and trashing me—yet I still leave those up.
https://lemmy.world/c/politicsunfiltered
I could have removed them. Seems like a lot of conflicting viewpoints for you to imply I have some agenda.
I think actively trolling people by arguing in bad faith or through astroturfing like this is definitely poisoning the community. It shouldn’t be tolerated for tolerances’ sake. And I’m not saying to just ban people you don’t agree with. I’m saying people who obviously just post to poke the bear, so to speak, should face discipline for trying to turn Lemmy toxic.
If these articles are from legitimate news organizations, calling it “poking the bear” doesn’t really make sense. I’m not even posting the articles directly—just links to them. And let’s be real, the actual news sites get way more attention than we ever will here. So if you’ve got a problem with the content, take it up with them.
Besides, are people who post a ton of pro-Harris content “astroturfing”? Or do you think what I post is “poison” simply because they don’t match your opinions?
How is posting articles from news orgs “trying to turn Lemmy toxic”? So is posting pro-Harris articles “toxic”? Also you do realize I post pro-Harris articles too, right?
1: You are “poking the bear” because everything you post to this community is pursuant to getting Harris to lose the election, either through pro-PSL or Green articles (via the Spoiler Effect), or through explicitly anti-Harris articles. That’s the pattern behind your posts, it obviously doesn’t matter how reputable a source is to you so long as you can flood Lemmy with this content. “Take it up with them” is a copout for your behavior because you choose to post their articles here.
2: You clearly don’t know what astroturfing even means. What could pro-Harris posts even astroturf for?
3: Repeatedly posting articles about getting Harris to lose the election and arguing in bad faith in defense of why that’s actually good for advancing socialism in the US is toxic because it’s literally incorrect. And when pointed out, you say you don’t actually think a second Trump term would be all that bad for you. It’s patently obvious what you’re trying to do on here, you’re trying to get leftists on board with neo-fascism and accelerationism to enrich yourself.
