So we’ve seen the complaints and the reports and boy oh boy are there complaints and reports.
I’ve discussed the account with the other mods and admins multiple times, and while we agree the volume is a lot, it doesn’t point to a botfarm or multiple people using the account.
Obsessive? Absolutely, but not technically rule breaking… Until today.
Today they indescriminately posted the same story three times from three different sources apparently solely to flood the channel showing a decided lack of judgement.
It’s a valid story from a valid source, the original has been kept here:
https://lemmy.world/post/21098916
The others have been removed as duplicates.
I’m also applying a 15 day temp ban on the account.
“15 days? That’s oddly specific! What’s in 15… OH!”
In cases like that the default position is to allow the downvotes and individual user blocks to do the job.
I think that would carry more weight if downvotes had some kind of meaningful effect on the user’s engagement with the platform. As it stands they’re purely symbolic.
Additionally, deferring to user blocks does two things: 1) It decreases the chance that the problematic behavior will elicit meaningful criticism or pushback from more engaged participants, which amplifies its unchallenged visibility/effect on marginally engaged lurkers, and 2) it puts control of the dialogue squarely into the hands of committed trolls, rather than the community or the community’s moderators. Blocks don’t do anything to change or improve the community, they just allow people to filter their own version of it.
Pyfedi / piefed.social has a take on this that you might find interesting.
For example, pyfedi allows for anonymous voting, but I believe there’s a planned change (if it isn’t already implemented and live) so that folks with a low reputation (from too many downvotes) can’t use it. By default, comments and posts with too low a reputation are also hidden. This is handled automatically by the software, so no human moderator or admin has to do anything - if enough people downvote, the system enforces the consequences automatically.
Which makes your community toxic and your job harder.
How many reports did you get and have to filter through and ultimately ignore? If that’s not an indicator from your community that something needs to change you’re not listening to our needs.
My default is to be more lenient because I saw how badly heavy handed moderation can go from 15 years on reddit. ;)
Too many times what’s “toxic” or not was decided by… well…
This very much appears to be a case where it would be reasonable to break from your default. This is not a typical user doing typical things.
People are commenting about one glaringly obvious troll with a long history of baiting in comments, not calling for widespread bans based on a few posts per user.
