Has anyone else noticed a large influx of Trolls lately?

This isn't about immediately filtered content, like the disgusting DuffMan George Floyd meme, or Holocaust denial. That's pretty well kept in check by mod tools. I'm also not talking about cogent or even pointed political discussion.

I'm not even talking about necessarily in this community directly, however in a lot of other spaces I've noticed a lot of accounts using divisive language and terms like "The ineffectual left" "single issue voters" "ignorant right wing morons". Lots of straw man arguments, lots of willful ignorance.

I'm not a centrist, I'm very very very far left however I know well enough not to patently dismiss the talking points of others, outside of course calls to genocide. I know what dog whistles sound like, and I'm hearing a lot of them lately.

Most egregiously I'm seeing very long form post replies that read very much like what is generated from LLMs.

So I guess my question is, how're we all fairing with what might be the largest Turing test ever?

Flax_vert ,

I've had a lot of strawman arguments used against me lol. It's just the internet, I find

snownyte ,
@snownyte@kbin.social avatar

I always suspect a lot of them are coming from Reddit to take their daily dump on something to discourage others from using. All in hopes that we come back to Reddit so that they can gaslight, cry to mods and have us banned again just for their own amusement.

Yeah they say that the internet in general can produce these kinds of people from all corners, but you do notice by behavior. If it isn't Reddit, it's got to be Twitter. One of the two, they're the most rabid of the bunch that would resort to these kind of things because they don't lead any productive lives.

Bizarroland ,
@Bizarroland@kbin.social avatar

Don't forget, there is a large and worldwide vested interest in maintaining online divisiveness.

The internet has become our global hearth. The grand majority of humanity participate in the internet to communicate with each other for conversation, connectedness, and social expression.

This is very bad for authoritarian regimes, whether they are currently in power or attempting to enter into power or attempting to expand their power.

Should someone do something that is considered "bad", information about that will spread around the world as fast as a lie ever could.

To prevent that from hampering their schemes, the smart thing to do would be to poison the source. If you hate everyone on the internet because you have been effectively compromised by psychological poison, then you will not trust the people on the internet that you communicate with when they tell you something bad has happened.

Therefore, the mote of power you could add to collective action is rendered ineffective.

And, the interesting thing is they don't have to fool everybody. They only have to fool enough of us that our own internal division prevents effective action.

I never really believed in a devil growing up, but if I did believe in a devil now, I would definitely say that this is one of his activities.

rab ,
@rab@lemmy.ca avatar

One of the best comments I've ever read on lemmy

Eyck_of_denesle ,

I see more posts about "have you seen this or that in lemmy recently" or "lemmy is worse than reddit" posts more often than these supposed trolls. Sure they exist but all of the time they are down voted or deleted.

There is also someone saying in the comments that criticizing biden is a foreign conspiracy. Some of these Americans just look like a reflection of the right but call themselves left. I'm not American so I face no real threat(as far as I'm aware) regardless of who gets elected there. So I just think you can criticize "both sides" people without making your leader look immortal

Cybermonk_Taiji ,

I'm not American so I face no real threat(as far as I'm aware)

You need to up your awareness friend. There is no corner of the planet not directly affected by the upcoming election in the US. Go ahead and imagine the current state of the world but with the US pulling out of NATO firmly allied to Russia. Sound fun?

Eyck_of_denesle ,

Is there any proof to your hypothesise or is this just fear mongering?

Dasus ,

What are you on about? We live in a global society, of which the US is a pretty influential part and also happen to have a very significant military.

If Trump wins and does everything he's been going on about, it'll definitely influence the rest of the world, however indirectly. And it will directly influence a lot.

Yes, it will affect Americans the most, but to pretend that it won't affect the rest of the world is naive.

Eyck_of_denesle ,

I think you got lost in the same argument lemmy users get lost in. Go read my first comment again and see how I say I'm not American just to let others know I'm not very biased. I also mention as far as I know along with direct impact.

My whole point was about being able to criticize biden but guess what we are back to Trump bad discussion which no one is disagreeing with. There's a lot bigger threats while I live than trump or biden. It's the reality my friend. That's not to say that these elections don't matter. Right wing extremism is growing around the world and it's important for us to call it out. This however doesn't need to stop people from criticizing actions of left.

And I specifically asked about your hypothesis of US pulling out of NATO. As you haven't provided any sources, I would assume it's fear mongering. Some of you American left are mirror identical to the right.

Cybermonk_Taiji ,

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/nato-cannot-survive-without-america

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/02/13/opinions/trump-pull-out-nato-bergen

https://apnews.com/article/trump-nato-presidential-election-congress-republicans-20e902788e8701999ce0424f73d478cc

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.dw.com/en/john-bolton-trump-will-pull-us-out-of-nato-if-reelected/video-68382326

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-trumps-comments-urging-russia-to-invade-delinquent-nato-members

aodhsishaj OP ,

Do you ever sort by hot? Or are you mainly in the default sort?

Eyck_of_denesle ,

I'm on default and there's always posts like this every week. Last week it was about the bear and how supposedly lemmy is more mysogynist than reddit. Before it was about how lemmy is too one sided and all the comments agreeing are zionists ranting that their comments get downvoted so apparently lemmy is filled with reddits ban list.

I don't have any problem with this but I left reddit cause I was getting more posts about rants about some other bad posts than the bad post's themselves. Example stremio addons subreddit. That shit was filled with entitled miserable people angry that free software was being used by new people. I never saw that much toxicity even on any arch linux forums.

There are some instances like hexbear, lemmy.ml, lemmygrad that I see people using words left may not like. But it's definitely not as bad as it's portrayed. Blocking these can help.

aodhsishaj OP ,

My sort is hot, I'm often seeing posts you never see I guess.

trolololol ,

Me? No, and I've been around for a while

Omgboom ,

Are they coming from a specific instance? I've blocked a couple and my lemmy experience drastically improved

muntedcrocodile ,

Is it simply just the political majority starting to catch up with Lemmy and its extreme left ideology?

Also i know a guy who runs a bunch of llm powered bots to produce flat earth propaganda flatgpt one could say. There are some beautiful argument chains.

I've also run into some cases where u can do a little prompt injection and it starts saying potato instead of any noun.

amio ,

There are some beautiful argument chains.

Doubt.

Agent641 ,

Circle of life on the internet. Some public forums last longer than others. Some go full facist dictatorship, some devolve into anarchy, some die out completely. Nirvananet, Totse, gamefaqs, 4chan, 99chan, imgur, whirlpool forums, stack exchange, reddit, Lemmy. Theres no telling which way a rudderless ship will drift. You just do what you can, and get off when she starts going under

Lost_My_Mind ,

...............whirlpool forums?

eldavi ,

yes but reddit always sheds users every once and a while

AlexisFR ,
@AlexisFR@jlai.lu avatar

It's not redditors who are doing this.

Toes ,
@Toes@ani.social avatar

Nope, maybe try to find new communities?

aodhsishaj OP ,

Why wouldn't I try to improve the ones I'm already in?

shinigamiookamiryuu ,

There's a reason I drew this.

r3df0x ,

I'm not sure I'd call them "trolls."

I think Lemmy and the fediverse in general is vulnerable to bot manipulation because no one is going to give out personal information to random instances.

There are users on !autism who say that they get accused of being bots.

mlg ,
@mlg@lemmy.world avatar

tbh not really

Even the largest comment threads tend to only have a select few comments that are either blatant shilling or next level dumb.

Everyone else seems to have at least several comments that match their opinion.

Even the complaints about .ml spamming seem mostly untrue, I haven't really seen any spam or mod deleted content.

ml and world defnitley mod or ban eachother, but I don't think they're increasing in trolls.

Wanangwa_Bamidele ,

People just say their agument and their idea.

Yo, as long as they are not bot spaming ads or p*rn, I seem ok.

oracleunity ,

Fight stupid with stupid.

In this case, random copypastas are one thing that works well. Wastes their time, and communicates the fact that you think they are stupid. *cue Undertaker copypasta*

Also, would be great if every community had the tiananmen copypasta stickied.

aodhsishaj OP ,

I don't think that'll help anyone to be honest. Usually that approach just feeds the issue of Poe's law which empowers radicalization.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

https://gnet-research.org/2023/07/28/schrodingers-joke-the-weaponisation-of-irony-and-humour-in-the-alt-right/

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • random
  • asklemmy@lemmy.world
  • test
  • worldmews
  • mews
  • All magazines
    •