One of the easiest ways to strengthen a community against attacks is to shine a spotlight on the behaviors shown by people attempting to sabotage it. This is done by labor organizers in real life to strengthen a group of workers against union busting, for instance.
The term often used for this is “inoculation”. Similar to being vaccinated once you are aware of an attacker, the effectiveness of their behavior decreases.
So Hexbear comrades, what patterns have you noticed in wreckers, trolls, and feds? Comment in the thread and I’ll update this post to include your feedback.
Terminology
Troll
:troll:
Standard internet bog person. Not particularly clever or inventive. 4chan-tier. Nothing in their brain but slurs.
Wrecker
:silver-legion:
Typically fixated on the site, repeat and/or sustained activity. (Eg Pumpkin Spice Flintstone guy). Might be a reference to an old USSR term for saboteurs in the party?
Fed
:fedposting:
Rare (?). Tries to encourage illegal behavior. Bad at it. Often doing it just to see who corrects them and in what ways.
Patterns I’ve noticed
General
:cissues:
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new account with slightly “off takes” that gradually becomes increasingly aggressive
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“just asking questions”
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“innocently” brings up incredibly specific past struggle sessions
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tries to position obvious shitposts as sincerely held opinions that somehow reflect poorly on the site (eg “everyone loves hunter biden”)
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attempts to take other user’s sentences out of context and spin it into an argument
Wrecker Types
Fresh Accounts without History (FAWH)
:amogus:
These are accounts created in the last few weeks with little to no activity FAWHs indicate ban avoidance, shell propaganda accounts, and/or a desire to hide a pointed agenda. Identify and counter this by checking post histories.
Defrosted FAWHs
:corporate-art:
These accounts behave similarly to FAWHs but show a much older registration date combined with long periods of low activity, reflecting history editing or dormancy. They will occasionally only have comments at or around the time of struggle sessions. Identify and counter this behavior by checking post histories.
Drive-by Accounts
:stupidpol:
These accounts post bigoted or inflammatory comments in active threads then delete/edit their comments a day or two after the submission dies to obscure the pattern of their activity.
This is hard to spot unless you check back in with your suspected trolls or seek them out by reviewing. If you catch them in the act it's hugely indicative of subversive intent.
Identify and negate this by monitoring suspected trolls for post deletion and reporting before they are deleted. Also quoting especially aggressive replies so they can’t edit it away.
I’ll update this based on other’s comments. Viva la Hexbear!
:hexbear-retro:
They like posting highly exaggerated versions of what they think we might post, for example something like “everyone who has ever been inside a car gets the wall”
This is a technique documented by Muslims who attended mosques which were later revealed to have FBI provocateurs effectively radicalizing and recruiting their young members to do terrorism. I can’t find the article, unfortunately.
What they are doing should actually be somewhat familiar to those who have done labor organizing. They’re social mapping and building profiles on people. They don’t want to know what the party line of the PSL is. They want to know what you personally believe and whether or not you’ve been personally involved in your local branch in particular.
It’s an old truism that the best way to get the correct answer to a question on the internet is the state a wrong answer confidently. This is true for subjective beliefs or for group norms as well. Encouraging cartoonish adventurism is an excellent way to elicit a wave of responses of people staying their own genuinely held beliefs about political violence, often on accounts full of PIA that a bad actor could have been documenting or could be retroactively documenting.
Have noticed this too! The rhythm will be off and they’re a dick about it.
:stupidpol: “hello chapos dae want to learn to make at home explosives to kill elected officials that we all hate such as illinoise state house representative Marshal Marshalls (D)”
Fun Frog Fact: I looked it up. “Marshal” and “Marshalls” are both different names with separate etymology, but are still from France. Fucking white people lol
Oh sorry, was briefly skimming and must have read the “fra____” and then paired the two
On that note, this site’s public mod log is a great source of slop and available at the bottom of every page.
:popcorn-time:
If you check now, there’s a batch of removed comments from someone who definitely checks a lot of the boxes for “wrecker”. :quark:
https://hexbear.net/modlog
I was starting to feel pretty gaslit there and so it helps that someone else saw what I was seeing in that exchange, I was trying to really avoid using the word wrecker, or concern troll, because I genuinely want to listen to comrades who are uncomfortable. It was all framed in such a unproductive and inflammatory way. Also did my best to avoid using debate-bro language but the hits just kept coming.
edit they just wrote an unhinged rant calling me a sexpest, misogynist, toxic man (I'm non-binary), and implied I am a rapist. Very cool....
Sorry you had to deal with that comrade. The admins were informed and the trash has been taken out :fash-bash:
I’m sorry you had to experience that, comrade. Hogs like that are why I wanted to have this discussion with folks. It genuinely helps to understand patterns and understand you’re not missing something.
:meow-hug:
Oh good! Some folks just can't take a shitpost.
Love the open modlog.
I noticed that wreckers tend to have a "button" issue, that when set off, makes them drop the mask(s) and explode and catch fire until they are banned.
It's usually transphobia, or :lmayo: defensiveness, or some particular treat that they're so fond of that even the pretenses of leftism are thrown aside to defend that treat with chud takes.
Yeah, they can never manage to keep their transphobia to themselves for long.
Honestly I think this site is a little too paranoid about wreckers. If someone is acting a little edgy and weird but you can't quite tell, you can usually just wait a couple hours before they show their whole ass.
I use parallel PPB (PPPB) with 15 threads to cut average whole ass time to 1 minute
:countdown: :countdown: :countdown: :countdown: :countdown:
:countdown: :countdown: :countdown: :countdown: :countdown:
:countdown: :countdown: :countdown: :countdown: :countdown:
I don’t think the paranoia’s misplaced. I think the anxiety is. There are people who have been straight up targeted and harassed, both irl and on the site. To my knowledge, that sort of thing is usually taken care of pretty quickly here. But I understand people worrying about it, at least. But fed shit or people inciting struggle sessions? I’m doing my best with opsec and I’ve put some practice into closing my browser instead of engaging when I’m immediately through the roof on something. It really works.
Considering past events with doxing and targeted harassment, I think certain amount of healthy mindfulness about wreckers is warranted.
My hope for this post is that it can be used as a community resource so folks can better identify questionable accounts and be less anxious on the whole. It’s a lot easier to disengage, ignore, and/or ppb someone once you can tell they’re just an angry clown.
I remember the user that was working for the US arms industry and posting here.
W H A T ?
I think it was the guy who posted fresh 9/11 footage here before it was posted elsewhere online and checking his LinkedIn he worked for the Air Force and then Boeing
Another thing is that most of these behaviors aren’t excellent indicators on their own, but are excellent indicators in aggregate. Either one user exhibiting a ton of them or a bunch of users exhibiting one of them way more than usual all at once for seemingly no reason
I usually start keeping an eye on a FAWH that references site events from before the account was registered. Sometimes it might just be a new alt of someone in good standing, but if they start posting anything even remotely approaching bannable,, I assume the account is evading a previous ban
That’s a good one! They are almost always passive aggressive / straight up aggressive about it as well if you comment on the account age.
:frothingfash: “WHAT ARE YOU NOT ALLOWED TO MAKE NEW ACCOUNTS THIS SITE BANS YOU FOR EVERYTHING CAN’T EVEN SAY removed LIKE A NORMAL PERSON HERE”
Reddit is so bloated and impossible to administrate that nobody is checking who is who, even though every right wing reactionary on there has a post history of "talked about sports or marijuana a few years ago and now is suddenly very passionate about world news".
I say this as someone who is on a brand new account: I don’t get offended when people are suspicious of me when I do this. Sometimes I’ll hedge what I’m saying and sometimes I’ll just take the L and accept that I’m not gonna participate in that conversation. There’ll be more. I’ve seen people get super upset and start going off about how paranoid everyone on the site is.
Wreckers generally don't strike when everything is going smoothly. They strike in moments of chaos and use that moment to splinter communities as much as possible. Based on my experience here and watching GenZedong work towards establishing a foothold at lemmygrad.ml, this has been pretty noticeable. In our first week we had the Kerries, we had people from Raddle imitating the mods and developers on other sites. Similar things have happened on lemmygrad days after the quarantine, where "concerned reddit refugees" would pop up saying that the mods were compromised and shit.
The same people go around spreading shit everywhere else they can too. If you search Reddit for "chapo.chat" you can find a lot of weird comments from people that describe a really funny alternate reality of this place.
I find that in the specific growth-related wrecking when they attack leadership, they are very forward about grievances, but very shy about demands, which inevitably involve purging leadership and putting them in charge.
Also I didn’t realize Lemmy was going through that. Anything standing out to you?
This is a really cogent point. It’s interesting you have noticed a similar pattern with GenZedong. Any new tricks that are worth mentioning so we can keep an eye out?
Longer write up I did about this because your comment got me thinking, does any of this line up with your experiences?
This site seems to have a certain amount of ambient wreckers / trolls that are recurring, with the number definitely spiking around:
Event 1. Struggle Sessions
These can be either organic ones or manufactured. Noticed all three of the wrecker types (FAWH, Defrosted, Drive-by) during those and they followed a repeatable pattern of:
- making an exaggerated and inflammatory :bait: statement for position A
- responding with an equal inflammatory :bait: for position B
- escalate argument and get legitimate users to take :bait:
- get legit users on :both-sides: to argue with each other, ideally for the most bullshit version of the positions
Forget who I saw that laid it out this way, but it made a lot of sense to me, so I’m copying it.
The thing to keep in mind, is that the inflammatory positions don’t necessarily have to incorrect. In fact it works better if you find a nerve / topic the site hasn’t resolved contradictions around yet. That’s part of why early struggle sessions often made the site more pleasant afterwards and peeled off reactionaries.
Note: You can see FAWHs “fishing” sometimes if you look carefully, where they will cycle through controversial topics over 1-3 days trying to get one to “stick”.
Event 2. “Growth” Events
New community lifeboat comms, site gets a shoutout on a major subreddit, etc. Makes sense as a way for presenting the site as “not welcoming”. Can be done with either “this site is not safe” posts, “omg site is dead who was phone”, or creating a struggle session event.
Has historically been very effective here to the point Hexbear no longer does lifeboat comms.
Event 3. Software releases
Focused on stressing out and/or demotivating developers. This can take a lot of forms: Rage posts demanding certain features be built, direct focus on criticizing / harassing /griefing devs on the site, etc. Also very effective, ultimately contributed to near total burnout of both gen 1 mods and devs.
A sharp feeling of anxiety sharply graws at your mind. They could be anywhere! Your shoulders tense up looking around the room. They could be anywhere couldn't they?
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That means anyone could be a fed, call the next person a fed to try release your anxiety. Authority Formidable (3%)
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No federal agent would be able to get past this level of irony. It is simply not possible. Rhetoric legendary (1%)
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Push the feeling down no one is a fed here. Everyone is a liberal. (Exit)
Your opponent is slammed flabbergasted, your cellular device flys through the air at break neck speed the sheer velocity of your voice causes those around to you become weak in the knees. You have proven your point to all those around.. you are mentally unstable. 1d4 psychological damage. Check failure
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Came here for the inevitable salt of weird nerds that’d be drawn to this post like worms to a flame. Not disappointed.
I think it does create a hierarchy of sorts. I just think it’s a necessary hierarchy and the nature with which it rotates people in and out is a good mitigation against infiltrations and helps keep it shallow.
I recognize your username but that’s just because I’m a power user :sickomogus:
Oh, sorry I thought that would be sufficiently readable as a joke. I am not Rachel. She just was a big part of the initial power user discussions here
Fwiw I hope she’s doing alright too
I think the big difference between a wrecker and just someone who is argumentative is that the wreckers never have fun. Lots of people get into debates, that's what the internet is for, to learn and not bother your irl friends. But even a grump whose genuine will still shitpost, laugh at memes, talk about fun things that aren't just politics, etc.
Is responding to any bad news with "we're all going to die" doomerism a sign of a wrecker?
I wouldn’t say so, that just sounds like exhaustion and not particularly malicious.
I think it can be unhealthy if it’s pervasive for long periods of time. But even behavior that would be a problem if people were doing it constantly and in large numbers can be fine in bursts. Some of the fed posting following the Roe decision, for example. Like, that’s an understandable reaction in a time where tensions are high. And ideally, people will come out of it with a better understanding of adventurism and with a greater resolve to commit to radical action that isn’t counterproductive
