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:

  • new account with slightly “off takes” that gradually becomes increasingly aggressive

  • “just asking questions”

  • “innocently” brings up incredibly specific past struggle sessions

  • tries to position obvious shitposts as sincerely held opinions that somehow reflect poorly on the site (eg “everyone loves hunter biden”)

  • 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:

  • buh [she/her]
    ·
    2 years ago

    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”

    • ShittyWallpaper [they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      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.

    • EffortPost [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      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)”

      • EffortPost [any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        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

          • EffortPost [any]
            ·
            2 years ago

            Oh sorry, was briefly skimming and must have read the “fra____” and then paired the two