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:

  • HodgePodge [love/loves]
    ·
    2 years ago

    they don’t let people debate transphobia on this site, why would they let dudes debate abortion?

    • DumpsterDive [none/use name]
      ·
      2 years ago

      There's a difference between listening to lived experiences and fully embracing standpoint epistemology.

      • HodgePodge [love/loves]
        ·
        2 years ago

        There’s a difference between listening to lived experiences and fully embracing standpoint epistemology.

        I’ll make this easy so we don’t need to have a meta conversation about episcopalians or whatever.

        Q1 - do you believe people have the right to an abortion?

        Q2 - do you believe people have the right to define their own gender(s)?

        • DumpsterDive [none/use name]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Do you believe in natural rights? If so, where do they come from? If not, what do you mean by "right"? Obviously women in the US do not all have a present legal right to abortion [and just as obviously them having that right taken from them is a bad thing ], so clearly that's not what you mean.

          Gender identity is necessarily internally defined (that's what progressives usually mean by "gender") by that person. It's a mental feature, not a physical one (like sex).

          • HodgePodge [love/loves]
            ·
            2 years ago

            so like… I’m going to try and be sincere here. you do get how this kind of comment reads to people, right? It has huge :debate-me-debate-me: energy and you keep dragging yourself back to this completely different topic around defining words.

            do you not understand what people mean in every day conversation when they say “right”? is your approach to leftism entirely “Rationalism” and rhetoric?

            this lacks both written coherence and empathy, my dude. ofc people are going to think you’re anti-abortion or whatever if you pitch this kind of thing. It’s uncanny how much it matches the tone of right-wing convos.

            Abortion rights aren’t an intellectual cardio sesh for anyone who can get pregnant, it’s a matter of life and death. Having someone sniff their belly button lint and pontificate on “what even are rights anyway lol” feels dismissive

            I’m commenting with this in case you somehow really don’t understand what you’ve been doing and how it reads to people.

            • DumpsterDive [none/use name]
              ·
              2 years ago

              I don't care what you think of me and while I'm annoyed at what you project on to me, but it's not like I know you so there's not much I can do to change your mind. Go read my response to someone who asked a better question if you're so desperate to avoid thinking about tacit assumptions.

                  • UlyssesT [he/him]
                    ·
                    2 years ago

                    Generally, if someone says they don't care what someone thinks, then posts a lot more replies after that to the person they supposedly don't care about what they think, I press X.

                • DumpsterDive [none/use name]
                  ·
                  2 years ago

                  That's a really appealing argument to make to someone who explicitly made this account to talk about how the moderation practices are bad

                    • DumpsterDive [none/use name]
                      ·
                      2 years ago

                      Spite, basically. I gave a more direct answer elsewhere.

                      Okay, not entirely spite. The actual reason, and this is connected to the original ban, is that I believe women should have the legal right to abortion but I object to the notion of natural rights, so when I am asked "Do you think X have the natural right to Y" my answer is "no" no matter what X and Y are, but that doesn't mean I don't think X should have the legal right to Y. I said over and over "Roe being overturned was bad, but not because of natural rights" and people read it as me saying "women don't have rights, I'm a paleoconservative".

                      The problem is that we've inherited a lot of dogmatic axioms from people trying to argue for progressivism within a liberal framework when that framework is ultimately both inaccurate and unable to accomplish what they want it to. Granted, when it comes to arguing something to a court or within some other government body in the US, you basically need to find a way to make it liberal, but that doesn't mean you should reason to yourself or to like-minded people in that fashion.

                      Edit: Last explanatory part that was missing is that, because I was spiteful, I responded antagonistically to the couple of people here who jumped down my throat about this despite having no idea what I said in the first place. I should try to be less spiteful.

                        • DumpsterDive [none/use name]
                          ·
                          2 years ago

                          There was one time where I gave a snippy answer, but generally in that thread I was trying to be thorough. You can't just assume behavioral consistency over time when people have things like "moods" and "experiences".

                          Also literally the next line is me explaining that that's not entirely true.

                            • DumpsterDive [none/use name]
                              ·
                              2 years ago

                              I got almost no ppb but a ton of Shapiro comparisons. I think part of the problem is that even when people have much more personable communication than I've exhibited here, they are still called a "debate bro" for basically making any actual argument instead of just restating their conclusions.

                              While it's inadequate, I think there's a good case for the "bully people left" ethos. People are rarely argued into different camps, even if they are sometimes persuaded on fine details that aren't too far from them. People's ideologies are based on their relationship to their own environment, there's no arguing someone out of that if it's got its claws in them. By just bullying people and saving time on arguments that usually amount to nothing, it gave the subreddit the ability to exert disproportionate control over the website culture by intimidating dissenters and amplifying agreement.

                              That has much less pro-social application on an insular website like this one, but there is some merit to it in general.

                              My compromise position, which would apply less in a more public setting like the sub was, is that even if you resolve to only bully people who are vocally not on the left, if they are on the left and seem to be communicating in good faith, then it's not just permissible but necessary for the development of half-decent ideology for there to be debate.

                              Those are my thoughts on the matter, anyway. Thank you for weighing in despite my situation being such a miserable bog of internet dramatics.

          • ShittyWallpaper [they/them]
            ·
            2 years ago

            I assume based on context that love is using “right” to mean “a prescriptive assertion of freedom”, regardless of whether that freedom is materially available