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:

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

    To be honest I don’t think it was your opinion, seeing as how that seems to be “women should be allowed to have abortions”,

    You'd fucking think so, but that's not the case. The mod log is gone, but literally in that thread I said over and over women should have the legal right for at least three distinct reasons, and my objection is the magical reasoning around natural rights, but nope, natural rights won.

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

        full-on Benny Shaps posting I would have banned you

        i don't mean to keep re-litigating a re-litigation (and so feel free to not engage obviously) but it seems to me, that many posters positively and continuously engaged with dumpster and were inviting themselves to a debate, as it were. not really fair to accuse him of being ben shapiro when he's trying to clarify his point of view, and his interlocutors continually read him, uncharitably, as a conservative wrecker or w/e. (if there were to be bans for debate-broing, at least one should ban all instigating parties.)

        and, at risk of turning this into a longer and longer thread, and only because i feel like it connects, obliquely at least, back to the original thread and the original thrust of my comment: i have no familiarity with duster's OG thread, but i shouldn't see why, dumpster or an analogous poster, should be banned by you or someone else, for a thread deliberately made for debate, that opened himself to be dunked on (i.e., opened himself up to be corrected by the board), that self quarantined in the strugglesession sub, and that made clear that he want to interrogate the rhetorical or ontological usefulness or truth of liberal rights discourse wrt to abortion, not the issue of abortion itself (and wherein he clarified that he's not "against" abortion itself in a normative sense)? how does one discuss rhetoric or reasoning without being pedantic, or without "debating"? what is preserved or protected by preventing that thread from occurring?

        (edit: okay, pig-poop balls me all you want lol. very constructive.)

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

            i'm not dumpster. i don't have the energy to re-read, but it certainly didn't strike me as a friendly chat, when agitating posters kept responding to him and implying he was a transphobe or whatever.

            and out of fair play, this must be fitting for you. :lepigpoopballz XD:.

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

        It's worth nothing and it's bad moderation policy, but I appreciate the attempt at a consolation, for whatever that's worth.