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:

  • EffortPost [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    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.