1y ago

Fediverse troll creates pro-police community, immediately gets negative reactions from cop haters on Lemmy

lemmy.world Thank The Police - Lemmy.world

Thankthepolice is a community dedicated to expressing appreciation and gratitude for the hard work and service provided by law enforcement officers. Users share stories, videos, and messages that highlight positive interactions and contributions made by the police in their communities.

!thankthepolice@lemmy.world

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https://lemmy.world/post/4684388

Lots of angry lemmings in this post

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105 comments

We need the ability to tag users on Lemmy so that when we figure out that someone is a tankie or an anti-Canadian propagandist we can tag them so that the next time we see them comment we know they are a bad faith actor and can respond appropriately (and by appropriately I mean not wasting our time trying to have a good faith discussion.)
EDIT:
NegativeYoda said that Sync for Lemmy had the functionality I was looking for so I checked it out.
It does.
I was able to (temporarily) highlight NY in red like a banned user and tag him as a tankie. This week makes my lemmy experience much less frustrating. I've ashtray done the same (for real) to several obvious bad actors so I don't get drawn into a discussion with someone who has no intention of participating in good faith.
- Basically how I used the Reddit Enhancement Suite tag manager.
  
  Yes. There are several users here now who are bad faith actors. It would be great to be able to tag them. That way I wouldn't try to engage in conversation just to become frustrated by their bad faith arguments and insults before recognizing their names. I don't want to block them because I want to be able to make good faith responses to their nonsense but I want to know that they're trolls so I don't get involved in a discussion that isn't going to go anywhere.
  
  Thanks for doing that. I have a similar approach.
  I really want federated social media to work, and the extremist propaganda is killing it.
  
  Yup. It seems like the bad actors have moved from Hexbear to Lemm.ee. I see a lot of tankie nonsense coming from there now. It would be great to be able to set a flag on a user who you often agree with and on ones you have identified as christofascists, vegan extremists, or any other bad faith actor, really. Maybe we could even color code them.
  
  Yeah we really need a way to identify ex-cops and other bad faith scum like them.
  
  It's got to be exhausting to be that angry all the time.
  
  Mate, it’s exactly the same as you except the of disliking boogieman “vegan extremists” it’s dislike of the real bootlickers who enforce an unjust system onto others.
  It must be tiring for you to be going after the wrong thing all the time instead of acknowledging you were part of the problem all along.
  
  I feel sorry for you. It's got to be very stressful.
  
  Nah it’s pretty chill.
  Hopefully you can grow up one day.
  
  I'm sorry that you're going through life so angry.
  
  I feel that the ability to tag users is the only thing that Lemmy is missing for me. Maybe all of the actions of these bad actors will inspire the creation of a tagging system.
  
  Check out my original comment for an update. Sync goes Lemmy does what I was looking for.
  
  Thanks, I've been using Lift Off but if Sync allows you to tag users, I'll have to give it a try.
  
  I quite like it. I find the text extremely small. I've made it larger but then the cards get very crowded. I'll eventually get it to somewhere that it works better for me.
  This morning the first response in my inbox was from someone I had hilighted as red and tagged as a BAD FAITH ACTOR. It helped me to slow down and carefully craft my response. I like it a lot but the tagging and hilighting functionality costs a couple of bucks per month or $25 per year.
  
  I would be happy to have it in my client. If I could have a personal list of tagged users so that their names showed up in a different color I wouldn't accidentally get drawn into a conversation with someone who is just using childish, circular arguments and utter nonsense in a bad faith attempt to derail the conversation. I could just ignore them and continue the discussion with other users but I could also warn others who were engaging with them and becoming frustrated that they are bad actors and that they are wasting their breath.
  
  Just block and move on with your life.
  
  But someone might be wrong!
  
  Blocking users is a sign of weakness.
  The blocking system on Reddit was horribly broken. Blocking a user on Reddit effectively takes them out of the conversation. They can't reply to any comment by the person who blocked them or under a comment by the person who blocked them. A bad faith actor can involve themselves in the conversation then block the OC preventing them from carrying on the conversation about their own comment. A small group of bad actors could move together to block anyone who didn't agree with them. By blocking up to 100 users each they could shut down disagreement. A small group could shut down a sub until the mods banned them. Tactical blocking was a thing.
  On Lemmy, when you block someone you take yourself out of the conversation. The blocked user can continue to discuss the topic at hand below a comment from a blocking user. Tactical blocking doesn't work. All it does is protect the blocking user from being exposed to contradictory comments or ideas.
  So, no, I'm not going to simply block anyone who is a bad actor. My beliefs aren't that delicate. My ideas aren't that fragile. I'm not that weak.
  What I would like to be able to do it to tag users who I have discovered are bad faith actors so that I don't get drawn into a pedantic, or fallacious conversation with someone who is just trying to distract of derail the conversation. Having a bad actor block me is a gift. I can still respond to and discuss their comments but they can't see my response. I can warn others that they are bad faith actors. I'm totally cool with that. In fact, a couple of people have loudly announced that they're blocking me and I've celebrated.
  If you're being harassed or threatened, or if someone is hurling racist or other hate at you you can still contact the instance admin and have them banned but you can't tactically block a user and you can't shut down the conversation in a community.
  
  Weak? It protects your time. Although maybe you have hours to post online with idiots. Most people don't.
  
  So block me and move on.
  
  It's pretty time consuming tagging people and I'm not sure it's worth the effort. I did it on reddit for a while but the supply of new assholes is basically endless.
  
  Tagging people or blocking people is like a fraction of the time I spent on reddit, and its roughly the same here. And the benefit is the time saved not having to see or argue with bad faith actors.
  
  Check out my original comment for an update. Sync goes Lemmy does what I was looking for.
- You know, I hadn't heard the term "tankie" before coming to Lemmy/Kbin, and at this point I'm lost again on what it's supposed to mean. I have a general idea but it seems to mostly just be a malleable catch-all for "someone I don't like who possible sort of leans one way a bit on some things". Like how "boomer" has become super over-ueed boogeyman term for "someone older than me I don't like".
  Seems like a lazy way to categorize tribally, and group people as "others". Or am I getting it totally wrong?
  
  Tankies are auth left. They support the policies of Stalin, the CCP, et al and are staunch soviet union defenders and revisionists. It's an old term from the 80s in the UK
  
  A planned state economy isn't a leftist ideal.
  Leftism does its best to tear down hierarchies, tankies have a problem with the way economics are handled, and the existing hierarchies, but that's only because they want to be the ones in charge of both.
  
  And so people that are anti-cop are Stalinists? That's how it seems to be used.
  
  CCP and Kremlin propaganda is dividing their geopolitical rivals however they can. Old vs young (boomers), police vs citizen, left vs right, rural vs urban, men vs women, etc.
  It's called divide and conquer, which is an old tactic that turns out to be very effective when you can have LLMs masquerade as citizens of the country you want to destroy.
  
  You think people hate cops or these other divisions exist because of CCP and Kremlin propaganda? They may emphasize them but they're caused by real issues and grievances. Marginalized communities have hated cops forever, way before internet propaganda, for example.
  
  Noooo no no no. We're all anti cop. They are anti west.
  
  How can one be authoritative and left?
  Like militant inclusivists?
  
  The same way you can be small-government and right -- by embracing an inherent contradiction.
  Mostly, the tankies do so by apologizing for any and all bad behavior by self-professed anticapitalist states like the Soviets or PRC. Or by framing western democracies as the bad guys in every possible situation.
  
  Authoritarian, not authoritative. The 20th century has a lot of history of authoritarian communist regimes, which would be standardly classified as left. It may not be the most appealing version of left politics, and it is just one version of communism, but it is still a version of those things.
  
  What a tankie actually is, is a ML who supports violent force against a population - Hence being named after the Soviets driving tanks into Hungary to stop a revolution.
  Right wingers have taken this word and think it applies to anything left wing they don’t like when it’s just a leftist anti-authoritarity term used for ML chuds.
  
  Tankies are angry leftists. They're the alt-left that the extreme right always complains about. I suspect that many of them are actually neo-Nazi trolls trying to prove that they aren't so bad by cosplaying as tankies. They're bad faith actors.
  
  I'm an angry leftist, but I ain't no tankie. I'm pissed cause I'm middle aged, and have been dealing with over a century of outright lies from the rich.
  
  I'm a pragmatic leftist. I know that being angry and demanding the murder of all rich people and government officials isn't going to happen. We need to get organized like the christofascists are and use the system. Until we do the christofascists will continue to rise.
  
  The only reason I fear revolution is because I fear if my side wins, we'll govern peacetime as we would during war.
  Really becomes hard to judge who your allies are when things get ugly, and there are way too many covert narcissists that know how to game their way to control.
  
  There won't be a revolution in Canada. If the tankies try there are only two possible outcomes. The tankies ends up in prison or the tankies end up dead. Your taking about using a few Gravy Seals with military style guns against a national armed forces and police that number in the hundreds of thousands with real military weapons, APCs, tanks, planes, etc. A bunch of military fetishist with murder fantasies don't stand a chance. It's all fun and games until a bullet rips through one of your comrades chests and it becomes obvious that they're shooting white people.
  Just ask Ashley Babbit and the idiots that were around her when she died. The attack on the Senate wasn't as fun after that happened.
  
  Tankie is all about embracing the tanks. They're the authoritarian left.
  Primary beliefs (all stupid and wrong): the Soviets and People's Liberation Army can do/did no wrong. Russia is still Soviet and still the good guys. Ukraine is a conspiracy from the West that is actually Nazi. Any geopolitical problems are the fault of the West who behaves as a complete bloc and is literally only motivated by the capital interest of billionaires. Africa and the subcontinent are the world good guys (just conveniently ignore literally anything bad that happens there). Lots of Islamophobia.
  As with all authoritarians, it's all about conspiracy theories. If you try to argue with them, they simply don't believe counterfactuals or will shift goal posts and start talking about something else entirely.
  Most of the angry leftists you encounter, especially in these parts, lean much more towards anarchism. Very different from tankies.
  
  I've been including the ones who want to murder all the rich people and government officials with the tankies even though they don't want to use tanks.
  
  You're not using the word right then. Which will hurt any arguments you make while using it.
  Again, it's a pejorative all about embracing authoritarianism. The tankies love government officials so long as those government officials follow any kind of communist kayfabe. The tankies are totally okay with billionaire oligarchs in Russia. The tankies would oppose and protest any kind of violence directed against the government's they like. They adore social hierarchies and loathe western democracy.
  And there are plenty of anarchists that embrace violence.
  Stick with alt-left or more direct pejoratives.
  
  I include them because they are taking about "revolution" and the only way you successfully overthrow a federal government is by force which necessitates the use of tanks even if they haven't considered the fact that the fetal government is going to fight back with tanks and many, if not all of them, will be killed.
  
  That's not what the word means. At all.
  It's about being on the side of the tanks -- specifically the Tienanmen Square tanks. It is literally the opposite of wanting to use tanks to overthrow the government.
  I understand how you're using it. I'm just warning you that you are very much going your own way with this word and are going to look foolish if you do so.
  
  From Wikipedia:
  Tankie has its origins in British political rhetoric. It has since become a popular pejorative in English-language social media.[22] In 2017, left-wing writer Carl Beijer argued that there are two distinct uses of the term tankie. The original, which was "exemplified in the sending of tanks into Hungary to crush resistance to Soviet communism". More generally, a tankie is someone who tends to support "militant opposition to capitalism", and a more modern online variation, which means "something like 'a self-proclaimed communist who indulges in conspiracy theories and whose rhetoric is largely performative.'"
  
  Yes, that's what I said. The tanks are operated by authoritarians AGAINST the rebels. They are not tanks operated by rebels. Tankies will bend any logic to defend and support authoritarian governments so long as they present anti-capitalist.
  It is all about authoritarianism. If you call an anarchist a "tankie", you're going to look like you're being totally disingenuous.
  
  And yet, Wikipedia doesn't agree with your opinion.
  
  Ok. Thanks.
  
  I recall someone saying the term originates somewhere online, and describes literally those who are cool with the tanks coming out and government authoritarianism, so long as the people being run over by the tanks are seen as fascist righties.
  But the other comment sums it up pretty well, the lefty extremist Boogeyman is real, it's just a tiny minority being amplified. The right don't like 'em, the rest of us don't like 'em either.
  
  On the side of the Tienanmen Square tanks is how I originally saw it, though it apparently dates back to the Soviets sending tanks to squash the anti-Communist rebels in Hungary.
  
  Your total misunderstanding perfectly proves the point of the previous post about "tankie" being a term picked up by the far-right and taken way beyond its meaning.
  Tankies are authoritarian far left types, such as for example Stalinists (so, not just any general Communist, but the kind of Communist that has a hard-on for "strong leaders" who murder by the millions those who such leaders themselves deem as "enemies of the Party"). They're the Nazis of the Left (which is probably why they're right alongside actual Nazis and assorted fascists in siding with Putin against Ukraine).
  Meanwhile woke people are just moral liberals, often not even being leftwing in the true sense of the word because they don't actually care about inequality in general or about a better life for the many, but instead are selective about the "injustices" they care about, invariably leaving out wealth-inequality (the biggest source of discriminatory treatment by a very large margin) and often claiming their own "identitarian" group is a "victim" of "injustice" and demanding compensation, which is really just doing what's best for themselves personally but hidding behind the group, in other words being greedy whilst using leftie-like political structures and language.
  In the Left-Right political axis, "woke" covers a wide range from "mildly leftwing" to "business loving hard-core neoliberal" (neoliberalism is just "money liberalism" so it dovetails nicelly with moral liberalism), because "woke" it's not at all about the greatest good for the greatest number but rather it's about freedom in the moral sphere.
  
  You clearly have no clue whatsoever what you're talking about, and I don't mean it as an insult: it's a plain statement of fact.
  The idea that people obcessed with things like LGBT rights want a Revolution Of The Proletariat in which they confiscate the Means Of Production from the hands of the Burgeouisie and set up a Dictatorship Of The Proletariate as a way to bring about a system were everybody has the same (i.e. Communism) is hilarious and displays trully amazing, world-beating ignorance on the subject.
  
  LOL!
  
  tankie = woke that is all you need to know
  That sounds super lazy and useless. Like a good example of what I was saying.
- Sync has this functionality if you pay for it
  I just use the very free and very effective block function
  
  My beliefs aren't so fragile that I need to protect them from beliefs that don't agree. We need to engage with the extremists. We need to call them out and let each other know that the person we are talking to is a bad faith actor who isn't interested in a discussion or understands but to simply spread their extremist message of hate and intolerance. If we block them they continue unchallenged.
  
  If you have the energy for that, go nuts.
  Being that the bulk of the loudmouths are bad faith trolls no sort of reasoned discussion is going to get through.
  If enough people block them they eventually get quarantined into their own echo chambers and the oxygen of getting off on pwning the libs will run out
  
  If we block them they continue unchallenged.
  That's why they should be blocked at the instance level, not individual users.
  Engage them? No thanks. All that does is help train their LLMs.
  
  I don't like the idea of blocking people who have different ideas but who aren't otherwise doing anything problematic. I'm talking with someone this morning who has the most ridiculous ideas about how the world works. His ideas are just nonsense and he advances them with great confidence. I have him flagged so that as soon as I saw his name come up as red this morning I knew that I needed to slow down and careful about my response. I don't want to block him because the things he says offer a chance for people who know how the world works to respond, perhaps influencing the perception of a reader who comes along later.
  If you want to block people, by all means block them, but you're taking yourself out of the conversation, not them. That was the problem with the blocking system on Reddit. If you blocked someone you took them out of the conversation. On Lemmy when you block someone you take yourself out of the conversation. Unless you want to operate in an echo bunker where you can only see people whose ideas agree with yours that's a bad thing.
- I just block. I don't want them wasting my time.
  
  I don't want to live in an echo bunker. I have encountered very few people on Lemmy who I needed to block personally. In fact, there are only four on my blocked list and I have no idea why they're there. I suspect that I accidentally blocked them while trying to do something else.
  Blocking someone on Reddit took them out of the conversation. Blocking someone on Lemmy takes you out of the conversation.
- Hol up...
  
  What?
  
  Is anti-Canadian propagandist a real thing?
  
  Definitely. The Chinese and the Russians spread lots of anti-Canadian propaganda that is then picked up by the weak minded at both extreme ends of the political spectrum and spread on Facebook, Reddit, Lemmy, and other social media, mostly by basement dwelling edge lords.
  
  There was literally a spate of news posts about Chinese interference in the last election, with good evidence to show it happened. The only two options are there are anti-Canadian actors or foreign nations are interfering in our elections for Canada's benefit rather than their own. The former might be hard to believe, but the latter is downright delusional.

105 comments