10mo ago

About the troll problem

Hey, so I'm on a different instance, and I hope it's not out of place for me to post here. I really like Mbin for its design and features, and I made this account specifically for interacting with LGBTQ+ posts.

Anyway, there are a few things I'd like to discuss, if that's okay.

First, I'd like to know if it's necessary for me to report posts if they've already been reported on Blahaj. Like, is it just a federation delay that causes the bad posts to still be visible for a while, or is my reporting necessary to get them removed?

I've noticed that the recent troll posts are coming from lemmy.today and eviltoast.org, and I'm wondering if these instances should maybe be considered for de-federation from Blahaj. It seems like one or two users are ban-evading by making new accounts on these two instances. Are there any legit users that would be affected by this de-federation?

Also, I wonder if I made a mistake by boosting a few threads recently. Like did I accidentally get the attention of these transphobes? Should I refrain from boosting?

Again, I hope it's okay for me to post this here.

30 comments

First, I’d like to know if it’s necessary for me to report posts if they’ve already been reported on Blahaj. Like, is it just a federation delay that causes the bad posts to still be visible for a while, or is my reporting necessary to get them removed?
It's complex. If an admin does an instance ban and removes comments, then the removals don't federate. If a mod removes the post, or if an admin manually removes a post, post by post, the removal federates. We have a bot that works around that problem though, by manually removing posts one by one, so the most helpful thing you can do is make a post saying "Troll account, please remove all posts" or something like that, rather than reporting every post.
Also, I wonder if I made a mistake by boosting a few threads recently. Like did I accidentally get the attention of these transphobes? Should I refrain from boosting?
Nope, it was nothing to do with you. This is just some kid that got banned from a conservative community on one instance, so he created his own on another instance. That community got banned because he was transphobic, and so, he's having a tantrum, and doing more transphobia.
Again, I hope it’s okay for me to post this here.
More than ok. And I apologise, I sent you a DM about reporting posts, without realising you'd made this post here!
And, notably, we have now defederated from lemmy.today.
- Yay!! Thank you so much for this wonderful place!
  💖️🥰️💖️
- i thought it was someone trying to kill a small instance by making lemmy.blahaj.zone defed

Okay, so here is a running list of the recent transphobic trolls from lemmy.today
@DiscordMod1990yyyyx@lemmy.today
@TiredOfWokeMods@lemmy.today
@Hshsjsjsjjsnsnshs555@lemmy.today
@VeganTomato@lemmy.today
@Vegan2mato@lemmy.today
There is definitely a problem of transphobic trolls coming from that instance.
- Look at you, ... oh wait, you're probably mentally unable to do this due to self-hatred.

You’re not using an account on Blahaj so not much of what you’re asking matters as you’re not affected. Your reports would go to your admin and whoever’s instance the posts are on.
Some reason you may still be able to see posts could be due to you using mbin. Not sure if mod reports and removals have been fixed to federate correctly honestly.
- They do not yet:
  https://github.com/MbinOrg/mbin/issues/248
  
  To clarify, Mbin reports do make it to lemmy as of this PR, but lemmy moderator actions taken, such as removing comments, does not then make it back to Mbin. Not exactly the most clear situation to be in right now, but it's been iterative process to get all the systems correctly hooked up to the fediverse.
  My post didn't make it to blahaj or fedia 🤔 that's not good... the other one after did, though
- not much of what you’re asking matters as you’re not affected.
  I don't understand. This account of mine is only used to interact with LGBTQ+ communities, mostly on Blahaj. Browsing Blahaj communities on Mbin, I do not see anything from instances Blahaj has de-federated. Isn't that how de-federation works?
  
  No, they only apply if you are using an account on that instance. So only whoever fedia.io chooses not to federate with as that’s what you are using.

I have no vote in who de-feds on your instance. But if trasnphobic content seems to be coming solely from those two domains, neither of which I've encountered before, that certainly seems like something worth investigating. Have you gone on those instances to find out if they have actual communities vs being stood up for just one or a handful of trolls? I think if they have communities of people then the better move would be to ask their moderators / admins to do something about it. If they appear to be troll farms, fuck 'em.
- The eviltoast.org instance doesn't seem to have much local content, and a recent post asks:
  Why has Lemmy.ml and feddit.UK defederated from eviltoast
  My instance seems to have de-federated from it already as well.
  The lemmy.today instance has more local content and engagement, but I can't seem to interact with its communities from my Mbin account. So I can't contact their admins and report issues.
  Maybe the mod from Blahaj that removed their content can report the problem to their instance?

Lemmy.today has rules against transphobia. Maybe report?
- I can't seem to interact with any communities from that instance, so I can't report anything to their admins.
  
  If you can give me any more details, let me know. Looking at your instance, I only see two communities from lemmy.today, and one looks like it was deleted, so should only be their announcements one. Is the one you're having trouble interacting with the potentially deleted one?
  Or do you mean users rather than communities? If you're trying to report threads or comments, are they potentially already removed from blahaj and then it won't let you interact with them?
  To sum up some things about cross instance interaction as of this date:
  reports do propagate to lemmy
  moderator actions do not propagate back
  direct messages don't work cross instance
  
  You could try making an account there and DM the admin directly, I think they have open signups, part of the reason they're such a spam infested hellhole.

Mod from 196 who had nothing else better to do than clear out the mod log of 300+ reports of the same user spamming from the same instance https://files.catbox.moe/rypu0b.png
I fully believe either lemmy.today either supports these actions, can't deal with them, or refuses to deal with them at this point. We've had to clean up so much spam on 196 within the last few days it's getting tedious. Either way, I personally vote for defederation until they clean up their act.
It's genuinely frustrating to deal with all of this. Doesn't help that Lemmy doesn't have good mod tools. At some point I had to double check it was even being cleared, despite the user being banned and all content removed.
- We're getting a bot set up that will help with this. It will be fired from matrix, and I'll share the details with you once we've got it set up
  
  Thank you, Ada. That's nice to hear. Sorry you had to design something like this to solve a problem that only exists from lemmy's devs not working on their own successful software.
- If reports are federating across, then a good deal of them could be from me. Is it necessary to report each one, so they can all be dealt with, or is that just annoying? I thought that they stack to the same user and that mods can easily mass-delete. Is that not how it works?
  
  I genuinely do not know, I just know that a fellow mod banned and removed all posts, and I had nothing better to do than take care of it as I wait to pass out.
  I'm not gonna get mad at you or other users for reporting bigots and rule breakers. If I came across as mad at you or the other reporters, that is not my intentions as I am just up at 3 AM for some reason.
  
  Nope, each report comes through as a seperate report. If multiple people report the same post, then that's multiple reports, one after the other. If someone reports every post from a user, that's multiple reports.
  The best thing you can do is a few reports, and if you find more, make another report saying "All of this accounts posts are trolls, and need to be removed", because we have an option to ban someone and remove all of their content.
- I vote to defederate from lemmy.today and 196

2 posts below there's my post about an eviltoast.org account. myfirst guess was an attempt to kill the instance by making other instances (especially bigger ones) defederate
(i also have a fedia.io account)

- You dumb fuck, you're one of the transphobic trolls this post is bringing up, don't bring that "defederation over opinions" talking point up in here, We all know you're just scared they'll defederate your spam hole, I hope they do for all our sake.

30 comments