this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2025
178 points (99.4% liked)

Ask Lemmy

35950 readers
1823 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

As some of you may be aware, over the past few weeks there have been an increasing number of what I suspect are bots which will share one or even a few posts, all relevant to the communities they are shared in, at which point the account self-deletes. I’m torn as the stories are relevant, but they give me the impression of a narrative attack. I’ve seen only one of these accounts actually comment before deletion, otherwise they post and immediately nuke the account.

I have tagged mods and admins but have not heard any recognition on the problem. It’s also notable that by my impression this issue is getting worse. I noticed yesterday that communities I subscribe to which previously have not had this problem are now starting to receive these kinds of posts.

I want the fediverse to be a place to communicate with real people in good faith; this manner of posting runs contrary to that. So that begs the questions, is this actually a problem, and if so, what can be done about it?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Skavau@piefed.social 15 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

This is what blights so many small reddit alternatives.

The initial wave of users onto reddit clones often include a disproportionate amount of malcontents. A lot of people who don’t play well with others, who are banned from reddit (or at least banned from lots of subreddits) usually turn up first on these reddit alternatives and disrupt the community by repeatedly showing anti-social or disruptive, attention seeking behaviour. It’s not even necessarily related to any political persuasion. This stuff can collapse budding alternatives.

The first wave of new users on reddit alternatives are, in my experience, more likely to have a lot of problem users and since the sites are so small, and usually sparsely moderated, they are much more disruptive than they would be on reddit. The Fediverse is large enough to avoid the problems of that to some extent now (a problem user who makes alts to troll, and bait and harass is a lot more visible on a small reddit clone with 1000 users vs. 50,000) but there's something to be said by growing and ignoring the problems (as Reddit itself had done - which is why it's now a site utterly infested with bots and astroturfers and trolls etc).

The hope here is that the Fediverse can implement useful tools that disrupt the typical pattern of behaviour that these people present so they don't increase and fester as the network grows. Best to nip this stuff now whilst the userbase is manageable.