No Stupid Questions

First, no one knows if the picture is someone connected or a stolen cam footage to use. So we don't know any identity. Could be automated or could be individually sent out. More important is the question of restrictions of postings in some way. How would one do this before the first attempts by each new user profile? When they first started there were a few other names used, but for whatever reason (ease or maybe enjoying the attention now) Nicole has become the one seen, through various instances that would each have to set up their own ban.

As for what the point is, that could be asked of so many phishing and spam attempts. Often times they're so bad that even if you wanted to, the links are incomplete or don't make sense. Spam calls can be the same way. Usually letting them go to voicemail gets them to hang up before anything is left, but I've heard some live and recorded where it doesn't even get through the spiel. What was the point? Maybe to establish a connection...or maybe just badly planned implementation.

Anyway, no one knows yet about Nicole, and honestly if it wasn't just the single name and picture/info, it would all just be part of the constant spam that's out there. Perhaps "they" hit on a formula to retain recognition, but now just don't know what to do with it.

I think it's likely to be a pig-butchering scam. Essentially, it's a catfish who lulls people into a false sense of security using stolen photos, and once that has worked, they try to scam them. I've received 3 Nicole messages, each one with a different photo, and because the photos are blurry, along with TinEye and Google Reverse Image Search failing to detect them, I believe the photos are actually stills from a video, which would explain how they've evaded detection. It's also possible the photos were just photos that got deleted long ago, and the catfish is using this to their advantage since deleted photos would not get detected.

On one of the Nicole accounts was a photo of a buttplug, and in that photo, an old white man was visible in the reflection. Once this was pointed out to "Nicole", the photo was deleted. So whatever their intentions are, they surely can't be good. Their accounts exist across instances, so it may be difficult to effectively block and ban them.

Who is Nicole? What does she want???

ITT: Lemmy users making conspiracy theories of stolen photos, without ever actually clicking the links and investigating.

Yes, it's her. She's promoting her peertube live broadcasts. When I clicked, I was one of 3 viewers, and she was just sitting in a dark room, illuminated only by her computer monitor, smoking a cigerette and not saying anything. The video was blurry, and it was boring.

My theory is, she's someone who IS nerdy in a tech way, and genuinely does love the fediverse.....but if I would have typed anything, I'm sure she would have probably promoted an adult cam streaming site.

I'm fairly sure she, and possibly a team helping her, directly create and control the bots.

Funny story though. Before she was a thing, while I was still trying to understand the fediverse I asked a lot of queations. One of the questions I asked was, what was stopping someone from creating duplicate accounts on different instances. To I was told "you can". Then I asked what would stop someone from making thousands of duplicate accounts. To which I was told "you can". Then I asked what was stopping someone from making thousands of duplicate bots to spam the entire fediverse.

I was laughed at, and told that would never happen, and it COULDN'T happen in a defederated environment. So I did what I always do when I don't understand something. I ask questions.

I asked "Why is it not possible in the fediverse? What stops it?"

And I never got a straight answer. Just mocked, and told I was stupid for suggesting it could happen here.

Now I don't know how many bots she has, but I'd venture that's a few dozen thousand. Like 20-40,000 of them. And probably 80% of them are banned at any given time. So she creates more, and then those get banned, and she creates more, and those get banned. Meanwhile the total number of bots grows.

So, I was mostly asking what stops this behavior from a public posting perspective. I hadn't even considered the idea of private messaging.

So technically I guess my question goes unanswered. Since Nicole ISN'T spamming communities. She's spamming users directly.

Still though. The amount of hubris that the fediverse is all encompassing protected from spam is mind boggling.

The only reason you don't see ads, and spam here isn't because it's not possible. It's because big money backers don't view this platform as having enough users to invest in.

If the fediverse was as big as twitter and facebook and myspace, then all the brands would absolutely set up accounts, and set up their own instances.

Now you could ban them.....but if they saw the fediverse as a worthy platform to invest in, they'd be paying 1000 people to every 1 moderator. And with money backing their 1000 posters, and the 1 mod being unpaid, and overworked, they would have a secret account that looks like a normal user. This account would ask to take over the abandoned community. Then, they'd instill a bunch of other "regular users" as mods to that community.

So now you have these power users. Lets take Blaze for an example. I'm not saying Blaze IS a corporate backed shadow figure account. I'm not saying that. I want that to be clear, that I'm not accusing him of anything. I'm using him as an example.

So lets say Blaze is now the head mod of like 17 different communities. He'd spend 2-3 years getting the platforms dtrrust. Then ensure ALL the other mods are also corporate backed.

Then the company would pour money to ensure when you think of Lemmy, you think of Lemmy.Instance

And I know you're thinking "But if they did that, you could just make a new instance". Sure, you could. But here's the biggest misconception on Lemmy. The average person (not the average current lemmy user, but the average person) does NOT give a shit about any of this.

If Verizon comes along and makes comics@Lemmy.instance and makes a bunch of comics that are subtle verizon ads, the average person would not give a shit. There'd be no rage. No migrating to a new instance. They'd just laugh, unaware it's an ad. "Ha ha ha. That's true about 5G biggest network!". Meanwhile you're yelling at them to move to a noncorporate network.

If you think I'm wrong, why is reddit still DOMINATING the fediverse. One single big subreddit is bigger than the whole fediverse combined. With the ads. With the corporate bullshit. Nobody is leaving.

You could say "But Lemmy is growing, and reddit is shrinking", and that's true.

I came from reddit. But I didn't leave reddit. I was banned because AI flipped out over nothing. Lemmy was what I found when I googled "Sites similar to reddit". I've talked to people with similar stories on Lemmy.

The fediverse isn't growing due to being the better choice. It's growing because reddit is either intentionally banning users that they view as problematic towards their new layout, OR they're unintentionally downsizing due to bad AI. They probably assumed I'd just start a new account. My account was a 12 year old account. I was among the 1% of karma earners in 2022. I'm NOT starting over.

So, with my arrival, reddit shrinks by 1 user. Lemmy grows by 1 user. Now multiply by scale.

We are trying to figure it out: !nicole@feddit.org

I have no idea who that is. The fact that I don't see any posts by them means I probably blocked the profile because they were making massive numbers of posts.

Why don't you just block Nicole?

She told me I could call her fediverse chick. I believe that's her preferred nomenclature OP

A scam center, fraud factory, fraud park, scam factory or scam compound is a collection of large fraud organizations usually involved in human trafficking operations, generally found in Southeast Asia and usually operated by a criminal gang. Scam center operators lure foreign nationals to scam hubs, where they are forced into modern slavery, to scam internet users around the world into fraudulently buying cryptocurrencies or withdrawing cash via social media and online dating apps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scam_center