Okay so here’s what happened.
There is a mod of some AI-generated image forums who has been slinging out bans for “anti-AI trolling” to people who have never participated in their community, apparently more or less at random. Full disclosure, I am one of those people, and I’m confident I have never done any anti-AI trolling.
Apparently the justification for this is that other people are being aggressively hateful to this mod, coming in and being incredibly abusive, transphobic, insulting her for alleged alcoholism and making fake pictures of her and generally just being horrible. Conveniently, one of these people showed up in the thread where we were talking about it, on cue, and started slinging around horribleness which provided a convenient cover for people to say “And THAT’s why we have to be really strict with the bans!” type of things. We never really got to the bottom of what the connection was between that and the random bans to other people who were longstanding accounts that didn’t seem to be doing any of those things.
Anyway, now another abusive alt of the (now obviously bannned) abusive alt that originally stirred up trouble has made a pitch-perfect effort to inflame divisions and create a balkanization between the “pro AI” people, centered around dbzer0 (edit: and blahaj), and “anti AI” people, centered around everywhere else.
This is two identical posts, made to two separate communities which are guaranteed to have totally opposite takes on it based on their different levels of information about the issue, which will then lead everyone to assume that the other community is just being horrible about it on purpose when they draw different conclusions:
(Edit: The troll has now been banned, so I can’t link to their posts anymore. Just imagine this post, except made by one of the trolls who are featured in the comments of that post, you can dig in the modlog or in spoiler text of some other comments to see some of what they were saying. Anyway, the troll posted the exact same complaint about being “unfairly” banned both to lemmy.world, where they got tons of sympathy and upvotes, and to dbzer0, where people who were aware of what they were up to gave them derision and downvotes.)
Like I said, if the goal is to create division and heated argument between two opposing “camps,” this is pretty much as perfect as you can get it. I expect it to work, at least to a certain amount, to get people embittered towards one another and arguing about the issue impassioned that the other side is wrong and stupid.
I can’t find the link right now, but there was someone on reddit who claimed that they used to do this professionally (trying to disrupt online communities so that organized shilling could succeed better there, because the previous coherence that they had had had been replaced by confusion and bickering, and then they could insert bullshit without it being pushed back on as strongly.) It’s fascinating. What they described isn’t exactly like this, but it definitely sort of rings similar to me. Just to throw that out there.
Also, UniversalMonk is involved, because of course he is.
Edit: Fun with grammar
The latest anti-AI alt made purely to harass Mystic seems to be banned and their content removed, so the links are broken, FYI.
Edit: Also your quotes around anti-AI trolls - which they literally are - is definitely putting a spin on the reality here. Makes me think your ban was entirely appropriate.
Just saw your edit. When did MigratingApe do any anti-AI trolling? The whole point here is that random people are getting caught up in this who are objectively not doing anything remotely related to anti-AI trolling, hence the quotes.
Are these “people getting caught up in this” in the room with us now?
deleted by creator
Yes. The top rated comment is one of them, as is MigratingApe as I mentioned.
Except there are plenty who are doing the trolling, and the quotes are dismissive of it entirely. Despite you noting that there are in your other comment.
I have no idea, nor do I care to investigate how a mod handles things on a small community.
Here are a few things we do know:
The fact that there are people, such as yourself, getting so riled up over being banned from a community they claim to not have any interest in is also odd. Why would being banned from a community you dont care about even matter?
But let’s not pretend there aren’t trolls when there clearly are. This also isn’t the first time this sort of thing has happened.
Some people are just shitty. Banning and blocking are handy tools for that.
Everything you said in this is totally on point. Exactly what I was gonna say, but you did it better. Great post, friend.
I feel like this isn’t the post / the community for you then. In my opinion it is relevant whether or not someone who’s being banned actually objectively did anything, and I feel like I’m not alone in that. But if you are convinced that it’s totally irrelevant (and at the same time that what some other people did is super relevant), then I feel like we can agree to disagree on it and conclude our conversation at this point.
I’m fairly certain I don’t need to spend hours investigating individual actions to be a part of the fediverselore community.
So yeah, we can stop right there.
Oh. IDK why I didn’t see that coming.
Anyway, the post before it was deleted was more or less a carbon copy of this post, except that it was made by one of the trolls, who actually do deserve to be banned. And so, all of lemmy.world took a look at that and said, “Yeah that’s messed up they shouldn’t ban you for no reason,” and all of dbzer0 took a look at that and said “But you’re clearly a twat so of course they banned you, YDI”. I don’t know if the two camps had a chance to have each notice the other and start fighting, but people are already talking in these comments about a reason to block all of dbzer0 as a result, which I think was exactly the kind of intended response for this to generate.
Probably their goal, yes.
Yep, I’m aware of the posts, I just wanted to point out two things - that they were deleted so no longer a good reference, and the quotes around anti-AI trolls - which as you say, there absolutely are, and were in that original thread you linked - comes across as dismissing the idea that they exist.
If anyone is getting that impression, then hopefully me and others talking extensively about them and their real existence, in the post text and in the comments, will dissuade them from it.
I would hope so, but as we know many people dont read past a headline/title.
I’m just sharing how it reads when you put it in quotes. Like if I said:
Wouldn’t exactly come across like a compliment. So having it in quotes in the title reads, to me, like you’re being dismissive rather than trying to differentiate users who got caught up, likely due to timing of their downvote, or down votes being their only interactions with a community.
Which, I will point out, takes some effort when its a small community, even on Lemmy.