It's no secret that the fediverse has trolls. Trolling is IMO antisocial and disruptive. We have a few on dbzer0, with one casually saying they have 100 alts. I have to say, I'm unsure how to deal with this. I'm unsure how to deal with someone this dead-set on bullying people, even wanting to recall admins. I have been told this troll probably has ASD (as offensive as that is to me) and that I can't impose my beliefs on others. But I have never banned people for disagreeing with me, my problem was that I and others were trolled and harassed. You could tell trolls things like "please leave me alone" or "stop replying to me multiple times" or even "stop following me" and that does not get actioned because it is not against the rules to harrass people this way. Look at the disengage rule, it doesn't apply to these situations. And try hitting the search button for "troll" on the rules.
I've been told yes these trolls are annoying and disliked by many (if not most) people and yes they drive away people like me from participating at all on lemmy or matrix, but that is not enough of a reason to ban. There are also trolls who report everyone they argue with and use their account solely to argue and troll. I don't want dbzer0 to be known as the place that houses trolls that get anyone who argues with said trolls banned. Report abuse was not ok in other forums, but it is rarely actioned here. The trolls I am talking about have their accounts housed on dbzer0 btw, a place that is not supposed to be freeze peach.
I know many of our users like to tell off right-wingers and libs. That can be fine if it doesn't get out of hand ("kys" is explicitly banned). I could say, let's not allow people to troll, but maybe some only want leftists to not to be trolled. For instance, one group of trolls we have is antivegan. Is that considered an example of leftists that shouldn't be trolled (and I do mean trolled, harassed - not just disagreeing)? Right now, there is a lot of room for trolling all sorts of people. One reason for our zionist rule is because we had zionist trolls that weren't breaking our other rules even though our code of conduct does not allow supporting genocide. Our anti-AI rule was because others were harassing some of our stable diffusion mods. People have been sent nasty PMs as well. You can troll on this instance and get away with it as long as it is not explicitly stated as not allowed in our rules. I have been told it has to be explicitly stated, one of our trolls is a rules lawyer who believes they were given permission to troll before their account was made.
So tell me about your experiences with trolls. How do we fight them? How can we change or add to our rules? Which trolls have been bothering you?
This meta post was finally posted in response to my comment here:
I agree that it is antisocial, but it seems like what you're talking about here is not something that people should be banned for. Trolling is super hard to identify, because some people just genuinely have the troller's opinion, and you can't just ban people for having a certain opinion. I mean, you can, but this is a slippery slope that quickly lands you in the area of "the rulers control what people are allowed to say"...
It feels like this is more of a personal problem. If someone is being obnoxious, just block them. Blocking them is much faster than creating a new account.
I don't like to say this because it sounds like victim blaming, but this is not my intention. Trolls shouldn't be trolling, but trolls continue to do their thing because they can get a rise out of you. They will stop once they don't get a rise out of you anymore. So the easiest way to get rid of them is to just not care about them. I can't understand why you would ever write something like "stop replying to me". Instead of that, just press block, and they're gone. Pressing block 100 times still only takes like 100 seconds, annoying yes, but it's very likely they'll stop long before that, because it's also annoying to keep making more accounts for no "reward" (getting a rise out of people).
As a personal experience, I comment a lot, and I've just never experienced a troll with me personally. I've had situations where I had to stop replying, but I don't think they were trolling, I think they were just dumb and obsessive.
But I'm also no mod or admin, so maybe me not having an "A" or "M" next to my name shields me. I think those markers shouldn't exist unless you're speaking "as an admin" (i.e. explaining a ban). Maybe just using a second account without these markers might help you out.
Ordinarily I would say blocking is enough, but I have seen trolls get reported over and over, by different people, and there isn't much that can be done. Those reports have to be ignored. I can also block one account on my side (unblocking to see reports by them and blocking again), but another account trolling very similarly will also start doing the same thing rinse and repeat. The reward continues to exist as long as there are multiple people to troll under each new account. If we let trolls say whatever they want and not moderate it, we wouldn't have a need for any rules, admins, moderators, anything at all. It would be a free speech Nazi bar. I've actually read so much reprehensible shit on lemmy that I'm surprised you haven't run into this.
Edit: I forgot to say for the "stop replying to me" this is because we have a disengage rule. If someone says "disengage" you have to stop. But, people will say some other variation instead and complain we didn't moderate a disengage violation. I've also seen trolls like spam people, multiple comments per reply, and that gets hard to track for me to understand where/when the disengage happened.
It sounds like a rule of traumatizing the many for the benefit of no one, including the troll. Ban them. If the community is messing with your mental health and the admins are inflexible, maybe step away from modding. I quit modding a community about which I cared very much because the owner couldn't keep their own rules and played dumb when confronted. That community is dead as a doornail, now.