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 think people who antagonize others for no real reason, lean into troll behaviour. And it is hard to enforce because currently we have to make a new rule for every troll type we run into.
I have been told it is "mean" when I do this. So I've gone back to just ignoring. It's been a while since I fed a troll. The number of trolls have not gone down tho.
I do like having some sort of criteria for a troll. I have seen some trolls do what you listed but it gets turned back into something like: sealioning/concern trolling = genuine beliefs, pedantic = ASD. It makes getting a consensus hard.
Oh it's definitely super hard to figure out, and the more details you put on the rules the more likely someone is to show up and say "Well actually the rules didn't say i couldn't post a sealion question at 3:24 PM local time on a Tuesday so I thought it was alright."
I would assume the trick would be to examine the frequency of the behavior. Someone, heck probably everyone has done those things on accident or at the very least done something that sounds like they were. For example, sealioning is a very easy one to accidentally do and sound like you're being factitious, as there is no tone indicators in text posts. Of course, that's why these techniques are ones trolls tend to use, there's plausible deniability in "just asking questions." Furthermore, nobody wants to turn away someone who is seriously just asking questions, but in the process trolls can weaponize our goodwill, and there's really not a great answer.
My thought would be that if someone is showing up to every single comment section sealioning or being incredibly pedantic, I don't think they're making a serious attempt at having a meaningful conversation. (Of course, this brings up the question "Is meaningful conversation the goal here?" which is full of it's own debate.)
Where you draw the line is the important part, because yeah, some people will accidentally use these rhetorical devices or say something that sounds like we are. Even worse, if you draw the line at say, 20% of posts, trolls will do exactly 19.99% of posts, this is why a lot of places on the internet that do have a blanket "No trolling" rule and it just ends up being enforced in a vibes based way.
Great point. I remember I when I first got accused of sealioning, I didn't even know what the term meant and had never even heard of the term before. By the time I looked it up, someone had banned me for it. After finally figure out what it was, I still don't think I did it. lol
I personally think that "sealioning" one of the more stupid and way too vague terms of the online world. I see so many accuse people of it, but I see rare examples of it actually happening.