this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024

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politics

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244

A note on Universal Monk: (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by jordanlund@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

176 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So we've seen the complaints and the reports and boy oh boy are there complaints and reports.

I've discussed the account with the other mods and admins multiple times, and while we agree the volume is a lot, it doesn't point to a botfarm or multiple people using the account.

Obsessive? Absolutely, but not technically rule breaking... Until today.

Today they indescriminately posted the same story three times from three different sources apparently solely to flood the channel showing a decided lack of judgement.

It's a valid story from a valid source, the original has been kept here:

https://lemmy.world/post/21098916

The others have been removed as duplicates.

I'm also applying a 15 day temp ban on the account.

"15 days? That's oddly specific! What's in 15... OH!"

top 50 comments

sorted by: hot top controversial new old

[–] SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago (2 children)

[–] pooperNickel@lemm.ee 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

RIP. I'm sure he'll be back with alts, but here are the final stats:

UniversalMonk stats pulled 10/25/2024, 3:20:53 PM EDT

Account created 78 days ago (8/8/2024, 9:21:38 PM EDT)
6,272 submissions (= 2,017 posts + 4,255 comments)
80.4 avg submissions / day
11.9 mins avg time between submissions (assuming 8 hrs of sleep / day)
87,814 downvotes accrued (~ 1,126 downvotes / day, 0.20 u:d ratio)
- -70,379 net reputation score
- ~ 1.3 mins between downvotes on avg
- ~ 14.9 avg downvotes / submission
  - ~ 13.2 avg downvotes / comment
  - ~ 19.5 avg downvotes / post
  - ~ -11.4 avg reputation score / comment
  - ~ -13.4 avg reputation score / post

~ 16 typed pages (3,789 words) written / day

236,631 total words written as comments, 58,852 total words written in posts
~ 76 mins / day writing comments (40 wpm)
~ 32 mins / day making posts (40 wpm + 30 secs / post)

~ 140 hrs commenting/posting in 78 days, which breaks down to:

~ 108 mins / day
11.2% of their waking hours

None of this takes into account time reading others' posts/comments, or alts this user may have. See the modlog for any communities they've been banned from.

Top 5 duplicate submissions (of 914 exact matches and 683 which are 70%+ similar)

spoiler 27 x 'Thank you! :)'

27 x 'Thank you! :)'

26 x 'Thank you!'

22 x 'Yep!'

22 x 'Agreed.'

:::

Fetch user stats yourself with: https://codeberg.org/p00perNickel/lemmy-user-stats

[–] geekwithsoul@lemm.ee 6 points 5 days ago (2 children)

I do have to admit to feeling at least a little validated for having called him out way more for his pattern of behavior when it came to interactions with other users as opposed to his posts. His posts were bad but the way he engaged with anyone and everyone was downright toxic. /politics is a better place with him banned, and now Lemmy will be a better place for him being gone. I'm sure he's still out there on some platform playing the poor victim, as I doubt this was a "teachable moment", but I sincerely hope he gets help somewhere. It's cliché, but that dude had issues.

[–] pooperNickel@lemm.ee 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Not sure if you saw this https://lemm.ee/post/45848048

I read this as "leave us alone about trolls, just block them". Because while they say to report them first, we all saw how that went with UM. Lots of us were ignored for weeks. So Lemmy is only better than Facebook in that it's smaller. So fucking disappointing. Trolls will be free to troll.

[–] geekwithsoul@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah, thanks! I saw it but unfortunately buried in work this week and last, so haven't been very active lately. But I did just reply in that thread to counter some revisionist history from the mods. :)

[–] pooperNickel@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I just went and read your comment. Thank you for writing that. Very well said. I wish I had more patience like you do.

[–] geekwithsoul@lemm.ee 2 points 1 day ago

Thanks! I'm not sure how much is patience and how much is just being resigned to the mods making the wrong decision on this one. I think the rule change is just punishing the community for their own past failings, but I don't really see anyone being able to change their minds on this one. And being a mod - especially on /politics - is by definition a thankless and difficult job, so I do understand where they're coming from in part. Unfortunately they seem to have learned all the wrong lessons.

[–] pooperNickel@lemm.ee 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

I couldn't agree with you more. Thank you for calling him out. I can definitely say that comments like yours help me keep my resolve and think "it's not just me! Everyone can see it!"

If you and others hadnt kept calling him on his shit I would've eventually probably just stopped using Lemmy tbh. Users like that absolutely shit in the pool. I'm sure he'd have a lot of whining to do about how he was persecuted for having a different point of view but we all know that was bullshit. Luckily we don't have to endure that whining!

[–] geekwithsoul@lemm.ee 5 points 4 days ago

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Somebody crossed a line!

[–] SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

It was only a matter of time.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago

Taking it to PMs is a fast track to getting Admins involved and Admins do not fuck around.

[–] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

@jordanlund@lemmy.world did this get reversed? Because I'm seeing posts again when I'm not signed in on a mobile client. Or did they move to another instance?

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

You might be seeing their posts in other communities, this ban only extends to Politics on lemmy.world.

[–] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Ah, I was thinking that it was a ban from lemmy.world completely.

Poop.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Apparently they have now been banned permanently. It's in the modlog.

[–] HelixDab2@lemm.ee 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

How do I get to that? I saw something posted yesterday by, I think by SatansMaggortyCumFart? But I can't find it again.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

From the web interface, modlog is down at the bottom.

[–] SacredHeartAttack@lemmy.world 76 points 1 week ago (3 children)

HOW do you post here 1.9k times in two months? I have like 7 posts in over a year and I feel somewhat active.

I’m not complaining about any decisions mods have made, I’m legitimately asking cause that seems crazy. 32 posts a day is a LOT.

[–] jordanlund@lemmy.world 40 points 1 week ago (2 children)

I told them in PMs that, as a mod, I self limit to 3 posts a day for fear of being seen as putting my thumb on the scale and influencing the discourse.

And that's in the groups I mod(!)

He's over that by a factor of 10+

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[–] very_well_lost@lemmy.world 39 points 1 week ago

32 posts a day is a LOT.

Honestly, that's not even that impressive... It's only 4 posts per hour over a 8 hour work day, which is completely achievable if Internet trolling is your hobby of choice.

What's really impressive is the number of comments. I won't speculate on Monk's motives (out of fear of running afoul of this community's rules) except to say that they seem extremely motivated to argue with anyone and everyone who posts a disagreeing comment. Their tactic is to bicker with any dissenting voices (without actually engaging with their arguments) to the point of exhaustion so that no one will bother engaging anymore — a very specific strategy I have to imagine is designed to shift the Overton window a particular way.

Fortunately, their efforts seem to have been mostly ineffective given the number of people around here who continue to call out their BS. So keep fighting the good fight, I guess!

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[–] MyOpinion@lemm.ee 68 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (42 children)

Good they have been trolling us for a while. Also, thank you for your efforts and you are appreciated.

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[–] pooperNickel@lemm.ee 60 points 1 week ago (18 children)

Firstly, thank you for that ban. Did you notice the duplicate section in my comment? Low effort comments, dismissiveness, refusing to engage in good faith even when someone treats him very respectively, and copy-pasting the same responses many times is only one of several signs this is a troll. This behavior breaks rule 4.

No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.

I do not understand how anyone could possibly look at the evidence I provided and say "nah, not a troll".

For your convenience:

Top 10 duplicate (total 617 exact and 318 fuzzy, 70% or more similar) submissions from UniversalMonk@lemmy.world found.

spoiler 'Thank you!' x 27

'Yep!' x 24

spoiler 'k' x 23

'Agreed!' x 21

spoiler 'I don't know what you mean.' x 20

'I don't have to explain anything to you. Thanks!' x 14

spoiler 'Right?' x 13

'Every vote for Harris is stealing a vote from thir...' x 12

spoiler 'Exactly!' x 11

'To cut through the nonsense and save everyone time...' x 10

[–] geekwithsoul@lemm.ee 49 points 1 week ago (10 children)

I want to second this. I understand the mods prefer a case-by-case approach, but I think that leaves a very specific pathway for bad actors to exploit. Monk was posting a purely insane amount of comments along with a very high but not as insane number of posts, and almost all of it was low-value, and often copy-pasted from a previous comment.

Do the mods even have easy access to the kind of data your script was pulling? I think that may be part of the issue is that the mod tools with Lemmy are lacking/limited.

[–] Archer@lemmy.world 44 points 1 week ago (1 children)

He had a standard copypasta for people accusing him of being a troll. If that’s not trolling I don’t know what is

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[–] odelik@lemmy.today 40 points 1 week ago (18 children)

I think the bigger issue here is the indiscriminate obvious trolling.

The fact that it took "bad judgment" and not the reading between the lines for their sealioning and bad faith arguments and faux "friend" comments points towards the need for strengthening our community standards.

Allowing people to come in and troll under the guise of "I'm following the rules lolololol" makes the mods look like rubes.

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[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 33 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I’ve handled users like this similarly in some of the communities I head up here. I try not to touch the content unless it is obvious misinformation and that violates instances rules. That said, if their content and or comments are clearly intended to create discord, pester, or pester in a passive aggressive manor, then they get the boot.

I wish we had some sort of sort filter that hid aggressively downvoted content and comments. That way the “knights of the new” could bury problematic content.

People don’t like the idea of mods having to censor users, but they also don’t want their feed full of downvoted posts or infighting.

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[–] taiyang@lemmy.world 33 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Oh holy fuck it's only 15 days away! Anxiety!

Also having seen the guy, makes sense you can't ban bad takes (or at least, shouldn't) but my sense is he just likes to be infamous. Hell, this is a post about his banning, even! He's probably loving the attention.

Still, I've got my Lemmy heroes

obsessive posting can be used for good, like a certain maneuver named after a certain starship captain.

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[–] Roflmasterbigpimp@lemmy.world 33 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That boii went super saiya-cringe mode.

[–] SilentStorms@lemmy.dbzer0.com 38 points 1 week ago (1 children)

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[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 31 points 1 week ago

"I'll keep posting what I want, when I want, where I want, and respond to people how I want. Whether it is "working" or not. Thank you!" - Monk

This is when I realized it was all in bad faith and I stopped giving him the benefit of the doubt.

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