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!”
Are you familiar with toxoplasmosis? The disease that mutates into different forms so a bunch of different animals can host it and pass it along.
This is a long article but it’s really good, it’s worth a read and it predicted a lot of the discourse of the last decade: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/the-toxoplasma-of-rage/
The sort of gist of it is this: the more grey area / ambiguity in a topic, the more we pop our own identity into our stance on it. And so if that thing is controversy, we argue about it so much more if there’s room to self-insert our identity in that grey area. It spreads and spreads to a bunch of different hosts. It becomes a meme via argument by infecting a bunch of hosts to pass it along.
And that’s Monk.
Pretty early on, it was very clear that they had no actual understanding of the topics they were talking about. I tried in their first few weeks to engage with them and so did others. Only to find nothing there. No opinions, and all counter-arguments were clearly copy & pasted off of Wikipedia. Things like “we have X amount of members in Maine”.
Please.
Eventually they stopped trying to engage altogether, and instead moved into a deliberate pattern of line-toeing retorts. None in good faith. But, more importantly, never with enough substance to interrupt the ensuing argument, while simultaneously always enough comment traffic to perpetuate the thread.
Monk is a memetic toxoplasmosis source vector. Through pure ineptitude or irony, I think they’ve accidentally turned more people against third parties than for them, but maybe that isn’t their goal.
Even now there’s an undercurrent of “I don’t think I even disagree with them”. Well, how could you? They haven’t said anything worth disagreeing with, have they? What have they said, though? Not much. Nothing recognizable as an opinion in defense of the third party articles. Often, just enough to establish a veneer of plausible deniability.
It’s a sophisticated form of trolling and it’s recognizable to anyone with a long history of community management online. There are some people who never seem to be directly at fault for things, yet every single time you remove them, the temperature goes down.
You don’t need to actually build a case against these people to know that the equation is simple: when they’re around, everyone is angry. When they aren’t, people get along better.
Anyway, my point is this: you can tell who is contributing in good faith and who isn’t, because they will attempt to say what’s on their mind. It might be the worst take you’ve ever heard in your life, but it has a concretion to it. Monk has no concrete substance, they simply like to stir the pot.
Agreed. They are being intentionally passive aggressive and they are trying to create discord in this community. They often say that they expect downvotes.
IMHO, if a user is repeatedly trying to get a rise from other users, then it’s time to go.
It’s like a little bother holding a finger to your face and saying “I’m not touching you.” They’re following the rules and not hitting their sibling, but know they’re being a pest.
You’ve pretty much nailed it.
upvoting for well articulated nuance
Absolutely agree with this and for this reason, in my opinion, they really should be instance-banned. They contribute nothing that anyone else isn’t already doing. And they’re absolutely doing it in bad faith.
So good riddance to bad rubbish.
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.
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+
I don’t know what his deal was but anyone who is that gleefully belligerent when confronted by people who don’t like what he’s doing isn’t really anyone I want around. Coincidently, I blocked him today. I don’t think he was doing anything wrong other than sheer volume of one-note posts. But I got tired of all the comment sections being about him. And I think I’ve absorbed enough of his point of view for a time.
For all I know he was just trying to keep folks riled up enough to vote. But those posts didn’t add to the value of the community IMO.
For a while I didn’t block them b/c I wanted to see what and how much they were posting. The shtick was indeed getting old and after seeing the glut of posts today, I blocked them. Enough is enough and I know what they are about.
Trolling. Trolling and disinformation.
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!
Have you not seen that Dot person? They post like 50 news posts a day. The accounts days old and already has about 100 submissions.
Good they have been trolling us for a while. Also, thank you for your efforts and you are appreciated.
I dunno if it’s trolling. It’s deluded and obsessive demonstrating a lot of free time, but, like, they’re passionate about it.
I mean, they have some magical thinking and logic and I don’t think their actions are actually pragmatic towards their goals, but I’m fairly certain it’s genuine.
Either way, this was the right move.
Edit: ehhhhhh some other comments have shown they were acting like a troll fairly consistently. Maybe this should have been done sooner.
They are trolling. They love the negative attention here is just one example of it “Wait, do I have 81,000 downvotes now? I thought it was 45,000?! Can you double check. I wanna put the correct number of downvotes in my profile. The link you provided isn’t working for me. Thanks for the updated stats, friend! :)” They purposely post more mild posts and then like today they went for the triple post of troll material. They are playing a lot of people right now. Don’t be one of them.
Yeah, they are literally bragging about being a troll in their profile when they boast about their downvotes.
Pretty wild this is even being debated.
Exactly there intentions are right there for anyone to see.
I see I wasn’t up to date on my Monk lore… I blocked them fairly early on after a weird conversation.
That’s a much more recent turn. Not that long ago they were asking why they were getting such negative engagement. I think they decided to cling to ideology and take the negativity as an affirmation of their position. Make no mistake, I’m not asking for them not to be banned or anything. I have 100% left community that they’ve been apart of. And will not lament their absence. I don’t think it’s clear trolling.
This is what falling for a troll looks like. Giving excuses for their trolling behavior as if the troll is really just responding to their environment despite the troll being the one who initiates the conflict.
That’s just it though. In a weird sort of way they don’t tend to initiate it. Look at it closer. Try to find an instance of them commenting on a post to community that wasn’t their own. Or did not mention them in some way. It’s oddly rare as f***.
If their whole intent was to feed off metallic replies. Why would they create and moderate many many different communities to which they post some of the same s*** and get very little response? Often still getting ratioed on what little response they do get. That’s a lot of extra work for not very much troll food.
If you choose to Define them as a troll. You still have to admit they’re one of the easiest trolls in history to avoid. Which should make you question the label. The behavior is much too erratic and unpredictable for something like a simple troll. Much more indicative of something like mental illness and a bad response to being bullied
Try to find an instance of them commenting on a post to community that wasn’t their own.
That is just trolling with home court advantage. They put out the honeypot and get to argue on their home turf for the most part, although they also posted to c/politics.
Much more indicative of something like mental illness and a bad response to being bullied
‘Just responding to their environment.’
That is just trolling with home court advantage. They put out the honeypot and get to argue on their home turf for the most part
That’s a REAL stretch. I’m not saying they aren’t fucking annoying. They’re really, FUCKING, annoying. But being annoying doesn’t imply trolling. I’ve met people who’s basic speaking tones and patterns annoyed me. But it was less something they did intentionally and more a malfunction of who they were. And in this case, despite monk making a spectacle of themselves. People sought them out far more than monk intruded elsewhere.
I won’t miss them. But some of the behavior has definitely been obsessive and bullying towards them. Regardless of their actions or what you think of them personally. Maybe you like that fact. Maybe you don’t. For me personally though it feels like pretty shitty behavior all around and no one to really root for. When I stopped engaging with them. I stopped having issues with them. They didn’t follow. Didn’t harass others the way they were harassed. That’s not justifying or defending their behavior. Whatever lessons they learned they learned the wrong fucking thing. There’s no question about that.
Nah. I’ve dealt with these kind of people since BBSs. They’re trolls and get a kick out of the responses.
They usually have multiple “hidden” agendas.
First and foremost is to get a rise out of people to get engagement so their message resonates negatively and then is surfaced and viewed by the impressionable.
Second is to cause strife within the community.
Third is to get that strife to get people to shift to their viewpoint
It’s amazing how many people forgot about the classical “get a rise out of everyone with shitty arguments” troll, or forgot that the way to deal with them was to ignore and ban on sight. Fuck, I was practically in diapers when Usenet and BBSes were a thing and I still remember “don’t feed the troll.”
That’s the consensus from the admins and mods. They have shitty opinions, but having shitty opinions is not a TOS violation.
They constantly troll anyone who responds to them. It’s sheer flame bait with every comment.
All of the posts and comments that user makes are universally Down voted, and pretty much everyone here hates this user. Why on earth you won’t ban them permanently is beyond any of us.
I appreciate that you want to give them the benefit of the doubt, but it’s obvious that they’re main goal is to provoke Arguments. Pretty much everyone in the affected communities, like news and politics, can’t stand the person. Nobody wants them there.
Please permanently ban them, at least from those communities.
I think this is balanced and fair. I don’t think they demonstrated any supremely shitty opinions, i.e. racism, bigotry, but their presence was incredibly annoying and they didn’t really participate in useful conversations and moreso used the reply box as a soapbox to say a lot of nonsense.
Moreover, I think banning until the election shows an understanding and restraint by the administration team that is commendable.
Yeah, the typical line crossers, racism, bigotry, hatred, genocide denial, etc. get you on the fast track to a ban and they avoided all of that.
.
Genocide denialism and bigotry are WAY worse than just being uncivil. I’m fine with a chamber that doesn’t allow bigotry. If you think that makes it left-leaning, that says a lot more about the right than “free speech”.
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than there is for demonstrably antagonistic behavior. Lemmy is veering too strongly toward curating a list of acceptable opinions and too far away from enforcing civility standards, if you ask me. That’s a surefire way to create an ironclad left-leaning echo chamber.
I would argue exactly the opposite.
First of all, fuck “civility” rules, which in my experience (back on Reddit) tend to result in polite bad faith comments (sealioning etc.) being tolerated while comments calling out bad faith for the toxic behavior it is get removed.
Second, facts are not opinions, and it’s hardly Lemmy’s fault if Colbert was correct about reality’s bias.
.
Well, it’s always been left leaning, look at .ml ;)
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having shitty opinions is not a TOS violation
Good cause I’d be gone already
It’s certainly not genuine good faith engagement. But yeah not obvious “trolling” no matter how dismissive and off putting their responses can be. They have some sort of personal need for engagement. And way too much free time to pursue it in. Two things combined with unwillingness to understand or acknowledge the arguments other people make. That come off so toxic.
.
It is only trolling if they do it from the le beaucoup Trolle province of France.
LOL
Just because it can be, doesn’t mean it is. It’s absolutely taken on more trollish overtones of late. They weren’t always this way. If you want to go dumpster diving, months ago there were moments and posts of introspection.
It’s not healthy behavior regardless. But I can understand it. I don’t tolerate Leninist/tankie hypocrisy, and feel pretty self righteous calling them out on it. Viewing their silent down votes as affirmation. It would be easy to behave similarly to them. Pestering etc. Hell I have done it in the past. And if I was a person prone to the magical thinking of dogma and ideology I probably still would be. But I value my time, logic, and reason much more. And enjoy it much more to engage with someone, that even if we don’t agree in the end. We don’t talk past each other. But focus on actually having a fruitful discussion.
.
Only after you define a patronizing. And explain why you’ve chosen to ignore what was said. I literally said it’s taken on trollish tone recently. But I don’t believe it’s their actual MO. To be clear I’m not arguing that they should not be banned or trying to defend them. I honestly think there’s much more to suggest mental illness going on there than gleeful trolling. But I see that it’s wildly important for you personally to only see them definitely as a troll. Despite the fact that being undaunted and a bit spammy is the biggest accusation that you have. I honestly am getting much more trollish vibe from you than I have ever gotten from monk all the times I disagreed with them and pointed it out. Which to be clear I’ve largely stopped engaging with them at this point because of the uselessness.
Looking at some of their threads, the trolling type behavior seemed directed at users who were already fairly antagonistic to them to begin with, then it turned in to trolling back and forth all the way down.
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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.
-
'Thank you!' x 27
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11735366
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11735955
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11743878
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11817818
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11982633
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12027686
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12216542
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12307738
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12309396
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12311578
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12950616
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11735320
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12212813
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12787248
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12787595
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12788399
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12798832
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12804112
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12804403
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12815359
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12859415
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12884524
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12923452
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12937851
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12937855
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12996083
- https://lemmy.world/comment/13002846
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'Yep!' x 24
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11999485
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12119855
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12249835
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12366231
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12478780
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12650451
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12698185
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12765375
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12765376
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12795033
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12805136
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12805530
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12815339
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12882018
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12909916
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12923437
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12938868
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12328732
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12348685
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12521594
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12610600
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12713610
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12820772
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12894213
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'k' x 23
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11737773
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11737891
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11737972
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11737995
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11738086
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11738218
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11738246
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11743946
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11753322
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11753367
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11755099
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11755388
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11756415
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11756623
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11756683
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11756731
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11756770
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11756847
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11757001
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11757808
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11757813
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11757863
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12428142
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'Agreed!' x 21
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11714325
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11794705
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11872168
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12089887
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12132035
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12264458
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12317444
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12323502
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12453161
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12516191
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12805534
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12840119
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12909898
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11904886
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12131410
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12270853
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12278119
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12278155
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12323465
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12693001
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12966982
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'I don't know what you mean.' x 20
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11757556
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11757557
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12238257
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12400823
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12565188
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12583929
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11735566
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11737157
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11888568
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12311040
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12360057
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12395133
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12420111
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12421236
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12421321
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12439696
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12525488
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12563842
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12564780
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12582076
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'I don't have to explain anything to you. Thanks!' x 14
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12398666
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12495296
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12366227
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12367327
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12419420
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12428146
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12457183
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12486020
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12599998
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12600030
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12613040
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12770794
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12787046
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12820767
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'Right?' x 13
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11776872
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11850443
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12492449
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12493392
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12626401
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12649851
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12650242
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12786095
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12804035
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12805992
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12871852
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12911508
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12939450
-
'Every vote for Harris is stealing a vote from thir...' x 12
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12460202
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12472234
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12476989
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12477047
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12478029
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12478783
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12478790
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12492462
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12492508
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12492607
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12492644
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12521576
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'Exactly!' x 11
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12227814
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12351305
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12516482
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12657136
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12805096
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12850788
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12899417
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12920864
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12323618
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12559965
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12820815
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'To cut through the nonsense and save everyone time...' x 10
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12287124
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12287210
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12307518
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12307643
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12317493
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12317539
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12317831
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12328262
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12328273
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12338170
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.
He had a standard copypasta for people accusing him of being a troll. If that’s not trolling I don’t know what is
Ha! Yeah - in fact it evolved and expanded to the extent of almost all of his interactions being simply copying and pasting his responses ad nauseum. Very rarely saw him say anything he hadn’t already parroted back dozens and dozens of times. I kinda get why some people accused him of being a bot, because it’s hard to imagine a human deriving anything out of those sorts of interactions.
The number of comments/posts makes me think they’re getting paid per comment or post (or maybe per reply?)
In any case, I still find it funny that in one of their earlier posts I called Stein a Russian stooge and they took personal offense to that. (for a moment, I wondered if maybe they were stein.)
There are multiiple Stein Stans in the community who report anything remotely anti-Stein, even (especially?) when it’s true.
I am not entirely sure what tools they have, but yeah the script was just pulling data from the public api. Anyone can write this script, and I will open source it if folks are interested. It could be good to have a set of tools similar to this one which mods could run with minimal effort.
Mod tools are pretty limited.
We have a queue of reported posts and reported comments, from there it’s a manual lookup of user history in their profile and on the public modlog.
For actions, we can remove comments and posts, lock posts, ban users temporarily or permanently, feature posts in the community, and promote users to mods.
Thanks for that. Kinda what I figured. I may work some more on tools to help. Would you be interested? Specifically in simple scripts you can run after a pretty easy setup and running a single command typically.
Anything that helps, sure!
That would be awesome of you.
Here is the tool: https://codeberg.org/p00perNickel/lemmy-user-stats
Let me know if you have any issues with it!
Thank you!!
How did you generate this report?
It’s a script I wrote. I’m planning to open source it soon. Should I send you a link when it goes up?
Yes please!
Here is the tool: https://codeberg.org/p00perNickel/lemmy-user-stats
Let me know if you have any issues with it!
I get that, but hear me out… it’s just as likely that they’re an obsessive compulsive, possibly on the autism spectrum, who can’t stand letting someone have the last word.
Now, I’m no clinical psychologist, I’m not competent to make that diagnosis, but I’m sure you’ve also seen arguments between two people incapable of letting it go.
Do not treat neuro divgerent people with training wheels.
I’m neuro divgerent and it pisses me off when people treat me differently. Yeah, I’ve got my shit, and I often need things explained to me with clear guidelines, rules, and expectations.
But one thing my neuro divergence doesn’t grant me is the ability to act like a shit stain and get away with it while prodding everybody around me antagonisticly.
The response here is not about whether their behavior was socially acceptable, but whether it was an indication of a fake account being run by multiple people or a script or something.
I’m personally suspicious due to all those cut and pasted replies, but I suppose it’s possible that’s just an indication of obsession as well. I’ve saved text for a comment reply before, but it was because the text had a lot of citations and I was tired of refinding them each time. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of reason to save and repeat “I don’t have to explain anything to you. Thanks!”
Ditto!
So if I want to copy paste the same non-response 26 times, I will not get banned for it, as long as I don’t say overtly mean things? I would absolutely assume that would get me perma banned if I kept doing it.
As long as it’s not a non-sensical response and seems to fit the comment chain, I don’t see an inherent problem there.
Example:
“Well, we agree to disagree.” full stop. Discussion ended. No, I don’t have an issue with that.
If the thread is 52 comments and that’s posted 26 times, that is a dead thread. There is an inherent problem with that.
Posting should be an attempt to create discussion. If the poster tries to end discussion in the comments, that’s just making noise. Eventually, a community of just noise will die.
Are you trolling us now?
Am I allowed to speculate about the mental health of other users as well I wonder, or is that just reserved for mods?
While I understand your concern because I knew someone who was like that personally, that person’s ability and desire to constantly respond caused them a significant bit of distress, often replying to people with something like, “please stop replying because I feel compelled to say something in response.”
Maybe shutting a user up every now and then would be a net positive.
“please stop replying because I feel compelled to say something in response.”
Modding at that point kind of becomes:
I’d rather be on Snoopy’s side than Lucy’s. ;)
Mental illness aside - respectfully, if spamming isn’t considered against the rules, I kind of consider that bad moderation.
Hmm… that is a good take. (Somewhat scarily, that also seems to describe me really well.)
Being on the spectrum could also explain a higher than typical screen time. I’ve been on these online communities in the past, and there are folks there who get online as the first thing they do when they wake up, and then go offline just right before bed. (There are good reasons for it of course - when you crave social interaction but the only medium that you can handle it is using a computer, then this sort of thing becomes more understandable.)
-
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.
When it comes to moderation, I’m of the opinion that it should never be a “read between the lines” interpretation. If we’re going to take action as severe as a ban, it should not be open to interpretation.
For example, I remember a comment that was reported and removed for referencing the whole disingenuous question “when did you stop beating your wife?”
Reported and removed for call to violence, and I had to explain to the other mod that “no, no, they’re making a point about asking disingenous questions…”
Post was restored.
Yes, but when there’s literally thousands of posts and comments to build the “between the lines” data within a 30-day time frame what excuse is there?
When somebody is trolling so hard that it’s causing strife within your community it should be addressed. Identify the behavior that isn’t desired and enforce existing rules around it or create a new one and warn the person that they need to operate in good faith within the rules or they will be ousted as an antagonistic troll.
In cases like that the default position is to allow the downvotes and individual user blocks to do the job.
.
Pyfedi / piefed.social has a take on this that you might find interesting.
For example, pyfedi allows for anonymous voting, but I believe there’s a planned change (if it isn’t already implemented and live) so that folks with a low reputation (from too many downvotes) can’t use it. By default, comments and posts with too low a reputation are also hidden. This is handled automatically by the software, so no human moderator or admin has to do anything - if enough people downvote, the system enforces the consequences automatically.
.
Which makes your community toxic and your job harder.
How many reports did you get and have to filter through and ultimately ignore? If that’s not an indicator from your community that something needs to change you’re not listening to our needs.
My default is to be more lenient because I saw how badly heavy handed moderation can go from 15 years on reddit. ;)
Too many times what’s “toxic” or not was decided by… well…
People are commenting about one glaringly obvious troll with a long history of baiting in comments, not calling for widespread bans based on a few posts per user.
I appreciate both the lenient approach and the transparency.
If we wanted an echo chamber, we could have called this /m/VoteBlue or similar and established only pro-Harris posts and comments as a rule.
I guess, despite the name, it can still become VoteBlue (after all, on a different website world politics used to be discussed on a sub called AnimeT… ) but I think it’s worth asking - if a genuine and civil commenter of a conservative persuasion joined the sub, how willing would we be to actually engage with that person?
See this example - a liberal who once clerked for a conservative Supreme Court justice (Scalia). https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/02/17/im-a-liberal-lawyer-clerking-for-scalia-taught-me-how-to-think-about-the-law/ (or https://archive.is/KauGu )
Just because you have vastly different views and many disagreements with someone, doesn’t mean that you can’t engage in good faith with them, or have both sides get something meaningful from the engagement (even if part of the resolution is to continue to agree to disagree on some of the more salient points).
This very much appears to be a case where it would be reasonable to break from your default. This is not a typical user doing typical things.
Well, yeah, and I did that when I raised the issue with the other mods and admins multiple times. ;)
The problem with individual user blocks is that if someone submits enough of the links in a community, blocking them means blocking most stories and discussions so you can’t really read or participate in the community without leaving them unblocked.
When it comes to moderation, I’m of the opinion that it should never be a “read between the lines” interpretation. If we’re going to take action as severe as a ban, it should not be open to interpretation.
The problem with this is that it allows people to ride the line of what is acceptable and get away with things that effectively poison the platform with toxicity.
It’s very similar to what Trump did, and now look at the state of the entire US politics system now.
By allowing people to toe the line by not technically breaking the rules, it still adds to the overall toxicity of Lemmy.
Oh very much so, which is why I, and other mods, were paying very close attention to what they were doing.
Reports fall into two categories:
“Oh, this guy again, can we ban them yet?”
and:
“Oh, god, it’s the person who reports everything…”
The weird part is in the latter case, you can’t just ignore ALL their reports, no matter how much you want to, because there is that 1 in 10 chance they’re right. LOL.
That was my comment. I’m both a little embarrassed that got referenced after so long, but was also impressed in the moment that someone took the time to actually understand the context in which it was made.
So, I’m torn on the issue of what the appropriate course of action would be in the instance of UniversalMonk, and when it should have been taken. I see the validity in your argument in regards to not moderating in the gray area due to the abuse & power-brokering that comes along with it.
At the same time, in order to create a healthy community long-term I think there needs to be some way to enforce a more black & white standard that dissuades people from engaging in this kind of behavior because it drives away legitimate users who care about the platform.
I don’t necessarily have a good solution for that, and again I do appreciate the complexity of the situation from a moderation standpoint.
Clearly we just turn over moderating to ChatGPT, what could possibly go wrong? ;)
I agree with this. The rule applied to justify the ban seems to be rule 3 - by posting the same article from multiple sources, it’s a repost. And IIRC this user has had articles removed in the past for the same reason (in fact leading up to new rules, e.g. the ones against linking to aggregators and the one that was put in place related to posting 19 articles in a single day) - so the multiple posts removed criteria was also met.
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.
like a certain maneuver named after a certain starship captain.
Ahh, yes! The Janeway Shuffle!
I’m pretty sure they were referring to The Cole Protocol.
Yeah you’re right. Notice no one is trying to get those folks banned
That boii went super saiya-cringe mode.
This is a perfect representation of them.
“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.
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.
It would be a nice Lemmy feature if posts and comments under, say, -20 were auto-collapsed. That would allow people to still see unpopular content without everyone having to wade through it.
That’s totally doable by clients. Not sure why they don’t all include that feature. It’s so basic.
So that the trolls would gang up on posts they don’t like?
There is no perfect solution, and I guess human moderation is the best one we have.
Maybe some kind of rate limiting would work for cases like this. Anyway, i doubt we’ll see that one again after the 15 days are up. At least for the next four years.
Oh I bet there’ll be posts regarding election integrity starting 11/6.
I’m pretty sure they’ll start before that.
If they don’t reappear then I think there is a legitimate argument that it was a coordinated propaganda account.
If they do come back with the same level of veracity then I think there is merit to the potential mental illness, or neurodivergence argument.
I’ll bet they have an alt account up and running already in either case.
I mean maybe, but I think it would be pretty obvious given the nature of how and what they post.
Possibly, yeah. Or they might just be content with spamming other politics communities.
Now that they were banned from politics, their rate of engagement went WAY down. Kinda speaks volumes.
Yeah, reddit had something like that baked in, I’m not sure how lemmy could implement it.
“You are doing that too much, try again later.”
It seemed to be tied to both the age of the account and the karma of the account. It varies from subreddit to subreddit.
There also seemed to be a difference if you were subscribed to the community or not.
But then we’re comparing something relatively new (lemmy) to an established platform with over a decade of development too.
Sounds like a great feature to request
I asked in our Discord. I think the limiting factor is federation. I’m not sure how it’s possible to rate limit things in a federated environment.
Fortunatley we have smarter people than me around!
Sounds like a bot could do the job. Counts submissions in a rolling 24 hour period and fires a report off if someone goes over. Or it even deletes the post itself.
For local, lemmy.world users, yeah. I think the confounding factor is federation, but like I say, I raised the issue and we have people way smarter than me!
I was just thinking about reading the name and time on the post and running a counter. Then deleting the posts if they are above the limit.
It’s easy enough to limit for a local user posting. I guess the tricky part is what if this comes in through federation from an instance that doesn’t support limiting. Probably just refuse the CREATE request with an appropriate error code (400?) and message (the “try again later one”) and hope the user’s home instance will report that back to the user.
Talked about this with the admins and the suggestion is to use some kind of automod, but implementing something like that is a little beyond my ability.
Ah - I can see why they’d prefer an automod (they’d not have to worry about configuring or changing the server software in that case).
Unfortunately, as far I can tell, none of the existing automods out there support deleting posts by a rate limit. It’s not impossible to add this functionality, but it’d take a bit of work and time from a dev.
For example, I think for lemmymodbot one can modify the User Processor at https://github.com/noenfugler/LemmyModBot/blob/master/lemmymodbot/processors/user_processor.py to accomplish this.
Under line 8, add this line to create a user/seen hash
user_post_seen_hash = {}
and replace the entire execute function with something like this,
if content.actor_id in self.user_post_seen_hash:
if int(datetime.now().timestamp * 1000) - int(user_post_seen_hash[content.actor_id].timestamp * 1000) <= 300 * 1000:
handle.remove_thing(“Posting too frequently, take a break”)
self.user_post_seen_hash[content.actor_id] = datetime.now()(Oh, and at the top of the file, also add above the first line,
from datetime import datetime, timedelta
)
But for lemmy.world (even if just looking at /m/politics) it would likely OOM from the in-memory hash due to the volume of users, so it’d need to be extended leverage the database for the lookup.
Something similar could be implemented on top of threativore, I think around this line might be the easiest place to implement the check of the username/timestamp, https://github.com/db0/threativore/blob/main/threativore/threativore.py#L285
Edit: Forgot to add, all the above code changes are completely untested by me, use at your own risk, etc.
You gotta know they’re absolutely loving this shit right now. An entire post dedicated only to them? Where they are the topic of discussion? That’s probably the biggest badge of honor someone like them could earn here.
I’d wager it’s bookmarked and will be read several times a day for months to come.
The Dark Monk is going to write some erotic friend fiction about you, jordanlund.
I have mixed feelings about zombies. They’re dangerous but I like their swagger
🤘🧟♂️
Oddly, on a personal level, I have no beef with the guy. If we were local we could probably go out for beers or something.
You’re a better man than I.
I think @jordanlund@lemmy.world is right. The Monk has many beliefs that I either agree with or at least understand where they’re coming from. If there had been full duration Democratic primary, or any of the 3rd parties been even remotely competent/had a chance, or the voting system been a universal Ranked-Choice Voting system or better I’d probably support them. But he refused to see reality to the point I think it is fair to argue a dishonest agenda at best.
Regardless of the cognitive dissonance saying that gives me, I think it was a good thing for the community, and perhaps Monk too, that a break was mandated.
I think we have the same view on this, except I don’t have cognitive dissonance over the ban - the ban was for a repeating behaviour of reposting/repeat posts, rather than the person’s stubbornness over the whole spoiler effect/FPTP means only two real choices thing.
Also, it’s temporary and just one magazine (rather than, say, the entire instance).
I have a similar experience. E.g. https://lemmy.world/comment/12591604 - the user was pretty friendly to me and chill about it when I let them know that one of their posts helped me convince a third party voter to vote Harris instead.
I’m not sure how that comment fits into the conversation.
jordanlund wrote,
Oddly, on a personal level, I have no beef with the guy.
So I was just pointing out another example where this user could have tried to troll or inflame me, but instead went with the “no-beef” approach, for whatever reason.
After seeing how that user banned DMs, I don’t see how anyone could be against the current permaban. I was just pointing out that somehow I was one of the rare few who somehow got along with that person while they were still here.
Good, thank you for addressing this! I think the temporary ban is a perfect solution. I only care about this because of how close we are to the election, and this solves that problem.
Let’s be real, it’s basically a perm ban because I sincerely doubt that dude is showing face around here after the election.
This is really timely - I am sharing a screenshot that may be important.
UniversalMonk appears to have created an alt last week, UbiquitousMonk. I saw an initial flurry of posts following the UniversalMonk format 12 minutes after it happened, but knew it was a different account and not just a rename because I had to re-add my “propaganda” tag in my Connect app.
I commented just noting the flurry of third-party posts as odd, and they responded with something in Russian. Then everything was deleted, comments and posts.
I don’t know if that was meant as satire, if it was the same poster, or - maybe - a mistake and the Russian text is evidence of a misinformation campaign origin. I’m sharing the comment screenshot for mod visibility.
Edit: sorry, I can’t embed this image, so here’s the link: https://imgur.com/a/9wzgSxR
Pretty sure it was a gag, I banned it as soon as I saw it.
Ah, ok. Yeah, the comment seemed hard to judge but the account was so similar to UM’s modus operandi that I wanted to raise it just in case.
Another perfect example of the dude being completely a not-troll and just innocently neurodivergent in these comments:
https://lemmy.world/post/21123227
…right @jordanlund@lemmy.world ?
They clearly make all these weird communities so they can not answer to any mods and they can control the narrative.
They are making Lemmy worse. They are violating rules 4. The mods can deny it all they want, but if you read this very thread, it’s clearly not just me saying it and it’s not just their shitty opinion we don’t like.
They are looking to stir shit and maybe influence an election, and 99% of the time gotten away with it Scot free. We cannot handwave away the fact that they’ve spent around 2 hours a day just writing posts. That means something. And it means something that practically everyone hates what they’re doing. And the stats I’ve been posting speak volumes.
Man, if it wasn’t for the antagonistic shit riddled throughout that post I’d engage and cheer him on. And the way he talks about his girlfriend in that post is a little worrisome. He’s doing that same antagonistic shit when talking about her.
He’s so clearly got main character syndrome and believes the world is out to get him. If he took the time to be self reflective in his personal interactions as much as he did about his physical health he might be a person I could actually engage with.
Yeah, if I didn’t think they were fucking up the whole ecosystem and showing other potential trolls they can too, I’d just block them and move on.
UniversalMonk@lemmy.world “Socialist Mormon Satanist” stats pulled @ 10/22/2024, 1:37:27 PM EDT
-
Account created 75 days ago (8/8/2024, 9:21:38 PM EDT)
-
6,131 contributions (= 1,932 posts + 4,199 comments)
-
81.7 average contributions / day
-
11.7 mins average time between contributions (assuming 8 hrs of sleep / day)
-
83,172 downvotes accrued
- -65,774 net reputation points
- ~1.3 mins between downvotes on average
- ~14.3 average downvotes / submission
- 0.21 upvote to downvote ratio
-
231,519 words written as comments, 58,014 words written in posts
-
3,861 words (~16 typed pages) written per day
-
~77 mins / day writing comments (40 words / min)
-
~32 mins / day making posts (40 words / min + 30 secs / post)
-
~137 hrs commenting/posting in the past 75 days which breaks down to
- ~109 mins / day
- ~31.9% of a full time job
- 11.4% of their waking hours
-
See the modlog for more info.
None of this takes into account time reading others’ posts/comments, or alts this user may secretly have.
Top 10 duplicate submissions (of 306 exact matches and 234 which are 70%+ similar)
-
'Thank you!' x 28
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11735366
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11735955
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11743878
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11817818
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11982633
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12027686
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12216542
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12307738
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12308150
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12309396
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12311578
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12950616
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11735320
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12212813
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12787248
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12787595
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12788399
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12798832
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12804112
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12804403
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12815359
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12859415
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12884524
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12923452
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12937851
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12937855
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12996083
- https://lemmy.world/comment/13002846
-
'Yep!' x 28
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11999485
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12119855
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12249835
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12317674
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12366231
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12478780
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12521586
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12644574
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12650451
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12698185
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12765375
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12765376
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12795033
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12805136
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12805530
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12815339
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12882018
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12909916
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12923437
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12938868
- https://lemmy.world/comment/13023699
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12328732
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12348685
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12521594
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12610600
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12713610
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12820772
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12894213
-
'k' x 23
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11737773
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11737891
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11737972
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11737995
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11738086
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11738218
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11738246
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11743946
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11753322
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11753367
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11755099
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11755388
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11756415
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11756623
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11756683
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11756731
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11756770
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11756847
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11757001
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11757808
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11757813
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11757863
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12428142
-
'Agreed!' x 22
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11714325
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11794705
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12089887
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12132035
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12264458
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12317444
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12323502
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12453161
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12516191
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12605087
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12745932
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12805534
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12840119
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12909898
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11904886
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12131410
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12270853
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12278119
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12278155
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12323465
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12693001
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12966982
-
'I don't know what you mean.' x 20
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11757556
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11757557
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12238257
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12400823
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12565188
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12583929
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11735566
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11737157
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11888568
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12311040
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12360057
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12395133
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12420111
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12421236
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12421321
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12439696
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12525488
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12563842
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12564780
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12582076
-
'I don't have to explain anything to you. Thanks!' x 15
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12398666
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12495296
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12366227
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12367327
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12419420
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12428146
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12457183
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12486020
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12495287
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12599998
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12600030
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12613040
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12770794
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12787046
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12820767
-
'Right?' x 14
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11776872
- https://lemmy.world/comment/11850443
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12493392
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12626401
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12649851
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12650242
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12745913
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12786095
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12804035
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12805992
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12871852
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12875566
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12911508
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12939450
-
'Every vote for Harris is stealing a vote from thir...' x 12
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12460202
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12472234
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12476989
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12477047
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12478029
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12478783
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12478790
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12492462
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12492508
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12492607
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12492644
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12521576
-
'Exactly!' x 11
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12351305
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12516482
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12657136
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12805096
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12850788
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12899417
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12920864
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12323618
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12559965
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12611016
- https://lemmy.world/comment/12820815
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'To cut through the nonsense and save everyone time...' x 10
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