all 43 comments

[–]magnora7[A] 22 insightful - 1 fun22 insightful - 0 fun23 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

It's all been removed.

We were being attacked like this last night, someone using a vpn and making a ton of names and posting the worst garbage.

I dealt with it for about 30 mins then went to bed because it seemed like it was over, but I guess he started up a few hours ago again. Anyway, I just removed it all and banned those users again. We will probably have to start doing IP bans, but the user is rotating their IP address constantly, so we may end up having to ban a lot of VPN ip addresses because of this one person.

Just have some patience. I'm not omniscient. The stuff gets dealt with, but I cannot deal with everything negative the instant it is posted. It's just not possible.

[–]zyxzevn 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

If it becomes a problem, you can also put the new users (or suspect users) in a shadow-mode. They won't see the difference.

And after someone trusted has checked their behaviour, you can activate them.

If necessary, you can even add a few variations. I think that you want to spot the good/trusted users, and flag users that behave like bots, click_farm, hacked_account or troll.

[–]magnora7 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

That's true. Voat usually just disables new user account creation when they're under attack, which isn't a terrible idea.

It would be nice if user report flags placed extra limitations (less posts per hour allowed) on brand-new users.

[–]Tom_Bombadil 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's probably worth mentioning to recently joining community members that this type of thing has happened here before.

This is probably round 3 or 4, so this isn't his first round of community agitation, with many calling for action.

[–]bobbobbybob 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

this is an excellent idea. Can probably train up an AI to spot the bad ones and ban them too, reducing the amount of accounts left to authorize

[–]Snow 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I guess it doesn't work since pedo's favorite tor.

[–]zyxzevn 14 insightful - 2 fun14 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 2 fun -  (24 children)

Also "racists"

Looks like invaders are working to bring down the forum (2020 related?).

Soon we will have a report in the American media requiring the banning of Saidit.

Similar happened on voat, but they did not care about the racist part. So now they have many racist stuff. (Note: criticizing Israel or Saudi Arabia is not racist).

Magnora should appoint some trusted moderators to stop invasions like this.

[–]magnora7 11 insightful - 1 fun11 insightful - 0 fun12 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Having moderators won't stop this because they'll just post in subs where the moderators are inactive.

[–]zyxzevn 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

I think it will stop the big wave. But I agree that other measures are necessary too.

For website administrator, it would be nice to correlate different accounts with time and place (and IP).

[–]magnora7 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

We have all that info and are using it

[–]WanderForUmm 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Not sure if you have are already tracking this, but i assume you have a way of seeing who is upvoting troll posts, and correlating those?

[–]magnora7 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yeah we do have a way. We ended up banning about a dozen accounts from this guy, I haven't checked but I'm fairly certain he was upvoting himself. But if it became a deeper problem, that would be a great thing to check next.

[–]zyxzevn 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Great!
Some websites have limits for new accounts or rarely used accounts.
Like amount of posts, and amount of votes.

[–]magnora7 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

We actually have that already. He was hitting that limit, then making a new account and posting again.

[–]Jakio 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

I agree with you, broadly. But, the challenge is how to stop invasions like this without going down the slippery slope of censorship. I'm not sure I have a good answer, personally.

Honestly, part of the strategy behind this trolling might be to get mangora7 to crack down hard. Who knows.

[–]magnora7 18 insightful - 3 fun18 insightful - 2 fun19 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

Honestly, part of the strategy behind this trolling might be to get mangora7 to crack down hard. Who knows.

Of course it is. They want to turn this place in to either a swamp of terrible content, or a house of censorship, and I refuse to do either.

[–]Tom_Bombadil 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

This.

Edit: +3

[–][deleted]  (2 children)

[deleted]

    [–]Jakio 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    But that's the catch- some of the posts didn't advocate anything. Just saying a kid is hot is gross. That's why people do it- it's right on the line, and forces the community to react strongly.

    edit: the more I think about it, the plan is to get Mangora to freak out and lock things down.

    [–]WanderForUmm 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    One of the keys to the strategy they used successfully to destroy voat was to scare off new users. Whenever there was a major subreddit banning on reddit, a bunch of fake racist/pedo/nazi whatever accounts that had barely posted for months fired up and went into overdrive. My suggestion, unpleasant as it may be, is to moderate the front page to some degree, and try and cultivate a TRUSTED base of mods for major communities to do the garbage work to stop the trolls in them. In my opinion, trying to cultivate a culture and a sufficiently large userbase that their shit is kept off the frontpage would, if nothing else, give a good idea of how large an org they have, if they scale up their efforts with the site's userbase.

    On that last point, last I checked, one of the only voat communities that didn't get destroyed by the racist and pedo trolls was FatPeopleHate. They managed to keep the trolld mostly out despite whatever else was going on by having relatively heavy censorship of things unrelated to hating fat people, and a policy that required moderator appeals to be accompanied by a timestamped picture to prove that they weren't fat. I'm no fan of FPH, or of censorship, but it's interesting to see that strange policy seemed to keep the trolls out, almost inadvertantly.

    [–]zyxzevn 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

    "they" could be:
    - left wing "activists"
    - Israeli internet army
    - US or UK military group.
    - correct the record - like company

    [–]Skuly 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

    Iv seen five new accounts started in a few hours of each other so i think its just one guy.

    [–]zyxzevn 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Yeah. Some troll-activist.
    Could be just as dumb as CNN.

    [–]magnora7 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    It's almost certainly just one guy, based on what I'm seeing

    [–]magnora7 6 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 2 fun -  (3 children)

    Or even China, because we're talking about the Hong Kong situation a lot right now, and China is known for censorship

    Or could just be some guy who was bored and decided that would be funny

    [–]Tom_Bombadil 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (2 children)

    It must have been... the Chinese!!!

    <One guy>

    ;-)

    /s

    [–]magnora7 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

    Could be one hyper-nationalistic Chinese guy who's not associated with the government. There's really no way at all of telling who it was or why they did it though. Probably just some guy messing around to feel powerful, tbh

    [–]Tom_Bombadil 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

    Yea, I'm just messing. ;-)

    Could be anyone?

    JC is notably absent?

    He is a Chinese national. Could be him?!

    JK JC.

    [–]Jesus 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    YOU forgot the ADL, the organization that boasts about working with Google, and hundreds of other Tech companies to censor.

    [–][deleted] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    "they" could be (((them))).

    Just kidding, probably just a couple of bored middle schoolers.

    [–]Afor 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

    I've warned about the blatantly obvious ways to ruin the saidit for over a year and the reply from mangnora has always been that we should trust our fellow users.

    Today we have racist and pedo content for miles.

    As much as I want to believe in saidit, and personally like what the admins are trying to achieve, I don't have faith in the way they're going about it.

    I've set up my own federation based social network where I'm free to toss out whoever is trying to ruin the experience.

    Everybody should check out Softaculous and HubZilla. We're in the age of "7-clicks-on-a-web-page" to install your own social network that can connect with the millions of users on The Federation.

    The future is simply making your own stuff, not following stupid decisions because its too hard to create an alternative.

    [–]magnora7 9 insightful - 3 fun9 insightful - 2 fun10 insightful - 3 fun -  (1 child)

    I've set up my own federation based social network where I'm free to toss out whoever is trying to ruin the experience.

    So when someone posts bad content at 4am under a new user account and you're asleep, how is that any different from what just happened here? I fail to see the improvement

    [–]Tom_Bombadil 7 insightful - 3 fun7 insightful - 2 fun8 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

    The main difference is that it happened to you, and not him.

    [–]Drewski 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    I agree that decentralization & federation are the future. Relying on any centralized service is bound to fail at some point in the future.

    Heck, reddit started out as a free speech platform and look what it's become today. I also posted on early Voat, which started out great but devolved in a different way (which may have been a planned and organized attack).

    As for federated services, have you looked into prismo and lemmy? I'm thinking of starting a lemmy instance once it leaves beta.

    [–]HeyImSancho 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (9 children)

    There are those now advocating for open pedo love, as well as the same in regards to beastiality. I mean, we're living in a world where many think all things are beautiful, and that there aren't any sort of consequences.

    Kinda strange, but true.

    [–]magnora7 15 insightful - 1 fun15 insightful - 0 fun16 insightful - 1 fun -  (8 children)

    They're agent provocateurs, they don't actually believe that stuff. They just want to mess up the website.

    [–]HeyImSancho 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

    While you know better than I do on your own site, I was merely pointing out, that protection for the 'sub genre' mentioned is growing; it's a fact. Censoring soon, could play out like white folk now being called out for wearing blackface at Halloween in the 1980's; actions now, are held accountable later by society.

    As long as there's no violation of the law, why censor? I note, I believe Jordan Peterson, or one of those folks is working on a platform, that they at least say, will offer free speech, short of a court ordering the removal of said content.

    I mean, 30 years ago, this 'topic' could've been on drag queens, and the dangers poised there, yet today, we've got drag queen reading hour in libraries across America.

    Things are quickly changing.

    [–]magnora7 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

    We have to draw the line somewhere. Their actions are not worth defending, even as devil's advocate, imo

    [–]HeyImSancho 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

    I actually owned part of a forum for a while; it was a break away like saidit is. There were similar 'we must act' arguments on numerous topics.

    One such topic of 'we must act', was for those who inevitably had some sort of psychological break, and then found themselves to be 'god incarnate'. Somehow, we had a few of those breaks on our forum before it closed; one of which was Steven Joseph Christopher.

    I don't really have a point, other than I comprehend what you're talking about, and feel the need to do so, as I'm not playing 'devil's advocate'. What I am noting, is living long enough to see what wasn't accepted, and what was joked on; is now often times protected, and those that can be traced back to disliking it vocally, are now having to often times, if lucky 'apologize', for that 'transgression' decades past.

    EDIT TO ADD: part of my point, as the longer this site is around, you'll see the participants pushing for the narratives they want addressed, and often times, others shunned. But, I agree that spam is spam, and you as the site owner must figure out what to moderate, and what not to.

    [–]magnora7 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    I mean that's fair, and I appreciate it. But 90% of the guy's posts were literally "Let's kill niggers with shotguns" and stuff like that, verbatim. It's the bottom of the pyramid of debate, so it's against site rules. And he was posting only that type of content, as fast as he could. And creating 20 accounts to do so, in an obviously serial manner. So it was a pretty clear situation from my standpoint that he wasn't here to merely contribute his viewpoint to the website.

    I appreciate your story though, thank you for sharing. It's good to hear other perspectives about this stuff, because it's often not black-and-white, like you pointed out. But thankfully in this case it was.

    [–]fred_red_beans 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

    [–]HeyImSancho 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

    Yes, we had him, and a couple others. I really think that some people have to a degree a sheltered existence, and upon experiencing perhaps a different reality, or a more encompassing reality, they seem to crack.

    LOL, I never thought about this, but is there a term for made crazy by the Internet?

    [–]fred_red_beans 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

    I don't think delusional is necessarily born from the internet. This guy just looks psychotic, like he took too much acid one day and never quite came back. Yea, he reminds me of people who went places or got involved with things that just weren't suited for them and made them pop. Wow, believes he's Jesus, has control of government agencies, and is going to kill anyone he sees as a threat; who could ask more from a savior? lol

    [–]HeyImSancho 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Actually, he and the others I knew of, all had/have savant qualities. In Steven's case, he was a talented graphic/animated artist; with lots of work, and money.

    He still has those traits minus the money, but it's skewed into his religious doctrine; like the flat earth with a 'green glass ceiling', and the mark of 'his order' to go along with it, or 'Missterrybabylonestar'. All of these, are imho very good artistic renderings.

    What I really cannot believe about him, is he does have a scary little following. Last I heard, for money, he was having them give him blowjobs on pornhub; not really sure about this, but read it.

    I guess from there, the only other thing I know of him, is that Trinity over at GLP has at one point received I believe court protection orders against the guy, lol.

    No worries, the saviors will probably show up here at some point, muhahahahahaha....