this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2025
44 points (87.9% liked)

FediLore + Fedidrama

3141 readers
12 users here now

Rules

  1. Any drama must be posted as an observer, you cannot post drama that you are involved with.
  2. When posting screenshots of drama, you must obscure the identity of all the participants.
  3. The poster must have a credible post and comment history before submitting a piece of history. This is to avoid sock-puppetry and witch hunts.

The usual instance-wide rules also apply.

Chronicle the life and tale of the fediverse (+ matrix)

Largely a sublemmy about capturing drama, from fediverse spanning drama to just lemmy drama.

Includes lore like how a instance got it's name, how an instance got defederated, how an admin got doxxed, fedihistory etc

(New) This sub's intentions is to an archive/newspaper, as in preferably don't get into fights with each other or the ppl featured in the drama

Tags: fediverse news, lemmy news, lemmyverse

Partners:

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
sexy_peach@feddit.org
44
"Anti-AI trolls," transphobia, fun stuff (quokk.au)
submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 5 days ago) by PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au to c/fediverselore@lemmy.ca
81 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Okay so here's what happened.

There is a mod of some AI-generated image forums who has been slinging out bans for "anti-AI trolling" to people who have never participated in their community, apparently more or less at random. Full disclosure, I am one of those people, and I'm confident I have never done any anti-AI trolling.

Apparently the justification for this is that other people are being aggressively hateful to this mod, coming in and being incredibly abusive, transphobic, insulting her for alleged alcoholism and making fake pictures of her and generally just being horrible. Conveniently, one of these people showed up in the thread where we were talking about it, on cue, and started slinging around horribleness which provided a convenient cover for people to say "And THAT's why we have to be really strict with the bans!" type of things. We never really got to the bottom of what the connection was between that and the random bans to other people who were longstanding accounts that didn't seem to be doing any of those things.

Anyway, now another abusive alt of the (now obviously bannned) abusive alt that originally stirred up trouble has made a pitch-perfect effort to inflame divisions and create a balkanization between the "pro AI" people, centered around dbzer0 (edit: ~~and blahaj~~), and "anti AI" people, centered around everywhere else.

This is two identical posts, made to two separate communities which are guaranteed to have totally opposite takes on it based on their different levels of information about the issue, which will then lead everyone to assume that the other community is just being horrible about it on purpose when they draw different conclusions:

(Edit: The troll has now been banned, so I can't link to their posts anymore. Just imagine this post, except made by one of the trolls who are featured in the comments of that post, you can dig in the modlog or in spoiler text of some other comments to see some of what they were saying. Anyway, the troll posted the exact same complaint about being "unfairly" banned both to lemmy.world, where they got tons of sympathy and upvotes, and to dbzer0, where people who were aware of what they were up to gave them derision and downvotes.)

Like I said, if the goal is to create division and heated argument between two opposing "camps," this is pretty much as perfect as you can get it. I expect it to work, at least to a certain amount, to get people embittered towards one another and arguing about the issue impassioned that the other side is wrong and stupid.

I can't find the link right now, but there was someone on reddit who claimed that they used to do this professionally (trying to disrupt online communities so that organized shilling could succeed better there, because the previous coherence that they had had had been replaced by confusion and bickering, and then they could insert bullshit without it being pushed back on as strongly.) It's fascinating. What they described isn't exactly like this, but it definitely sort of rings similar to me. Just to throw that out there.

Also, UniversalMonk is involved, because of course he is.

Edit: Fun with grammar

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Also, UniversalMonk is involved, because of course he is.

I'm gonna repeat your favorite comment and ask where's your proof? Give me receipts.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/u/UniversalMonk?page=1&sort=New&view=Comments

Pretty much all of the bottom section of that page is UM getting involved in the drama of this particular "anti-AI troll." He's getting involved on the correct side, but the point is he is certainly involved.

[–] _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

that's bullshit. when you say "UM is involved", you make it sound like UM is behind it in some way. feeding trolls isn't being involved, and you know it.

[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

But how would else Phillip win when he can ignore your posts and say no one has anything to say?

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au -3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

In my opinion, someone who's involved in the conversation is "involved." Cryptagion's point isn't totally weird or crazy, but I don't really agree with it. Especially given the nature of UM's previous involvement on Lemmy, I think it's relevant if he was heavily involved in the comments for this thing, so in passing, I noted it.

I've had my share of slapfights for the day at this point. Probably for the week. What could possibly be gained by me creating a reply saying, "No, it's not bullshit! I didn't make it sound that way!" and similar things?

It feels like you really want the hostility to continue beyond the point where everyone's had their say. I have no idea why. Excitement? A desire to see as much disagreement and arguing as possible? He asked for proof, I provided, he disagreed with the interpretation, and at that point anyone who wants to read can make up their mind whose argument made sense. I have absolutely no interest in continuing beyond that point. You're free to conclude for some reason that it's a sin for me to do that, I view it as a pretty constructive approach to take.

Edit: Also, I completely forgot this even, but when UM raised the exact same objection up at the top of the thread, I actually had a pretty long conversation with him including explaining myself in detail and also apologizing about sort of bringing his name up in the nature of a punchline. We talked over DM a little bit, it didn't go anywhere because UM, and I exited the conversation, but because I'm not just a shouty little conflict creator, I actually took it seriously and had a conversation about it.

This is, again, why I think it's incredibly weird that a certain contingent of Lemmy is all up in arms about "PugJesus starts arguments!" as this big sin he's committed. Y'all love this kind of slapfight, you love finding shit you can complain about or having endless hostility with people you don't like. It's fine, I do that sometimes too although I try to cut it off when it seems like it's beyond the point of anything useful, but for you to accuse someone of arguing, stalking, following people around to give them votes or argumentative comments, etc etc, as a bad thing is hilarious given these last few messages (to pick one of any number of examples I could.)

[–] eugenevdebs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Weird how you didn't reply to the other person but okay. _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com

This is, again, why I think it’s incredibly weird that a certain contingent of Lemmy is all up in arms about “PugJesus starts arguments!” as this big sin he’s committed. Y’all love this kind of slapfight, you love finding shit you can complain about or having endless hostility with people you don’t like.

lol

Please lemme know when I'm anywhere near as bad as pugjesus, calling people fascists because they want democrats to fight harder, or saying they don't do something as they actively document themselves doing it. My admins will remove my messages/comments when I fuck up, hold me and them up to it. Unless I have the grave sin of "I don't like .world" which is why UM and R2O get harassed despite not doing anything.

But I know you'll always side with Pug over the people he harasses, and never actually talk to the people who are more equipped to deal with you than I am. Like the admins you ignore, or the users who are more familiar of your style.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au -4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

My admins will remove my messages/comments when I fuck up, hold me and them up to it

Make sure you guys agree on a safeword beforehand

[–] UniversalMonk@quokk.au 7 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Also, UniversalMonk is involved, because of course he is.

How am I involved?! I have nothing to do with this drama. I'm not the mod of those communities, nor am I the person complaining about any of it.

Only thing I've done is vote and comment in the !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com community where the issues first came up.

Thanks, friend! :)

[–] Walk_blesseD@piefed.blahaj.zone 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

"pro AI" people, centered around dbzer0 and blahaj,

Jesse what the fuck are you talking about

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, maybe I was wrong. I thought there were some blahaj people in the grouping that was saying "yeah this makes total sense" but I don't see it looking back now. Maybe it was in the deleted threads or maybe (more likely) I entirely hallucinated it, I'll remove that part.

[–] Walk_blesseD@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 5 days ago

Idk, it's entirely possible that there's one or two of them on here, but from what I've seen it's definitely not the majority opinion, that's all I'm saying.

[–] SereneSadie@lemmy.myserv.one 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Man, someone going around harassing mods by making 'fake pictures' of them.

Gee, I wonder what they could possibly be using to make those fake pictures, huh.

Glass houses.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 2 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Next you'll be telling this mod isn't actually an unhinged alcoholic foot fetishist loser or whatever else they accused her of...

(I feel like asking for ideological consistency of the trolls is asking way too much, they're just not operating on that level even)

[–] SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

So lazy to use AI to try to change public opinion.

Real trolls use memes.

Good work sniffing this out, I'm done with blahaj so I was only seeing the db0 side

People should know and remember there are always troll campaigns being ran in most social media spaces with any significant user base.

A couple of other current campaigns I've noticed across social media:

  • an ongoing attempt to frame antizionism as antisemitism

  • terfs attempting to sow division between trans people and the LGB part of the LGBTQIA+ community.

  • terfs attempting to sow division between trans men and women

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Yeah. It is hard to tell the difference between people just being dysfunctional in a way that will cause pointless strife because they are dysfunctional, and people being dysfunctional in a way that will cause pointless strife because they are planning out how to cause pointless strife. I do agree with you that my guess is that at least some of it is that second thing.

It's sort of mind-boggling to me that no one involved in this "in authority" on the dbzer0 side seems responsive to the idea that this is a bad idea, will make their instance look bad, and also won't do anything to solve the harassment of the mod (will in fact make it worse).

But whatever ¯\_ (ツ)_/¯

[–] SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Db0 has been making some questionable moderation decisions recently

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Yeah. It doesn't come across as malicious to me FWIW. I feel like people are just tribal, and there's this incredibly strong impulse to stand up for "your tribe" be it the anarchists, or the trans people, or whatever, whenever you perceive that they're being attacked or mistreated. Maybe that's it, maybe it's just that it's such a minor issue that the admins don't feel like getting involved, who knows.

I feel like just like separation of church and state, there should be separation of instance and tribal grouping. Like no making an instance that's only for anarchists, only for the Marxists, officially anti-AI or pro-AI, or what have you. It seems like in practice it has been a tailor-made formula for producing drama with other instances. In general you notice the regional instances, they don't have stuff like this come up, it's just "hey we're the Canadian people come join us."

[–] Diva@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

do you think this behavior is an example of tribal behavior or of a troll who is posing as (or possibly just is) an over the top neoliberal?

They stirred the pot in the same way about db0 having a blow-up with hexbear

They also did the same thing here, posting a piss-post from hexbear like it's serious - the poster was actually impersonating a hexbear regular and was banned.

All of their responses are volatile, tribal, hating anarchists and tankies- as well as openly neoliberal and extremely positive about piefed.

They also say they're a 'prompt engineer'

Do you think this creates a good image for piefed and detractors of the 'tankie troika'

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

That's very clearly a troll trying to make anyone who's against .ml and friends look bad. I can't tell if the cartoonish over-the-top way they're doing it is a mistake, because a more subtle believable approach would have stirred the pot more effectively, or a wise decision because people are so simple-minded that they'll take even that at face value.

Do you think this creates a good image for piefed and detractors of the 'tankie troika'

I think it creates a bad image, I think that's why they are doing it.

[–] Diva@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 days ago

seems like a very elaborate troll, here they are complaining about Russia and China during the ICC hearing for Israel

I guess it could be read ironically, but they're also saying the same shit the pro-israel libs I know were saying at the time.

[–] PatrickStar@sh.itjust.works 1 points 5 days ago

There was someone who talked about this in fedilore a few weeks back, but they got dismissed because everyone thought it was an isolated incident. Those people look stupid now in my opinion.

load more comments
view more: next ›