I have noticed some very odd behavior in [email protected]. I saw by chance that a user no longer existed shortly after making a handful of posts on [email protected]. I made a comment about it and a user responded very rudely and accusatory, which raised a red flag. I clicked on that user’s profile and, once again, that user seems to no longer exist. This struck me as very odd.
So I started paying attention to the users of posts on [email protected], and I now see that this is a very frequently recurring pattern: A new user is created and posts about 3-8 comics in a span of about 3-24hrs and then the user’s account disappears. Every day this happens, sometimes with multiple accounts.
Since you can’t view the user’s profiles you can’t see what other kind of posts or comments these users are making and it seems very suspicious. It seems like a single person or group of people are taking advantage of some sort of system that creates short-term accounts? Is there some service or bot that does this sort of thing that I am unaware of?
Though the behavior I’ve found here is only making some posts on the comicstrips community, besides the one rude comment, it still is a giant red flag. Is this happening in other communities? What other behavior is being hidden by using burner accounts? What benefits could there possibly be for this? Are communities being manipulated somehow? Surely it makes no sense that someone would anyone go out of their way to constantly create new accounts just to post comics?
I also wonder how other people feel about this. Am I alone in thinking this is weird and a big red flag?
we’re aware of this and have been in contact with the mod before, asking them to let us know if this ends up leading to moderation issues.
some people behave strangely, but as long as they’re behaving well we’re fine with tolerating that.
i haven’t been monitoring their accounts in detail, but they have been doing this for months already.
if they’re causing issues we will look at options for enforcing this, although with federation being a thing they’ll likely just move on to another instance where we will be less able to control this and continue from there. just posting content that is on topic and using new accounts frequently is not necessarily what we consider a problem, but if this links up with bad behavior in comment sections that is a different topic, as the account deletions effectively make moderation impossible. at that point however it will become a topic of interest for us, as we don’t like seeing ban-evasion or evasion of other moderation actions.
if you happen to see them causing more issues please make sure to report the comments in question, as this will persist the contents at the time in our database, and also let us know directly e.g. via pm to @[email protected], as we won’t typically see community reports when not actively looking for them.
if you happen to see them causing more issues
This is an issue for us normal users, though. There is no way of knowing if these people are connected to any bad behavior because they are deleted so quickly. We don’t know if they are posting elsewhere or committing vote manipulation. At best, the seemingly few people who happen to be aware of these burner accounts would have to then also happen to stumble upon a bad comment made by a brand new account that is then deleted.
Basically, if this is the only option, then that guarantees that they will continue to get away with any hidden behaviors. Whoever this is has already proven that they are willing to create an account to write rude and accusatory responses to someone who merely points out the burner accounts. Considering how low of a bar that is for such a negative reaction, that establishes their character. I likely would not have looked into this at all if it wasn’t for this weird toxic reaction.
Additionally, the sole mod of [email protected] seems to be unreliable. When I was looking into why people from lemmy.blajaj.zone could not see the community, I saw a handful of people bring up how slow they are to take any action, if they take any at all. Not to mention they were banned from lemmy.blahaj.zone for refusing to take down a comic that is known for racist, sexist, and transphobic comics as well as straight-up nazi references. An example of their lack of action, the rude comment from this person/group has not been removed. The upvotes on that comment are also suspicious in that it could be them employing vote manipulation.
Moreso, the main concern is not even really that particular community. The concern is what this person/group may be hiding elsewhere behind this behavior. So relying on the moderator of this one community for an issue that could be more widespread.
I’m just asking to look into this a bit more than just waiting for something to pop up, because it’s highly unlikely to be noticed entirely because of this weird burner account behavior.
👀
I also was wondering since the majority of posts in my stream was basically from comicstrips, especially when using voyager. It less prevalent in Arctic, though.
I don’t have anything meaningful to add but just wanted to chime in that I noticed the same thing and ultimately just blocked the community. I thought about making a post but assumed it would lead into a big argument over acceptable behavior and not starting witch hunts and decided against it. I’ve also largely given up on clear or direct dialogue between mods/admins or responses to technical issues. I’m sure that doesn’t apply universally amongst the different instances but at least for .ee and .world my experiences haven’t really been productive - so I’m just going to lurk and assume everything is operating as wanted and intended. It’s too frustrating to otherwise assume that help is wanted but just not accepted.
I’ll just chime in and say that the admins at sh.itjust.works have truly been great whenever I’ve had questions or concerns.
i agree with you since, recently, worst comic strips i check where made by such bad accounts.
i also checked your account 😋 :
go $fsck yourself : … My username is a wordplay on the Linux command filesystem check: fsck.
You better filesystem check yourself before you filesystem wreck yourself
It’s odd. It looks like someone trying to disguise bot posting but where from? The posts are coming in faster than at r/ComicStrips (which is definitely a sign something is up) but not as fast as at r/Comics, and there is no crossover in content.
They’re also not recent.
- Captn Crunch is from 2019
- The cactus one is from 2019. And the URL has lapsed.
So they aren’t drawing from a feed of recent comic strips, it is possible that they are scraping older Reddit posts first.
What benefits could there possibly be for this? … Surely it makes no sense that someone would anyone go out of their way to constantly create new accounts just to post comics?
I have no idea who is doing this or why.
But if the question is: why COULD someone be doing this… it’s possible that the person just wants to be as anonymous as possible? There are a lot of people in the fediverse who take privacy very seriously. And given the state of the world, I don’t blame them.
They were rude and accusatory to you, which suggests they’re not “professionals” (who would have just ignored you), but rather an individual with strongly-held beliefs, which supports this hypothesis.
What privacy would be gained from this? If the goal is to only post comics, there would be no benefit from creating many burner accounts over a single account used only for posting the comics and no other kinds of interaction.
Yeah dunno I was just guessing.
unless youre misspelling the URL… my client says this community no longer exists. wtf?
Lemmy.blahaj.zone might be blocking that community. Possibly for this very reason.
https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/c/[email protected]
Doesn’t exist.
Yep. It’s banned.
