Today I noticed a huge wall of spam from UniversalMonk from 2 different accounts and didn’t initially think much of it and blocked their communities but more spam came from different communities.

At this point I checked and saw that they had created several communities which then led me down the rabbit hole to discover that their posts had almost entirely covered the new posts page of both sh.itjust.works and lemm.ee. Later on I discovered that they’re posting right-wing propaganda and misinformation from breitbart, foxnews you name it.


He’s already caused and stirred shit 2 months ago and clearly I can see why now.

At this point it’s difficult to believe that UniversalMonk will learn proper netiquette in: not post spamming, being considerate to others, and not sharing right-wing extremist content that no one wants.

  • woelkchen@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I agree with the sentiment but this here is not a complaints forum.

    Please report that user and his communities to the admins of the instances he’s registered at. A quick look at the sidebars of both sh.itjust.works and lemm.ee would suggest that their admins banning him is a slam dunk.

    Maybe ask at !support@lemm.ee and !main@sh.itjust.works what to do?

    On the grounds of !fediverse not being a complaints forum, I’m going to lock this post.

    • realcaseyrollins@thelemmy.club
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      5 months ago

      Don’t pretend to be surprised, this is Lemmy we’re talking about. It’s how they roll! Inclusion through exclusion or something.

    • recursive_recursion they/them@lemmy.caOP
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      5 months ago

      So u want to silence someone for their beliefs.

      Allowing people to spout whatever nonsense and cause harm to others is reckless at best, ignorant and insane at worst. I’m old but not old enough to have dementia.

      Free speach does not mean u have a right to not be offended.

      The argument of free speech so hollow, I’ve seen it used by right-wingers use it as a rallying cry when in reality free speech is free yes but simutaneously it does not mean free of consequences.

      He’s in violation of our TOS and probably several others which reminds me @ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone you’ll want to see the last image with dumbass Zuck at the top

      • Allowing people to spout whatever nonsense and cause harm to others is reckless at best, ignorant and insane at worst. I’m old but not old enough to have dementia.

        What words has he said that are cuasing harm. Because if it isnt calling for actionable violence then it isnt causing harm.

        The argument of free speech so hollow, I’ve seen it used by right-wingers as a rallying cry

        I didnt realise free speach was a right wing idea. I though free speach of a basic liberty of free independent people.

        when in reality free speech is free yes but simutaneously it does not mean free of consequences.

        Free to say as he pleases and get downvoted, judged, resonded to negatively.

        He’s in violation of our TOS and probably several others

        What tos violations has he made? Im gonna assume innocent until proven guilty.

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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      5 months ago

      Sure, I’ll take the bait. It’s not at all an issue of his beliefs. Plenty of people on Lemmy think that we should vote for third parties, plenty of people on Lemmy think that… I don’t know, I blocked UM so long ago that I can’t even really remember what his beliefs were. I think he thought Biden was doing a bad job. I don’t think that is some weird heretic belief on Lemmy that will get you banned. Nothing he had to say was ever the issue.

      If every time someone gets on the bus, they sit down next to random other passengers and start pestering them about Jesus, loudly and without fail, no matter how much the person clearly doesn’t want it, and then when multiple people tell them to stop, they start crying about religious discrimination, yell at the whole bus, say they won’t be silenced, show up the next day with a whole backpack full of pamphlets about the first amendment, concoct elaborate disguises to be able to sneak back on the bus once one bus driver finally has had enough and bans them, all the while setting up this incredibly loud consistent whining sound about how they’re being persecuted because of their Christianity, it was never about the Christianity.

      You can be Christian on the bus. You can also be Jewish or Muslim. You can wear a headscarf, you can talk to your friends about Jesus, together on the bus. Likewise, you can be anti-Biden, or pro-Biden, or pro-socialist, or whatever you want to be, on Lemmy. When you become so incredibly obnoxious about your style of interaction that the entire community has agreed that you’re causing a problem, and then instead of being open to feedback and continuing to say what you think, but in a fashion that is productive and respectful of everyone else, you instead double down and say you won’t be silenced and send threatening DMs to your critics and start making a whole bunch of new accounts when you are banned from multiple places, it is time for you to go. Because you had your opportunity to tone it down and integrate within the social contract that makes the place function, and you explicitly and proudly chose not to.

      • Sure, I’ll take the bait. It’s not at all an issue of his beliefs…Nothing he had to say was ever the issue.

        Ok so what is the issue cos op hasnt seemed to have addressed it.

        If every time someone gets on the bus, they sit down next to random other passengers and start pestering them about Jesus, loudly and without fail, no matter how much the person clearly doesn’t want it, and then when multiple people tell them to stop, they start crying about religious discrimination, yell at the whole bus, say they won’t be silenced, show up the next day with a whole backpack full of pamphlets about the first amendment, concoct elaborate disguises to be able to sneak back on the bus once one bus driver finally has had enough and bans them, all the while setting up this incredibly loud consistent whining sound about how they’re being persecuted because of their Christianity, it was never about the Christianity.

        I like ur metaphor it presents a very visceral image of a particular behaviour. Ur forgetting just 1 things lemmy has that a bus doesnt a magic button to make them disapear (the block button). Also nothing wrong with talking to anyone u want about anything u want thats how free speach works.

        You can be Christian on the bus. You can also be Jewish or Muslim. You can wear a headscarf, you can talk to your friends about Jesus, together on the bus. Likewise, you can be anti-Biden, or pro-Biden, or pro-socialist, or whatever you want to be, on Lemmy.

        U can also talk to anyone else u please about anything on this list or not on this list, it doesnt havr to be your friends.

        When you become so incredibly obnoxious about your style of interaction that the entire community has agreed that you’re causing a problem,

        Free speach requires that u allow people to be obnoxious, as long as ur not calling for actionable violence i say let em speak.

        and then instead of being open to feedback and continuing to say what you think, but in a fashion that is productive and respectful of everyone else, you instead double down and say you won’t be silenced

        Why should anyone be forced to change how they choose to express their beliefs. What if everyone in a neighbourhood decided that rainbow flags where obnoxious, that does not grant them the right to deny the gays there right to express their beliefs however the fuck they want. (So long as its not violent or callibg for actionable violence etc etc).

        and send threatening DMs to your critics

        If this is true which it quite probably could be then op should have started with this. Ill be in full support of instance bans if i can be shown verifyable proof this is true.

        and start making a whole bunch of new accounts when you are banned from multiple places, it is time for you to go.

        Thats how an open platform works good luck stopping it. Ie the technology of Activpub has made the capability to deny any individual their free speach impossible.

        Because you had your opportunity to tone it down and integrate within the social contract that makes the place function, and you explicitly and proudly chose not to.

        I hate the concept of the social contract. I was forced to sign it under duress (i didnt concent to being born etc etc). The politicians, the billionares, the dictators of the world, the thieves stealing food to survive, etc etc etc they have not integrated within the social contract. If there is no enforcement then why follow the rules?

        I believe in a far simpler system that perfectly describes every system far better than the social contract. Darwinian evolution. Given that i would say its pretty arrogant to assert that following the social contract 100% of the time is always the most advantagious.

            • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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              5 months ago

              Mods from lemmy.world and lemmy.ca have been in these comments saying that yes, it happened and was a TOS violation.

              You’re free not to believe them. I don’t think asking them to expose someone else’s private DMs to you to prove it to you is realistic.

              • Mods from lemmy.world and lemmy.ca have been in these comments saying that yes, it happened and was a TOS violation.

                Which ones and can i get comment links?

                You’re free not to believe them.

                I dont trust anything i verify

                I don’t think asking them to expose someone else’s private DMs to you to prove it to you is realistic.

                I think its pretry sus if ur willing to claim someone has sent abusive messages but not reveal what said abusive messages where. Thats a bit like claiming u have proof of someone stealing your car but will not be providing said proof as u just have to “trust me bro”

                • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
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                  5 months ago

                  Which ones and can i get comment links?

                  https://lemmy.world/comment/14444086

                  https://lemmy.ca/comment/13865167

                  I think its pretry sus if ur willing to claim someone has sent abusive messages but not reveal what said abusive messages where. Thats a bit like claiming u have proof of someone stealing your car but will not be providing said proof as u just have to “trust me bro”

                  What part of “not publishing other people’s private communications” doesn’t make sense?

                  This is, in fact, exactly the same way stolen cars work. Someone steals your car, you get the police report, you show it to the insurance company. If you don’t have a police report, then they definitely will have questions.

                  https://ponder.cat/comment/1480007

                  That’s the police report. The insurance company doesn’t say, “Well, I won’t know it was stolen until I see it for myself. Yes, I know you explained there’s a specific reason you can’t show it to me, but I just don’t trust anything, I verify. The report from the person who investigated it using the extra abilities of their position, and then wrote formally that yes, it was stolen, isn’t good enough.”

  • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
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    5 months ago

    Here’s the thing: without this thread, I might never have become aware of this user or their activities. Are you sure that what you’re doing isn’t counterproductive and giving them more undeserved attention?

    • recursive_recursion they/them@lemmy.caOP
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      5 months ago

      I can see what you mean by that although for this case in an odd manner you actually want to highlight this problem.

      This is another parallel system that was shown in this crazy GDC talk: 1,500 Slot Machines Walk into a Bar: Adventures in Quantity Over Quality


      For background context Alex Schwartz and Ziba Scott launched premium mobile games to the Google Play Store in 2013 which unfortunately didn’t “help in making our money back and being able to make enough money to make the next game”. After having explored the storefront and finding nefarious apps and junk reskined clones everywhere they decided to intentionally flood the Google Play Store with junk slot machine games as a joke/experiment.

      "There was a point in here that I don’t think was drilled home as hard as it could have been which was… if people are sneaking by with garbage the thing that we did was to put a huge neon sign with an arrow pointing at ourselves and the garbage next to us; illuminating the entire underbelly of dark weird App Store shit and so the idea that if you do it at scale clearly they’re(Google’s) going to notice and clearly they’re(Google’s) going to change the terms of service slowly to ice you out.

      Hopefully others went down with us in the wake of that. Like we provided the perfect targeted spot to drop the missile uh so hopefully, hopefully that helped get rid of duplicate apps that were also in the area."

      • ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world
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        5 months ago

        I agree with you. In this case it’s time to bring this up. I quietly blocked monk months ago because I was tired of seeing his shit in my feed, but I didn’t want to bring attention to his inflammatory posts. But that clearly hasn’t worked on a wider level. He’s still posting sketchy stuff and annoying other people here. Sometimes you have to call people out and the wider community has to act, even at the risk of drawing attention to the problem users.

  • Shardikprime@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    This is harassment directed towards one specific user.

    If you find direct offense to their posts, you should let the instance admins manage that through reports. If there is many instances, do that many reports.

    But this is basically fascist harassment. A witch hunt.

    What, no one can dissent from your ideology? Is it that weak that it cannot and will not handle criticism?

    The reverse applies as well. If you want, open your own instance echo chamber and talk to yourself.

  • Matt@lemmy.ml
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    5 months ago

    I’m in the center. But as long as it’s not illegal, then it’s OK.

  • ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    I had actually forgotten about that guy. I blocked him a few months ago because I got tired of his incessant and biased spam.

  • TORFdot0@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    100% if he is breaking the ToS on multiple instances (and I would argue that spamming most likely is, not to mention the substance of the content)

    He can always create his own instance and anyone who wants to see his content can join it as well. Instance admins shouldn’t feel obligated to give anyone a platform (ahem, .world), the fediverse is decentralized and democratic.

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    Eh, I just had a run-in with them again.

    Trying to get every instance to ban them is a little crazy tbh, and I think you’re right that their entire goal is a blend of trolling and misinformation.

    It isn’t crazy because they’re acting in bad faith. It’s crazy because just lemmy is already too big to try and organize a lemmy wide ban. Trying to get a fediverse wide one applied ain’t happening.

    Best you can do is report them for the spamming in the instances they do it on.

      • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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        5 months ago

        Reports don’t just go to mods, they go to admins as well. And you can usually contact admins in other ways on most instances.

        • recursive_recursion they/them@lemmy.caOP
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          5 months ago

          Reports don’t just go to mods, they go to admins as well.

          You’re not wrong. Again however if the mod dismisses the report, the admin(s) would be unaware of the report unless they check the All tab. On P.D. anyways the report queue defaults to Unread, not sure if that can be changed on the newer instance versions.

          And you can usually contact admins in other ways on most instances.

          Again true, however [a user who’s already made a report] is it highly likely that they’d message the admins for an update? maybe?

          It’s a non-zero possibility, but for my own report experience I actually just send a report and forget about it (unless I’m personally looking and pondering the reports queued on P.D’s report page, earlier last year I tried to send messages to users who made reports saying thank yous or updates on what happened to their reports).

          For any users here please comment if you’ve asked for an update I’m actually genuinely curious what the frequency is.


          Edit:
          Ah right I just remembered that I wanted to request for a feature that community moderators can’t dismiss the report that’s made about them. This is the same copyright loophole system that exists in Youtube.

  • jjagaimo@sh.itjust.works
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    5 months ago

    Seems like he does get banned frequently by mods, given he has like 10 accounts created on a number of servers in the past few months

  • Coelacanth@feddit.nu
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    5 months ago

    This fucker is still around eh? I remember him single-handedly sowing discord in c/politics around the time of the election with incessant pro 3rd party spam and insane tirades of sealioning - also report abuse if I remember right. Or at least taunting people into breaking rules and subsequently reporting them. I was amazed at the time that he was allowed to remain unbanned for ages in that sub when it was very clear what he was doing.

    • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
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      5 months ago

      What’s wrong with advocating for 3p vote?

      Did the party komissars prohibit these discussions in DNC controlled subs?

  • x1gma@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    Why are we giving this person their stage again? How probable is it that the instance admins of the like 15 instances they have accounts on will all collectively ban him? It’s just your average nazi spammer on the internet. You’ve read that “bio” this person has. Even if they get banned, they’ll come back just on principle. Just block him like any sane person would do, leave him shadow banned like that with his nazi friends, and call it a day.