So I have noticed a lot of people attempting to engage in debate with a troll that is not here to learn about how leftists can believe what they believe, or what statistics or science supports our beliefs. In fact what I have seen so far is cherry picked and bad statistics citing in order to give the impression that facts will change their mind if only you engage in the debate. The fact is, the debate is not one that can be won with facts, or at all.
What the facts show is that White Supremacists are a much bigger danger in the US than any other domestic terrorist group... Or honestly any foreign terrorist group. The statistics in the US show people of color being arrested at disproportionate rates for crimes committed by at equal rates by whites. When a troll cites bad statistics, don't think for a second that correcting the misinformation will diffuse the situation, because the goal of those statistics is the same goal as a study like the Bell curve(which we now know was funded by White Supremacist groups and has been riddle with logical fallacies and false assumptions to the point of being completely discredited). The goal of that misinformation is to rope you in. This is the greatest tool of the troll... Like somebody trolling for fish, the internet troll needs a good hook as well. DO NOT FALL FOR THE HOOK.
They are here to crowd out our community, to make us give up and throw in the towel. They have successfully conquered sites like VOAT and 4chan and to some degree Reddit. I think we need to keep in mind that they are very dedicated and will resort not just to cheap manipulation, but to spam campaigns or anything they think will make this site less useable.
Now that we have established the operation and goals of the spammer, what can we do?
First rule: Don't feed the trolls. Second rule: Don't feed the trolls.
What does a troll eat?
Trolls eat attention and time. Don't give them either. With out the ability to report individual posts we are really relying on moderators to chip away at the spam and ban users. This is really time consuming for moderators so patience is your best friend here. If you see something you don't think a moderator has seen you can always message them directly and ask them to remove it.
Keep in mind, this is not their site, they have enough echo chambers, so when they come here and accuse us of building an echo chamber, I say, so what... Any time leftists put in time and effort to build a resource it is immediately under attack and/or it gets coopted for use by fascists. Lets work together here to make sure neither of those things happen. They can go back to Twitter, 4chan, reddit, Voat, facebook, stormfront or any number of racist websites that claim to support their free speech. We have no obligation to support the free speech of hateful morons. We have no obligation to engage in debate with somebody here to "spread their ideas," or even to try to "understand ours," if they seem in any way disingenuous.
So when you spot a troll, resist to urge to respond, to contradict, to shout them down. That will only encourage them to continue and call for backup on other sites until this site is totally over-run and un-moderatable.
Thanks for reading guys, I really hope we can not fall into this trap where other corners of the internet have all caved.
SpiritOfTito wrote (edited )
Mods need to be more happy with the ban hammer.
I've no interest in reading daily mail comments and I've even less interest in reading some racist pasty faced school drop outs racist opinions.
Mind you, I've not actually seen any of the nasty shit they were posting so chances are the mods have brought the ban hammer down swiftly.
In which case, good job ladies and gents