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.

  • empireOfLove2@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    1567·
    9 days ago

    That mf is still around? And now they’re spamming right wing nazi stuff, despite definitely for sure being a legitimate honest 3rd party Jill Stein Stan? My gosh, say it isn’t so!

    There is nothing for them to learn about “netiquette”, they are a cancerous wart intentionally participating in bad faith with the entire fediverse.

  • SGforce@lemmy.caEnglish
    533·
    9 days ago

    I wouldn’t care so much if he wasn’t such a bitch about it. You want to post that stuff than own up and admit it. Fucking cryptofascist.

  • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    7020·
    9 days 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.caOPEnglish
      294·
      9 days 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.worldEnglish
        17·
        9 days 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.

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    492·
    9 days 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.worksEnglish
        19·
        9 days 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.caOPEnglish
          15·
          9 days 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.

          “The claimant gets to review the dispute, the guy who wants to have my song; he gets to decide if he actually owns my song.”

          This is the same contradictory system in a slightly different manner:
          The defendant gets to review the dispute, the guy who’s been reported; they get to decide whether to accept or reject the report.

          I noticed this paradox earlier last year when I made some terrible posts and asked the P.D. team to review the reports made on me as I didn’t want to fall into this trap.

  • Coelacanth@feddit.nuEnglish
    455·
    9 days 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
      723·
      9 days ago

      What’s wrong with advocating for 3p vote?

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

  • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catEnglish
    415·
    9 days ago

    It blows my mind that the admins of UniversalMonk-affected servers don’t just ban him on sight.

    Guys: You’re being too nice. I get it, you want to be inclusive. But you have to draw lines. Someone doesn’t have to be telling racist jokes or something, in order to be clearly and unapologetically a net negative to the community in every possible sense. And, showing them firmly to the door doesn’t have to be a complex or “objective” process when that happens.

    • Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.winEnglish
      1226·
      9 days ago

      Nah, this whole trend to censor anything and everything that isn’t exactly what you want to see is worse for the community.

      I say leave him alone. I don’t have him blocked. I don’t ever see his content unless I actually do search to see what he’s been up to (spoiler: he was a far right nutbag all along the end). Even IF he is spamming articles, that behaviour can be modded by communities he isn’t modding for, and those he is modding for can be blocked. Hell if he pisses you off specifically you can block him yourself already! This isn’t a community needs to step in issue.

      • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catEnglish
        214·
        9 days ago

        How many of this comment do I need to respond to?

        You guys aren’t even trying to make it make sense. Moderators blocked him, so he made new communities of his own. Then people blocked him and instances banned him, so he made new accounts. Now he’s showing up again for people who have taken the steps you describe. He is actively evading people’s attempts to not have to listen to him. He talks about how proud he is of himself for doing it.

        • Cephalotrocity@biglemmowski.winEnglish
          921·
          9 days ago

          How many of this comment do I need to respond to?

          As many as it takes to get you to understand censorship is a worse means. UM can ‘evade’ all he wants but he can’t take away your unsubscribe and block buttons. Did you know they aren’t single use? Amazing!

          • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catEnglish
            183·
            9 days ago

            Did you know you can’t take away my “asking the admins to ban an obvious and incredibly energetic troll” buttons, either?

      • GreenKnight23@lemmy.worldEnglish
        144·
        9 days ago

        just like I said the other day.

        https://lemmy.world/comment/14424566

        in a year Lemmy will be a cesspool of extremist thoughts and opinions. left, right, doesn’t matter.

        the average Lemmy user is become far more caustic towards any differing opinions and that directly increases the toxicity of the platform.

        this is why mods are trying to be pedantic about the rules in communities, but unfortunately they’re only accelerating it.

        they’re removing all the content under “incivility” that calls out or questions bullshit yet leaving toxic misinformation up because it breaks “no rules”.

        • imaqtpie@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
          814·
          9 days ago

          Yeah man I feel like I’m taking crazy pills, I literally haven’t seen a single thing this dude has posted in months and all these people chiming in like he’s flooding their feeds. Like why the fuck are they subscribed to his communities in the first place???

  • jordanlund@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4214·
    9 days ago

    Everyone wanted to know how it would go for the “I just want people to support a 3rd party” folks after the election… Well, now you know!

      • jordanlund@lemmy.worldEnglish
        528·
        9 days ago

        He was banned on lemmy.world for excessive Jill Stiein/3rd party spam prior to the election and the discussion at the time was “What will they do after the election?” Well, now you know. Right Wing all along.

    • RandomGen1@lemm.eeEnglish
      82·
      9 days ago

      I want to push back on this just a little. Clearly UM isn’t the bastion of consistent good thought, but others that were maligned like return2ozma have been pretty consistent in what they post.

      This is to say, “Great, one person is a fuckup. Why are we attributing this to the whole group?”

      • sunzu2@thebrainbin.org
        47·
        9 days ago

        Becuase 3p vote is the threat to neo libaral regimes… They requires polarization and two choices to lock us into endless cultures warz lesser of two evils, trust me bro vote for my guy…

        They DNC would rather you vote for Trump than 3p lol

  • woelkchen@lemmy.worldMEnglish
    291·
    9 days 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.

  • x1gma@lemmy.worldEnglish
    313·
    9 days 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.

  • jjagaimo@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    27·
    9 days 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

  • archonet@lemy.lolEnglish
    282·
    9 days ago

    oh, that tard’s still around? I blocked him months ago.

    I can affirm my experience has been all the better for it, so yes, the rest of the fediverse should throw the Nazi out of the bar.

  • recursive_recursion they/them@lemmy.caOPEnglish
    221·
    9 days ago

    Based on the number of dislikes I have to imagine that someone out there might have made reports which were probably and unfortunately ‘handled/managed’ by UniversalMonk as that’s how the current moderation system works:

    Currently [as of Jan 12, 2025]
    If a report is sent, both the community moderator(s) and admin(s) are able to see and handle the report.

    • This has the unfortunate side effect where if the moderator has no qualms and dismisses the report it can become unlikely that anyone would know what’s going on.

    The user who made the report might then unfortunately think that the admin(s) are condoning the post/content that’s shared on their platform which might not actually be the case.

    At this point I’m just going to ask that: if anyone has any posts or comments that they’d like to report, please feel free to also shoot me a Direct Message (DM). I’m going to preempt and say that while I can’t promise that I’ll respond immediately, I can at least guarantee that I’ll reply back saying that I have seen your message.

  • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    211·
    9 days ago

    Oh wow, that’s the first time I’ve seen this person’s userpage and read… whatever that is.

    So fucking cringe.