As some of you may be aware, over the past few weeks there have been an increasing number of what I suspect are bots which will share one or even a few posts, all relevant to the communities they are shared in, at which point the account self-deletes. I’m torn as the stories are relevant, but they give me the impression of a narrative attack. I’ve seen only one of these accounts actually comment before deletion, otherwise they post and immediately nuke the account.
I have tagged mods and admins but have not heard any recognition on the problem. It’s also notable that by my impression this issue is getting worse. I noticed yesterday that communities I subscribe to which previously have not had this problem are now starting to receive these kinds of posts.
I want the fediverse to be a place to communicate with real people in good faith; this manner of posting runs contrary to that. So that begs the questions, is this actually a problem, and if so, what can be done about it?
Yeah it annoyed me when I noticed a couple of my comments disappeared after posting to those posts. I thought people were reporting and mods taking them down. I’d check the modlog and nothing. But, it is suspicious about this kind of behavior that’s been happening and again, it’s annoying. Why would anyone do that?
I think the next time we see posts like them, is to take their idea, re-word them and post them. At least that way, they’ll remain up for people who want to contribute than wasting so much of everyone’s time trying to participate.
IIRC, “ban user” with “remove content” fails to get recorded in the modlog. Since that’s inconsistent with “remove post” getting logged, I assume it’s a bug.