Yeah, people be random sometimes, internet can be hostile. But why is @GrapheneOS still engaging? After 2-3 messages you won't really improve on anything, and their goal is probably to just suck energy, so the only way to win is to not engage at all. Also ruins the conversations about the the content, instead people end up focusing on that crazy-on-one-side exchange.

Internet 101: don't provide sustenance to the creatures who sometimes live under bridges.

It's often possible to get through to people who are initially hostile. They were friendlier than a lot of the Free Software community on Mastodon and didn't even link to harassment content. They burned themselves out and stopped on their own so they're still not blocked.

> It's often possible to get through to people who are initially hostile

If there is a hint of the person actually reading your messages, then yeah, I'd agree in many cases. But read the messages this person posted, it is clear after just a couple of messages that they're not responding to anything @GrapheneOS actually wrote, they're spewing nonsense into the ether.

Personally, I don't think it's worth trying to save everybody, focus on people who are actually willing to listen, and have a conversation instead.

I don't know, but GrapheneOS posts tend to get the most bizarre attacks on social media. It's really strange - outright unhinged attacks.

It speaks to the medium that someone shouting nonsense can absorb so much of the thread

Does mastodon or whatever that UI is not have a way to block someone from appearing on the main commenter's own feed?

This thread is hosted on GrapheneOS's server so I'd assume GrapheneOS team could block multimilliardaire https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/115584160910016309

On most platforms if a post's author replies to a reply, that will boost it above others. Admittedly I don't use mastodon and can't spot how many replies that post actually received (I see 25 boosts, 0 quotes, 21 favourites, but not the number of replies/comments)

This would make sense. And would make their repeatly taking the bait even more regrettable

Goes to show the fundamental UX design flaws of Mastodon and Twitter. If it were on Hacker News or Reddit it would be instantly downvoted. Even if the OP replied to the comment, it would still be buried. But because of how Mastodon and Twitter are designed, if the OP replies it will get amplified.

We can block accounts from grapheneos.social to stop their posts being shared by our instance. If they posted a link to harassment content, all their replies and the replies to those in the linked page would be gone. Our chat rooms have a much lower bar for bans because it's disruptive for everyone using it. There's currently someone raiding our Matrix chat rooms spamming images including CSAM because they're angry we banned them for their harmful behavior in our rooms. Our moderation team turned on the automation for removing this which previously led to someone escalating to a swatting attack when they couldn't spam gore and CSAM anymore. It's best not to ban people if they're not really causing any harm because we have enough people targeting us with libel, harassment and even violence already.

Is shadowban an an option? I guess not for CSAM but for the lead up to that?

It must be hard sometimes not to get quite a dim view of the world when pressed up against this part of it. Condolences.

Mental illness sucks. The guy is clearly not doing well.

State actor, without a doubt. They even called them perverts at one point.

He's French.

Right? I was like, "why is the official os account arguing with a bot?"

I mean, it's also not great ux that it shows up where it does and with so much real estate.

100% state bot. I wouldn't even think it was just France, other state actors would love to see GrapheneOS go down as well. How dare citizens have technology we can't access.

Likely a fascist whose sole purpose is to suck energy from the maintainers. An authoritarian trolling an anti-authoritarian project.

BYE four or five times.

LET ME SHOW YOU THE DOOR, MAY I?

Normal troll behavior. I don't know why they keep engaging with him since he's obviously just there to poop on the floor.

It doesn't look like a troll. It's best not to do something which could cause them to escalate to obsessive harassment. It could potentially turn into more violence in the form of swatting attacks or something else.

Yeah it does. It's perfectly OK to ignore abusive people if a good faith effort to communicate has failed.