And the thing is that it’s often so incredibly obvious that they can’t possibly be real. But HQ can’t always know for certain.
But does anyone remember the name of that poster who claimed to have lost premature twins a few years back? she actually joined mn a few weeks before, built up a bit of a persona and a following, she and the dh were splitting up, then she found out she was pregnant, then it was twins and then she was texting some mn’er from an ambulance to say that she was being rushed to hospital, and so the overnight vigils began, with her writing in incoherent english because she was so so so distraught and all she wanted was her babies and on and on she went.
People were on the verge of starting collections for her etc, but people had been reporting the threads for weeks and weeks and because there was no proof there was nothing HQ could or would do.
It was only when a poster started a separate thread saying “look, I know this is emotive, but people really need to take a step back when becoming over invested in these threads because they don’t really seem to be all they claim to be,” that others admitted they’d been reporting for weeks and had actually been told to stop doing so. And it was only then that HQ banned her. But she stayed on FB, used to send the poster she’d texted who had also lost twins iirc to tell her that she was going to kill herself if said poster went out etc.
And a few months later she was outed on another forum when a poster revealed that the pictures of her dead babies she had on her profile had been lifted from the internet. And she admitted everything was made up.
So for people who think that troll hunters are worse than lowlife like that, I urge you to think about just what kind of trolls there are out there. And for people who get over invested in the threads, do think about if a poster e.g. posts that they’ve just namechanged on their way to the hospital or just joined while in the depths of a screaming argument with their partner, or while they’re lying in a pool of their own blood, how likely is that really? Genuinely?