Bad faith posters/targeting by bots

[DeafLeppard]

I’m not sure if I am being paranoid or not but I do feel like there are an increasing number of threads started by bots or bad faith actors. I’m all for robust discussion but they tend to be by posters who don’t do anything else. I can’t imagine MN is immune to being targeted by rabble rousers. Is anything happening behind the scenes?

I know some forums don’t let people post on politics/contentious subjects until they’ve reached a certain number of posts in order to discourage this kind of behaviour.

Hi @DeafLeppard,

There's nothing particular going on that we've noticed. Obviously we do get trolls here from time to time and we usually manage to see them off fairly quickly, though some can be harder to spot than others.

The 'rabble rousers' are a bit different to actual 'trolls' because it's harder to be sure that someone is 'just' here to cause trouble rather than simply having an opinion that goes against the grain or is strongly held. We do have some limits on a small number of topics. However, topics like politics are by their nature contentious and we wouldn't want to discourage people from posting on those topics just because they're new. Putting lots of limits on when and what people can post about doesn't feel in the spirit of free discussion.

We do always encourage people to just hit the report button if they have any concerns about a poster and we deal with those as quickly as possible. It's usually fairly easy to see from our end if someone is acting in bad faith, and we can take it from there. Please don't ever feel backwards about coming forwards in terms of reporting this. We understand that it's not easy to tell as a user what someone's intentions are so we're always happy to take a look behind the scenes.

What makes you think they are bad faith / bots rather than simply people who hold opinions you dont agree with?

I think it's more likely the bots/bad faith actors are elsewhere (X/Facebook/Tiktok etc) and their influence on opinion is being felt here.

I swither a bit about this too - but they generally only come on MN to post on political subjects. Most MNers post on a wide variety of topics, so I get suspicious when I see posters who don't also have posts on school holidays, the weather or what have you.

You search their previous posts?
The problem with that is the name change facility.
If someone has an outrageous opinion, such as marmite is lovely, and they know they are likely to get torn a new one, they tend to name change so that their posts on, as you say, school holidays and the weather, aren't linked and they can carry on chatting normally on other topics

That doesn't mean they dont have the opinion they claim to have, it just means they read the room and know they will face backlash for it and they dont have the stones to stand by their opinion as 'themselves' iyswim.

If you search the OP name on any contentious/guaranteed frothing thread with a high number of replies, you will usually get a brand new poster name (or someone that has joined within the past couple of days). The name is very often three words including a colour. They tend to engage a lot with the thread, quoting responses and replying to them throughout, or tagging people with the @ function.

This isn't all down to namechanging!

I have reported several threads under the "not a genuine poster" option, but had no response from HQ, so have given up.

I don't want to big myself up in any way, but as a daily poster on Mumsnet since 2006, I think I have a fair idea of when a thread is genuine and when it isn't.

I agree with this - the posters just don't pass the sniff test. You see the same with the poo trolls - for which every time I have reported something that felt "off", MN has investigated and the post has almost always been removed. So I think my intuition is pretty good.

And yes, if my spidey sense tells me that a post is ragebait/trolling then I do have a look at what else that person has posted.