What happened?
Due to the recent developments, I have decided to make this community moderator-only. There has been a mass spam attack involving gore and nudity. This is now a very serious situation and it is clear that something has to be done to stop this from happening. The new messages might be from a different, psychopathic spammer.
What we decided to do about it
To have better control of this situation, we decided to lock down the community, except for the comment section on this very post. (Please let me know if I’ve missed a post)
Rules
- Please refrain to further spread the newest spam image, especially uncensored versions of it.
- The “It’s my girlfriend!”-joke is long gone. Be respectful, stop using it.
Going forward
Our main goal now is to stop the spread of spam on Lemmy. This seems like a major problem in Lemmy’s concept, so we need to work together to create a working solution to the spam and potential defacing of users.
Update: The source of the gore images has been identified, so it’s safe to say it’s not actually the same person as “Nicole”. Still fucked up, though.
I wrote about it earlier in this same thread: https://lemmy.today/post/27138344/15514958
Basically, the guy who was stalking me had this obsessive, relentless vibe. He’d actually brag about using alt accounts to follow me so I wouldn’t know it was him, and even admitted to “poking” me just to try and make me “snap.” Eventually, someone looked into his behavior and discovered he was using a spambot army to follow and mass-downvote me. During that investigation, someone noticed that the domain names tied to the bots matched the ones used in the infamous Nicole spam when it first started. His account also happened to be created right around the time that spam started.
As soon as that slight connection was made public, and after stalking me, trolling me, and downvoting me for months, he suddenly deleted his account (PapaSkwat@lemy.lol – the account has been deleted, so I feel I can actually name it).
So maybe it’s just coincidence. But his obsessive behavior, his refusal to let anything go, and the way he bragged about using multiple accounts to bug me, and bragging about trying to run me off Lemmy, lines up exactly with the kind of person who might launch a spiteful spam campaign against the girl who is victim of the Nicole spam.
The timeline, the tools he used, and the general attitude; it all fits. Then again, there are plenty of unstable people online, so who really knows. Just my take.
Wow, you’re the only person I’ve heard being targeted by the same person. What’d you do to piss them off?
I posted news articles from conservative sources to conservative communities. lol
He was so mad about it, he’d follow me to non-political communities just to mention it, then would downvote. Then he ramped up his campaign and started using the spambots.
For example, in a Positivity community, I posted a short post about my scooting on a nice day, “Great day for a simple scoot.” He unleashed the bot on it and it has 60 downvotes. https://lemmy.today/post/27013791
Notice that after he got called out and deleted his acount, now my posts there eventurally get up to the regular-ish 5 upvotes that those sort of posts typically get. (They always start out early with a “0” though, because there is still another person that downvotes all my posts. But that person doesn’t unleash bots on me, so all good) !positivity@lemmy.today
In the middle of his hate campaign against me, I actually asked him why didn’t he just block me or the 3 conservative communities I posted to. And he said that he wanted to keep bugging me to make sure that I left Lemmy.
It was weird. I never even thought of leaving Lemmy, so not that big of a deal to me. But it’s super fascinating to me that there are people out there who actively want to hate and be unhappy. So strange. Lemmy is just an online forum, no idea why so many take it so seriously.
Obviously me being a conservative on Lemmy means I get plenty of downvotes and spite. I’m fine with that. It’s expected. After ragging on me a few times, most get bored and realize that I’m not going anywhere, so they just block me and/or conservative communities.
But that dude was on a whole 'nother level. LMAO
Again, I don’t know for sure he was the same guy who’s behind the Nicole campaign, just that the timing and his behavior totally lines up with it all. Just my personal theory and I have no solid proof at all.
You’re blameless and think other people take Lemmy too seriously?
Apparently others thought it was the posters fault too and realized that he was bad enough to cause defederation: https://sh.itjust.works/post/35952149
As per that thread: “The targeted accounts are all outspoken users with very similar political opinions. I assume whoever is running the downvote accounts doesn’t like their politics.”
I’m sure the poster is probably already back under an alt. Probably started another account 4 or 5 days ago. Guess he better cut back on the Nicole spam and downvote bots this time though. :)
Well this got real accusatory too quick for my blood. Good luck with your hate campaign or whatever.
I have no hate campaign, as I have no hate towards anyone. I didn’t start the investigations into spambots or defed issues.
But I def hope they find the loser Nicole spammer guy. Incels like that need to be banned and dealt with accordingly because it’s unhealthy for awesome places like Lemmy.
I only posted conservative articles to conservative communities though, so he had no reason to be so weird about it.
He was obsessive and stalked me, and used a freakin’ bot army to follow me and downvote me. That’s too far, and it’s weird behavior. He probably also did it to other people he didn’t like. That fits with the M.O. of the original Nicole spammer: a loser who can’t accept rejection.
This thread isn’t about me. It’s about Nicole spam. I gave my feedback and theories about who it might be and why I thought that. That’s it.