There was a very public spat that played out between some of the mods of a vegan community and the admins of an instance probably around a year ago now.
Since then there's been a lingering feeling of distrust and resentment between some vegans and the rest of the Lemmy user base. Trolls and instigators love to gaslight people from both sides into fighting which leads to further division.
To everyone who is part of that: you are shitty people who need to grow the fuck up.
While I tend to agree people love drama and Lemmy is an easy target for it since it's still relatively small. They take pleasure seeing the shockwaves of these events ripple through the fediverse. Blocking them and refusing to engage with bad faith arguments (whatever your personal definition may be) is the best line of defense ATM IMO.
Many of them are important quality of life changes given recent/current events. I'm looking forward to the ghosts of the spam accounts disappearing.
The super rich have to keep their wealthy pawns in line to condition the masses. They've been banging various forms of this drum since MBS took over.
Wow, that list of changes is impressive and appreciated. Thank you all so much for the continuing work on the platform.
someone that they are/were friendly with
The problem I have with this theory is how incredibly stupid it would be for someone to do this to a personal acquaintance. If you're sharing media that's instantly recognizable as private 2 party communication, the person being harassed knows exactly who to report. I know stalkers are a thing but are they really that stupid? Or is prosecution of these things so awful that they operate with little fear of the repercussions? I have a really hard time believing this scenario but maybe that's being naive.
The more likely thing to me would be someone that is fairly tech savvy trying to harass or extort someone. Maybe "Nicole" is someone who clicked a phishing link from a stalker. Maybe she's hated by whoever is behind the spam. It could be almost anything. We don't really have a lot to go on other than whoever it is isn't actually the person in the pictures.
We do know that they actively monitor either the talk about the spam or the attempts to stop the messages since the messages have changed in reaction to attempts to stop it. There was also mention of a picture that was posted and removed somewhere after someone else was spotted in the picture. Who's behind it all and why is still unclear but we know it's more than just bot traffic. If it's an ARG they could find a less annoying way to go about it.
Plenty of CEOs in the past. Less talky more Luigi.
They look more like accidental or stolen/malicious pics from a laptop webcam to me. Whoever the person in the pictures is I hope they aren't being harassed or stalked or something.
These days it's hard to say for sure what's spam or some kind of social experiment or even a deranged person using social media to terrorize someone else.
Nice to see another instance join Lemmy and the fediverse. Best of luck.
Britney Spears - Oops!...I Did It Again (Official HD Video)
Eminem - The Real Slim Shady (Official Video - Clean Version)
Thank you for the continued work.
Congrats, and thank you.
Don't give them ideas. Next week's tournament will be "get 50 Thanks from battle in a row" or some other evil thing.
That's amazing.