Topic: Why are FUD-trolls allowed to open 4 topics per day? (Read 653 times)

I agree with you and share your frustrations, but either theymos would rather there be as much freedom as possible with moderation taking a backseat and intervene as little as possible, or he just doesn't have the time to do anything about it. It's hard to know where he stands sometimes as we rarely get comments from him on issues. Sometimes I just don't know whether he's dead against something and as such doesn't comment on it/ignores it to save him having to do so, or he just doesn't have time to comment or implement these things. Obviously as much freedom as possible with little mod intervention is good, but obviously sometimes there needs to be something done about those who cross the line (both with trolls and spammers) otherwise the forum just becomes a mess and unusable. We could have curbed the sig spam a long time ago and just banned the campaigns who were doing nothing and causing the destruction and they would have probably cleaned their act up pretty fast as this forum is too valuable to them. If we let them get away with doing what they want without repercussion then they will continue to be lazy and greedy and the forum continues circling the drain in the process.

Well, here's another masterpiece from the one and only btc-room101

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/nsa-begat-btc-china-cleans-usa-hairlip-hodl-r-purse-5081862

I tend to report the useless topics and posts made by freightjoe (and they get removed) but when it comes to stuff like this what can you mention in the report?
Drivel, mumbo jumbo, useless topic? It's a mess of everything but still, does it go against Rule nr. 1 ?

Would love to hear from mods like  hilariousandco, do you think this is against the rules? Would you delete this topic?
Just so I and others either report this bs or we simply ignore it, no point in both users and mods wasting their time.

I appreciate the response. It is just frustrating that there seems to be a general disregard to the state of Bitcoin Discussion, when it should be the cornerstone board of the entire forum. Issues like this one, asking for more mods, changing merit requirements for signatures, etc, are raised on pretty much a weekly basis in Meta, and yet Bitcoin Discussion continues to be a spamfest. We can report all the spammers we want until the cows come home, but without some changes being made at the admin level, that board (and others) will never improve.

I'm well aware of his behaviour and it's obvious he just logs in to post some fud then leave and his only intent is to kick up a fuss and be disruptive, but if you want an answer of how they should be handled then PM theymos about it. I brought the case up about fud trolls and what to do with them at the beginning of the year and have bumped the thread several times throughout the year looking for an answer but no response from anyone let alone admins so I'll assume it's something we tolerate until I hear differently.

Both the users I mentioned go on spamming sprees. You can review their post history and see them posting a new reply every 2-3 minutes for an hour or two at a time. They regularly open 4 or 5 new topics in the space of 20-30 minutes. I know they are posting more than the usual one line spam of "Bitcoin can make great profits if we just have faith and hold then we have a bright future", but they aren't contributing in any meaningful way. They join any and every thread and either claim bitcoin is dead or call everyone else morons. In my opinion, they are obvious trolls, and at the very least their posts should be deleted. Allowing them to continue spamming seems counter-productive to trying to clean up Bitcoin Discussion, especially since their posts are deliberately inflammatory/provocative and always generate a flood of replies.

Again, it's purely down to opinion of you as a reporter and the mod that handles it. Only Globals and admins can handle reports in Bitcoin Discussion so it's likely going to be down to me, mprep and Rickbig on deciding what to do with them.  They probably won't get marked as bad so will probably just stay in the queue unhandled like they are now. Whether you want to waste time on report them or not if they're not going to be handled is also up to you.

Wrong political leanings lead to bad management practices. This has been a known issue for a very long time, and very little has changed ever since people started bringing it up. It's either ignored completely, dismissed as a 'non problem yet' or you're told to "just report it".  

If, as you say, there isn't the will amongst the staff to outright ban users like freightjoe and btc-room101, then could we have some guidance on reporting their posts? I would never report a solitary post simply for saying something I don't agree with, even if I do think it is just baseless FUD. But when these users post 20 times in under an hour, even when their posts are somewhat on topic, in my opinion it crosses the line from discussion to spamming/trolling. Can we report all their posts when they do go on one of their spamming frenzies?

Trolling isn't allowed as per the rules but obviously that's completely subjective and why I brought the issue up in the staff forum for other's opinion, but nobody at all commented on it. I'd say he crosses the line from being a bitcoin cynic to a troll. His entire history here has just been to scream negativity about bitcoin and if he wasn't a troll he could do that in a much different way, but he's only here to alarm and fud.


There's a difference between someone being a sceptic and someone just being an outright troll who is just posting alarmist threads to purposely rile people up. He's not saying anything new and is obviously just getting kicks out of posting fud time after time.

D'ya think? Looks like he lost his GSOH on the way, then.
Troll account?
Not really, more like a Bitcoin Skeptic account: that's allowed, isn't it?

Well, you know the current forum situation is. If spamming is still a real problem even if there were solid rules about it. How much more about making FUD statements.

The best thing to do here is to just report every post and explain a good point to why is this a troll post(then hope that something good might happen to this account)


sad

I'd say it's because he's a good chance for Bitcoiners.

On Audi forum you're not allowed to spit at Audi because it serves no purpose but to make people think again about buying Audi, which isn't good for Audi.

But on the forum what does the FUD make?
-Keep away people not really certain about BTC -> good thing cause that's not a market you want to enter with weak hands
-Force people who are interested to think again and look for more info
-Make the weak hands sell (that means cheaper coins so that's a good thing too)

I love FUD and people spreading it. It means slow, stable and intelligent adoption by people understanding the technology and why it's FUD and not legitimate criticism. It means cheaper coins for everyone and good trades opportunity (shorting isn't bad in itself ^^).

Don't hate the FUD. Embrace it.

Though I agree it mustn't prevent other discussions so when 95% of topics will be FUD we'll need some kind of regulation on spamming :/

I agree with you OP

I also think people opening 4 new topics within 4 days spamming their favourite alt on the alt discussion board should be told to merge them and also get a 1 week ban and 100 merit or what (if dont have 100) the poster has deleted.

I have seen numerous ada and eos  topics opened by the same account before under the guise of new great observations about the project. They could have mentioned all of that on their first thread.

Should be 1 new thread opened per week on the same alt per poster.

Would be cool to have sigs removed from the main alt board because deliberate spammers and bots get noticed and are less welcome in the communities own threads in the ANN section. You always get some passionate people in most ann threads who wouldnt endure too much trash sprouting up in their threads.

The main alt discussion board is the one that has certainly been damaged the most since end of 2017 and needs the most help.

This man has a serious mental problems and needs to be treated as soon as possible. Just see his threads and you'll understand why...
I would second this: someone is getting paid to do this. Personally I wouldn't wish to limit this user to open threads but I think it will be better if we ban him and remove his account from this forum.

Thanks, that more or less answers my question. It's allowed

Most serious posters have abandoned the spammy boards. The noobs are the ones left, and they're probably being influenced by FUD.

You have a point, but I'm not talking about restricting his FUD. Let him FUD all he wants, but he should contain it in just one thread. Sharing the same FUD in many different threads is just spam.

Let me rephrase that: You don't go spam an Audi forum without getting banned

I'll ignore the account.

That isn't quite true.  There are trolls on the internet who love fucking with people who are passionate about something--doesn't matter if it's Audis, fountain pens, comic books, or bitcoin.  Their mission is to draw attention to themselves in a negative way, because to them any attention is good attention, and they're obviously not getting enough of the healthy kind of it in real life.

So just because you see someone trolling as hard as they can against bitcoin on a bitcoin forum, it doesn't mean they're being paid by anyone to do so.  I used to hear that a lot on the conspiracy theory websites back when I visited them (before I figured out that doing so was affecting my sanity).  People would say that if you don't believe WTC7 was taken down by nanothermite charges, you're being paid by the US government to spread disinformation and so on.  But although that's certainly one possibility, it's remote, and Occam's Razor would suggest that people are doing this for their own pleasure.

Don't know about that.  A person who does such things certainly knows how to save money on travel expenses, although he probably doesn't have much income and money to invest with.

That's the best solution, which a lot more people should avail themselves of.  That ignore button is worth its weight in gold, so to speak.

More a scammer than a troll.
From his website :


At least with him, the things are clear!

@Loyce -

freightjoe needs to get the ban hammer, problem is he’ll just start a noob account & continue spamming his crap.

There’s another one but I forget the exact username - btc_101 or something like that.

This problem actually you know better than other members in this bitcointalk forum, why this can happen to apply the topic in 4 times a day, because of you LoyceV, One of the most active mods in the idea of ​​posting professional and useful topics.


I conclude if freightjo, doing this, if he does not violate the rules of the forum I think it's fine.

I have gone through freightjoe post history and have seen constant attack on cryptocurrency and bitcoin in particular,  but the fact still remains that bitcointalk. Org is a decentralized site just like bitcoin it self and at that any thing is allowed without restrictions unless it goes against the general rule of the forum.

It might be that person want someone to drag with him by creating a fuss about FUD with the current situation of the market at this time. Well most people like him will lose confidence in crypto and can't also think positively.

I've come across a couple of his post over the past weeks, and I initially though s/he was someone you could reason with and discuss factually, I've long been proven wrong.

Best option is probably to put the account on ignore.
Restricting such FUDs in any form, would spark another kindle of FUD. Directed against the forum, and how it's against criticism.

No-one genuinely interested in bitcoin should be much deterred much by such FUD as they are everywhere and we can't control all of it.

Restriction on his posting ability should be implemented maybe a limit, no proof he's getting paid as he doesn't wear signature nor image advertising any product. He create over 3 FUD post in a single day. He was already on my ignore list after I came across one of his August post. The dude is just confused

This is the internet, you're bound to find people like this everywhere. I mean, trolling has become a new source of income for some people.

You would be surprised, but he may actually be serious on his beliefs about bitcoin, and might even be insane enough to think that all of what he says is true. There are so many people who do that. But you can't really ban people like these because one, freedom of speech is "violated", and besides it takes seconds to create another account to come back. Winning a battle isn't equivalent to winning a war.

Toxicitiy has taken over the internet. I guess I'd rather have toxicity than having no internet.

freightjoe is very well known for his FUD threads/post at a time when BTC does not stand well in terms of price. I try to reply few times in his threads with what I considered constructive to write - but his opinion is unchangeable. Although everyone has the right to their own opinion, as LoyceV says - he is sometimes exaggerated in that.

I notice he is come back again, and I post in one of his thread where he actually called the users ( present and future users ), stupid, fools, mentally retarded.

There is always the third possibility, he is just mad at the world. I've been dealing with people that make accounts after accounts in a local forum I'm lurking just to troll and start flame topics even when there is no financial incentive.

Anyhow, you know the solution:

No real/experienced bitcoiner/trader will take any of freightjoe's posts or comments about the bitcoin seriously,and anyone who does is probably a noob who shares the same views as him and it's best the forum ignores him/his kinds
He's freely allowed to air his shitty views,its down to the gullible to swallow it.There are more than enough topics and threads about the bitcoin and it's history for anyone to know freightjoes talking trash

Looking at freightjoe's recent post history would make you think that he hates Bitcoin to the highest level and is completely against it, while if you have a look at the deeper history of his posts, around November of last year, you would find him announcing a project named "Bitcoin Ruthenium", which he claimed to be a fork of the Bitcoin Blockchain. Now, if a person really hates something that he can't even stand it and keeps talking negative about it, why would he work on a project that is solely based on that exact thing that he doesn't even like?

He is either purposely doing all this in order to spread fear among the noobs and get a drop on the price in order to buy lower, or he has invested some money back in time and is hurt by the current drop which is why he is not being able to control his emotions. In either way, he doesn't deserve a lot of attention.

I brought him up in the staff forum back in February. Obviously just a troll account. Pretty sure he is NLC as well. Probably best to just ignore him because nothing will likely be done about it.

Anyone who has to travel around by free-riding freight trains is possibly not the best person to give investment advice. On the other hand, he may just be miffed because his railway network doesn't accept Bitcoin in payment for travelling tickets.

The market is too hard for some people to take it. He is just in deppresion stage . Will be just fine in the next bull run.
I doubt that anything that happens on this forum will ever have any effect on the market. So, shorting Bitcoin and creating FUD here will never work, in my opinion.
As i can see the topics are started by different people, they just like to see that side of the glass.

I think the reason is "Everything is accepted here except spamming" if someone opens 4 topics for one same issue. just report it. I don't think he is getting paid more likely another guy with 24/7 weed mood.

I'm thinking about freightjoe for example: Why are FUD-trolls allowed to open 4 topics on a day, meanwhile spamming the same FUD in many other topics? Why is this allowed on Bitcointalk? I mean, if you don't like Audi, you don't go to an Audi forum and open 4 topics about how much you dislike it per day, right? Why is it allowed to do that here?

I can only think of a few reasons for doing this: someone is getting paid to do this (as part of a FUD campaign in the media from some "established parties" against crypto), or someone is trolling because he missed the boat and hopes to buy more cheaper, or just shorting Bitcoin. Whatever the reason is, I think it's toxic to this community.

Each of his topics quickly grows to a few pages because of the generic signature spammers, so his FUD gets all the exposure he needs.
So again, my question is: why is this allowed? I know this forum values freedom of speech, but can't his FUD be restricted to just one topic? Let it grow into a Spam Megathread instead of spamming several boards on a daily basis.