Block report and move on. Encourage others to do the same. “Democratically extinguish the thread by ignoring it and anyone who would fan the flames”. Hopefully the mod team is active enough to silence anyone who’s actively trolling.
yup👍
plus since the mod team is spread out across multiple instances it incentivizes mods to do their best for their instance
it’s a somewhat friendly competition in icing out people who toxify the environment
plus we try to help each other out since this is an ongoing FOSS project🌻
As a mod and instance admin, it varies depending on the variety of the troll and whether they’re under my jurisdiction:
- Garden Variety Trolls: I just don’t engage and ban them. These are the types posting racist memes, name calling, harassment, etc. I waste no time on them. Outside my jurisdiction, I report them.
- Mis/Disinformation Accounts: I usually fact check them. Not to change their minds, but to tear down the false narrative they’re trying to construct. Depending on the how they’re operating, I may or may not report / mod them; depends if they’re violating any rules. There are some I’ve wanted to ban/mod but they weren’t violating any rules, so my hands were tied.
- Obnoxious Jerks: Usually just don’t engage at all. Sometimes the best thing you can say is nothing. If they’re under my jurisdiction and are violating rules (most communities have some kind of “be civil” rule), I’ll mod the offending content, ban if it’s a persistent pattern of behavior. If not, I’ll report them.
Otherwise, I just downvote, block, and/or move on. Life too’s short to care what some internet troll has to say.
There’s no great way to handle people whose only goal is to drag you down or lessen you. Just block and move on to better things.
This is especially true on platforms where engagement = content is promoted (ex. Instagram)
You’ll notice that the most controversial comments show up first, and that’s because a lot of people have replied to it to argue or tell the person off. I’m willing to bet a lot of those controversial comments just do it to get views to their account.
Instead of engaging, block the user. If an account usually has bad behaviour in the comments, drop the whole account.
Over time you might see less of the trolls, and it will tell the algorithm that people don’t want to see it. If the platform is engineered to increase engagement, it should try to avoid users hard blocking content
Short answer: you don’t.
Trolls are people who like getting a rise out of others. They’re provocateurs. The best thing you can do is ignore them. Let them feel like no one cares and their effort is being wasted, and they eventually get bored and stop. On Lemmy, downvote if you want to, but personally I don’t even like giving them the satisfaction of knowing someone read their message.
If you’ve got a persistent troll who is bothering you, block 'em so you don’t even see them. And don’t even tell them you’re doing it, just let them scream into the void obliviously.
Usually I spend 5 minutes typing out an angry reply. Then I realize I have no interest in hearing back from this person, hit cancel and move on with my day.
Yeah, I’ve been there. Halfway through typing a reply I usually realize, the most likely outcome of this is more bad faith arguments and more frustration.
I will sometimes just leave a purely factual reply or a link, and not respond further if they want to debate it or move the goalposts.
