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[–][deleted] 6 insightful - 3 fun6 insightful - 2 fun7 insightful - 3 fun -  (6 children)

Very interesting. Something that's kept me at Saidit is that I think most of us agree that Big Corp and special interest groups of the 1% (internationally) are actively damaging any small group or business that can impact their market share. Many on Saidit disagree with me about the specific approaches of the 1% to glean everything from the 99%, but there seems to be a general agreement that this is endemic in US political culture (and in India, Brasil, Russia, Turkey, the Philippines, the UK, etc., etc.). You note the other forums that were attacked, and I would argue that some of the attacks can be from some of the small/developing forums, which receive funding from politically motivated donors.

One interesting development with the cultural attacks is how familiar they are with Saidit, and how they tried use our interests against us. This I see in the broader context online, whereby strategies are to divide people by having them argue over misinformation, disinformation, facts, science &c.

On another note, the attackers actively went after /u/TheAmeliaMay, and this person handled it very well (under the circumstances), but one very disturbing issue here is that Amelia did not deserve the personal attacks from the Saidit community, and some of these people were also foolled by the attackers. I know from personal experience that one has to have a thick skin to remain at Saidit. I hope /u/TheAmeliaMay will engage with us again soon, and will know that there are those of us here who are very grateful for Amelia's support and engagement.

[–]magnora7[S] 7 insightful - 4 fun7 insightful - 3 fun8 insightful - 4 fun -  (3 children)

One interesting development with the cultural attacks is how familiar they are with Saidit, and how they tried use our interests against us.

For instance, when we set up saidit, within the first week someone had used an automated script to register over 1000 usernames. They already had the API script set up because we're built the same way as reddit. They just pointed the script toward our site and stole a lot of people's usernames from reddit, so they couldn't register the same names on saidit.

These people know what they're doing.

I agree, Amelia handled it well given the circumstances. I think Amelia is taking a break but will probably be back, they just need to take a breather after all the craziness from the attack, which I totally understand! It's upsetting to see some people on saidit fall for the attack tricks, but that's why those tricks are used, because people do still fall for it. That's why education and discussion about these topics is so important. In theory, if we understand how the tricks work completely, the tricks no longer work on us. So all of us have to learn all of the tricks. It's a lot to ask, but the whole global internet culture has to mature in this way for things to move forward, I believe. We have to see the tricks for what they are, and learn not to react emotionally to those intentionally trying to provoke us.

[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Holy Mackerel. I remember Redditors bragging about their scripts for vote, account and post management years ago, when Aaron Swartz was also briefly engaged, and thereafter. But I've not seen these discussions for many years. (As you probably know, everything changed at Reddit during Digg's first major blackout, and their kiddos created Reddit accounts. I can't remember when that was.)

[–]magnora7[S] 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

The Digg exodus to reddit was in 2010. The technology has gotten better and better for infiltrating forums, I have no idea how Aaron would deal with this. Also there weren't really long-term large-scale paid shill groups when Aaron was around, imo they've become a prominent thing in just the last 10 years or so

[–][deleted]  (1 child)

[removed]

    [–][deleted] 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

    Am I going to have repeating issues from 4-hour-old accounts? What is it with these brand-new users who want to lecture Saiditors. This is indeed an issue.

    Regarding Amelia, I think it's obvious this person was trying to help deal with the many problems during a massive attack with fake accounts. Amelia tried to develop fair and equitable processes. In one case, Amelia reversed a ban. It was not Stalinist. During the process, Amelia was attacked by everyone - real and fake - sometimes with very personal insults. Regardless of that, Amelia was nonetheless rather polite to everyone, offered transparency in /s/Saidit and /s/gov, and would only delete or ban statements and people who were in obvious violation of Saidit rules, and as far as I can tell, there wasn't much in the way of deletions and bans because many of us could see all of the crazy posts.