Lots of trolls on those instances. They’ll try to sound like they’re making reasonable points while also outright denying facts and even contradicting themselves. If you take the bait and try to reason with them, they’ll gaslight you and try to make you doubt your sanity.
And sometimes they travel in packs and will brigade you, especially on posts that are a day or two old and not as active anymore. Basically to isolate you and team up on you and make you question yourself.
We have theories about some of them having ties to certain authoritarian countries (like russia). But they’ll constantly virtue signal about their anti-west stances, and accuse you of supporting every terrible thing that any western country does or ever did if you so much as criticize their dear russia.
They’ll strawman you, they’ll sealion you, they’ll gish gallop, motte-and-bailey, and basically use every disingenuous or bad faith trick in the book. And if you call them out on it, they’ll only keep attacking you using ad hominems and DARVO.
If you don’t know what any of those things are, it would be good to look them up and equip yourself with the knowledge so that you can recognize it when you see it. Because you will see it if you’re here long enough.
It’s not too bad overall though, and people are generally reasonable. Learning what instances to avoid is half the battle, then block the communities where you see it happening most. There are some where they tend to congregate.
After that, make good use of the block button for users who stress you out. And there’s a useful feature on some clients where you can tag users with custom tags, so you can label them as “possible troll” or “insufferable tankie” or something like that if you’re not ready to block someone yet for any reason.
Lastly, remember this motto, and it will serve you well: Don’t feed the trolls!
Lots of trolls on those instances. They’ll try to sound like they’re making reasonable points while also outright denying facts and even contradicting themselves. If you take the bait and try to reason with them, they’ll gaslight you and try to make you doubt your sanity.
And sometimes they travel in packs and will brigade you, especially on posts that are a day or two old and not as active anymore. Basically to isolate you and team up on you and make you question yourself.
We have theories about some of them having ties to certain authoritarian countries (like russia). But they’ll constantly virtue signal about their anti-west stances, and accuse you of supporting every terrible thing that any western country does or ever did if you so much as criticize their dear russia.
They’ll strawman you, they’ll sealion you, they’ll gish gallop, motte-and-bailey, and basically use every disingenuous or bad faith trick in the book. And if you call them out on it, they’ll only keep attacking you using ad hominems and DARVO.
If you don’t know what any of those things are, it would be good to look them up and equip yourself with the knowledge so that you can recognize it when you see it. Because you will see it if you’re here long enough.
It’s not too bad overall though, and people are generally reasonable. Learning what instances to avoid is half the battle, then block the communities where you see it happening most. There are some where they tend to congregate.
After that, make good use of the block button for users who stress you out. And there’s a useful feature on some clients where you can tag users with custom tags, so you can label them as “possible troll” or “insufferable tankie” or something like that if you’re not ready to block someone yet for any reason.
Lastly, remember this motto, and it will serve you well: Don’t feed the trolls!