Did someone spam you with a Zoom link today?

I did not receive the messages.

Yes, I did.

Yes, I did.

I haven’t received any pm’s from any Jelly for about two weeks.

I did, if I’m guessing correctly what you’re referring to.

Nope.

Wow! A new user who has just signed up and immediately knows what I’m talking about! I wonder what magic you use to get such a brilliant insight.

I’ve flagging these profiles for days, the mods are pretty good about getting rid of them.

Yes.

Because I’m “trusted” and “informed”.

What can I say. Even bots want me.

Was that what was written in your pm? Because in mine the bot was betting me to give it a chance to prove that it wasn’t a bot.

@Mimishu1995 – Are you asking me?

@JLoon yeah, I was asking you. Should have typed the @

@Mimishu1995 – What I got was basically the same message you reciveved – including reference to me being trusted, blah blah, etc. It’s since been mysteriously deleted from my pm log, either by the sender or by mods.

My own feeling is that this site has probably never been a rich environment for anyone wanting to harvest data, but it’s an easy hack because development stopped over 10 years ago and security features haven’t kept up.

And before everyone piles on and tells me I’m a heartless ungrateful bitch – I do appreciate what (both) moderators here accomplish. But really, without some significant tech upgrades it’s a losing battle. What you’ve seen lately will only get worse.

@JLoon the answer below you genuinely scared me.

It’s grammar and syntax usage has significantly improved, the learning algorithm is pretty good. The context algorithm, however, still sucks.

@canidmajor – Right.

And unfortunately it’s not the only one running here.

I’m taking a break.

Good luck everyone.

There’s been a swarm. Not engaging with them. Not encouraging them with attention. Just flagging.

Should we be on guard for spoofing—using our own profiles?

90

8 messages thus far but why all the subtrefuge. Who/whatever it is posting, it isn’t Voldemort. Are we all talking about drexell3?

@Drexell3 Hang on a minute. Don’t thank me. And don’t make assumptions. If the bulk of the crowd suspects a snake among us, the last thing I anticipate is meeting it in person. I am by no means championing your case. And if your fear is discovery and eviction from here, I suggest you explain your fears to the bunch assembled. I don’t know enough to have a position.

Another vote that it’s a human pretending to be a bot. (Forget which jelly said this first.)

Interesting either way.

In this^ profile, he gives the times for the Zoom call including the time in Russia. This is the returning jerk who was banned.

I was unaware of this thread until the pile of pm s appeared this afternoon. A bot recruiting a “league” and assuming my charter membership? What What about the rest of you members? That’s a list he/it can take to the bank. What a world. Something to hoot about at the poker game tonight. Gotta nap for the all nighter. Good luck to the rest of you with whatever game this is.

I received it. Though it was about an appeal to the Fluther moderators and proving the person was human. The person claimed to have had their messages (attempting to understand why they were being banned) ignored by moderators.

It’s clear to me that there is a human there, even if the person seems to be foreign and is using some translation software, and posting some rather odd statements. They understand some people thought they were a bot, and say they were misunderstood.

The message to me did not say anything about a charter membership in a league.

Yes, he was kinda convincing but I did not honor his wishes. Something about that whole interaction creeped me out.

@Zaku I have already entertained the idea of the account being a human using a translator. There are moments when they seem too intelligent to be a bot.

But actually whether it’s a bot or human doesn’t matter to me now. The user has done some pretty suspicious stuff. They first claimed to be in Eurasia, but is obsessed with America and asked some pretty loaded questions that seem to be gearing to a certain answer. In one question they claim whatever bias they had came from Russian TV. The Eurasia thing was quickly abandoned and at one point they claimed to be in another country. They claimed to be anywhere but Russia, but everything they say has at least something to do with Russia, and they seem to hold a very high opinion on Russia. They also show signs of snooping around and know things that a new user shouldn’t be able to know.

And now the whole Zoom thing. For which reason would anyone jump into a call even if the user was human? What do they think they are going to achieve here? Not to mention each time they post an invitation the reason changes too. Mine seemed to be customer satisfaction or something.

Even if they did turn out to be a human who was just using a translator, it would do nothing to change my opinion about them.

@Mimishu1995 What other country did they claim to be from other than North Ossetia-Alania or North Ironia-Alania (two names for one of the republics in the Russian Federation, which is in Eurasia, but is not Russia, but would have Russian TV, which has a strong Russian bias)?

I’d be curious to see what shows up on a Zoom meeting. I’d be curious to see them communicate in a different format. I didn’t today because the time wasn’t good for me. Did anyone else?

According to the message I got, they hoped that it would show people that they were not a bot, and possibly someone that would be allowed to keep using Fluther.

@Zaku I didn’t enter the call either because the time wasn’t good. But I’m actually more worried that it’s a potential scam link, and, in the case it’s a genuine link, a possible violation of privacy. I just don’t really feel like showing up to an unprompted meeting with a person I don’t know.

And also my message didn’t have any “charter league” either, but they said something along the line of “I’ve been misunderstood by some people here, must I be misunderstood forever?”

I still have doubt that this user has a good intention. A lot of us have contested their bias by pointing them to the facts that was actually what I did in my earlier interaction with them. And their reaction is either doubling down on their bias or going away to ask another question with the same underlying bias. It doesn’t seem to me that they have come here to do things a normal user would do – ask questions and learn – but to impose a certain belief onto us. And it says a lot when they come to an American-dominated website, mostly ask questions about America in a heavily biased and negative tone, and refute our argument with their “Russian TV” experience.

I suspect that in the best case scenario of them being a human and is just calling to prove they are human, the conversation would go something like this: “hey, I’m a real human, not a bot. So do you believe me now? Do you believe what I’ve been saying? That’s right, you have been brainwashed all along. I get my news from Russian TV, which is 100% the truth. Now forget everything you’ve known and listen to me.”

That is my opinion on this user for now. I could be wrong with my assumption though. You just provided an interesting perspective there. Maybe in the future something will happen and we will have new information about this. But for now, with all the information we have here, I don’t think I trust this user one bit.

I would absolutely not go to a Zoom call with an unknown person with highly suspicious intentions.

Does anyone notice how the user seems unfazed by anything thrown at them, but gets so offended when they are called a bot? So much so that they organize an entire Zoom call just to prove they are human. They even insulted me at one point, long before the mods started banning them :P This is one thing I found so amusing about this situation.

@Drexell3 has left the building !

@Tropical_Willie OH happy day!! :)

So should we assume he/it will reappear in another guise? Others above speculate this one the “second coming” of a past incarnation. I’m not net savvy at all, so I don’t understand what the panic is about. I figure any day now, we’ll all be conversing unknowingly with machines anyway.

@HP my problem with them is not because they are a bot, but because they are here to spread misinformation and instill hate. It doesn’t matter if it’s a bot or not.

I’ve spoken to Russians in person before, a high percentage (of my experience, so anecdotal, but still) of whom said things which were almost as strange, or even more strange (in different ways). And hearing interviews with many “people on the street” in Russia also seems to have a high percentage of people with wild-seeming views/expressions/ideas, and/or seeped in Russian media propaganda.

As a new flavor or unusual foreigner, I find them interesting. But I think there is a very thick language barrier that’s made worse by whatever algorithm they used to translate their text. They’d probably have better luck posting in their native language and letting us try to translate it. (I don’t remember what the policy is here on posting in foreign languages, though.)

(I was finding it at least as interesting as dealing with another regurgitation of Fox News / alt-Right nonsense.)

But I get that many regulars here were quite bothered by it.

And, IIRC, one of the main goals of Fluther is to have people posting in well-written language, which I also enjoy.

I really don’t know enough to have an opinion regarding the malevolence of the “visitor” I can’t remember any posts from him/it. The pms popped up out of the blue, the first amounting to the Princess Leia hologram “help me obi wan kanobi” speech. I mean it’s bizarre—a genuine strangely worded plea of fear and desperation, begging me not to sic the mods on him/it followed by an almost poignant reflection along the lines of “soon the mods will find me and throw me out. What can you do to help me? The second message began as listing one of us by name a covert pipeline to the mods dedicated to his/its eviction for being a bot which it claimed untrue. I mean the wording, aside there was a genuine impression of urgency and panic—fear!! I mean what kind of bot panics? This one was so over the top, that I wrote to correct the mispercetions as to the functioning of this place, beginning with the fact that I don’t snitch to the mods on man or machine, and am powerless in regards to their omnipotence. And finally I emphasized that there was nothing covert or clandestine about the accused member’s behavior or justification that the mods might require a “plant” inserted to keep an eye on us. But this interaction provoked an immediate reaction, as though any reply at all be seized upon as indicating chance for alliance and possible salvation, and in the messages which flooded back, he/it blurted speculations on the order of what you might expect from a condemned man awaiting execution running through the possible scenarios leading to that phone call from the governor. If it is a machine, it’s definitely something different. A machine that mimics fear an desperation?

HEY @all didn’t Putin shutdown internet outside RUSSIA ?

No.

I’m wondering what you mean by notorious?

Upon contemplating a Message anomaly I encountered yesterday or before, I might have received a spam zoom invitation.

I saw a new Message notification but when I clicked on it, the newest message was one that I had already seen a week prior.

Perhaps that anomaly or some administrative action caused the message volatility.

@Brian1946, the message probably disappeared because the account was deleted. They keep coming, though, under different names and with different wording.

All that fear and desperation and the pleas for recognition are a con. Don’t respond.

My opinion: This little site, with its old technology and its small but loyal base, might look to someone like an excellent petri dish for trying out spam and trolling techniques and Trojan Horse invasions.

Note also how it tried to sow discord among us by accusing some and inveigling others to stand up for it or rescue or protect.

@Brian1946 Same just happened to me. (2022.07.31)

@Tropical_Willie they said they came from Eurasia. So if @Zaku‘s answer is anything to go by, this could explain why a pro-Russian troll could be using the Internet.

@HP I think I know who is on the list of you PM. And honestly I don’t care. Who would you believe, an odd-sounding bot-like account with problematic belief, or an established user on this site?

I think we should all take @Jeruba‘s advice, report and don’t respond. We all know they are dead set in their goal and any reasoning with them would just be thrown back at us by a more ridiculous argument. They want our attention. Over time they may stop with all of this if they realize we don’t care.

@Brian1946 I received 3 more messages, but they were all deleted before I could view them. I wonder what they said this time :)

I have another new message on my count today, but no message. I tried writing a mod asking if I could see any of these messages, but no reply yet.

I visited a new Wisconsin State Park today. It’s only 14 miles from my home. It was gorgeous. Wisconsin is a beautiful state.

I did not respond to the wrong question. Some of you need a distraction or a priority check. Just sayin’. :D

For those of you who have not been around or aware of what’s been going, Fluther has been undergoing a siege in the last few weeks by either a bot or a very nasty troll. The mods have been working hard to chase down and eliminate nasty new iterations and pms.

It might not mean anything to the casual Jelly but it has nearly brought down Fluther and we hope it is gone. I have considered leaving Fluther until it was dealt with.

@janbb the user must have done some nasty things that I wasn’t there to witness. To me it’s just a really pathetic troll that outed themselves too early and is making itself look like a clown. I’m pretty amused by what is going on, but it doesn’t affect me negatively at all.

I hope you will stay. I can see the mods have been very aggressive with them now. And besides, a lot of us here don’t seem to buy into what they try to impose on us. We jellies are too smart for this :)

Just great, I just joined and we get an apocalyptical troll that threatens to shut things down :( I really like it here and talking to so many amazing people, I sure hope we all can get through this.

@RayaHope We will.

@Mimishu1995 It’s less about us buying into it, and more about the programmers using a small, nearly defunct site as a testing/proving ground for the AI coding. If they deem it to be successful here, in a little noticed corner of the internet, then the spread into larger, better attended opinion sites will become endemic. The learning algorithms of these is impressive, from incoherency to very understandable grammar and syntax, to having context almost match current usage.

In spite of what some think, it does matter, if we are going to be able to keep Fluther going.
It is more than a “distraction” to be blasé about.

It’s clear some bad translation software was used. It’s also clear to me that there was a human being there.

I have not seen anything that indicates a bot to me, except that some people here seem convinced it was a bot. I also haven’t seen anything that looks like it was trying to take down Fluther, unless you count annoying people by posting messages so unusual and with such bad English that they could convince people they were a bot. The messages I saw were also seeming more like someone from another culture and/or who has a very different idea of what’s appropriate, posting lots of seemingly bizarre non-sequiturs and some rude or defensive comments, rather than someone intentionally trolling. Of course since moderators deleted lots of things, I may be missing a lot of information.

@Zaku the first ever question of this user was about help with some kind of sport betting. I remember telling them not to involve in betting because it’s destructive behavior. Then they said something like an insult toward me for not helping them, and something like I’m leading Fluther into destruction because of my irresponsibility. That question only had three people answering, so I don’t know if you have seen it.

Although I don’t really think things are that serious like @canidmajor said, and I don’t discount the possibility that the user is really just a person from a different culture without much knowledge of English, I still have serious doubt they are here with good intention. It has been revealed that they named a user here by name as a potential “enemy” and rallied other users into “saving” them. This doesn’t seem to me like something a normal confused person from another culture would do. It’s just petty and borderline malicious, regardless of culture. Combined with everything we’ve seen here, I still pretty much doubt its intention.

And I think all of us should be careful. Maybe the “take down Fluther’ goal isn’t actually from the fact that it’s a bot testing ground, but actually from our own discomfort with them right now. In the case this is a human messing around with us, like a few of us have speculated, this is extremely harmful to all of us, because spreading fear and discord among us is exactly what a troll would want. The more we are fearful of them, the more they gain the upper hand. It would even be a big success for them if they manage to drive any of us out of this site just by being obnoxious.

Don’t give a troll what they want. Don’t give them attention. Let them rot in their own miserable filth. Report and let the mods take care of them.

And even if it does turn out to be a bot testing out its things, we can’t let it take over our mind, because that would only show the developer of whatever this bot is that the bot is effective, that they should do exactly what they are doing and people will be confused and scared. We can’t let that happen. We can’t let them win.

I can think of several reasons why that person’s behavior disrupt the community, are antisocial, rude, and may violate various Fluther rules. The reason I came to Fluther in the first place was Gail’s recommendation as a place where people were different from most Internet forums in that there were interesting people using well-formed sentences. And while I didn’t see the gambling question or some other things, I saw many posts that looked like they’d gone through bad translation software.

Glancing at the Fluther guidelines, I see several things that would suggest this user isn’t a good match for Fluther, such as:

* Fluther is about “getting an answer from a real person.” (Getting seeming non-sequiturs from a real person clumsily using translation software, may not fit that well.)

* “Responses must… Be respectful; you can disagree without being disagreeable”

* “Responses must not: Disrupt the discussion”

* “quality responses are still required”

* “All content on Fluther should be:
Genuine
Well-written, and
Promote good discourse”

* Not allowed on Fluther: “Vague, confusing, or generally non-sensical” activity.

* “All content must: Use proper English”

So, I did see many examples of things that clash with the above.

And it seems like foreigners using translation software, and/or people being too confusing and not writing well, are against the guidelines.

@Zaku so in the case this is just a confused foreign user with a bad translator, why do you think they came here? If they know little English, why don’t they just find another forum in their own language so that they don’t have to go through the translation process, while avoiding culture clash as well? And I haven’t seen any question about Russia or Eurasia from them. All their questions are exclusively about America and American culture. For someone who is so proud of Russia, I would imagine they would talk more about Russia.

And why do they try to stay for so long when it’s clear to them they aren’t welcome here? If I were them, I would have just left after I saw my account being banned for the second time. Why bother with all the Zoom links when it’s clear to them that no one is joining and the mods would just ban their messages? They just seem so obsessed with this site for no reason.

My time following Internet drama has taught me that sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction, so I’m not discounting your theory, because there have been cases of people suspected of being trolls and bots but turned out to be average people with issues. But I’m just having a hard time understanding the motivation of this user, if your theory is true.

I don’t know why they came here, why or whether they don’t use other forums, or why they got attached here – I expect they do use other forums. Maybe we’ve actually been more interestingly responsive to them than other English sites? Just a guess on my part.

I had only just started to communicate with them somewhat effectively, when they got banned. I have some theories, but I don’t know. They’ve offered to connect with me on other channels, and I would be interested to do so, but the mods keep deleting their accounts, apparently even when they just send me private messages, which I think has so far prevented them from seeing my attempts to give them other ways to communicate with me. A mod did reply to me, but they avoided talking about the actual situation.

Since I’ve had so little contact, I can only conjecture about why someone from a remote part of the Russian Federation might not have talked much about Russia in these posts, but if I try to imagine a likely situation, perhaps they may not have been interested in doing so, may not have thought that was a good way to start out (not that the topics they did choose worked), and/or they might expect that few people on an English-speaking site are likely to know very much about their context being in a Russian republic that perhaps none of us had ever even heard of before.

Actually, in their latest attempt to communicate with me before getting deleted by moderators, they wrote in pretty clear English and mentioned several things about situations where they live. If they’d started out that way here and not posted so many questions and answers about other topics that seemed so random to us, things might’ve gone differently, but I expect their context for communication may be very different from ours.

I also don’t think we know their age.

My “theory” that they’re not just a bot is from looking at the times they did manage to respond in ways that made sense. I feel like I understand AI and communication well enough to be pretty sure there’s a human there. Some of the other posts I saw did look like they were strange and random-seeming-to-me, which I don’t know if they were from a bot, or were of content derived by something random like web browsing, or were someone using a translation program giving them strange replies.

One possible imagination of the person, is that they’re a young person in this remote far-southern republic of the Russian Federation (some images here ), and they are interested in the West, and have access to a computer with an Internet connection, perhaps have a lot of free time, and are interested in trying to communicate with people in other parts of the world, and are learning from web browsing and using translation web sites.

(This person might have more luck communicating with me if they left me with an email or other forum method of contact, as then their account wouldn’t need to survive long enough for me to see it, reply, and them to see my reply.)

@Zaku Seeing your post here, I understand you would like the user in question to contact you. There’s no rule against that. We’re happy to provide alternative communication channels, even for users who aren’t following the guidelines. Please check your PMs so we can establish a connection between the two of you.

When I responded to your message about recovering deleted PMs, I was not aware that you had a suspicion or even the knowledge of who sent you those PMs. With this added information, my response would have been a different one.

@longgone Thanks!

No.

I have no direct experience of this issue and I had no idea this was happening until I read this thread. I read one post recently that seemed written by a badly programmed Turing Machine that had been dropped onto a concrete floor but that is it. I feel I have missed out.

He really is a human, it turns out.