News

Yeah, absolutely.

https://sh.itjust.works/comment/21079358

This fuckin' dingbat I can't even

Edit: So maybe I'm fooling myself, but I do feel like I've gotten a little bit capable with spotting which ones of them are the deliberate disruptors as opposed to people who got fooled by them and are echoing. The major tells of the totally fake accounts are:

1. Low effort. They don't try very hard to convince you. It doesn't have to make sense, they don't really read what people are saying, they just blandly repeat the same kinds of stuff. Most people who sincerely believe that Bernie betrayed the Palestinian people and all our hopes that he would finally say something against Israel (for example) will at least seem like they believe it themselves, they'll get upset about something specific that happened, or they'll misunderstand various facts but sincerely talk about them, or similar. The people who are deliberately lying will just kind of fart out their little shtick and then move on to the next comment. Some of the sloppier ones, if you check the profile, don't really bother to engage with anything that isn't their designated political talking points. They'll just kind of spray one-liner "I sure do love Helldivers mm boy" comments in other communities but the only thing they ever put any effort into is particular repetitive political points.
2. A lot of times their reactions don't really need to match what you're saying. They have a tendency for example to tell you what you believe ("I get you’re trying to run interference over criticism of Bernie"), instead of responding to what you said, and then start arguing with the strawman. Of course real people do that too, but most real people at least have some interest in reading and responding to what the message they're responding to actually says. A lot of the shill messages could literally apply to any message. Try mentally shuffling them around, so that what they said is a response to some totally different comment, and then if it still fits 100% equally as well, then that's a warning sign.
3. A lot of times they have the same handful of arguments that go on repeat. It's like 5-10 little nuggets (AOC voted to send weapons to Israel! Bernie doesn't call it a genocide!) and they tend to fall back on them and totally ignore anything else. Also, crucially, they tend to introduce unrelated ones randomly even when the topic is some totally different thing. For example look at how many people in these comments are bringing up AOC.
4. Often if you check in their profile you'll see a lot of overlap between multiple talking points. Some of the comments are just low-effort spray of random comments, but a lot of their political or meaningful engagement will be the exact same variety of various points. Historically, some of the sloppier ones would tend to overlap ones that really didn't fit (Ukraine is escalating the war and it's really dangerous, NATO needs to stop! I sure do wish Kamala Harris wasn't so pro-genocide, I'm definitely not voting for her!) all from the same account.

That is my short maybe-totally-wrong field guide to identifying the bad accounts on Lemmy. Not 100%, your mileage may vary, I have no real idea but this is what I've observed and guessed at.