I remember it pretty much that way too, but not recently and not at a department store. Heck, I just browsed through commemorative euro coins (no dice) because I felt it was somehow connected to Europe in the nineties…

Then I am happy for you

“Victim” is an interesting term, but quite accurate. There’s such a an effort and investment into converting people to that cult. I wish you the best with your mother, hopefully the other half of your conversations is more pleasant and eventually overtakes the conspiracy theories.

I don’t. We don’t talk. Relatives of mine, including one of my parents, sank into vaccine conspiracies, then followed that pipeline to Qanon, and then explained to me how they were waiting for Trump to lead his secret army to take down the government of my non-english-speaking, european country.

I gave them their keys back, I got my keys backs, I blocked them everywhere, I nuked my accounts on the social media they use (and where their posts steadily got worse). It’s a hard decision, I still think about it often still (it’s been nearly two years), but I will never talk to them again.

Technical question: while the instance is federated, its users can post here, right? Do you have any moderating tools that allow you to monitor incoming comments from users from a “fishy” instance as they come in?

My fear is that they have not accumulated enough of a mass of users yet, and enough of an interest in a “small” platform like Lemmy yet, but that the crowd will come once Lemmy becomes an established platform, which will make real infiltration efforts worthwhile.

And then we’ll have to deal with the usual tactics: brigades organized offsite (on discord, telegram…) to drop on anything trans/immigration/etc. related like a plague of locusts. Teams of users posturing as the “sane one” and “crazy one” allowing the “sane” actor to push far-right points that “make sense” next to pure extremism. Threats sent as PMs to individual users. Doxxing, online stalking. And, behind that, their host doing nothing to prevent- or facilitating - the behavior.

I’m fine with you not taking action for now, but would you be ready to drop the hammer if they become problematic and user-level blocking of instances is not yet a thing?

Edit: I commented on the wrong account, but I also have one on Mander.

With my track record at killing even cacti, I am going to suck at this game. It does sound interesting, though (and “great story” is enough to make me face the rice farming).

It definitely sounds unique, which is exactly was I was hoping for when I made the post! Thank you!