Nicole [LOCKED]

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19 users here now

Due to recent developments, we've had to lock down this community until further notice. For more information, please take a look at this post: https://feddit.org/post/10515288

Thank you for your understanding.

founded 1 month ago

MODERATORS

30p87@feddit.org

FQQD@lemmy.ohaa.xyz

FQQD@feddit.org

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This community will be locked down until further notice (feddit.org)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by FQQD@feddit.org to c/nicole@feddit.org

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What happened?

Due to the recent developments, I have decided to make this community moderator-only. There has been a mass spam attack involving gore and nudity. This is now a very serious situation and it is clear that something has to be done to stop this from happening. The new messages might be from a different, psychopathic spammer.

What we decided to do about it

To have better control of this situation, we decided to lock down the community, except for the comment section on this very post. (Please let me know if I've missed a post)

Rules

Please refrain to further spread the newest spam image, especially uncensored versions of it.
The "It's my girlfriend!"-joke is long gone. Be respectful, stop using it.

Going forward

Our main goal now is to stop the spread of spam on Lemmy. This seems like a major problem in Lemmy's concept, so we need to work together to create a working solution to the spam and potential defacing of users.

Update: The source of the gore images has been identified, so it's safe to say it's not actually the same person as "Nicole". Still fucked up, though.

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[–] DonaldJMusk@lemmy.today 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

So I may have a distant and weird connection to the originator of the Nicole spam. No proof, but here's my case.

I had this weird stalker on Lemmy—PapaSkwat@lemy.lol (account’s deleted now, so I think it’s fine to name him). Someone else did some digging and found out he was using a bot army to follow me around and downvote my posts.

While people were investigating that, they noticed something strange: the domains used by his bots matched the original Nicole spam domains.

Then, right after that investigation thread dropped, PapaSkwat suddenly deleted his profile. The same profile that had been active since around the time the Nicole spam started. And he’d been trolling and stalking me for months. One of his comments even admitted he was deliberately poking me to make me "snap.”

There’s this theory that the whole Nicole spam thing might’ve started as revenge. Like, maybe some guy got dumped or rejected, got obsessed, and started blasting her pics everywhere because he couldn’t let it go.

That kinda lines up with my stalker’s behavior. He’d get mad, obsessive, and go out of his way to tell people how awful I was. He even bragged about using alt accounts just to mess with me.

It was bizarre.

So here’s the chain: weird stalker gets outed for running downvote bots → bots are tied to Nicole spam domains → stalker suddenly vanishes → and now Nicole is “dead” (not for real, but metaphorically, like the spam just ends).

Maybe the guy realized the jig was up and decided to kill off the whole Nicole thing too?

I have no clue, no proof other that people's assumptions. It just seems a strange coincidence that my weird stalker guy disappears right after rumblings come up of him being involved in Nicole spam. Then right after he disappears, this dead nicole spam comes up.

Here’s the bot investigation post (2 Instances are being used for coordinated vote manipulation, and should be defederated. chinese.lol lemmy.doesnotexist.club): https://hackertalks.com/post/8713785

And here's a screenshot where he brags to someone about trying to make me "snap" and another where he brags to me directly about having alt names to stalk me too:

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I sincerely doubt this has anything to do with you at all, and the only link is that those instances seem to have absentee admins who aren't taking action to ban users. Which is attractive to both spammers and botters.

So here’s the chain: weird stalker gets outed for running downvote bots → bots are tied to Nicole spam domains → stalker suddenly vanishes → and now Nicole is “dead” (not for real, but metaphorically, like the spam just ends).

Maybe the guy realized the jig was up and decided to kill off the whole Nicole thing too?

No. That is in fact not the chain of events as both regular "Nicole" spam and the gore spam (and now the anime picture spam) have continued well past your "stalker" got banned. In fact, both types of spam seem to still be ongoing.

Regular "Nicole" spam and the gore/anime spam have also occurred (and is still occurring) in parallel, with culprits using different origin instances.

Everything suggests this is (at least) two different, separate actors.

[–] DonaldJMusk@lemmy.today -2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I didn't mean to imply that it had anything to do with me in that sense. Just that maybe the same guy who stalked me on here could be the same person behind the Nicole spam.

The creepy vibes I had from him also seemed to match up for the kind of person who would do the Nicole spam--someone who takes the smallest slight and blows it up and goes for revenge and just doesn't stop. Goes to the trouble of setting up and using bots to downvote my every post. Alt names just to follow me and give me shit and downvote. Took glee in taunting that I'd snap and quit Lemmy--which he also mentioned several times.

Definitely the same kind of guy who would take offense when some random girl doesn't give him attention, so he captures pics of her and spams all of Lemmy to creep her out and make her look bad.

But there are lots of weirdos like that in the world I guess.

(Special shout-out to the Lemmy's who supported his harassment of me though. That kind of toxic behavior doesn't help Lemmy.)

[–] FQQD@feddit.org 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This might actually be a very good hint on who the spammer is. Thank you a lot for sharing.

[–] Coelacanth@feddit.nu 5 points 1 day ago

Is it? Aren't both regular Nicole spam and the potential "second actor" spam still ongoing?

I do believe those instances were chosen for the same reason though, as they seem to have absentee admins who aren't banning spammers and botters.