instance-level signals
- brand new account with no post history outside political threads
- account from a known bad-faith/large general purpose instance (lemmy.world etc) that only ever shows up in communist/.ml communities
content signals
- "both sides" framing but applied asymmetrically, equating us imperialism with defensive responses from targeted states
- humanitarian interventionism: "but what about the people of x" used specifically to justify nato/us positions
- treats western ngos and media as neutral baseline, demands extraordinary evidence for any counter-narrative
- whataboutism that only ever runs one direction, deflects from western atrocities but never from the targets of western aggression
- "im a leftist but..." followed by a position you could copy paste from a state dept briefing
- disproportionate focus on us adversaries (china, russia, cuba, dprk, venezuela, iran) with zero comparable scrutiny of us allies
- concern trolling about "authoritarianism" that somehow only ever applies to socialist states
behavioral signals
- posts consistently during us business hours
- only shows up when a specific topic is active, disappears otherwise
- never updates their position no matter what evidence you put in front of them, the argument is purely performative
- high comment to post, or post to comment ratio, always replying never posting, reactive disruption pattern
- posts are concentrated in the same few communities, often with overlap between suspected accounts suggesting coordinated targeting
READ THE FUCKING MANIFESTO!
I check at least two of those behavioral signals because I post to avoid working ๐