I had noticed a weird uptick this election in older accounts that were new to Soap Box activity. That's not alarming or even abnormal given the stakes of the past election. I'm not equipped with examples months after the fact, but there were definitely times where a 9+ year old account that had been active only in like The Battlefront or something five years ago and had lain dormant since was suddenly posting every 15 minutes in the Soap Box, which is normally a fairly closed and stable community that doesn't see much influx of visitors, nevermind thread-spamming ones. And these accounts were always pushing right-wing talking points, consistently enough to make me take notice. Or perhaps it was simply my bias in only registering my visceral reaction to that kind of nonsense, but not the left-leaning ones.
Actually I lied, I do have an example: Fury13 is a 25 year old account that stuck to the technical forums, took a long vacation, farmed some engagement in the front pages, took another vacation, and then showed up years later to post 42 times in two calendar days in late October to talk at great length in the Box (for the first time) vociferously criticizing women (their clothing, their responsibility in being victims, etc) and then disappeared off the map after catching too much heat. Maybe he just felt emboldened by this particular Trump campaign (but not the previous ones?) or this particular crescendo in the global authoritarian surge but the pattern is odd, and this surely isn't the only one.
This is a useless anecdote, true, but as someone who gets his jollies rousing from hibernation to poke at these frauds I've been on a slightly higher alert lately. Like when I ran across this winner, a 21 year old total lurk account with no posting history whatsoever that only just now decided to activate like the Winter Soldier and become extremely vocal and celebratory about the death of DEI. I guess it's possible that there's an oldblood techie, a true CPU architecture aficionado, rich and fat in his middle age, who just really hates minorities and finally found his moment to speak after two decades. It seems far more likely that whatever entity is responsible for astroturfing random forums pulled this particular compromised password out of the bucket of accounts to start needling libs about racial angst.
I don't think I have a comprehensive point here other than to vaguely support OP's suspicions in limited cases. I don't think it's a super widespread issue, not enough to suggest a systematic security problem.
Actually I lied, I do have an example: Fury13 is a 25 year old account that stuck to the technical forums, took a long vacation, farmed some engagement in the front pages, took another vacation, and then showed up years later to post 42 times in two calendar days in late October to talk at great length in the Box (for the first time) vociferously criticizing women (their clothing, their responsibility in being victims, etc) and then disappeared off the map after catching too much heat. Maybe he just felt emboldened by this particular Trump campaign (but not the previous ones?) or this particular crescendo in the global authoritarian surge but the pattern is odd, and this surely isn't the only one.
This is a useless anecdote, true, but as someone who gets his jollies rousing from hibernation to poke at these frauds I've been on a slightly higher alert lately. Like when I ran across this winner, a 21 year old total lurk account with no posting history whatsoever that only just now decided to activate like the Winter Soldier and become extremely vocal and celebratory about the death of DEI. I guess it's possible that there's an oldblood techie, a true CPU architecture aficionado, rich and fat in his middle age, who just really hates minorities and finally found his moment to speak after two decades. It seems far more likely that whatever entity is responsible for astroturfing random forums pulled this particular compromised password out of the bucket of accounts to start needling libs about racial angst.
I don't think I have a comprehensive point here other than to vaguely support OP's suspicions in limited cases. I don't think it's a super widespread issue, not enough to suggest a systematic security problem.
Ahem.
I'll try that in the future.