I mean, at this point a very clear pattern has formed- she creates a new persona, builds a network of personal connections (some who know her identity, some who don't), and then waits for an opportunity to insert herself into some emerging group online as a power mod who can influence the group's rules, culture, etc.
That said, rather than worrying about whether any given person is Laurelai or not, I think we should consider the ways in which this sort of social engineering allows bad actors to exert disproportionate influence over marginalized communities and insulate themselves from the consequences of their actions more generally.
Let's be clear here- an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. As long as we're reacting to bad actors taking positions of power in 'the trans community' (fragmented and illusory as it often is), rather than creating trans communities which are resilient and resistant to this sort of co-option, we're on the back foot.
@Sovereign_Beast @quinntessence @Cheezebell yeah, having the warning signs is far more important than figuring out what her particular next move is, because she's not the only person who pulls this shit. I think with this particular case there were a lot of clear warning signs that led a lot of people to realize something weird was up long before she got unmasked, and those are the lessons we need to learn
@Sovereign_Beast @quinntessence @Cheezebell like even the fact that everyone knows who Eightpoint's mod was, was maybe not the best thing, while almost no one on kolektiva knows who our mods are because they're not at the center of a bunch of drama. Mods shouldn't be main characters, ideally they should be almost invisible, like a copyeditor should be almost invisible
That's often harder than it sounds, since IME most software tends to single mods out and make them more visible.
Look at discord, for example- the easiest way to make someone a mod is to give them a role with mod permissions, which- as a role- is highly visible. Same is true with most forum software, IIRC- mods and admins by default get fancy banners that make them more visible.
I think Fedi is unique in that you don't necessarily see right away that the person you're talking to is the mod, admin, or owner of an instance, and that provides an opportunity for mod invisibility as a default that would require a not insignificant amount of work to implement on another platform.
@Sovereign_Beast @Cheezebell yeah, that's true. I don't use Discord super often but in the servers I'm in, even though there's the little icon and so on, I sometimes forget who it is if it doesn't come up as an issue, though, which is more what I'm talking about
Well, there's also social dynamics at play. For mods to be invisible requires both that mods engage as just another user, and also that users engage with the mods as just another user.
The minute anyone starts making the mods visible *as mods*, and social dynamics begin to form around that visibility, you lose the potential to have an anonymous or pseudoanonymous mod team.
@Sovereign_Beast @julieofthespirits @Cheezebell
mods have real power, though. Their power doesn’t come just from visibility, but from the structure of the platform. In fact, a lack of visibility could easily lead to abuse of mod powers. How are people supposed to know if a mod is targeting certain people if they don’t even know who the mods are? Authority should come with scrutiny and you cannot scrutinize the invisible.
