This is some small internet bullshit i'm here for

Oh, I think I got one of those. It's that girl with the bong, right?

I've heard that if you actually add her on friendica, the mayor of Toronto shows up at your house and gives you an old fashioned.

This annoys the fuck out of me and I hope whoever is behind it doesn't realize their goals, because I don't want lemmy to degrade into a bunch of spam PMs.

Understandable.

I have no context for this and thought it was an April fools joke left up but no, this is a real problem here?

I gotta give it to you guys. The foresight to prevent a disaster is 10/10. Top tier. Well done.

Yeah it seemed funny at first but the longer this went on the creepier it got as we all realized this isn't just a catfish.

Whoever is doing this to the actual person in the photos is a terrible human being and should go climb under a rock for the rest of their lives.

Is this Nicole thing really still a thing? That’s so like back when I still had a 401k.

I've been thinking this since it started and saying it for a bit. I don't understand at all how there were memes of this on the front page all the time and it took this long to do even this. Has there been any attempt at an effort to notify whoever is in the picture that this is happening? I would like to help if possible.

I can't wait for the future 4 hour video deep dive into Nicole history and lore.

About damn time. The joke has run it's course a long time a ago and if these posts are victimizing an individual they most definitely need to be stopped.

I can't believe I managed to never get one of these spam messages. I didn't even know what a Nicole was until the week or two ago.

Considering the spammer has used so many different photos, and they all seem to be "in the moment" webcam photos, I suspect they may have webcam spyware on the victim's computer

Wait, there are people who genuinely believe she's the one behind it?

I thought it was pretty obvious that she's the target of harassment. Some people must be new to the Internet

This is a copy+paste of a comment I left on the !Nicole@feddit.org mod post after the recent incident with the gruesome picture(s?):

“I think if Lemmy doesn’t have the infrastructure to defend against attacks like these which are presumptively conducted by one bad actor, then it doesn’t have the infrastructure to defend against wealthy organizations when our communities do get big enough to be noticed by them.

[!Nicole@feddit.org]’s history underscores how the messaging system in particular needs a massive overhaul; using image recognition as a filter for messages like Lemmy.World does for image posts (with options for NSFW that isn’t NSFL?), preventing images (and URLs? or only allowing white-listed sites?) from being sent within the first message sent between users (unless a box is ticked?), ~~not showing message recipients images until they are directly opened~~, and preventing the de-anonymizing of message recipients should be made first priority for the next patch.”

Edit: not sure if my comment is inciting other trolls/spammers to target me but I just got this DM several hours after commenting

I thought she loved me.

Damn, I never thought about it this way. Wow. I always took it as a funny thing not thinking of the person in the photo being an actual person who could very well be harassed. Thank you for bringing this to light. Whoever thought of this is a good human being. <3

Thanks. Even if it isn't a harassment campaign I'm sick of the messaging