As the owner of one of the first ten nodes on the mesh I can say that I have been around since the beginning. I have noticed quite a few changes since then. From emoji names to the kiddie discords, LongFast MQTT has gone from a reasonable place to hang out to romper room almost overnight. I’m not a babysitter and now I don’t even go into LongFast until after 9pm when the children have all gone to bed.
I tell myself not to sweat it as the more nodes on the mesh the better, but, as we know, the PTB have been full on slamming LoRa/Meshtastic as a place where the Mexican drug cartels and Hamas terrorists like to do their business because it’s the last place on earth that private messaging can be encrypted and now, it’s even listed on the FBI and Homeland Security websites.
And then it dawned on me, of course the feds have infiltrated it and are just stinking the place up trying to either make people go away or trying to setup these kiddie minecrafters in some crazy psyop through their discord servers or otherwise just as hey have done a million times across thousands of platforms. So, it is what it is. The kiddies have no idea they might be getting setup to be used as an eventual take down going the tiktok route.
FEDs generally use the lowest IQ denominators for solicitation and their tactics don’t change from place to place on the internet. They are famous for using childish emojis and picture names and have become synonymous with undercover live action role playing and child predation, so anytime I see it, I know what I am probably dealing with.
My advice to new meshers is, be aware that operations could be occurring and you might want to stay off LongFast for the foreseeable future. Make a private channel for you and your friends and if you want some good mesh advice, find a HAM!