Don't pretend to be a telepath, either. The moderators certainly aren't telepaths. It's pure speculation.

It is always beneficial because by doing so those observers who may be getting pulled into the fascist sphere see people that they normally get told demonize them trying to be reasonable and engaging in good faith were the side trying to "show them the light" is not. Sometimes thats all it takes to get people to reevaluate what they are engaging with and break the echochamber walls a bit. Remember you arent just discussing in isolation there are also the observers who you can aid as well. If those getting sucked into those spheres constantly get told people silence these ideas because progressives cant argue against them what do you think you do to the observers who see those posts getting removed without dialog? They start getting confirmation bias and pulled into those spheres even faster. Its the same reason certain religions send people door to door to spread the word of God, the point is to have those doing the outreach feel ostracized by the world so they become more ingrained into this group that "actually loves" them and is trying to act in "good faith" but is constantly shuned by the outside world. By just not engaging/answering questions or removing those posts you are doing exactly what they want you to do as it gives them ammo to feed their narrative of being persecuted.

I would say if you think you can tell someone is acting in bad faith. Call them out on that and explain clearly why it's bad faith. You can just ignore any response after that but I think it's extremely helpful to future readers if you can make them more aware of the tactics people making bad faith arguments use.

As op said. If you don't have the energy or desire to make a response it's more than ok to not engage of course. I would not want to wish arguing with people online against your will on my worst enemy.

The last word rarely matters, what will leave an impression is the overall tone of the discussion. Once they start going in circles, you can wrap up your position too.

Most importantly, if you don't feel like you have the energy to engage in a discussion, just leave it, you don't owe the internet masses your energy.

Yes but the purpose of that is to be banned and get content deleted so they can claim persecution as well. Its a tough thing to balance when getting over run by bots/trolls but you have to remember that the goal is not to change you its to feed a narrative to those they want to convert to their ideologies that they are persecuted and silenced without due consideration, they want to get banned so they can point back to it in a video later and be like see these progressives never engage and just hate, censor and cancel anything they dont agree with, they cant argue with is because they know we are right. Its all bullshit of course but by giving them those examples and banning instead of answering in a calm manner and moving on you reinforce their points to those getting indoctrinated.

Doesnt matter if its in bad faith or not, just answer the question with an honest answer. Even if its a bad faith question, the answer isnt. And plenty of other people will read it.

copy/paste is your friend :)

From what Ive seen, and Im not accusing you, is that a lot of people dont want to give any answers. One of the worst things Ive seen being repeated like a mantra is "its not my job to educate you.". Like its this hand wave to the responsibility that we all have to make sure that misinformation cant run unchecked. I saw this on Reddit especially, and what happened was that all those people who had questions were abused and told to "educate yourself", as though treating people like this was the key to winning arguments. The result was shock and horror that Trump won in 2016 and then again later when Brexit happened.

So while it can be annoying, IMO, its import to always answer questions. Even if its just copy/pasting in an answer that youve already given before. This is turn helps to avoid echo chambers, because other people can correct me and you, should we have gotten the wrong information about something. It keeps us all honest. I mean, for shits and giggles Ive said some things that were straight up bullshit. But it fit the narrative, and people upvoted. No one pushed back at all. And thats pretty scary if you think about it.

Once they're engaging, you can do things like waste loads of their time (it takes much less time to spout solve dumb bullshit than explain why it's dumb bullshit), persuade bystanders that you're right by arguing with more logical fallacies and unreliable sources than they can point out, and make it look like they're being unreasonable by sealioning.

Bad faith debate/discussion is something I see more and more from the right. It seems that they've now grown an entire ecosystem that can manufacture plausible support for anything they might need to get what they want.

General or scientific consensus on a topic? The consensus is just greedy establishment types trying to maintain funding - a conspiracy. Why else would we have a number of scientific papers/books/academic works from think-tanks with generic, helpful-sounding names brave enough to publish opinions that are contrary to the alleged consensus? We've even had success lawsuits strategically worded and filed strategically in specific districts, decided in our favor by judges we recommended!

Doesnt matter at all, half the of the purpose of the trolls is to get posts removed/banned as it gives them ammo to act like the persecuted group. Don't give them what they want answer the question calmly and keep moving so you dont allow their narratives to be the only ones visible to the susceptible people getting pulled into those hateful ideologies.