PSA: the 'moneroitalia' telegram group is in the hands of trolls that spread fake info about Monero. Avoid it.

If you speak Italian and would like some information about Monero, i strongly suggest to avoid the Telegram group 'moneroitalia'. Sadly it's full of conspiracy theories about Monero and became a main source of disinformation about the project.

The channel has no moderation except spam and this results in people being let free of spreading fake info about Monero. There is one very active individual (a butthurt pre-randomx miner) dedicated since years on scaring miners and potential contributors away from Monero by spreading bogus claims like:

• Monero devs are on the payroll of AMD (because it's more efficient to mine with those)
• There are no legit miners and the network is run by botnets
• for a long time the majority of the network was controlled by 1 botnet
• RandomX was a failure, the devs know but don't care.
• so much more that i don't even bother to list.

I saw with my own shocked eyes people joining the chat because the wanted to contribute to the project or simply mine it and getting scared away by the stuff they read, even ending up thanking the troll for their help and for avoiding them to touch Monero.

When i initially tried to make the admin aware of the problem years ago, the answer i got was that both i and the troll were valuable members of the group. That was it. I left the group right after, but rejoined recently and found the troll still there welcoming me with insults and increasingly crazy claims about Monero.

To this day, every person joining the group asking info about Monero or how to mine it, is scared away or receives crafted wrong information.

As mentioned, this situation started years ago, when i still tried to make the individual reason (and i still did until recently), by explaining the reality of things. I was repeatedly laugh at, attempted to being de-legitimised with fabricated lies and plain bullying.

I repeatedly asked the administrators to act and not just leave trolls waste the work of hundreds of volunteers working on Monero, but the answer was always evasive or no answer at all. To this day the group called "Monero Italia" is basically hostage of a highly motivated Monero hater. Only from time to time the admins make some counter comment, but for the vast majority of the time the troll(s) are free to scare people away, and very successfully, in my experience

The last straw for me was when somebody joined the group asking for contacts because they wanted to organize a meetup in Malta and wanted to talk about Monero and ended up being treated like shit in the group until they just left. Luckily i happened to see their message (i don't usually use telegram) and i could dm them, and help them out with the organization in private.

After spending way too much time trying to mitigate what i see as a damage to Monero, and after being ignored for way too long by the admins, i gave up trying to make them reason and created another **Telegram group called "moneroitaly" ("Monero Italia - Info e Supporto"). This group is also bridged to the Matrix and IRC rooms "#monero-italia". Please direct Italian-speakers there for support about Monero and tell them to avoid "MoneroItalia" on Telegram.