In the past week I’ve been absolutely roasted for criticising two different countries. Normally I’d be okay with that, I can handle a mild toasting and after all debate is a good thing.
On both occasions though I was flamed for mentioning human rights issues that are established facts and have been known for many, many years. I was critical of the actions/laws of their governments and not the people, their race, religion, general political ideology or nationality.
On both occasions I was bombarded by long posts that parroted propaganda, and in the case of one country I was told (on multiple occasions) that I was ignorant, racist and even fascist for mentioning the issues I did. I’m not complaining about how I was treated, but as a reminder, I was discussing internationally-recognised human rights concerns that can be verified and based in fact.
I could just be paranoid but I’m fairly convinced the responses weren’t from patriotic citizens. I think they were paid trolls or bots, and I think their purpose was to quiet negative talking points about the countries that were mentioned.
Has anyone else had a similar experience?
Why does it matter if the responses are from patriotic citizens or not?
“Bad faith” is lunacy, who cares? Arguments matter all on their own, regardless of the motivation for making them.
Of course you “think” they are paid trolls or bots, we all see that constantly. My first post on Reddit years ago was followed immediately by charges of being a Russian spy. Maybe they were a Russian spy and I was diversion?
Anyway, troll, bot, human, paid or not, irrelevant. The discussion is seen by others and judged on the merit of the argument itself. Stop worrying about the source, as you can never know, so it doesn’t matter. It’s not as if you get better results by talking to an unpaid patriotic person. Same shit.
Propaganda problem? Not at all. Every form of social media is rife with propaganda, as is every paper, website, news channel, and so on. How could Lemmy be any different?
The mentality that everything is an opinion and all opinions are valid is an sign of acute internet brainrot.
The truth actually exists. You’ve spent too much time on the internet if you think in terms of “choose your own reality”.
I think the point there is that the random opinions are valid because they are just opinions. Either they’re based on wrong or incomplete information or they aren’t. If you can get past that hurdle the discourse can offer corrections or fill in the blanks.
The arguments being made either have merit or they don’t. The ones with merit would approach that truth you mentioned, and the ones that don’t obscure it. If that makes any sense.
Yes, I’ve definitely noticed a spike in people lately rushing to glaze the rich and/or the US when they’re rightfully criticized.
or the US
The hilarious thing was because of what I’d said, more than one response accused me of being a maga-supporting american moron. I’ve never even been to US 😅
That’s when they run out of arguments.
I got a lot of “libtard”, I still don’t really know what it’s supposed to be, usa-democrat in a perogative way maybe? I’m a euro btw and have neither been to the usa lol.
I truly cannot think of a single time I’ve seen someone glazing the US on Lemmy lmao
I’m sure it’s happened somewhere sometime but a rush? I don’t think so.
if by ‘glaze over’ they mean ‘don’t condemn unconditionally as a hellscape and source of all evil in the world’, there are plenty of posters like that. myself included.
it’s very easy to make many accounts here, it really could be just one motivated troll creating many posts/votes attempting to manipulate opinions.
i still think it’s much better than other spaces on the net these days (esp reddit), but you should always keep it in mind.
also, some people from ml/grad do have a certain agenda(?)… lol
it’s very easy to make many accounts here, it really could be just one motivated troll creating many posts/votes attempting to manipulate opinions.
Good point, hadn’t considered that.
ghost of communism has entered the chat
If they were .ml, hexbear, or several other instance users… Yea. Their instances are echo chambers for their own dumbass ideologies.
Different instances have different ideologies and cultures they prefer, which cannot happen on twitter or other monolith services.
You’ll just have to learn to ignore the absolute braindead takes rampant from some instances, and don’t feel bad for blocking the cretins that don’t care for human rights.
You’ll just have to learn to ignore the absolute braindead takes
No you don’t :)
You can block them, or whole instances, depending on the client your are using
If you mentioned China or Russia in these comments then yes there are lots of tankies. And yes they parrot propaganda but you may actually be interacting with someone who has internalised said propaganda not an organized campaign like you would see on reddit and Facebook. So view it as an opportunity to interact rather than something to wholely avoid.
I was banned for being involved because I used the word tankie. They didn’t care about my arguments. So fuck this view, they’re as lost as MAGAts.
Also worth mentioning that there is propaganda on both sides: it’s really difficult to know what’s true. People also like to throw around terms without knowing what they mean and make assumptions that may not be grounded in fact (E.G., communism = authoritarianism: there are entire communist schools of thought dedicated to critiquing authoritarianism and how power has been / should be used in communist projects).
On some level it’s all true, there’s no consolidation of power that’s perfectly clean. Power is amassed from asymmetric exchanges, so there is some victim somewhere whenever it is amassed.
If it’s violence or just the threat of violence, or if the exchange was voluntary or not it’s the same.
Such a shame all countries that have catched communism have descended into dictatorships huh.
Also the “both sides” is such an outdated propaganda lie, used to deflect what is actually discussed (most classic: What About the USA??!).
Such a shame all countries that have catched communism have descended into dictatorships huh.
Almost like the anti-authoritarian schools of thought aren’t adopted by people who are keen to size state power or something, eh? Like those people would adopt different tactics or something? Like, maybe Juche and Anarcho-Syndicalism are different things with different approaches?
Also the “both sides” is such an outdated propaganda lie
So, are you saying that anti-communist propaganda doesn’t exist?
In my original comment, I wasn’t making an argument for or against communism. What I was saying is that people don’t know what they’re talking about and react on a hair trigger (because of years of propaganda). And you’ve just illustrated that beautifully.
Like, I don’t care what you believe, but maybe pick up a book and come to understand an ideology before you criticize it?
Love your paintings by the way. Especially the one with the window on the yellow wall. I’d totally buy a print of that.
Lol continue running around in circles 😂
“U stopid, read this propaganda book”
Sure mr who hasn’t fallen for the propaganda itself lol.
Blocked.
I think one was a post about China in .ml, and the other may have been a response to something about S.A., didnt bother checking much further.
You see, your problem is that you left a comment on a .ml instance that doesn’t align with the hive mind. Those are places where someone will look you dead in the eye and tell you with the upmost certainty that China is a utopia and North Korea is the free-est country in the world. Tis a silly place
I am probably gonna find a pipebomb in my mailbox
Accidentally reading a post from .ml and not realizing it is a wild experience. For a second I thought everyone was just being super sarcastic, y’know, saying things ironically like if I said I was having a wonderful time in traffic. Then I realized it was an .ml post and everyone was serious
Oh man this 😂.
Arguing about something, then seeing it’s a .ml user puts it all in a very different perspective (usually).
They just give those away? How generous!
It took me a while to realize this because I’m new to federated instances. When I learned “Oh, that’s where the problems are” I removed them.
I suspect that your vague, unsubstantiated feelings that someone you had a passing interaction with might have been a bot (it’s possible! who knows!) is not the valuable contribution to this community that you presumably thought it was going to be.
vague, unsubstantiated
I deliberately left it vague because I didnt want this to turn into a similar bunfight. And if in ‘unsubstantiated’ you mean there’s no evidence - I deleted said evidence cos of the responses I was getting.
might have been a bot (it’s possible! who knows!
I didnt say it definitely was bots, I said it might have been. Given what’s happened over on Reddit I think its something we should be vigilent about.
valuable contribution to this community that you presumably thought it was going to be
Well aren’t you a wonderful human being. Your mother must be so proud.
its something we should be vigilent about.
Meaning what, exactly? Do you really think the experience is improved by everyone screaming “bot!” At everyone who disagrees with them?
How to reduce Fediverse propaganda by 80% or more:
Note: Replace “lemmy.world” in the URL with your instance. e.g.
https://your-instance.xyz/settings
Ahh, nice one! Thats really helpful, thanks!
that was a cryptoscam not a fediverse server. We always federated as hexbear.net.Hexbear.net is the one with the best emojis.
Pro Ukraine or liberal, anti Russia or China are all extremely unpopular…there’s definitely an uptick in trolls, tankies and outright propagandists regarding any of this.
At the same time the same folks are totally in support of rightfully criticizing the US and Israel’s war crimes, genocide and imperialism.
Yes I’ve noticed
I had this feeling too
Lemmy has a echo chamber problem.
People don’t want to challenge their beliefs, their want a space in which all agree on the same stupid thing.
When I joined I was curious about how Lemmy/federation works. When it was explained to me it was said that with this approach there will be no one big Hitler who controls the discourse.
I had a hunch that this means that we will just get a bunch of smaller Hitlers. And… Well…
The problem in itself is that Lemmy means that you host a whole bunch of communities. Thats to much power concentrated in one place.
It should be that everyone hosts one community and all communities can talk to each other.
Then an Ideologie wouldn’t have a one-stop-for-all place to fester.
Everyone of us is an idiot in some way. We need other people with different views to make us aware of our idiocy. Otherwise we stay ignorant and stupid.
So I don’t think you interacted with bots. You interacted with cultists.
The problem in itself is that Lemmy means that you host a whole bunch of communities. Thats to much power concentrated in one place.
It should be that everyone hosts one community and all communities can talk to each other.
It’s a trade-off between accessibility and power. On platforms like Reddit, power is totally concentrated within the corporation that controls the service, but they allow any old dunce without any technical skills to make a subreddit, making it very accessible to the average person.
On the flip side, if every community was its own server, the power hierarchy would be much more flat, but the ability to make a community would be reserved mainly for people with sysadmin skills and money. It also would make discoverability and community more difficult to maintain.
In other words, I think the Threadiverse strikes a nice balance. It’s certainly not perfect, but there’s no right answer.
I had a hunch that this means that we will just get a bunch of smaller Hitlers. And… Well…
Hitlers all the way down
Lemmy is just three Hitlers in a trenchcoat.
USA, China and Russia?
You my friend, are like a very welcome breath of fresh air.
The world has a propaganda problem. Fediverse is in the world.
A KGB agent and a CIA agent meet up for drinks off the clock, and after a few drinks they start to talk shop. The CIA agent extols the strength of the Party’s propaganda, “All your citizens believe the propaganda! It’s incredible! So little dissent.” The KGB agent responds, “No my friend no, we are good at what we do, but you are the true masters of the art. No one at all questions your propaganda!” to which the CIA agent says, confused, “What do you mean? We don’t have propaganda?”
Kinda but some places are way worse than others (Hexbear, .ml, and lemmygrad come to mind as the most egregious, but I think Hexbear is actually gone now).
Unless it’s within the last day or two, hexbear hasn’t gone anywhere. The instance I’m on hasn’t defederated from them and I haven’t blocked them and I see their stuff all the time.
Ah, they lost their instance for a while there.
Depends on where you are IMO, there’s definitely at least a couple tankie instances with a very noticeable problem but there’s probably others.
