It’s really bizarre if you compare the Lemmy comments with those on Reddit worldnews. The Reddit comments are generally pro Israël, some even banaly so (in the ‘they had it coming sand the deserve what they get’- territory).
In a forum there should be dissenting opinions, however those are downvoted to oblivion. It feels very weird, I’m reluctant to use the word astroturfing, but there’s a huge difference in the time of the discussion compared to a couple of years ago.
Israel has an app where they post links to social media posts discussing Israel for app users to go astroturf. They take their propaganda very seriously. They have a word for propaganda targeting foreigners: “hasbara.” https://mepc.org/speeches/hasbara-and-control-narrative-element-strategy
Israeli work contacts flooding LinkedIn with their shit is one of the weirdest ways I see this online. It’s usually inappropriate to bring politics into the work sphere but in the days after the October attack, the business world came out in sympathy for Israel, as they should. The problem is that this was cemented as the only business friendly position from that point forward. Nowadays I see Israelis posting raw vitriol while everyone else is too timid to say anything except “we support Israel’s right to exist” or “we hope for peace in the Middle East” and other such fatuous trivialities.
Why is pro-Israel the only business friendly position? Simple. There aren’t any Palestinian startups. There are very few Palestinian CEOs.
I sometimes wonder if they’re just bad at it, so the astro turfing is obvious. The people posting have to be immersed in and understand the western site to blend in while remaining loyal to a very different kind of home communication and they often don’t manage it, and if they do that difference makes them stand out.
While we have dozens of western police show up in any discussion of police violence to explain that it’s really hard. Not even astroturfing, I think, just people being themselves. Aside from being obviously police their posting style blends in perfectly, if there were western astroturf campaigns I think they would blend perfectly and use much more subtle techniques
A lot of them aren’t people, they’re LLMs. And I don’t think the actual people doing it stand out to the average person. They’re not posting “death to America, Putin is amazing,” it’s much more subtle.
A common tactic is divide and conquer. They’ll support both extremes of a contentious political issue like abortion, gun violence, or policing.
Worldnews has always been the place where all the bad opinions and misinformed bullshit culminated. I remember threads with hundreds of first level comments all stating basically the same bullshit over and over again with no insight in sight
It is weird. The left leaning Canadian subreddit (r/onguardforthee) is generally pro Palestine but my city’s subreddit is generally pro Israel. I’ve been watching my city’s subreddit move right politically quite quickly.
Something I’ve noticed is that reddit as a whole seems to have gotten a lot more right wing since the whole API stuff. I’m not sure if it’s actually because of users leaving, or if moderation took a huge hit and it’s kind of snow balling into hateful commenting becoming normal.
I’m convinced the rightward swing is from people leaving. I imagine it’s a self-reinforcing feedback loop, too. I wouldn’t mind sometimes or even often being the underdog in a thread, as long as occasionally you could score a small win here or there. But when every comment is just going to get down voted to Hades, it becomes pointless.
It also just makes sense that people who are temperamentally conservative are both more likely to be politically conservative and be slower to abandon ship from a dying platform.
Nah, the reason is that for the past ten years, discussion have become more and more toxic. Reddit launched a campaign against GOP outlets a couple years ago.
This was absolute bullshits mainly because they ardently protect PRC propaganda subs calling for genocide and crypto-fascist subs. And that’s without accounting for islamist, ultra nationalist etc. Mainly because US court will only care about garbage like promoting Jan 6 in term of hate speech. Things that relate to the US.
The thing is that our favorite left wingers at reddit are… usians, and like every left wing usians who isn’t racist, they are ethno centrist. When look for problematic subs I am certain they look for subs in english. I would even bet they only look at subs moderated and created from U.S or maybe Canadian territory. They catch some brits from time to time but speak Spanish and you can explain how a good thing it is to genocide the Yezidis.
So moderate people left, from both side of the political spectrum and now only insane people remain. But no problem said reddit ! We just have to market ourselves as a place of free speech allowing controversies.
You’d think so, but my city’s subreddit used to advocate for transit, better support for the homeless, healthcare etc and generally be very left leaning. They still are some of the time, but I’ve started seeing a lot of upvoted comments very literally calling for the implementation of drug use policies (ie death) from places like Saudi Arabia or the Philippines.
I guess it’s possible it’s part of the Western move right ward but it’s jarring. I get it, the city’s drug problem is at its current worst, but advocating for the actual murder of users is insane and I can’t believe comments like that are at the top of threads. Even just a year ago those comments would be downvoted out of existence
Reddit is a powerhouse of online discussion. It’s the perfect place for astroturfing. Not to mention, Reddit is so desperate to become profitable that they’re bragging about “we know everything about our users,” so it’s obvious they’re selling data to data brokers, they’re selling data to google for their AI and google did a cool little quid pro quo with them to boost Reddit results in google search…why not get in bed with opinion brokers?
I wouldn’t be surprised at all. In fact, I assume it.
“Ah yes the rtardd muslims can’t use propaganda
It’s true because since they are in 1400 or something according to their calendar they haven’t discovered internet yet. I know it because I live Shitplaceville in Minnesota, US and therefore I know it because americans always know all the things”
“This is the truth, every woke american use -”
Mate that’s exactly how you sound. Your opinion is literally “all those states do use propaganda but that one ? Nah thye don’t”. You are trying to explain us that the Iranian government doesn’t use propaganda ? That’s it, they just don’t. Why wouldn’t they ? Because they are nice ? You’re telling me the government that sends their political paramilitary to poison hundreds of high school girls is not only nice but also honest ?
Somehow I hardly believe that.
And yes the part about how it sounds a little racist is indeed true because only the middle eastern dictatorship seems to still rely on posters and state newspapers for their propaganda while the white crazies are using internet.
Not really. If you’ve been on Reddit for more than a decade you really could see a cultural shift. Lemmy feels smaller and more filterable. If you curate your subscriptions and exclude more extreme
Instances it’s quite all right.
Whenever I read Reddit outside of my niche subs it just feels almost distopian, is become a very weird place.
When I left reddit, I was subbed to like 30-50 subs, I only went on r/aspiememes despite most of my subs being about geopolitics and history because wherever I went there always were dude promoting genocide while all pretending to be from different side of the political spectrum
Yeah. I believe in the fediverse and really want to see it crush corporate social media, but I don’t even tell people I use it while there’s so much authoritarian propaganda on here.
The fact that some of the most prominent communities are on the garbage instance lemmy.ml is just wild.
Edit: Oh, you’re German. You know, the mistake y’all made in WWII wasn’t going against Jews. It was committing a genocide. The lesson to learn wasn’t: “Always support the Jews.” It was: “Always oppose genocide.” Not racial essentialism, but moral essentialism. Y’all just swapped out Aryan supremacy for Jewish supremacy. And now y’all are on the wrong side of a genocide once again.
(It’s not the first genocide America’s been on the wrong side of, either.)
don’t know why somebody would favor one of these two since they both commiting genocide…
what you responded :
wrong side of a genocide
“trust me bro I’m not a nazis”
P.S : please stop equating the entire palestinian populations and even worse the entire muslim population of the region to the wealthiest terrorist organization in the world running a military dictatorship based on corruption throught defrauding and stealing humanitarian aid. That’s kinda racist
I’ll assume you’re arguing in good faith. When I said “wrong side of a genocide” I was clearly referring to Germany as a country, not OP. You do know that Germany has filed in the ICJ on the side of Israel, right?
As to your comment regarding conflation of Palestinians with Hamas, I couldn’t agree more. But it’s Israel who is treating the entire population of Gaza like Hamas by depriving them of food, water, and medicine in a total siege while they indiscriminately bomb them.
I think there is a bit more dissenting opinions over here. At least they catch the eye more as the isn’t hundreds of comments. But even sorting by controversial doesn’t really help as the highly downvoted stuff is usually rather crass.
In lemmy votes don’t seem to matter that much, unless you’re viewing comments with the “Top” or “Controversial” sorting. But perhaps that’s a symptom of having not so many users.
It’s really bizarre if you compare the Lemmy comments with those on Reddit worldnews. The Reddit comments are generally pro Israël, some even banaly so (in the ‘they had it coming sand the deserve what they get’- territory).
In a forum there should be dissenting opinions, however those are downvoted to oblivion. It feels very weird, I’m reluctant to use the word astroturfing, but there’s a huge difference in the time of the discussion compared to a couple of years ago.
Israel has an app where they post links to social media posts discussing Israel for app users to go astroturf. They take their propaganda very seriously. They have a word for propaganda targeting foreigners: “hasbara.” https://mepc.org/speeches/hasbara-and-control-narrative-element-strategy
Israeli work contacts flooding LinkedIn with their shit is one of the weirdest ways I see this online. It’s usually inappropriate to bring politics into the work sphere but in the days after the October attack, the business world came out in sympathy for Israel, as they should. The problem is that this was cemented as the only business friendly position from that point forward. Nowadays I see Israelis posting raw vitriol while everyone else is too timid to say anything except “we support Israel’s right to exist” or “we hope for peace in the Middle East” and other such fatuous trivialities.
Why is pro-Israel the only business friendly position? Simple. There aren’t any Palestinian startups. There are very few Palestinian CEOs.
When you don’t have a voice: you are wrong.
yeah, like every country, Ukraine does that, Russia pays bot, China concripts bot. And the US have its education system
Authoritarian countries like Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, and Venezuela do it much more than democracies.
I sometimes wonder if they’re just bad at it, so the astro turfing is obvious. The people posting have to be immersed in and understand the western site to blend in while remaining loyal to a very different kind of home communication and they often don’t manage it, and if they do that difference makes them stand out.
While we have dozens of western police show up in any discussion of police violence to explain that it’s really hard. Not even astroturfing, I think, just people being themselves. Aside from being obviously police their posting style blends in perfectly, if there were western astroturf campaigns I think they would blend perfectly and use much more subtle techniques
A lot of them aren’t people, they’re LLMs. And I don’t think the actual people doing it stand out to the average person. They’re not posting “death to America, Putin is amazing,” it’s much more subtle.
A common tactic is divide and conquer. They’ll support both extremes of a contentious political issue like abortion, gun violence, or policing.
r/Worldnews just bans everyone that is pro Palestinian. And it is filled to the brim with obvious Hasbara bots.
Similar to other communities pro isreal communities such as r/Destiny. Every single one of them has banned pro-Palestinian voices.
Worldnews has always been the place where all the bad opinions and misinformed bullshit culminated. I remember threads with hundreds of first level comments all stating basically the same bullshit over and over again with no insight in sight
No that’s because r/Destiny has a rule against political comments you dumb
It is weird. The left leaning Canadian subreddit (r/onguardforthee) is generally pro Palestine but my city’s subreddit is generally pro Israel. I’ve been watching my city’s subreddit move right politically quite quickly.
Something I’ve noticed is that reddit as a whole seems to have gotten a lot more right wing since the whole API stuff. I’m not sure if it’s actually because of users leaving, or if moderation took a huge hit and it’s kind of snow balling into hateful commenting becoming normal.
I’m convinced the rightward swing is from people leaving. I imagine it’s a self-reinforcing feedback loop, too. I wouldn’t mind sometimes or even often being the underdog in a thread, as long as occasionally you could score a small win here or there. But when every comment is just going to get down voted to Hades, it becomes pointless.
It also just makes sense that people who are temperamentally conservative are both more likely to be politically conservative and be slower to abandon ship from a dying platform.
Nah, the reason is that for the past ten years, discussion have become more and more toxic. Reddit launched a campaign against GOP outlets a couple years ago. This was absolute bullshits mainly because they ardently protect PRC propaganda subs calling for genocide and crypto-fascist subs. And that’s without accounting for islamist, ultra nationalist etc. Mainly because US court will only care about garbage like promoting Jan 6 in term of hate speech. Things that relate to the US.
The thing is that our favorite left wingers at reddit are… usians, and like every left wing usians who isn’t racist, they are ethno centrist. When look for problematic subs I am certain they look for subs in english. I would even bet they only look at subs moderated and created from U.S or maybe Canadian territory. They catch some brits from time to time but speak Spanish and you can explain how a good thing it is to genocide the Yezidis.
So moderate people left, from both side of the political spectrum and now only insane people remain. But no problem said reddit ! We just have to market ourselves as a place of free speech allowing controversies.
If you look at right wing subs yeah… Otherwise on reddit, denying the Uyghurs genocide and PRC propaganda are very casual
You’d think so, but my city’s subreddit used to advocate for transit, better support for the homeless, healthcare etc and generally be very left leaning. They still are some of the time, but I’ve started seeing a lot of upvoted comments very literally calling for the implementation of drug use policies (ie death) from places like Saudi Arabia or the Philippines.
I guess it’s possible it’s part of the Western move right ward but it’s jarring. I get it, the city’s drug problem is at its current worst, but advocating for the actual murder of users is insane and I can’t believe comments like that are at the top of threads. Even just a year ago those comments would be downvoted out of existence
Reddit is a powerhouse of online discussion. It’s the perfect place for astroturfing. Not to mention, Reddit is so desperate to become profitable that they’re bragging about “we know everything about our users,” so it’s obvious they’re selling data to data brokers, they’re selling data to google for their AI and google did a cool little quid pro quo with them to boost Reddit results in google search…why not get in bed with opinion brokers?
I wouldn’t be surprised at all. In fact, I assume it.
Reddit has been atroturfed to hell for a long time: https://web.archive.org/web/20160604042751/http://www.redditblog.com/2013/05/get-ready-for-global-reddit-meetup-day.html
Being pro Israel is being pro a lot of those things in this day and age.
They’re not opposites, look at the rest of the comments on this post.
Reddit is 100% astroturfed by Israel, Ukraine, and Russia.
There is no Palestinian/Iranian astroturfing.
It’s no covert secret that Russia benefits from chaos in Israel/Gaza. Russia is 100% amplifying the coverage of the conflict to their benefit.
“Ah yes the rtardd muslims can’t use propaganda It’s true because since they are in 1400 or something according to their calendar they haven’t discovered internet yet. I know it because I live Shitplaceville in Minnesota, US and therefore I know it because americans always know all the things”
Who are you quoting?
“This is the truth, every woke american use -” Mate that’s exactly how you sound. Your opinion is literally “all those states do use propaganda but that one ? Nah thye don’t”. You are trying to explain us that the Iranian government doesn’t use propaganda ? That’s it, they just don’t. Why wouldn’t they ? Because they are nice ? You’re telling me the government that sends their political paramilitary to poison hundreds of high school girls is not only nice but also honest ? Somehow I hardly believe that.
And yes the part about how it sounds a little racist is indeed true because only the middle eastern dictatorship seems to still rely on posters and state newspapers for their propaganda while the white crazies are using internet.
That’s funny, all you’re doing is saying your own words while pretending they’re mine.
I see it all the time and it’s a sign that you spend too much time on these forums.
I recommend stepping outside and seeing the real world. It’ll be good for you.
As opposed to what, Lemmy World??? This place is the same just fewer users.
Not really. If you’ve been on Reddit for more than a decade you really could see a cultural shift. Lemmy feels smaller and more filterable. If you curate your subscriptions and exclude more extreme Instances it’s quite all right.
Whenever I read Reddit outside of my niche subs it just feels almost distopian, is become a very weird place.
When I left reddit, I was subbed to like 30-50 subs, I only went on r/aspiememes despite most of my subs being about geopolitics and history because wherever I went there always were dude promoting genocide while all pretending to be from different side of the political spectrum
We are seeing that happen on Lemmy all 2024 so far.
please people on Lemmy are less insane than reddit. On reddit the top com would be an islamist guy upholding a KKK antisemitic conspiracies
Laughable. Reddit actually bans the insane fringes, then they come here.
Yeah. I believe in the fediverse and really want to see it crush corporate social media, but I don’t even tell people I use it while there’s so much authoritarian propaganda on here.
The fact that some of the most prominent communities are on the garbage instance lemmy.ml is just wild.
Yeah it seems sometimes Lemmy got a hard one for Hamas…still don’t know why somebody would favor one of these two since they both commiting genocide…
Here’s a clue: 31,000 > 1,139
Edit: Oh, you’re German. You know, the mistake y’all made in WWII wasn’t going against Jews. It was committing a genocide. The lesson to learn wasn’t: “Always support the Jews.” It was: “Always oppose genocide.” Not racial essentialism, but moral essentialism. Y’all just swapped out Aryan supremacy for Jewish supremacy. And now y’all are on the wrong side of a genocide once again.
(It’s not the first genocide America’s been on the wrong side of, either.)
what he actually said :
what you responded :
“trust me bro I’m not a nazis”
P.S : please stop equating the entire palestinian populations and even worse the entire muslim population of the region to the wealthiest terrorist organization in the world running a military dictatorship based on corruption throught defrauding and stealing humanitarian aid. That’s kinda racist
I’ll assume you’re arguing in good faith. When I said “wrong side of a genocide” I was clearly referring to Germany as a country, not OP. You do know that Germany has filed in the ICJ on the side of Israel, right?
As to your comment regarding conflation of Palestinians with Hamas, I couldn’t agree more. But it’s Israel who is treating the entire population of Gaza like Hamas by depriving them of food, water, and medicine in a total siege while they indiscriminately bomb them.
deleted by creator
I think there is a bit more dissenting opinions over here. At least they catch the eye more as the isn’t hundreds of comments. But even sorting by controversial doesn’t really help as the highly downvoted stuff is usually rather crass.
Happens here to, but not on the same scale.
deleted by creator
Could be. Mainly because of scale is easier to parse too.
In lemmy votes don’t seem to matter that much, unless you’re viewing comments with the “Top” or “Controversial” sorting. But perhaps that’s a symptom of having not so many users.