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?
finally. propper gender
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
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.
They just give those away? How generous!
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).
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
that was a cryptoscam not a fediverse server. We always federated as hexbear.net.Hexbear.net is the one with the best emojis.
Ahh, nice one! Thats really helpful, thanks!
I had this feeling too
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
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.
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.
You my friend, are like a very welcome breath of fresh air.
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?
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.
The world has a propaganda problem. Fediverse is in the world.
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.
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?”
Don’t let the crazies make you self censor.
On the contrary, walk right up to their front door and bang on it.
I needed to see this today. Thank you.
Thats what I was worried about. Half of me was like ”omg I’m never mentioning this country again". But then if its an established fact that said country is an egregious abuser of human rights then we should feel able to say it.
It’s just tankies, bunch of them come from .ml and since a lot of people block them, some have gotten wise and moved to a few other instances unfortunately. Tag them or block them and avoid interacting with .ml
Also remember the devs are both tankies…and not like “I have a USSR flag on the wall”, but full on CCP/putin/ruzzia shills.
I’ll happily call a tankie just a wannabe maga to their face.
You’re very brave
Totally this!
I see it as a bit of a problem that the biggest communities are in .ml . As a new user if you look up communities based on your interests you basically end up with half your subscriptions being .ml
yeah i made that mistake when i was new here.
the dogpile and death threats reminded me of reddit!
death threats?!?!
sheesh, they really are unhinged. thank goodness I blocked them almost immediately upon joining since I heard about them, but this is something we need to improve on imo, perhaps a sort of warning?
doubt it will happen though, since Lemmy devs are the instance admins, but maybe on some neutral instance chooser site or the other? (may already exist and I don’t know about it)
I’ve gotten death threats and stalkers too.Some extremist users in the fediverse are very unhinged and have no life.
yes an yes, that is very much the issue. .ml is not going to label themselves ad violent and delusional, they think the rest of us are that, because they project.
sigh very typical…
if this problem gets too out of hand, my mind went to defederation. perhaps too extreme? there has to be a reason the .world admins didn’t do it yet. idk if .social defed from ml, but perhaps reason…?
they don’t because the mods want users to make up their own minds. and that’s fine.
I don’t want admins/mods making my choices for me, I want to make them myself.
sheesh, they really are unhinged
Or maybe they’re lying to you
I am in enemy territory /s
Yes they (we) can be annoying, no lie there.
But are folks aware of who is building Lemmy? Like, who the devs are, their goals, etc.?
Yeah, the main dev I learned is a .ml believer. But there’s other instances and if they started mass censoring this place would die in a week.
From what I read thru some of the devs posts and drama on Lemmygrad, hexbear, etc, it’s complicated. Like, not super important for 99% of ppl to care about. My takeaway at the end was, yes the devs and the mission for Lemmy (and federation in general) is an inherently anticapitalist, or at least anti-monopoly, venture. Many first adopters were infosec/IT folks, ppl who could help build and give feedback, ofc, and were also ideologically aligned/adjacent. Basically, devs said that for this platform to have a chance at growing and being an alternative to privately controlled platforms, it can’t just be a politics debate playground; they wanted, needed, liberals to join and make their own instances, and help it grow. Which is happening and good!
I suppose this is a PSA as to who is building the true (imo) private* free speech digital platforms. It’s not liberals.
Do they come from lemmy.ml? Just ignore them and move on, to them tearing down the Berlin wall was a mistake.
