this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2024
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[–] [email protected] 70 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Because the big players there are not serious idealogues, they are paid a paltry sum through private channels to constantly spread Russian and Chinese disinformation in their larger psyop campaign against the West.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (2 children)

Highly doubtful. The amount of time, money, and effort would be much better spent elsewhere. Lemmy’s audience is very small.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 21 hours ago

Yeah, more likely the actors on Lemmy are just useful idiots parroting propaganda points they've heard elsewhere.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

Time

Basically none on the part of the handlers. Often this arrangement is handled by a private firm that doesn't necessarily have to be Russian or Chinese, I have heard of one operating in Australia. The posters themselves are spending a lot of time, but they're the ones selling it.

Money

Again, they're not exactly paying these guys a living wage, and even if they were, it's peanut crumbs for state-level actors.

Effort

A lot of people say that Lemmy is not worth the effort to demoralize because it's too small, I say the effort is too small to not be worth the investment. I would even say that Lemmy users are self-selected for radicalization in some ways, broadly speaking they are fed up with corporate social media and corporatism in general.

It's also a somewhat important step to have a place they can speak unfiltered amongst themselves, no matter how small the clubhouse is. That's where the real funky shit happens.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

I doubt those people are even aware of Lemmy, let alone hiring teams of people to post here. But regardless of how plausible it is, this is just speculation with no evidence behind it.

That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

commercial and propaganda bots have a tendency of taking small fora, and other sites with the ability to post, offline, as they overwhelm these super tiny venues, once their automated scrapers find them. There doesn't have to be a team of people doing something other than monitoring bots.

Also, I doubt anyone gets exposed to lemmy alone. It is very reasonable to believe many spend time on places worth using actual people to tailor their messaging to, and then carry that over here, and anywhere else they go. Point being, there no place so small that it becomes void of this.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Most of the users people are complaining about are very obviously not bots though. After investigating and interacting with them, I’ve universally found that they’re just weird, terminally online people with extreme views.

Actually, an offline friend of mine was recently accused of being an online shill. I’ve been pretty skeptical of these claims for a while but having a case with definitive proof has lost me all patience for these types of accusations. There’s just no point in accusing people like this unless you have actual proof. Most people are very very bad at distinguishing real users from propaganda.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 9 hours ago

Oh, I am not trying to say these particular people are bots, I am just pointing out that lemmy is not free of bots due to its size, also that there people are not solely on lemmy, so they are likely getting propaganda , in bot farm form, elsewhere, be it the US, Russia, China, EU, Exxon, whatever.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Exactly. Watch the downvotes for your comment roll in as day becomes night in the west.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

I think you two need to check your tin foil supply.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago (2 children)

A whopping two downvotes, yeah I'm sure the paid social media spam targets the 17k active users on lemmy.world and not the billions of users on Facebook

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It’s only 2 PM in California.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

It’s bedtime here now, nothing changed. Care to re-evaluate your conspiracy theories yet?

[–] [email protected] -3 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

The downvotes quadrupled while the upvotes failed to double. I think I’ll keep my theory a little longer.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 hours ago

71 to 6 lol

Even though these countries do run media spam operations, they usually target specific events and communities with a wide reach.

Most of the people you find here will be irl people with differing views, not paid shills to spam posts.

Also by these countries, I mean every country does this. You usually don't see US spam because they do it against Russia and China which means their spam will be in Russian, Chinese, etc.

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-covid-propaganda/

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 day ago (1 children)

as day becomes night in the west.

Title of my wild west themed romance novel

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I think I saw that in LaGuardia. Cover has a cowboy rubbing his horse’s backside as the sun sets behind the old saloon?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

Oh FUCK! That illustration was supposed to be part of a series on centaur fucking for tumblr!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I can't speak for the other Lefties on here but I'm a Western citizen and former proud Liberal persuaded by arguments on this very website

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 day ago

For anyone that needs to hear it, you can have both. You can live in a free society and also plot to bisect your nearest oligarch next time they go to their favorite sushi restaurant