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They even try to do this on Lemmy. I've seen a few accounts recently that were obviously created with the sole purpose of spreading right-wing propaganda.
As someone who is routinely accused of being a bad actor, I have to say I find this speculation to be somewhat paranoid.
I think people generally overestimate the commonality of their own perspective.
I'm sorry you've had a bad experience. Nevertheless, I think that a certain basic skepticism is important in social media, because it is simply a fact that many interest groups on the internet are fighting for sovereignty of interpretation and use enormous resources to assert themselves - even with very questionable methods. This of course makes it difficult to build trust and have an open discourse. The advantage of Lemmy, however, is that at least the platform itself does not interfere too much, like Meta, X or TikTok do. Therefore, it seems to me that there is a much higher probability that you will be heard with your opinion, message or whatever, if you can provide good arguments for your point of view. Sure, there are some viewpoints that users reject despite good arguments, but from my Lemmy experience so far, that seems to me to be the exception rather than the rule.
There are several things that lots of bad actors and bots say frequently enough that if someone says it, it may be faster to assume paid shill than to take the extra time to vet someone or give their opinion real thought.
This extends to more than just politics.
There are still plenty of people that have gone so far left that they crossed the prime meridian and landed on the right.
what is this enlightened centrist bullshit. Horseshoe theory is bunk
I could rephrase and say their beliefs are not the same, but their behaviors are. Think of some of the worst qualities of far right posting. Memes that pigeonhole non-believers, co-opting language to mean things other than what the majority of people understand it to mean, facts-optional diatribes. Now read any number of Hexbear threads.
equality extremists wanting an egalitarian society are not just as bad as fascists and theocrats even if they both have bad memes ...
what makes you think they aren't sincerely held beliefs being posted by real people?
I bet because they only post on thing topic with some random sprinckled in for cred.
But it would be interesting to hear from the commenter above.
Operatives appear for a shill campaign out of no where and once it is over they will generally disappear. They work in groups.
Exactly. I mean accounts that are typically not very old and exclusively spread right-wing content and the corresponding ideas - apart from perhaps a few low effort comments or posts that are most likely intended to conceal this fact. What makes these accounts even more suspicious to me is that they generally do not put forward any factual arguments, are not impressed by them in any way and are not even interested in a discussion. If you confront them and they respond at all, they always lapse into whataboutism or fall back on the familiar "I'm just asking questions" - both are strategies that think tanks in particular use to deflect attention from the fact that their claims and accusations have no factual basis. I can only conclude from such behavior that it is not about exchanging ideas with others, but about promoting a clearly defined world view, creating discord and aggression, tying up resources or forming a nucleus for belief in irrational assertions. I don't think private individuals without a political agenda would do that - at least not to this extent.
i don't believe there are private individuals without a political agenda
It ain't just far right...
DNC coup of biden attract a lot of these operatives too recently
Politics and news subs are ran by these people. Can't tell if they are reporters or straight up DNC shills though
We'll also got corpo shill campaigns happening too although that's Reddit's bread and butter now
It is certainly true that other interest groups also engage in propaganda (or PR, as it is called these days) in both traditional and social media. But that's not what this thread is about.
Anyway, you can perhaps even see something positive in the fact that the usual PR and opinion manipulation methods are now apparently also being applied to Lemmy, because this shows that whoever is responsible for these campaigns obviously ascribes a certain importance to this platform and thus also to the Fediverse - and that is somewhat of a good thing, I guess.
Yeah I was surprised to notice these patterns here this early
I am assuming they are taking seriously and learn to to use the platform.
It is also easier to notice due to way less volume here.
I just hope with proepr education people can better avoid feeding it.
Spotting Bad faith actor V disliking opinion is not quite a wide spread skill. But people are getting better at it.
Remember folks, just because you like what they say, doesn't make them a good faith actor. And reverse
some people want to spread their ideas. that doesn't make them not-people or even require that tehy are paid.
Is your argument that it's okay to spread hate and slander without providing any evidence as long as people aren't getting paid? Also, what makes you so sure that these are private accounts?
no
i assume that other users are actual users. there is no reason for you to assume they are not.
Well, I guess we have to agree that we disagree then.
i am going to push back on that a bit and say that your presumption about other users is unfounded and toxic to the community.
You are either very naive or exactly what they’re talking about.
Ok, noted. Will try to do better. Just one more followup question: Why do you think my presumptions are unfounded? I mean besides that you seem to have faith in the good of all people and don't seem to think that there is such a thing as computational propaganda.
so? they might care a lot about one or two topics.
Oh a 17 day old account just in here defending shills? Blocked.
i didn't defend anyone or the general act of shilling.
Because they dont interact with anyone except to spread hateful messages, and the messages are copy pastes of other bots.
Right wing ideology is maintained from the top. It HAS to astroturf itself if there arent enough sycophants.
i have never seen this.
What makes you think they are?
this is a platform for people to discuss topics that interest them. i have every reason to believe it's populated by people discussing topics that interest them.