this post was submitted on 15 May 2025

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Fediverse vs Disinformation

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Pointing out, debunking, and spreading awareness about state- and company-sponsored astroturfing on Lemmy and elsewhere. This includes social media manipulation, propaganda, and disinformation campaigns, among others.

Propaganda and disinformation are a big problem on the internet, and the Fediverse is no exception.

What's the difference between misinformation and disinformation? The inadvertent spread of false information is misinformation. Disinformation is the intentional spread of falsehoods.

By equipping yourself with knowledge of current disinformation campaigns by state actors, corporations and their cheerleaders, you will be better able to identify, report and (hopefully) remove content matching known disinformation campaigns.

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186

How to Sniff Out ‘Copaganda’: When the Police and the Media Manipulate Our News (www.teenvogue.com)

submitted 1 day ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I wrote the book Copaganda based on my years of being a civil rights lawyer and public defender representing the most vulnerable people in our society. I watched as the police and the news media distorted how we think about our collective safety. Copaganda makes us afraid of the most powerless people, helps us ignore far greater harms committed by people with money and power, and always pushes on us the idea that our fears can be solved by more money for police, prosecution, and prisons. Based on the evidence, this idea of more investment in the punishment bureaucracy making us safer is like climate science denial.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 day ago (2 children)

How to Tell a Lie with the Truth

The selective curation of anecdote is an essential mechanism of copaganda. … By cherry-picking anecdotes—indeed, even by using isolated individual pieces of data as misleading anecdotes—news reports can distort our interpretation of the world.

I feel like this is a truly vital thing to understand about propaganda in general. Very often, everything that’s being said is true. The art is in what to focus on, how much emphasis to give to small pieces of the picture, and how to give them emotional weight so that the artificially inflated singular piece you’re presenting will become a lasting and resonant part of people’s image of the picture as a whole.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

It doesn't even have to be true or false. 'Uncle Sam' was propaganda to get young men to enlist out of national pride.

There were no facts in the 'I want you' campaign, it was pure emotional appeal

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

Headline: "Teen Stabs Woman After Playing Violent Video Game"

Alternative equally true headline about the same story they'd never use: "Teen Stabs Woman After Eating Cheeseburger"

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 day ago

This is one of the pernicious functions of NPR here: to give liberal news consumers intellectual permission to support more funding for more police because, although it is baselessly connected to less murder, even marginalized people targeted by police supposedly want it.

TIL NPR features whitewashed conservative propaganda

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 day ago

Is it on television? Copaganda. Is it on radio? Copaganda.

Love teenVogue.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 day ago (2 children)

teenvouge

Damn this is some hard hitting reporting for an outlet catering to teens, is that what the kids are into these days? LMAO

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

Teenvouge has been killing it this year. This isn't the first really good article from them posted here

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Teen Vogue has been running some very good political commentary for a few years now. Here's another good one from last week: https://www.teenvogue.com/story/moms-for-liberty-public-schools-christian-education

I think they started during Trump's first term. (Or, at least that's when it got noticed.) A lot of people were like, "Wow, they used to print articles about which jeans will get you a prom date!" I guess somebody had to do the job that the NYT won't do.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

The kids are usually more hip to cynicism about the zeitgeist than the adults are. Anti-Vietnam War, “Life in Hell,” anti-Iraq War and Ron Paul, Teen Vogue is just following in the proud tradition.

I mean it is surprising and cool that a fashion centered magazine is doing real talk about politics, but the part that makes it surprising is the “Vogue,” not the “Teen.”

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 day ago

I'm loving that there's been some more Alec Karakatsanis on Lemmy lately!

He's probably the best at exposing and explaining systemic disinformation I've ever seen, maybe one of the best at it in the entire world.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 day ago (4 children)

DA fuk. When did teen vouge go woke

[–] [email protected] 2 points 16 hours ago

Like ten years ago

[–] [email protected] 3 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

Please speak respectfully about Comrade Teen Vogue.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 14 hours ago

Obviously they are part of the vanguard

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Insert "always has been" meme here.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 day ago

Yep, oddly enough Teen Vogue has delivered some pretty serious journalism for a while now. No idea what it's like in general lol but I've been impressed with instances of their work for years. Like, impressed above and beyond almost any other journalism, not just impressed by the contrast between their hard-hitting work and what the branding would seem to suggest.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago

Rolling Stone used to be the same way, nowadays not so much

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 day ago

I can't believe the judge being charged is going anywhere. It should immediately be thrown out. Thats the case for many of these things that have no standing.