I've noticed a huge influx of anti-Biden posts and comments, to the extent that I honestly think we're finally getting the reddit treatment. I remember there, when the Russian Internet connection went down, and for like a day all those kinds of posts nearly evaporated. And it seems like those accounts don't just do the overtly political things, they also engage in other areas, usually with a conservative slant.
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Yeah, that's a lot of what I've been seeing, bad faith actors sowing dissent.
Edit: ducking autocorrect
Sowing*
Are you certain? They could be making clothing with divisive messages.
/Jk
Yeah lots of anti-Bidens. Totally Russian trolls.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/15/us/politics/russia-disinformation-election.html
It's starting, for sure. Assuming it ever really stopped, that is.
We used to think that if we had user-generated content, we would all be immune to governments, corporations and other powerful actors spreading propaganda because we would get our information from each other, not them.
Turns out: governments, corporations, other powerful actors are perfectly capable of paying "users" to "generate content" and not even disclose this.
The Internet used to be an exciting development, now it's just like, yeah it exists, so what.
I remember there, when the Russian Internet connection went down, and for like a day all those kinds of posts nearly evaporated.
Oh shit, I remember this one. For a short time Reddit became a loooooooooot friendlier. Not friendly but friendlier. You could have a nice conversation with someone opposing your views and it came to an actual trade of insights. I valued that a lot. No fucking derailment with stupid ass nonsense and childish jibes. (At least for the most part. Reddit is after all Reddit)
Yeah, for sure. And before that time I used to wonder how much truth there was in the idea of the Russian troll farms - it seemed a bit like a conspiracy theory, even though it was pretty well documented in the Mueller report. But that day was such a dramatic demonstration. The whole site suddenly shifted so much to the left, and the toxicity dropped so much lower.
Maybe there are people that are outside of America and don't have direct impact of who wins the election and they don't have to blindly praise biden. Trump is a piece of shi but acting like criticizing Biden is some kind of a foreign conspiracy is funny.
Criticising him? No.
Criticising him and going "I'm not gonna vote for genocide Joe"?
Yes.
If you were Putin, you'd do everything in your power to see Trump elected. And if you pretend Russian troll factories don't exist then we know you're in one.
Just look at my comments downvotes. It really is about people being angry at others criticizing biden.
I did not mention anything about voting btw just to be clear. I just don't like the left behaving like the right. People should be free to criticize any leader. Just because orange man can do it worse doesn't mean you should let biden run around doing anything he wants. We should demand for people's best interests and well being.
No, it's because you're ignorant.
Ignorant of what?
The fact that other countries are absolutely trying to influence the US election by criticizing Biden, especially the Kremlin.
Plenty of “genocide Joe”, lib bashing, “both sides”, implication that if you vote for Biden you’re complicit in genocide, and many other anti-vote and anti-democrat posts all around.
Not sure what you’re reading that constitutes “dog whistles”, there have been some posts mocking right wing responses and some fediverse self-policing and knee jerk reactions to the female trapped in the forest with either man or bear discussion that have already gone through several evolutions and iterations.
The mockery of singe issue voters is deserved taken in the context of the failure to vote being trump fascism and even more genocide. Not sure what you’re trying to offer there other than what? We should listen to more open to “genocide Joe” comments and become immobilized with ambivalence and again, let fascism win by inaction?
Personally, I’m not hearing dog whistles. I’m reading people directly trying to influence opinion to not vote for Biden by any means necessary while willfully and actively avoiding any consequences to a trump win.
I’m reading people directly trying to influence opinion to not vote for Biden by any means necessary while willfully and actively avoiding any consequences to a trump win
Exactly, Kremlin shills and trolls using Israel's genocide as a wedge issue to get their asset into the White House again so he cuts support for Ukraine and pulls out of NATO.
The growing intensity of straw manning over the past decade has hurt us all so much.
Don't try to characterize what "they" would do, then get mad at your hypothetical. We need to talk to each other instead of about each other.
Wait... single issue politics is a real, proven, thing. Don't lump that in with ad hominem attacks. If you're not going to vote for someone you otherwise would because of a single issue, you're a single issue voter.
And an idiot
It's election season, so get used to this. Other countries have learned how to divide us using social media, not to mention the years of experience Fox New and Co. have in doing just that. On top of it, we now have AI generated posts to contend with. It's not getting better anytime soon...personally, I just ignore any post that sounds like it's inflammatory (which sadly are almost all political posts, and everything Musk).
I think some communities might benefit from a very strict no-politics rule. Because this right wing trolling is ruining lemmy for me.
"no politics" is what the right says when you suggest that maybe gay people are people. What you mean is a "no conservatives" rule.
Like when all the rightoids show up to a discussion and spam image macros of pigs shitting on their own balls?
Get real, this is a left-centered platform, 98% of the trolls aren't right wing, not by a country mile.
There's a lot of left wing trolling as well, even more so imo.
Yes it has been a stark difference that picked up this month. I was in what used to feel like a chill community and the sheer vitriol of the threads the past week has been really annoying.
Yes, that's absolutely the point of my post. Big upswing in bad actors.
I’m seeing very long form post replies that read very much like what is generated from LLMs.
Oh goodness, as one who has a bad habit of putting responses into essay form, I hope this doesn't refer to me. I'm not an LLM. Honest!
Okay, I'm pretty sure I'm human. It's a damn convincing hallucination.
Don't pay attention to them. Don't freed them and move on.
The kind of trolls I'm talking about start a conversation with you, ask you leading questions and pull into a discussion though. Then BAM dog whistles. It's insidious.
I'm well aware of the old adage "Don't feed the Trolls"
My larger question is how do we deal with the leverage an LLM gives trolls?
The kind of trolls I’m talking about start a conversation with you, ask you leading questions and pull into a discussion though. Then BAM dog whistles. It’s insidious.
If that happens stop talking to them.
how do we deal with the leverage an LLM gives trolls?
Once again, stop talking to them. Let the mods do their job.
EDIT or you can block them. You have the tools to solve the problem. Use them.
I have a comment on my profile where I express some observations about the cyber truck that weren't expressly negative and it was down voted to hell.
Maybe not so many trolls, but there's a lot of pretentiousness.
I see more posts about "have you seen this or that in lemmy recently" or "lemmy is worse than reddit" posts more often than these supposed trolls. Sure they exist but all of the time they are down voted or deleted.
There is also someone saying in the comments that criticizing biden is a foreign conspiracy. Some of these Americans just look like a reflection of the right but call themselves left. I'm not American so I face no real threat(as far as I'm aware) regardless of who gets elected there. So I just think you can criticize "both sides" people without making your leader look immortal
Yes, the hexbears and their .ml ilk have started to use alts to troll the larger forums. Their admins openly admit that their only interest within the fediverse is information warfare.
Other instance need to be taking this as seriously as they would be taking a nazi instance admin admitting to the same things.
Is it simply just the political majority starting to catch up with Lemmy and its extreme left ideology?
Also i know a guy who runs a bunch of llm powered bots to produce flat earth propaganda flatgpt one could say. There are some beautiful argument chains.
I've also run into some cases where u can do a little prompt injection and it starts saying potato instead of any noun.
yes, very much. i've been telling my partner it may be time to give up on Lemmy.
the ones that kill me are the long-form posts that seem to be making one point then pivot in the middle and get confusing. they're just muddying the waters but people who don't read past the first sentence or two upvote so they gain traction.
Yes - I wish Reddit would keep them...