Ask Lemmy

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).

Why does it matter if the responses are from patriotic citizens or not?

"Bad faith" is lunacy, who cares? Arguments matter all on their own, regardless of the motivation for making them.

Of course you "think" they are paid trolls or bots, we all see that constantly. My first post on Reddit years ago was followed immediately by charges of being a Russian spy. Maybe they were a Russian spy and I was diversion?

Anyway, troll, bot, human, paid or not, irrelevant. The discussion is seen by others and judged on the merit of the argument itself. Stop worrying about the source, as you can never know, so it doesn't matter. It's not as if you get better results by talking to an unpaid patriotic person. Same shit.

Propaganda problem? Not at all. Every form of social media is rife with propaganda, as is every paper, website, news channel, and so on. How could Lemmy be any different?

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

Possibly. Me personally, I'm not getting paid to post. Not yet. I'm working up to that. Eventually, I plan to print out pro-China comments I've made and fax them to the Chinese embassy in the hopes that they'll hire me. For now, I'm just padding out my CV.

This whole conspiracy theory is so bonkers. Lemmy was created by communists. You look inside, you find communists, and then it's all this "What!? People who disagree with me!? On the internet!?!?!? Impossible! They must be paid secret agents!!!!"

If you want to avoid the existential horror of realizing that people exist with different views from you, different instances have different user experiences, and you're free to choose one that doesn't federate with communists.

https://lemmy.world/post/40009107

In addition to .ml, you've got people like DonaldJMusk. I didn't believe them at the time about 300 accounts, but I can believe a dozen or so as I've been watching it happen for a year.

Just the other day somebody tried to call them on their bias... Banned.

https://lemmy.today/post/56628315

100% but I wouldn't call it a problem. I find it's often refreshing to see the stupidity around you and not have it hidden behind a veil. I think you also get more genuine information here it just requires more from you to not get got.

Depends very much on the instances and connected instances you interact with.

I haven't seen it excessively or broadly in the way you describe. I've seen strong one-sided and often ideological or presumptuous opinions on some tech topics, which may not be deliberate or orchestrated propaganda, but kinda works the same.

If you want to look into or try a save space, take a look at beehaw.org.

Otherwise, I'd check your instance's policies and whether they disconnect from certain other Lemmy instances.

Regarding your self-perception, given your thoughtful, well-formulated, and mindful text here, I believe you that your comments were mindful and not excessively wrong or disrespectful.

There is always a substantial uptick as any major election gets closer in the US. With midterms coming up you can guarantee that the bots and paid propagandists each with their own dozen or more sock puppets come crawling out of the woodwork.
It's a problem everywhere, not just Lemmy. It is just sometimes more obvious here sometimes because it is such a small community.
It's not hard to identify the paid shitbags. Comments rarely build up votes or down votes quickly. They can take literal days to gain traction. But somehow, if you call out certain comments at the bottom of an argument chain where the combatants stopped bothering to even downvote each other because literally none else is going to read that far, you can still somehow get half a dozen down votes in a matter of seconds.

I was bombarded by long posts that parroted propaganda

Turns out that when you define "propaganda" as "anything that I disagree with", and then go to spaces where a lot of people disagree with you, you're going to see a lot of "propaganda".

Yeah, but I've noticed that most of it is from memes@lemmy.ml specifically, so not sure if Lemmy has a propaganda problem broadly, or if its just specific sublemmys that are just infested with tankies along with possibly some bots keeping them in a ecochamber. I've since stopped engaging with them though since I've realized it's just a waste of time to since they are so far in their own reality that there's nothing that I can say that they will actually listen to

Noob mistake. Been there done that. I'm banned from .ml for saying China bad. Welcome to the team

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.

What were the 2 countries you criticised?

As everyone else has said, there is definitely this issue on Lemmy, when criticising China and Russia especially. Happened to me a few times. It's weird.

I once did a test to see if the bias was really that bad and commented on a relevant news article on .ml something like "fuck Putin. Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine" maybe with a couple of extra similar phrases. Comment deleted by mods with no explanation. Insane.

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.

This is a common suggestion. I can see why people say it, but I just find it hard to believe people are really spending time here to do that. Wouldn't you just go to reddit? What, do you want to convert the trekkies and Linux evangelists?

I think it's much scarier than that: some people are just fucking nuts

It’s got a “how bout I take a propa ganda at them honkers” problem

You weren't flamed for mentioning established facts, but for dogmatically repeating easily disproven claims. People brought receipts and explained how your views were not actually based on evidence but instead propaganda, and now you've deleted those comments, making it hard for others to verify that they were indeed wrong. You weren't using internationally-recognized consensus, but purely western consensus, portraying that western consensus as the totality of international thought.

Either way, no, no paid trolls nor bots, just a bunch of communists. Lemmy was made and developed by communists, so there are lots of communists here.

Ive been here less than a week and have encountered multiple extremists, schizo level posts, and just ludicrous positions to take.

It's clear that things like moderates and centrism dont have much of a home here.

It is what it is but ill say this.

Do not be afraid to just block them, theres not that many people here.

I could just be paranoid but I'm fairly convinced the responses weren't from patriotic citizens.

... patriotic citizens? Lol.. citizens of where, the world? The internet?

That said, your question was probably answered. Lemmy.ml users can be a bit much

There are a few topics that just can't be discussed rationally on here. I've blocked many communities and users, as well as setting up a keyword filter. I'm not here for much more than a diversion anyway.

Boy do I enjoy piefed's bidirectional blocking feature: I don't see their comments, and they don't see mine. We both live in pease (unless they are bots/trolls, then they live in pain muohaha)