This isn’t about immediately filtered content, like the disgusting DuffMan George Floyd meme, or Holocaust denial. That’s pretty well kept in check by mod tools. I’m also not talking about cogent or even pointed political discussion.
I’m not even talking about necessarily in this community directly, however in a lot of other spaces I’ve noticed a lot of accounts using divisive language and terms like “The ineffectual left” “single issue voters” “ignorant right wing morons”. Lots of straw man arguments, lots of willful ignorance.
I’m not a centrist, I’m very very very far left however I know well enough not to patently dismiss the talking points of others, outside of course calls to genocide. I know what dog whistles sound like, and I’m hearing a lot of them lately.
Most egregiously I’m seeing very long form post replies that read very much like what is generated from LLMs.
So I guess my question is, how’re we all fairing with what might be the largest Turing test ever?
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.
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
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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.
Ah yes, Mr RustyFish. I see you support Fishell Rustic Sanders for ruler of earth, purely based on his pro-fish stances.
We may agree in a fish court, or even a basketball court, but at the end of the day, you win some, I win some, and we both smell like fish for having tried your suggestion of chopping up dead fish that washed ashore already dead…and running their guts and bodies all over our hair and bodies.
Now I fear we’re two naked strangers slathering each other in fish corpses.
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.
“those people opposed to our glorious leader are surely from our external enemies ethnic group!”
Do you even realize how xenophobic you sound?
Another lemmy.ml troll…
Was that supposed to go to somebody else?
Yeah lots of anti-Bidens. Totally Russian trolls.
This you?
Calling out foreign election meddling. Yes.
those damn foreigners, always meddling.
can you see why we call you blue maga?
Nope. I can’t see. I want all governments to stay out of the elections of all other countries.
And who is “we,” the tankies? The poseur communists? The KGB? The Xi bitches?
Did I miss one?
Meanwhile, our Lord and Savior PugJesus is singlehandedly taking the fight to the trolls.
I’m just trying to remind them they aren’t welcome in decent places. I wouldn’t go to .ml or worse, Hexbear or grad, if you paid me.
Nope, not a bot and anti-Biden registered Dem. You guys always want to Strawman anti-Biden comments as either “angry conservatives” or “Russian-psyops”. You don’t actually address the concerns either, just brush them off as trolls. Discourse on Lemmy is a echo-chambered joke already. It doesn’t need trolls to ruin it, you’ve done plenty well yourselves.
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.
At this point it’s not just Kremlin shills. Netanyahu very obviously prefers Trump as well. These “leftists” don’t even realize they’ve gone full mossad.
Are you implying there are Israeli government shills on social media using this as a wedge issue? Seems unlikely to me.
It’s hilarious seeing them run the exact same “corrupt DNC” playbook when no Dems from 2016 are even in this race. They are doing it because they are lazy, and because there are still enough people who are so bought into this that it still seems to fool a handful of idiots.
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).
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.
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This is what it’s like on .ml, where all the hexbear trolls are still allowed. What’s happening is these trolls are making alts specifically to push propaganda. Their admins even admit it.
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.
You’re right, thanks for helping me reframe this.
I just add a user note to trolls and then anytime I see them I make sure to let people know not to interact with them
Same. If we want Lemmy and the Fediverse to succeed we all need to do our part to stop propaganda. They spend money to spread misinformation, but there’s no budget for fighting it… just us.
Are notes specific to an app or frontend?
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.
I’m new to the fediverse, and largely I don’t get it, yet.
But aren’t the things you’re talking about the type of reasons you’d give to DEfederate from that one instance?
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.
Gish gallop. It’s a common tactic used by authoritarians with no real arguments.
Only during the night. They turn to stone during the daytime.
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.
Just like with Reddit, there are a lot of people who use the downvote button if they just disagree, which isn’t really the intent. So you’re likely to get downvotes for any unpopular subjective opinion.
Yeah I generally agree with that.
I find that people really put a lot of stock into how much they like or dislike something subjectively rather than looking at it from an objective perspective.
Me? No, and I’ve been around for a while
Circle of life on the internet. Some public forums last longer than others. Some go full facist dictatorship, some devolve into anarchy, some die out completely. Nirvananet, Totse, gamefaqs, 4chan, 99chan, imgur, whirlpool forums, stack exchange, reddit, Lemmy. Theres no telling which way a rudderless ship will drift. You just do what you can, and get off when she starts going under
…whirlpool forums?
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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.
tbh not really
Even the largest comment threads tend to only have a select few comments that are either blatant shilling or next level dumb.
Everyone else seems to have at least several comments that match their opinion.
Even the complaints about .ml spamming seem mostly untrue, I haven’t really seen any spam or mod deleted content.
ml and world defnitley mod or ban eachother, but I don’t think they’re increasing in trolls.
