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LustyArgonianMana , in ‘The new normal’: work from home is here to stay, US data shows
@LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world avatar

We should fine companies who don’t do work from home when they could be. It’s safer for employees and better for the planet.

chr ,
@chr@lemmy.ca avatar

but think of the poor landlords not getting money for renting out office space /s

corsicanguppy , (edited )

Force them to justify in-office work and force an independent reassessment of that in line with other osha-style workplace safety assessments given how toxic the cube jungle is.

Oh. Right: and sexist.

LustyArgonianMana ,
@LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world avatar

Not just that, but the actual drive to work should be considered by OSHA as car accidents are one of the leading causes of death for people under age like 70

explodicle ,

We’re basically subsidizing this behavior with low taxes. It ought to be unaffordable to waste money on offices they don’t need.

Semi_Hemi_Demigod ,
@Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world avatar

Hell, take some of the money out of the highway budget, since it results in less road wear and need for additional infrastructure.

Kinda like how my power company would send me CFL and LED light bulbs for free because reducing usage was cheaper and cleaner than building a new plant.

jordanlund , in Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter case dismissed, cannot be filed again
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

Looks like he…

🕶️

Dodged a bullet…

slingstone ,

Queue loud song by The Who…

Retreaux ,

YEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

TheFriar ,

¿Que loud song?

slingstone ,

We’re talking about the way a TV show starts called CSI: MIAMI.

Basically, there’s always a clever remark from the lead, followed by the opening credits accompanied by part of a song by The Who.

catloaf ,

The word for signaling something is “cue”. A queue is a bunch of people in line; the words are homonyms. They are using “que” as a joke due to the similar spelling and somewhat similar pronunciation.

slingstone ,

You’re right. I’m an idiot.

RizzRustbolt ,

Baba O’reilly.

maccentric ,

Won’t Get Fooled Again

someguy3 , in Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter case dismissed, cannot be filed again

There were no details, what evidence was withheld?

ikidd ,
@ikidd@lemmy.world avatar
xenomor , in Nike Pledged to Shrink Its Carbon Footprint. It Just Slashed the Staff Charged With Making That Happen.

I can confidently say that every single corporate initiative like this always eventually reveals itself as just a feel-good public relations veneer designed to dress up business as usual. Even if some of the individuals working on these things believe they are accomplishing something, the organization never, ever really means it. Purely capitalist systems simply cannot and will never be able to organize meaningfully around goals that require long-term planning. Those systems are fundamentally oriented toward goals that span quarters, maybe occasionally years, but nothing longer. The only chance society has for meaningfully planning around climate issues is through government. Until people assert themselves (via governments) as a check on those corporate systems, we will continue to suffer through an ever-degenerating dystopia dressed up by glossy corporate lies like the ones Nike marketed for years.

kitnaht , in 'Microsoft killed my online life,' Microsoft is reportedly banning Palestinians in the U.S. for life for calling relatives in Gaza

That’s what you get for trusting Microsoft with anything…or Google…or Apple…or Facebook… stop tying your communication to these companies, they can pull the rug at any time.

Bbbbbbbbbbb ,

You have to trust someone with these communications, there is no free communication beyond face to face

BroBot9000 ,
@BroBot9000@lemmy.world avatar

Signal is right there.

Zachariah ,
@Zachariah@lemmy.world avatar

and Threema

sunzu ,

Threema is what signal should have been.

But I ain't got in me to start forcing people again lol

Signal it is until it is proven untrustworthy

Zachariah ,
@Zachariah@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, they’re both good (still).

features Threema Signal
price $5 / 5€ Free
account creation phone number optional phone number required
JovialSodium ,

Signal is centrally hosted thus it’s proverbial rug can be pulled.

9tr6gyp3 ,

Wait until you find out about internet service providers

knightly ,
@knightly@pawb.social avatar

You can have more than one dumb pipe to push bits through, but if the ISP can read your network traffic then you have bigger problems than a single-point-of-failure.

9tr6gyp3 ,

Do you have more than one ISP?

knightly ,
@knightly@pawb.social avatar

I’m very lucky in that regard. Not only do we have a local ISP and mobile service from a national carrier, but the electric co-op that provides our power just ran 2.5Gb/s fiber through the neighborhood and lets members use 200Mb/s on it for free.

Aux ,

Who doesn’t?

JovialSodium ,

True. Yet another linchpin.

Edit: spelling.

jmcs ,

For the most part the ISP doesn’t have a way to know you are using VoIP to contact people in a particular country (unless you are using a VoIP service owned by the ISP of course).

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

bleepingcomputer.com/…/signal-downplays-encryptio…

They fucked up so badly, Elon Musk was right for once.

moon ,

Damn that’s bad, and Signal’s response was even worse. They knew about it in 2018, for 6 years.

sunzu ,

I always felt like signal is there more to satisfy a niche so people feel like their whatsapp is good enough.

Leadership makes some odd chocies IMHO

refurbishedrefurbisher ,

Wasn’t Elon Musk trying to push Telegram?

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

That wouldn’t shock me, but he was right that Signal was not addressing a known vulnerability. In fact, denying that it even was a vulnerability.

For what it’s worth, I trust Telegram even less than Signal. And at least Signal seems to be finally doing something about the problem.

suburban_hillbilly ,

They didn’t fuck up, they made a design choice about the scope of the app. Are they also fucking up by not blurring the messages on screen? After all someone could be looking over your shoulder without you realizing it. Maybe Signal should ship with spyglasses.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

I’m not sure why you think anyone would want a messenger that touts itself for its encryption to not encrypt things.

suburban_hillbilly ,

It does encrpyt messages: In transit, exactly as advertised. Holy fuck.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Then it’s weird they are fixing it now. Why aren’t they insisting this doesn’t need to be dealt with because it was a feature, not a bug?

suburban_hillbilly ,

It’s weird that apps sometimes change scope and add features that users want? Ones that contributers already did most of the work for?

Why aren’t they insisting this doesn’t need to be dealt with because it was a feature, not a bug?

That was literally what they have been saying this whole fucking time.

“The database key was never intended to be a secret. At-rest encryption is not something that Signal Desktop is currently trying to provide or has ever claimed to provide,” responded the Signal employee.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Did they make an intentional design choice which users should have been okay with like you said the first time or is this a feature users wanted? It can’t be both.

subignition ,
@subignition@fedia.io avatar

It's really fucking annoying how relentlessly you pick fights with people these days. Wish you'd chill out dude.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

Or I’m just speaking my mind and you don’t agree.

And aren’t you picking as fight with me right now?

sunzu ,

You are right to bringing up this issue and it is pretty fucking big deal inho mistakes happen but signal "leadership" has made series of questionable choice which don't quite align with the user base.

Other person is down playing it hard too. Hard to tell why as he is not really providing any good reason besides trying to "explain" it away

subignition ,
@subignition@fedia.io avatar

Not picking a fight; don't really care what you have to say in response. Just needed to share my observation that you are latching onto people in a really aggressive manner in multiple threads as of late. If that doesn't bother you then go ahead and disregard.

Feyd ,

You’re absolutely right and it’s insane I keep coming across these wild takes from people that clearly don’t understand technology

theunknownmuncher ,

trust yourself by hosting a matrix server

Aux ,

How do you call a landline number in a war zone through a matrix server?

theunknownmuncher ,

I was simply responding to the comment:

You have to trust someone with these communications, there is no free communication beyond face to face

the oh-so-clever smart alecks saying “whaddabout ISPs???” forgot about 2-way radio and meshnets

knightly , (edited )
@knightly@pawb.social avatar

Unless you build your own, you have to trust your ISP to move packets, but you don’t have to rely on any third party services or give them your personal info to use social media.

Fully decentralized, open-source, and encrypted social networks exist. The only servers needed are your computer and the computers of the friends you communicate with. (See: Retroshare )

They’re just never going to get big because small, personal friend-to-friend networks can’t compete with the network effects of centralized media and a never-ending torrent of dopamine on tap.

Blaster_M ,

dead link?

knightly ,
@knightly@pawb.social avatar

Whoops, somehow managed to typo it. Fixed now.

Aux ,

From my comment above:

You’re assuming that people in Gaza have consistent access to the internet. The beauty of Skype is that you can call a landline through it.

moon ,

Not true at all lol, have you heard of peer-to-peer?

AbidanYre ,
mlaga97 ,

Matrix (federated) or Briar (multi-modal P2P) are both good options for getting rid of dependency on central organizations.

csm10495 ,
@csm10495@sh.itjust.works avatar

Still need an ISP. ISPs are pretty centralized and monolithic for lots of people.

Holyhandgrenade ,
@Holyhandgrenade@lemmy.world avatar

I’ll just build my own cell tower and become my own ISP, checkmate

csm10495 ,
@csm10495@sh.itjust.works avatar

It won’t be too useful unless you peer with the others.

XTL ,

That sounds just meshtastic.

Aux ,

You’re assuming that people in Gaza have consistent access to the internet. The beauty of Skype is that you can call a landline through it.

themeatbridge ,

This is exactly what they want you to believe.

grue ,

This is what net neutrality and anti-trust laws are for.

todd_bonzalez ,

You can run your own infrastructure.

Matrix has been recommended, but you can run your own Synapse server and federate with other servers.

odium ,

Your average person doesn’t know of any communication method other than mega corps.

Gamoc ,

That’s what you get

You’re right, they deserve this. You asshole.

Thedogspaw ,

Yor right I will just use my billions of dollars to build a global internet infrastructure and make my posts on my own phone using the os I just built in my spare time for fun its not about trust its about necessity

some_guy ,

We had an issue a couple days ago where we couldn’t move a VIP to a new phone because the vendor wanted us to perform multi-factor auth via a device from two years ago. We had to roll back the service. Our entire lives are built atop fragile digital infrastructure with broken and poorly thought-out policies.

jordanlund , in On NYC beaches, angry birds fight drones patrolling for sharks and struggling swimmers
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

“the drones could prompt a stress response in some birds that causes them to flee the beach and abandon their eggs”

Solution is self evident:

Use the drones to hatch the eggs and raise the chicks. :) Very, very, confused chicks…

Jumpingspiderman , in Anger mounts in southeast Texas as crippling power outages and heat turn deadly

Will they get angry enough to do something about the GOPers that are causing the problems? Probably not.

FlyingSquid ,
@FlyingSquid@lemmy.world avatar

They’ve been brainwashed into thinking that the GOP is the only solution to their problems and the reason why they never solve the problems is that the enemy is both too strong and too weak.

See point 6: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ur-Fascism

jordanlund , in [META] A few words about Bots and Civility
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

Good idea to make it official, I’ll float the idea of applying it to Politics and World News as well.

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

Do you mean float it with the users, or float it with the other moderators?

jordanlund ,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

Other moderators. We already know how the users feel, lots of reports on it even though it doesn’t technically break the current rules.

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

Hm… how does seeing a lot of reports translate into most users agree with these rules, though? How do you know it isn’t just a bunch of vocal users who like to do reports?

I mean, like I say I actually like the rule with some caveats, but I’d be curious to see the results of an informal survey or something instead of just assuming the volume of reports correlates well with what the users think is important. I don’t report misinformation, because I feel like generally mod intervention isn’t the way to address it, but that definitely doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s a problem (and actually a much bigger one than people being rude and unproductive in their way of responding to the problem, although that is also a problem yes.)

jordanlund ,
@jordanlund@lemmy.world avatar

Well, that’s where the discussion among the other mods comes in. :) I PERSONALLY feel it’s a good idea, and I Iike the idea of News, Politics, and World News all being on the same page, but it’s not solely up to me, nor should it be.

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

But it is solely up to the mod team, and the users who like to bounce on the “report” button, and not the consensus of the community as a whole?

I mean… you don’t have to answer that. I’m not trying to get in an argument about it and you can do what you like obviously. I just was a little surprised to hear that this is the big problem people want to solve - I feel pretty confident that if you surveyed the user base outside the bounds of the report button, most people would feel as I do that the propaganda is a much bigger issue than the people who get rude about the propaganda.

I think also that a lot of my prickliness in this comes not from the specific rule but from wondering about the question I asked OP - like I say, as written it seems perfectly reasonable (sort of just a clarification on the personal attack rule). But it’s interesting to me the question I asked, is this gonna creep into a “no talking about the shills or you get banned” or “no pointing out inconsistencies in another user’s story” rule.

One question I am curious about; do you personally feel that propaganda accounts are a problem at all on Lemmy? Do you feel like anything should be done to address that, in cases that aren’t bots or obvious sockpuppets or other things that can be administratively detected with surety?

some_guy , in Man plotted electrical substation attack to advance white supremacist views, prosecutors say

Stupid people want a race war.

Spacehooks , in Anger mounts in southeast Texas as crippling power outages and heat turn deadly

Wow we’ve done nothing and nothing changed

solsangraal ,

they most loyal and obedient slaves are the slaves who think they’re free

Spacehooks ,

Crazy thought but makes sense. Just thinking of Smithers.

PugJesus , in 'Microsoft killed my online life,' Microsoft is reportedly banning Palestinians in the U.S. for life for calling relatives in Gaza

Fucking disgusting

BossDj ,

Reeks of governmental intervention

Etterra , in On NYC beaches, angry birds fight drones patrolling for sharks and struggling swimmers

Well now you need to make drones to fight off the seagulls. Those things are fucking vile anyway so, have fun lol

Soggy ,

Gulls are an integral part of the beach ecosystem, and far less obnoxious than nature-hating people.

DragonTypeWyvern , in Alec Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter case dismissed, cannot be filed again

Now I’m very curious. It looks like the question revolves around how, exactly, the police got a hold of the ammunition involved?

Did cops try to frame a guilty man?

Is Alec Baldwin the new OJ?

girlfreddy , (edited )
@girlfreddy@lemmy.ca avatar

The prosecution brought an envelope of bullets into the courtroom but had never notified the defense they had them. That would be a BIG fucking ‘nope’ in any court case.

Archive source

nova_ad_vitum ,

That’s so fucking stupid it makes me question whether they intentionally tanked the case. This aspect of evidence disclosure is literally covered in My Cousin Vinny: youtu.be/uaoymfY9Kw0

dezmd ,
@dezmd@lemmy.world avatar

Now I’m very curious. It looks like the question revolves around how, exactly, the police got a hold of the ammunition involved?

Were you not ‘very curious’ enough to actually look at literally any of the real and active reporting on this before your comment?

There was no question as to ‘how, exactly, the police got a hold of the ammunition involved’ and it is a core fact among the details of why case was dismissed.

They even played the officer’s bodycam footage of an early formal interview of the former officer that brought the bullets in as evidence (that the officer on the stand pitifully tried to pretend wasn’t an interview) in which the prosecutor was present. The evidence was intentionally filed under another case number so it wouldn’t be associated with Baldwin’s case (or the Reed case that I believe was ongoing when it was actually brought in). And THEN, cherry on top, they also discovered while looking at the undisclosed bullet evidence in this court, despite the prosecutors claims that the bullets were not associated with the Rust set thus not counted as evidence, that there were matching bullets of the type that were on the Rust set.

Some link to this as the moment the case fully unraveled: www.youtube.com/live/0VEoEvcJNhE?t=28995s

Where the prosecutor has put herself on the stand and opened herself up to answering defense questions under oath: www.youtube.com/live/0VEoEvcJNhE?t=32578s

It’s among the craziest prosecutorial malfeasance shit I’ve ever seen from a high profile, video recorded court proceeding. One prosecutor resigned and LEFT earlier in the day as things were unraveling, and then the prosecutor that was still there put herself on the stand as-a-prosecution-witness to give testimony about the bullets, which even allowed the defense to question her about witness statements that she called Baldwin a cocksucker, about witness statements that she called Baldwin an arrogant prick, and about witness statements that she would ‘teach him a lesson’. In the context of a lawyer, putting oneself on the witness stand as a lawyer in the case, even as a prosecutor, is mental breakdown levels of personal desperation, even if they want to claim it was an attempt to preserve an appeal of the dismissal.

Veneroso ,

If the evidence doesn’t fit, you must acquit!

Etterra , in Dog rescues elderly owner from naked attacker in Manchester

I can’t wait for the update that tells us what drugs the naked man was on. Or off, depending on what exactly is wrong with him.

mozz , in [META] A few words about Bots and Civility
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

If you believe that another user is a bot, please report it and our mod team will investigate. Please keep in mind that real people really do have radically different points of view. Not everyone who disagrees with you is a bot or troll. Do not abuse the report system.

What about users who clearly aren't literal bots, but seem clearly to be posting in bad faith? I feel like there's going to be a huge grey area between "this needs mod intervention" and "there's nothing hinky about this user's posting"

I completely get the reason for the rule, as it's not a real productive accusation and there's no way to know. I'm one of the people that talk about the shills a lot, but I actually make a deliberate effort (probably without universal success) to draw a distinction between "there are shills here" versus "I think you are being dishonest in some way, and here is why" versus "you are a shill".

Banning the third sounds pretty sensible. Are the first two statements still allowed? Or are those considered uncivil also?

It is blatantly obvious to me that particular users on Lemmy are being some kind of dishonest about their motives. So like an example: Swearing that you want the Democrats to win the election, and you're bringing up bad things about Biden as constructive criticism / so he can fix it and thus not lose the election, but also publishing objectively false disinformation about the Democrats on a very regular, like absurdly regular basis. There are a lot of users who have that weird type of disconnect or other reasons to specifically think they are propaganda accounts of some description. I think it significantly distorts the discussion here in a way which is very much not a good thing.

I actually don't see it being super common that people jump to the accusation of someone being a shill as soon as there's a disagreement. I do think there's such a clear presence of some kind of shilling effort that it's, more or less, universally accepted that it's happening and distorting the discourse. Are we still allowed to talk about it?

Again, while I completely get the reasons for the rule... I feel like a lot of this stuff is hard for mods to be the ones to make mod-action decisions about because it's impossible for anyone with any level of powers to know which users are being honest about who they are. Upvote bots and things are one thing, but I actually don't see that happening all that much (maybe because the mods are on it any time it happens). Just someone making a real account and posting propaganda 10x per day, though... are we saying the mods are going to let that happen (because it's not a bot account) and we the normal users are not allowed to call out those users as doing anything, if in our opinion they're doing it for purposes of propaganda?

Zaktor ,

You are the reason this rule is necessary.

shaiatan ,
@shaiatan@midwest.social avatar

Attack the argument, not the person.

Pretty sure that’s a Rule 1 ban for you there.

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

Eh

I didn’t take it as a personal attack to point out that I frequently get in fights with the propaganda accounts. I took some issues with his statement but purely on the factual merits; I didn’t receive it as an attack if that makes a difference.

shaiatan ,
@shaiatan@midwest.social avatar

I meant it mostly to point out the hypocrisy, but point taken!

I don’t comment often, but FWIW, I appreciate your engagement and takes.

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

Ha! Yeah, I appreciate it, thank you. I mean you’re not wrong about it. I just meant I didn’t want to shut down discussion of ways in which I get in arguments with the shills like it’s out of scope or pretending it doesn’t happen and I’m offended by the suggestion that it does, or anything like that. 🙂

Zaktor ,

Then report it. That’s literally the secondary thrust of this post. You’re not the mods, but you have the tools if you think they need to look at something.

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

Caution, I’m gonna take this way too seriously and write a big super-serious response:

I would be curious how far you have to go back in my history to find an example of me actually calling someone a bot or paid actor. I would bet that you get sick of the process before finding one. You will probably find me calling someone out on dishonesty or accuse them of being a propaganda account of some description, but even that I think you’d have to go back a couple weeks at least.

I’m actually very careful in what I say about this issue as regards any specific user I’m talking to, for exactly the reasons laid out in the post - because it’s not productive to the conversation to get in a personal pissing match with any specific user or accuse them of things that there’s no way to prove or disprove anyway. I am human and get irritated and post inflammatory or personal attacks that I should not - and in particular I am extremely irritated that this platform seems overrun with propaganda which is distorting the conversation - but at least 90% of the time, I engage with the bad faith accounts purely on the merits of their arguments (which seems like a more productive way anyway). And, the other 10%, unless I’m really in a bad mood about something I will make some level of effort to measure my words about it a little.

Like I say I won’t claim to get it perfectly right. And I like the narrowly-applied version of the rule which is described in the post. I am just very curious about the exact location of any applications of it that might go outside of that narrow wording, though, hence my questions and me giving some context for them. Because yes, I am curious how much of what I say might be a problem that the application of this rule might become the necessary solution to.

Zaktor ,

Fair enough, you might not have specifically said “bot” or “Russian”, but this idea that there are pervasive influence campaigns everywhere and that people who comment against you aren’t being honest is the core of the problem. Unless you’re really pulling in some nonstandard tooling and doing some additional analysis on posting times and finding template wording (not just people using things epithets like “Blue MAGA”), you really don’t have any ability to sniff out fake posting from just people you really disagree with.

Someone coming on Lemmy day after day to diss the Democratic party may very well just not like the Democratic party. I have some people I follow on Mastodon that have radicalized over time. They were real and slightly cynical posters who just got more and more angry at the way everything’s turned out. And on the other hand, I also have people I follow who spend half their time just repeating Democratic party influencers. That’s not fake, that’s just a particularly clunky form of memeing. And still others who very deliberately want to spread their political view by whatever means are optimal. That’s maybe manipulative, but that’s also just another method for political persuasion.

This whole core of this post reads like “I like this, BUT there are totally fake posters and we need to call them out”. This strain of dialogue isn’t unique to Lemmy, it’s basically everywhere in public discourse and as I said elsewhere, poison to it. Because you’re not going to prove it. In all likelihood you’re probably wrong, as most influence operations were simply enhancing existing positions and thus largely indistinguishable from them. You’re just going to get people who also dislike the target saying “hur hur, they sure are fake” and the other side saying the accusations are insane, and then devolve into increasingly acrimonious back and forth taking up half the comments on a post.

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

Hm

I’ve been on the internet a long time. I have seen many many different types of bad faith users and people I disagree with. That part isn’t the part that led me to jump to “these accounts are fake.”

I feel like I’ve already explained why I feel there are propaganda accounts, or the difference between someone I disagree with vs. someone who has weird little inconsistencies in their story in addition to a pattern of behavior that’s very unlike any other type of authentic user I’ve ever seen before. Who I also, on top of that, disagree with.

This whole core of this post reads like "I like this, BUT there are totally fake posters and we need to call them out".

Because as you pointed out, calling out the fake posters directly doesn’t usually lead anywhere good. Surely you can understand the idea that I’m saying the flood of propaganda is a bad thing, but also that I can agree that adding a flood of arguing and impossible-to-prove accusations on top is also a further bad thing?

In all likelihood you're probably wrong

Glad we cleared that up, then.

LustyArgonianMana ,
@LustyArgonianMana@lemmy.world avatar

www.bbc.com/news/technology-43301643

I mean those people exist and they are an issue. The mods want us to report suspicious activity, and that’s about the best we can do. I personally look for Nazi activity and dog whistles and compared to Reddit, Lemmy is a paradise. I had one kinda questionable commenter who seems to deliberately be confusing leftwing and rightwing (which can be a Nazi thing dating back to calling themselves National Socialists to confuse people about who is left and who is rightwing). But even that person could genuinely be misunderstanding possibly, it is hard ti tell and in general accusing people of being a shill doesn’t move the conversation forward in a meaningful way 90% of the time.

rimu ,
@rimu@piefed.social avatar

I banned some of the most obvious and prolific shills from my instance and there was a small but noticeable drop in server CPU load. Their posts are not the cause, it's all the comments on their posts and the votes on all of that. Those are being discarded instead of processed.

Their effect should not be underestimated.

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

Is this Beehaw?

I remember seeing the defederation from Lemmy.world announcement, saying (as I remember it) that as much as they weren’t happy about taking that step, the flood of unwanted garbage was getting too overwhelming for any other realistic approach. I thought to myself, whoa that’s weird. Then I hung out on Lemmy.world for a while and said oooh this is what they were talking about, this is fuckin unpleasant.

Dude the tankies when I first joined Lemmy I thought were awesome; I went in and argued with them about the Ukraine war. I actually learned a bunch of stuff although not exactly what they were attempting to teach me. This relentless tide of single comments always on the same handful of talking points is something entirely different.

sunzu ,

As if they have a script, I don't get it. You have to agree to a lot of historical revisionism to shill it tho.

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

It was so weird. But enjoyable to me.

Actually, I remembered that I think I accused one of them, or many of them, of being bots, so maybe that sort of undoes my "no no I would never do that to someone just because they disagreed with me" thesis 🙂

The thing is, something really weird happened that made me think it. I said something along the lines of "hey this source is actually really good, I don't agree with the conclusions you're drawing 100%, but thank you for sending it to me I learned a lot" and got back a response like "how can you ever expect to learn anything if you're just dismissing sources out of hand etc etc, you need to open your mind and be open to opposing points of view, you're just being ignorant"... I don't remember it exactly, but it was a response that when I looked at it, I realized would be a sort of boilerplate comment that would serve as a generic hostile response to almost anything. And, by sheer stupid dumb luck, it happened that it was total non matching nonsense to this total unusual backwards degree as applied to what I had actually said, which was a sort of unusually friendly and open-to-discussion response.

It was like the "They Live" glasses came on, and I started looking at every response in the thread like that. Like what the fuck is this? Was that guy just not reading what I wrote and in some sort of hategasm where he was just typing anything... or am I in a bot lobby right now? What the fuck is going on?

IDK, I never really figured it out. But it was definitely very weird. Definitely some of the people in there were real human tankies and like I say I learned a decent amount by talking with them (for way too fucking long, IDK why). But it was, now that I think about it, my very first encounter on Lemmy with some user that made me wonder what the fuck was even going on on the other side of the keyboard because it made literally 0 sense at all, what had just happened.

gedaliyah OP ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

Most of what you describe would be a case by case basis. This post applies specifically to calling another user a bot or a shill. Pointing out intellectual dishonesty or hypocrisy can be a part of normal discourse and can be done in a way that respects the civility of the conversation. Some of what you describe could be in violation of other community rules, depending on the details.

The best thing to do if you’re unsure about a particular situation is to report it, and mods will review it. You can always message one of us about a situation if you are not sure or require additional clarification. People are allowed to disagree with one another, even vehemently, as long as they do so within the rules of the community.

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

Hm

Last question I guess; do you feel that misinformation or propaganda is any kind of issue on Lemmy right now? Like if you look at the posts and comments, does the overall conversation “look right” to you in that regard?

gedaliyah OP ,
@gedaliyah@lemmy.world avatar

If you are speaking of Lemmy as a whole, that is a pretty philosophical question.

Misinformation is a violation of the rules of this community and will be removed.

mozz ,
@mozz@mbin.grits.dev avatar

I was specifically thinking of /c/politics and /c/news on Lemmy.world; probably should have been explicit about that. Philosophy aside and just in your personal opinion / judgement, would you say the overall discourse in those communities right now looks to have any nontrivial amount of misinformation in it?

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