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submitted 3 months ago by voluble@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

I notice a large number of ragebait-y political communities being spun up by new users with thousands of posts & ai profile header photos. I notice comment sections are more acrimonious, and foreign disinfo talking points are circulating a lot more prolifically than before the US election started ramping up.

Anyone else notice this? Any idea on how to combat it on this platform? Are there any communities built around creating block lists of obvious troll/ai/disinfo accounts & communities?

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[-] Bernie_Sandals@lemmy.world 120 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

https://lemmy.world/u/UniversalMonk

One week old account. 684 Comments. 383 Posts. That's 152 posts/comments a day, 9 an hour, and most are over a paragraph long. Almost all of them focus controversially on third-party advocacy in the middle of an election year.

Not saying this account is a bot, but a person would certainly have to be spending a whole lot of time on lemmy to be posting this much in one week so it certainly feels spamish.

[-] aaa999@lemmy.world 27 points 3 months ago

haha I just saw an absolutely terrible post by that very real individual

[-] Microw@lemm.ee 20 points 3 months ago

I see that this account has a few topics it posts on. Now, that alone doesn't mean anything. Lots of lemmy users have their 3, 4 topics they are interested in and nothing more. Maybe they are an enthusiastic green party voter.

But that amount of posts in such a short timespan smells like a bot account.

[-] Angry_Autist@lemmy.world 18 points 3 months ago

That shitbag also got all my content pulled from /politics where I called him out as a shill, then the mods banned me despite me providing proof of his forum sliding tactics.

Face it, lemmy's already been taken over by the bots and shills, they've infiltrated the mod teams and are now protecting their own. We all saw it happen with reddit and the admins just let it happen here to.

Getting so tired of assholes infiltrating online spaces.

The account isn't a bot, they are a media management account that uses AI content but is ultimately just a person using tools to undermine free discussion.

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[-] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 64 points 3 months ago

I subscribe to communities and only read what I'm interested in. So I didn't notice anything. But I know lots of people use Lemmy differently and read the "All" feed. That might be an entirely different perspective.

[-] maegul@lemmy.ml 11 points 3 months ago

Yep, I'm the same as you. Didn't notice a damn thing, and was curious how I'd missed anything. When I saw it was happening through new communities I knew it was the All-feed people seeing this.

I get that the All-feed is useful and fun, but seeing random shit is kinda the "price of entry" no?

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[-] x00z@lemmy.world 60 points 3 months ago

Keep in mind that American elections are coming up and Americans think the internet is only about them. So we're not only being dragged into this by disinformation campaigns.

[-] NOT_RICK@lemmy.world 27 points 3 months ago

Americans think the internet is only about them

Do we though?

[-] TheFeatureCreature@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago

You might not. Many Americans might not. But the internet is annoyingly US-centric and can be frustrating to use as a non-American. A random example: Numerous times I've gone to sign up/purchase something and put "Canada" as the country and the "State" and "Zip code" boxes never changed. I have been denied purchases and registration several times because the website was coded to only accept US zip codes even if I change the country.

So many sites just assume everyone is American, speaking American English, and interested in American things.

[-] snooggums@midwest.social 11 points 3 months ago

Keep in mind that the US's population is comparable to all of Europe and we are bickering over one shared election while also being a bunch of loud jackasses. We don't even think about the rest of the internet while drowning it out.

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[-] weew@lemmy.ca 49 points 3 months ago

Tl;dr election year in the US. It's only going to get more intense until the actual election.

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[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 44 points 3 months ago

Outside of the news and actual politics subs, the only political spam I see on the reg is posts like this complaining about political spam.

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[-] mannycalavera@feddit.uk 44 points 3 months ago

It's all about the longest running election campaign in the world. The US elections. I don't understand why it needs to be this long 😂. France, the UK, India (over a billion people!) can announce and complete elections quicker than the US.

I would love some more intelligent and nuanced spam filtering but, honestly, I don't think we'll get anything soon enough.

It'll get better in November, but then we'll get a wave of spam about stolen elections. And then better again in January when they finally finish the election game.

[-] Passerby6497@lemmy.world 26 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I don't understand why it needs to be this long

Money and ratings. Since money is free speech and the media is a receptical for infinite speech, they can engineer a multi year campaign to keep that money flowing in constantly. And making it contentious means more eyeballs on the story and even more money for the media orgs.

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[-] recapitated@lemmy.world 36 points 3 months ago

Yeah we're all subject to the mind virus that is US general elections.

[-] aesthelete@lemmy.world 13 points 3 months ago

I hate the phrase mind virus.

[-] Draegur@lemm.ee 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Well, unfortunately it is indeed an infectious agent that hijacks the infected to manufacturer more of itself and cannot metabolize or reproduce without directly utilizing the machinery of a host AND its medium of transmission, metabolism, and reproduction is the mind, so "mind virus" definitively fits the bill.

But so do most memetic constructs.

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[-] TrickDacy@lemmy.world 35 points 3 months ago

Haven't seen that. But I have seen some users who spend every moment of their lives posting to sway opinion on an issue of their choosing. And if I accurately assess them as Russian paid trolls, I get all my comments removed and I get banned. So that's awesome and fair. Their content stays up, protected by mods. What an awesome feeling.

[-] Somethingcheezie@lemmy.world 16 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Israel -Garza trolls/posters too

Edit Little bit ironic funny. In a thread about trolls the trolls come out

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[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 34 points 3 months ago

It's US election year and this is (primarily) an English language site. Is that really a surprise?

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[-] RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world 33 points 3 months ago

It’s been bad for a bit with the tankies here taking every opportunity to make some variant of “genocide Joe” comments but refusing to discuss any of the choices we had and the result of those choices.

They got super-quiet when Biden dropped out. Vanished.

Now we’re getting what appears to be a new wave.

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[-] Temperche@discuss.tchncs.de 30 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Rather than block lists, just subscribe to the lemmy communities that interest you and don't subscribe to political/news communities. Then view lemmy through the "subscribed" feed rather than the "all" feed - no political posts - problem solved.

[-] Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works 20 points 3 months ago

I trawl through All to find new communities though, and a short blocklist makes that much easier.

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[-] auzy@lemmy.world 28 points 3 months ago

There seems to be a few people suddenly calling Biden racist too, and trying to say both parties are the same. If it quacks like a lobbyist, it is possibly a lobbyist..

But yeah. This is overall probably due to the election more than anything.

People like me (I'm Aussie) will even up vote some things simply because I can't imagine how bad it would be for Trump to win again.. For the entire world.

[-] occhionaut@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago

Hey, 🇺🇸'n here; I'm really fucking sorry that you worry about these childish political problems in a country you don't even live in.

We're still months out from the actual election date, so nothing is certain, but what is certain is that Donald Trump is not capable of changing his behaviour, or even actually listening to anything that goes against his rotten worldview. He is a demented track horse that is frothing and shitting everywhere (with a minority of stubborn racists betting on him) while the other track horse is making it look easy when her opponent makes himself look bad.

Its not an easy call quite yet, but if this progress continues as it is, its a near-certainty that orange man isn't getting his hands on the launch codes. And by next election, I feel confident that he won't get another chance.

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[-] Clinicallydepressedpoochie@lemmy.world 24 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

First time?

Don't worry, day after the election they mysteriously vanish as if they were never real at all.

Would be crazy if it were all just disinformation campaigns throwing shit at each other for 12 months.

Luckily no one's stupid enough to fall for all that.

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[-] Treczoks@lemmy.world 22 points 3 months ago

What is not flooded with political spam these times? And I am afraid we have not seen nothing yet.

[-] Swarfega@lemm.ee 18 points 3 months ago

Even worse for us that live outside the US. Nothing but US politics every time we scroll. Well, that and Linux stuff.

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[-] ExcursionInversion@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago

Nope, keyword filters help

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[-] SomeGuy69@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Absolutely, I had to immediately block the politics sublemmy. I noticed this change instantly as I always browse all. Suddenly my front-page was 95% politics posts. As if someone had flipped a lever.

[-] krashmo@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago

I don't know what you guys are talking about. It seems to me there's always been this many political posts here. Maybe there's been a slight uptick for the election but it's not much different than it has been for the entire year I've been around.

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[-] Randomgal@lemmy.ca 14 points 3 months ago

Yes. There's also been a spike of political commentors that seem normal until you engage with them, then they fire back with emotionally-charged nonsense full of contradictions.

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[-] Sotuanduso@lemm.ee 14 points 3 months ago

I haven't really noticed much, but that's because I've taken to blocking political communities once they start bothering me by putting too many article links in the front page or being generally rageful.

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[-] gigachad@sh.itjust.works 14 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Not really, but I am from Europe so I don't subscribe to communities connected to US news or politics. Can you give some examples?

[-] voluble@lemmy.world 24 points 3 months ago

Communities like https://lemmy.world/c/independentmormonism, https://lemmy.world/c/independentcatholicism, https://lemmy.world/c/thirdpartynews, all created today, and modded by a 9 day old user account with 640 comments and 334 posts.

[-] cRazi_man@lemm.ee 25 points 3 months ago

Lemmy is another form of social media, and bullshit that happens on social media will come here as more people come here. Your life will be much better if you make full use of blocklists and filtering.

[-] Lemminary@lemmy.world 18 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Don't know if you know, but just a heads up for anyone unfamiliar, the proper formatting for linking communities is:

!independentmormonism@lemmy.world

This helps users from other instances browse those communities without leaving their instance and prevents mobile apps from opening the browser. It also supports autofill when typing after the exclamation mark so you can't go wrong.

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[-] nichtburningturtle@feddit.org 12 points 3 months ago

I can also confirm that political discourse is becoming less civil / productive. Or at least that's what the increasing amount of such reports I'm getting, is telling me.

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this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2024
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