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What's up with this straight up pro-china and pro-russia stuff on Lemmy lately? (toast.ooo)

submitted 5 days ago by individual@toast.ooo to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

265 comments fedilink hide all child comments

What's up with this straight up pro-china and pro-russia stuff on Lemmy lately?

It's not even praising the people of China and Russia, but rather their gov directly.

Obviously the states have problems, and the EU to a lesser degree, but they at least have some human rights.

Is this some kind of organized disinformation campaign?

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[–] susurrus0@lemmy.zip -3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Your assertion is that Lemmy users aren't genuine.

Good point. I completely forgot the scope of OP's question was Lemmy specifically. In that case, I'm not sure whether it's likely that it's a disinformation campaign or not. I certainly hope it isn't.

You also implied that TikTok - A platform globally moderated by the the USA - is a hotbed for PR Chinese propaganda, which isn't reasonable either.

Isn't it reasonable? There's a lot of both pro- as well as anti-China content on American platforms. I'd think there'd be at least as much pro-China content on a Chinese platform. There does't necessarily have to be more of it. I'd say it's more a matter of young people being vulnerable and TikTok being extremely good at capturing their attention.

[–] Aria@lemmygrad.ml 7 points 4 days ago

I’d think there’d be at least as much pro-China content on a Chinese platform.

There is a lot of Chinese state-sponsored propaganda on TikTok, as well as pro-China speech by unaffiliated users. This is true of TikTok and of YouTube and Twitter. (The state-sponsored propaganda I'm highlighting isn't particularly insidious, it's things like student exchange or paid travel bloggers, Chinese news spending budget to create English language content). But you aren't more likely to come across it on TikTok than western platforms, because China doesn't control the algorithm. TikTok was forked off a Chinese product, but it's controlled by Oracle and the USA in terms of tuning and moderation. The Chinese just collect rent.

Now if your angle isn't that TikTok pushes those things, but just that kids use it and kids are impressionable, then I don't have any objections with what you're saying. I haven't seen any Chinese state-sponsored content that plays well with kids, but I wouldn't expect to either since my recommendation feed looks different (and I don't use TikTok).