cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/35786937
Free Speech Goes Only One Way
this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2025
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Fediverse vs Disinformation
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Pointing out, debunking, and spreading awareness about state- and company-sponsored astroturfing on Lemmy and elsewhere. This includes social media manipulation, propaganda, and disinformation campaigns, among others.
Propaganda and disinformation are a big problem on the internet, and the Fediverse is no exception.
What's the difference between misinformation and disinformation? The inadvertent spread of false information is misinformation. Disinformation is the intentional spread of falsehoods.
By equipping yourself with knowledge of current disinformation campaigns by state actors, corporations and their cheerleaders, you will be better able to identify, report and (hopefully) remove content matching known disinformation campaigns.
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Same as instance rules, plus:
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Related websites
- EU vs Disinfo
- FactCheck.org
- PolitiFact
- Snopes
- Media Bias / Fact Check
- PEN America
- Media Matters
- FAIR
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"Liberal," at least on Lemmy, has become more or less a meaningless word. Any word that has so many definitions, different depending on who you talk to, it becomes sort of corrupted and useless.
I've literally seen several times a conversation generally of the format "You support Israel!" "wtf no I don't" "Yes you do because you're a liberal and I know that because (whatever)! You're lying, you support Israel! All liberals support Israel!" I'm exaggerating slightly but that's the basic core of it.
Interestingly enough, the proto-MAGA movement was trying for years to turn "liberal" into a slur before the internet turbo-leftists got in on it. It basically fulfills exactly the same function in both cases: Just a checkbox that means "enemy" which can be used to shut down critical engagement, because humans have an instinctual category for "enemy of the tribe" for which engagement is meaningless, and you just need to attack.
IDK what word you could use to refer to news like MSNBC. I actually don't see a problem with saying "liberal" to mean news like MSNBC / The Atlantic / similar points on the spectrum, but on Lemmy, you're going to really get people confused. The word in general is just best left avoided I think.
Leftists have always hated liberals. Mao has an entire book about how evil and hypocritical liberalism. It's not my fault that you were raised to think "liberal"= left
Thank you for providing an excellent example of how people react once that "enemy" box that I was talking about gets triggered. "It's not my fault you were raised" etc is a perfect example of how people talk when they think they're talking to an "enemy," and attacking is more important than anything else.
(Mao also thought that killing all the birds would help the agriculture, I don't really take him as any kind of authority on how stuff works. MLK Jr. would have been a better example.)
"liberal" has a very specific academic definition that most people use. It's not my fault if you don't understand that.
Definitely not lol. Almost nothing in political philosophy works this way, where everyone generally agrees on what the big and heavy loaded words mean, that have been in use worldwide and for centuries in all kinds of situations.
So that's the definition that everyone agrees on -- so any liberal would strongly oppose Israel, because they're violating any number of those principles (basically all of them), right? You'd agree with that? Or no? I have a feeling you're about to educate me again.