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Russian and Chinese Bots Fueling Online ‘Violence’ After Charlie Kirk Shooting
(www.thedailybeast.com)
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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It might be true that there are bad actors - some even from china or russia - that are intentionally stoking tensions in the us, but dismissing that tension as manufactured would be a mistake.
Democracy is supposed to be a pressure valve for political dissent, and when those institutions start failing to address the demands of citizens, they start looking for more and more extreme ways to make their dissatisfaction known. American democracy stopped addressing the grievances of the people long before 2016 came along. Trump himself embodies an antiestablishment resentment that could be seen making itself known all the way back in 2008 and 2012, most vividly (in my mind, at least) during the townhall with Romney in 2011 when the conservative members in the crowd yelled at him that Obama was a terrorist. Both parties have been trying to suppress the populist sentiment in their respective bases for a long time, and 2016 was merely a watershed moment for what was set in motion a long time ago.
Which is why I find myself with mixed feelings in the wake of Kirk's death; catharsis, for seeing a stochastic agitative propagandist being on the receiving end of the violent environment he actively created and advocated for, and fear and frustration, for knowing that his death will do nothing to quell the surge in fascism and likely only embolden many more to do the same.