They even try to do this on Lemmy. I've seen a few accounts recently that were obviously created with the sole purpose of spreading right-wing propaganda.
As someone who is routinely accused of being a bad actor, I have to say I find this speculation to be somewhat paranoid.
I think people generally overestimate the commonality of their own perspective.
I'm sorry you've had a bad experience. Nevertheless, I think that a certain basic skepticism is important in social media, because it is simply a fact that many interest groups on the internet are fighting for sovereignty of interpretation and use enormous resources to assert themselves - even with very questionable methods. This of course makes it difficult to build trust and have an open discourse. The advantage of Lemmy, however, is that at least the platform itself does not interfere too much, like Meta, X or TikTok do. Therefore, it seems to me that there is a much higher probability that you will be heard with your opinion, message or whatever, if you can provide good arguments for your point of view. Sure, there are some viewpoints that users reject despite good arguments, but from my Lemmy experience so far, that seems to me to be the exception rather than the rule.
There are several things that lots of bad actors and bots say frequently enough that if someone says it, it may be faster to assume paid shill than to take the extra time to vet someone or give their opinion real thought.
This extends to more than just politics.
Looks they are getting shutdown kind of hard too. We ain’t dumb
You've been duped.
https://old.reddit.com/r/Millennials/
Seems to be the "real" subreddit.
https://old.reddit.com/r/millenials
With a missing second "n" seems to be a bot filled hell hole.
But also, I only left reddit a year ago and have never heard of the sub so who knows.
Also remember that Reddit as a whole is only going to get worse. The only goal is to make as much money as possible before it crashes in a cesspool of pure garbage like Facebook or Twitter.
I wonder what the ratio of Russian to American bots is.
Do you have a few examples of American bots, I'm intrigued now...
All I see is anti Trump submissions?
Meanwhile on the r/JordanPeterson sub right now, there's a complaint about leftwing bots on r/millennials
https://www.reddit.com/r/JordanPeterson/comments/1e8cwwh/uptick_in_propaganda_bots_or_post/le6m8jo/
...oh r/millennials says there's two subs... r/millennials and r/millenials with one n... Maybe that's part of what's going on.
Wow I thought this was just more reddit hate at first but you were lying.
What's a 'reddit'?
Welcome to !reddit. This is a community for all news and discussions about Reddit.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rule 1- No brigading.
**You may not encourage brigading any communities or subreddits in any way. **
YSKs are about self-improvement on how to do things.
Rule 2- No illegal or NSFW or gore content.
**No illegal or NSFW or gore content. **
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-Reddit posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
:::spoiler Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.