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.


Community rules

Same as instance rules, plus:

  1. No disinformation
  2. Posts must be relevant to the topic of astroturfing, propaganda and/or disinformation

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/35786937

Free Speech Goes Only One Way

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[–] DrFistington@lemmy.world 58 points 1 day ago (3 children)

There are no major news outlets that actually are actually liberal. There was A point maybe 20+ years where several outlets had a slight liberal bias, but America was a more accepting place in general, so it could have been a reflection of that.

But since then journalism has been decimated, and media outlets have been consolidating, and they are all owned by a handful of billionaires. Adelson, bezos, Murdoch, Zuckerberg, Musk. 90% or more of what you see, hear and are told is truth, comes curated through their outlets.

Every single one of them is a conservative, who's given millions to billions to get trump elected.

The idea that the current US media landscape is in ANY way liberal, is so fucking laughable, it's probably the best litmus test to see how programmed someone has become. By calling it the liberal media, someone has to be living in a land of pure fantasy

[–] Ileftreddit@lemmy.world 5 points 7 hours ago

“The liberal media” is just what the Nazis keep calling conservative media in order to move the conversation continuously to the far right

[–] taco@anarchist.nexus 16 points 1 day ago

Pretty sure it was BS 20 years ago too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Liberal_Media%3F

"The liberal media" is just the result of effective propaganda.

[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 0 points 23 hours ago

There are no major news outlets that actually are actually liberal

That's not true. Modern liberalism is Neoliberalism, a center right to right wing and pro-capital, pro-cop ideology that sometimes allows pretending to be left wing but never actually BEING or ACTING in accordance with left wing ideology.

MSNBC, CNN, CBS News, Politico, Huffpo, and the NYT are all examples of Neoliberal major news outlets.

American liberalism hasn't been left wing or progressive since before Bill Clinton became the Dem nominee in 1992.

[–] WHARRGARBL@lemmy.world 20 points 1 day ago (4 children)

When did MSNBC become “liberal”? Has the definition of liberal changed again? I’m tired and I can’t keep up with this shit.

[–] NewDark 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Liberalism in general is a center right ideology. It's just the furthest left you can be in America without being demonized.

[–] Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 1 day ago (4 children)

I fail to get why USians cannot make a real left government

[–] djsoren19@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 1 day ago

because we did once, and so the wealthy and powerful spent ludicrous amounts of money taking over the country to ensure it never, ever happens again.

They did, somewhat, back in the early 20th century. There was a massive labor movement, direct engagement into political life by a whole lot of ordinary people, and a big effort to turn the awesome power of the central government into working to address ordinary (white) people's problems.

It's part of what made it into a superpower by the 1950s. Before that it was just farms and racism. Then we got lazy, and let the assholes take over as the decades rolled by. But we can recover again, it just takes a ton of work.

[–] psycho_driver@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

Because we're an Oligarchy and liberal ideals are the last thing they want to encourage.

[–] Zorque@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Manifest destiny.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 19 points 1 day ago (1 children)

"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.

[–] BakerBagel@midwest.social -5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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

[–] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social 12 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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.)

[–] ininewcrow@lemmy.ca 13 points 1 day ago

It's called the Overton Window .... where you subtly over time shift the political landscape from one extreme to another without anyone noticing

[–] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 23 hours ago

When did MSNBC become “liberal"

🧑‍🚀🔫🧑‍🚀

Has the definition of liberal changed again?

Depends on your definition of "again". American liberalism has been Neoliberalism since 1992.

You may be thinking of Leftism or Progressivism, neither of which is liberalism.

[–] psycho_driver@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Liberal media? You're on it. Reddit was always waaaay left just because it started out being populated mostly by people who were way above average in intelligence. It's pretty enshitified and censored these days though so it will probably switch over to a funded far right propaganda machine soon enough.

[–] ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 23 hours ago

The bots in /r/conservative are really fuckwd right now.

[–] Nougat@fedia.io 10 points 1 day ago

Prologue: I do not disagree with this post one bit.

Notably, "free speech" has both a constitutional and colloquial usage.

Constitutionally, your First Amendment right to Free Speech (in the US) is a guard against the state interfering with your speech, even if it is offensive. Still, that's not universal; consider libel and slander, gag orders, for example. The Constitutional free speech protection does not shield you from consequences of your speech handed down by non-governmental persons or organizations.

Colloquially, "free speech" is often used to refer to situations like the one posted here: where a non-state actor takes a retributive action against a speaker. This usage is leveraged by people across the political spectrum.

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 day ago

"What? The land of the free? Whoever told you that is your enemy."

[–] TachyonTele@piefed.social 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

A reddit screengrab of a twitter post. Nice.
Let's get this post on imagr too, really widen the ocean of posts.

[–] Marshezezz@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 17 hours ago

A Reddit screengrab of an Imgur screengrab of a Twitter screengrab of an encarta screengrab of an amiga screengrab of a punch hole screengrab

[–] AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago

They're the biggest fucking hypocrites