This study investigates the presence of left-wing extremism on the Lemmygrad.ml instance of the decentralized social media platform Lemmy, from its launch in 2019 up to a month after the bans of the subreddits r/GenZedong and r/GenZhou.

We conduct a temporal analysis on Lemmygrad.ml’s user activity, with also measuring the degree of highly abusive or hateful content. Furthermore, we explore the content of their posts using a transformer-based topic modeling approach.

Our findings reveal a substantial increase in user activity and toxicity levels following the migration of these subreddits to Lemmygrad.ml.

We also identify posts that support authoritarian regimes, endorse the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and feature anti-Zionist and antisemitic content.

Overall, our findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of political extremism within decentralized social networks and emphasize the necessity of analyzing both ends of the political spectrum in research.

https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/40188039

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[–] PKMKII@hexbear.net 39 points 1 month ago (2 children)

See: the “academic analysis” of 2016 social media that “proved” Russian propaganda swayed the vote for Trump without offering up a single voter whose mind was changed by it.

[–] Chana@hexbear.net 27 points 1 month ago (2 children)

I mentioned this to someone a few years back and they confidently responded with, "my mom works at the state department and she says it's real".

[–] ShimmeringKoi@hexbear.net 20 points 1 month ago

My mom also works at the Lying About Shit Department and she say's there's a Chinese Jewish space laser

[–] PKMKII@hexbear.net 12 points 1 month ago

And his uncle works at Nintendo.

[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 1 month ago

Especially funny in the light of recent revelations that Obomba and dems were manufacturing the russiagate and still lost, twice.