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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[–] Chana@hexbear.net 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

A good trick is to start a PhD, which is usually a paid position (either teaching or research), and exit with a Master's after two years of courses if you aren't feeling it. The stuff you do would be basically identical but you'd get paid for a nearly guaranteed nerd job at the university. And they waive tuition.

You don't need to do this by any means but it is doable if you want to go in that direction.

[–] lelkins@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

i also plan on getting a phd in english do not worry. if i got english enough i will go full english