this post was submitted on 06 Oct 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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[–] BrainInABox@lemmy.ml -1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

So I am trying to say that very rarely did any of those people get super excited about Hilary Clinton, Seth Rich, American partisan politics, particular pundits on cable news, all kinds of stuff like that. They just weren’t interested. This lady has the most bizarre combination of election cheerleading like a CNN anchor, coupled with total disdain for the entire American foreign policy from top to bottom.

So you're saying that she doesn't remind you of the people you personally know, so she must be an evil foreign agent. That checks out, you do indeed seem to be a jingoistic chauvinist.

This lady I’m a lot less sure of, for reasons that should be equally obvious but seem like they keep eluding you.

No, the reasons are very obvious: you don't like her arguments, so you're smearing her with McCarthyist ad-hominems.

That’s actually not true.

It's as true as you're claims about Johnstone.

One of my common refrains is that the West is constantly betraying the Ukrainian people by giving intermittent and minimal aid and then putting extensive restrictions on what the Ukrainians are allowed to do with it, while they’re fighting for their lives

Wow, Russian talking points. Clearly you work for the KGB. Now address that I said you are using Hamas talking points in your history, clearly meaning you are a Hamas agent.

I mean she literally said very explicitly at

Ok, so she didn't say "Russia’s the good guys". Once again you are just openly making up fake quotes to spread disinformation.

I didn’t bookmark it or anything but it is there,

Oh, you mean like that last thing you said you hadn't book marked that you claimed she said, and then it turned out she hadn't?

She regards them in general as behaving reasonably in the war and the West as behaving unreasonably

Oh, did she say that? Oh, no, of course not, you're just once again making up a false thing to claim about her that she never said. More disinformation from you, CIA agent.

“AOC / Bernie are the bad guys” than

Damn, you just cannot stop making up false quotes.

Well your post history is all "Ukraine and the DNC are perfect and beyond criticism, and all Russians should be killed," so clearly you're CIA

Hamas doesn’t really have an extensively documented history of paying Western media people large and small to publicize various false things they want to plant in public consciousness

Yes they do, according to their enemies. Are you saying that Hamas don't pay media people? By the way, what actually false things has she said? Because so far you haven't actually been able to list any claims of fact that you believe are false.

and she’s not saying anything that is wildly false about Palestine that would even get me thinking in that direction.

Uhuh. So you're just admixing that it comes down to whether you personally agree with it or not. If you don't agree with it: Talking Point, clearly a paid foreign agent. If you do agree with it: It's just true. Just literally asserting that you're right, and disagreement is treason.

I’m not even sure what the equivalent would be for Hamas.

Why not? You've already said what makes something a Russian talking point: Anything that Russia is also saying, or anything that would benefit Russia if it was true. So saying, for example, that Israel is doing a genocide is, by definition, a Hamas talking point.

But they’re not really analogous organizations or situations.

Yeah, because you agree with one and not the other. That's literally the only difference you've been able to articulate: "disagree with me? Foreign agent!"

I’m aware that you’re pretending that the only reason I am saying any of this is because she has a viewpoint I “don’t agree with” or w/e.

I'm not pretending anything; that's the position you've laid out, you literally have not laid out any reason for you claim other than that she says things you disagree with. You just don't like me wording it that way because you want to be able to keep indulging in McCarthyist conspiracy theory to dismiss people you disagree with.

I feel like I’ve documented why I think it probably in a decent amount of detail at this point.

Oh yeah, you've definitely documented a bunch of things you disagree with her one; granted, a lot of those were completely made up lies that she never said, but that only further shows that you call her a ruskie infiltrator because you disagree with her.

Anything else you want me to answer before we wrap this up

Yeah, what do you think the end result of even the American left descending into warmed over Judeo-Bolshivik conspiracy theory is? What do you think the political environment will be like now that "You criticized the politician I like! Clearly you're an evil Ruskie subversive!" becomes the norm across the entire political spectrum?

Oh, and why do you have so many Hamas talking points in your history? Are you a Hamas agent?

Don’t get me wrong, you’ve been a peach, I just have to wash my cardboard box collection soon and I really don’t want to keep putting it off.

“Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.” ― Jean-Paul Sartre

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 2 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Got it. You just want to keep making the same point over and over again. I've tried to address it a few different times, and you're not into it. Okey dokey.

Final thoughts:

Ok, so she didn’t say “Russia’s the good guys”. Once again you are just openly making up fake quotes to spread disinformation.

“AOC / Bernie are the bad guys” than

Damn, you just cannot stop making up false quotes.

You got me lol. I went back and edited the quotes to hyphens, and replaced the AOC and Bernie thing with the exact words she said. Hopefully you are content now? Maybe not.

She regards them in general as behaving reasonably in the war and the West as behaving unreasonably

Oh, did she say that? Oh, no, of course not, you’re just once again making up a false thing to claim about her that she never said. More disinformation from you, CIA agent.

Heh. An example, from https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/the-reckless-brinkmanship-with-russia-just-keeps-on-escalating-73e514d99fe5

I wrote just the other day that Biden’s authorization for limited strikes on Russian territory with US weapons would immediately be followed by a push for even more escalations with strikes deeper into Russia, and here we are. Every time the warmongers get one escalation, they immediately start pushing for another.

There is a limit to how many escalations Russia will tolerate before taking drastic action against NATO to re-establish deterrence credibility, and nobody really knows exactly where that limit is. They seem bound and determined to find it however, and when they do we may already be on an irreversible free fall toward nuclear armageddon.

There's also stuff like this, where she has this whole revisionist history where Russia has every right to start slaughtering members of some random sovereign nation nearby to it as long as it makes sure to tell people in advance (which, of course, they didn't, but that's a separate issue), but Ukraine is trying to start World War 3 at the behest of Western powers if they fight back.

As we discussed last year, the terrifying thing about the west’s pattern of continually escalating against Russia every time it doesn’t get a nuclear ICBM in the kisser for the last escalation naturally incentivizes Russia to attack NATO directly in order to re-establish its credibility for deterrence. So far Russia has been content to respond to NATO’s escalations by just tearing into Ukraine with greater and greater ferocity, but if the western empire keeps interpreting every time Russia doesn’t attack NATO forces directly as a sign that it’s safe to keep escalating, at some point Russia’s going to have to hit NATO.

Ukraine doesn't "have to" destroy refineries or military aircraft inside Russia, simply because their apartment buildings and fruit markets with their corresponding people inside keep blowing up. That's "escalation." But Russia might "have to" start World War 3 if people don't take seriously their God given right to keep blowing up fruit markets.

You know, the anti-war perspective.

[–] BrainInABox@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago

Got it. You just want to keep making the same point over and over again. I’ve tried to address it a few different times, and you’re not into it. Okey dokey.

Glass houses mate; all you've done is continuously restate your argument that the fact she holds views you don't agree with is evidence she's actually an agent of the great Russian conspire to infiltrate and subvert our righteous Western society.

I went back and edited the quotes to hyphens, and replaced the AOC and Bernie thing with the exact words she said.

Yeah, and now it doesn't actually back up your point.

Hopefully you are content now? Maybe not.

Are you going to finally stop making up quotes?

Heh. An example, from

So she didn't say that; once again your argument relies on outright making up disinformation about her.

Russia has every right to start slaughtering members of some random sovereign nation nearby to it as long as it makes sure to tell people in advance

So no, you're not going to stop making up things she never said. So no, I'm not content; stop spreading disinformation.

Ukraine doesn’t “have to” destroy refineries or military aircraft inside Russia, simply because their apartment buildings and fruit markets with their corresponding people inside keep blowing up. That’s “escalation.” But Russia might “have to” start World War 3 if people don’t take seriously their God given right to keep blowing up fruit markets. You know, the anti-war perspective.

At no point was this discussion ever about whether her opinions are correct or not, and yet here you are, arguing at length about them. Which makes sense, because to you, there's no difference between being wrong and being a Russian agent, you fundamentally don't believe people can honestly disagree with you, even if they're wrong. You are a McCarthyist, plain and simple.

[–] InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 0 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Brain is a well known ragebaiter in the feddiverse

[–] PhilipTheBucket@quokk.au 1 points 4 days ago (2 children)

So I see lol

IDK why I got taken in by it, I like to think I'm usually pretty good at disengaging but for some reason he got me

[–] BrainInABox@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago

Because you know I'm right, lol

[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

You were being completely reasonable and brain in in the gutter was just trolling.

[–] BrainInABox@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

You people really cannot accept the idea of people disagreeing with you. How are they being reasonable when they are repeatedly making up lies out of whole cloth? What exactly have I said that makes me "trolling", but them "completely reasonable"? Oh right, nothing, you just already agree with them and have convinced yourself that trolling is when anybody tells you you're wrong.

[–] Doomsider@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago (2 children)

You have simply become infamous.

[–] InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago

Brain really just comes to rage bait, their comments and modlog say as much. Their active time seems to mostly be around office hours Moscow, but that could be a coincidence.

[–] BrainInABox@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 days ago

Nah, it's just one guy who's been following me around since I said Kamala Harris isn't better on Gaza six months ago

[–] BrainInABox@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Oh hey, you're back to stalking me around. Have you not gotten enough bans for it yet? You've been doing it for over six months now.