In the past week I’ve been absolutely roasted for criticising two different countries. Normally I’d be okay with that, I can handle a mild toasting and after all debate is a good thing.
On both occasions though I was flamed for mentioning human rights issues that are established facts and have been known for many, many years. I was critical of the actions/laws of their governments and not the people, their race, religion, general political ideology or nationality.
On both occasions I was bombarded by long posts that parroted propaganda, and in the case of one country I was told (on multiple occasions) that I was ignorant, racist and even fascist for mentioning the issues I did. I’m not complaining about how I was treated, but as a reminder, I was discussing internationally-recognised human rights concerns that can be verified and based in fact.
I could just be paranoid but I’m fairly convinced the responses weren’t from patriotic citizens. I think they were paid trolls or bots, and I think their purpose was to quiet negative talking points about the countries that were mentioned.
Has anyone else had a similar experience?
Cowbee is pretty notoriously long winded and erm, prolific in their comments, if that’s who you’re talking about.
I think China + Russia might be their special interest which would explain the level of “enthusiasm” they have at mention of either. It may also explain the repetitiveness of what they say. Not that they’re necessarily right, but they don’t seem botlike from my experience.
There are a handful of full rabid tankie trolls over in .ml though, so if you dealt with any of those and haven’t blocked I’d recommend doing so now.
If they were .ml, hexbear, or several other instance users… Yea. Their instances are echo chambers for their own dumbass ideologies.
Different instances have different ideologies and cultures they prefer, which cannot happen on twitter or other monolith services.
You’ll just have to learn to ignore the absolute braindead takes rampant from some instances, and don’t feel bad for blocking the cretins that don’t care for human rights.
As everyone else has said, there is definitely this issue on Lemmy, when criticising China and Russia especially. Happened to me a few times. It’s weird.
I once did a test to see if the bias was really that bad and commented on a relevant news article on .ml something like “fuck Putin. Russia is committing war crimes in Ukraine” maybe with a couple of extra similar phrases. Comment deleted by mods with no explanation. Insane.
I could just be paranoid but I’m fairly convinced the responses weren’t from patriotic citizens. I think they were paid trolls or bots, and I think their purpose was to quiet negative talking points about the countries that were mentioned.
This is a common suggestion. I can see why people say it, but I just find it hard to believe people are really spending time here to do that. Wouldn’t you just go to reddit? What, do you want to convert the trekkies and Linux evangelists?
I think it’s much scarier than that: some people are just fucking nuts
https://lemmy.world/post/40009107
In addition to .ml, you’ve got people like DonaldJMusk. I didn’t believe them at the time about 300 accounts, but I can believe a dozen or so as I’ve been watching it happen for a year.
Just the other day somebody tried to call them on their bias… Banned.
What a douche. That papaskwat account banned me when I asked why they were posting a mix of real and AI art.
