I’m not convinced the most extreme comments you see online seeking to split up leftists are in good faith. It’s relatively easy for people committing espionage to pretend to be leftists, push their agenda, and then seek to divide and conquer.
I’m not saying there aren’t real people out there saying these things, but I do believe many of them have bought the narrative of bad faith actors that were disguised among them.
The same exact thing happens on the right, but it’s more so just spamming their bad faith rhetoric with bots in their case. Since their goal is just to convince the least checked-in person to disengage or believe their side a bit more by seeing their side first.
Edit: So maybe I’m fooling myself, but I do feel like I’ve gotten a little bit capable with spotting which ones of them are the deliberate disruptors as opposed to people who got fooled by them and are echoing. The major tells of the totally fake accounts are:
Low effort. They don’t try very hard to convince you. It doesn’t have to make sense, they don’t really read what people are saying, they just blandly repeat the same kinds of stuff. Most people who sincerely believe that Bernie betrayed the Palestinian people and all our hopes that he would finally say something against Israel (for example) will at least seem like they believe it themselves, they’ll get upset about something specific that happened, or they’ll misunderstand various facts but sincerely talk about them, or similar. The people who are deliberately lying will just kind of fart out their little shtick and then move on to the next comment. Some of the sloppier ones, if you check the profile, don’t really bother to engage with anything that isn’t their designated political talking points. They’ll just kind of spray one-liner “I sure do love Helldivers mm boy” comments in other communities but the only thing they ever put any effort into is particular repetitive political points.
A lot of times their reactions don’t really need to match what you’re saying. They have a tendency for example to tell you what you believe (“I get you’re trying to run interference over criticism of Bernie”), instead of responding to what you said, and then start arguing with the strawman. Of course real people do that too, but most real people at least have some interest in reading and responding to what the message they’re responding to actually says. A lot of the shill messages could literally apply to any message. Try mentally shuffling them around, so that what they said is a response to some totally different comment, and then if it still fits 100% equally as well, then that’s a warning sign.
A lot of times they have the same handful of arguments that go on repeat. It’s like 5-10 little nuggets (AOC voted to send weapons to Israel! Bernie doesn’t call it a genocide!) and they tend to fall back on them and totally ignore anything else. Also, crucially, they tend to introduce unrelated ones randomly even when the topic is some totally different thing. For example look at how many people in these comments are bringing up AOC.
Often if you check in their profile you’ll see a lot of overlap between multiple talking points. Some of the comments are just low-effort spray of random comments, but a lot of their political or meaningful engagement will be the exact same variety of various points. Historically, some of the sloppier ones would tend to overlap ones that really didn’t fit (Ukraine is escalating the war and it’s really dangerous, NATO needs to stop! I sure do wish Kamala Harris wasn’t so pro-genocide, I’m definitely not voting for her!) all from the same account.
That is my short maybe-totally-wrong field guide to identifying the bad accounts on Lemmy. Not 100%, your mileage may vary, I have no real idea but this is what I’ve observed and guessed at.
You were wondering why people weren’t reacting the same to Eurovision contestants calling it a genocide as with Bernie Sanders, which I felt was kind of an odd comparison.
Political alliances are bad because they would mean actually taking action. It’s much more comfortable to just sit around, criticize, and preach your moral superiority.
In particular, if you’re criticizing Bernie Sanders because he’s not awesome enough, then that means you must be so awesome you’re on a whole nother level. And if anyone disagrees, it just means they’re not awesome, it actually proves your whole point. Job done.
Yeah, pretty much.
Also:
I’m not convinced the most extreme comments you see online seeking to split up leftists are in good faith. It’s relatively easy for people committing espionage to pretend to be leftists, push their agenda, and then seek to divide and conquer.
I’m not saying there aren’t real people out there saying these things, but I do believe many of them have bought the narrative of bad faith actors that were disguised among them.
The same exact thing happens on the right, but it’s more so just spamming their bad faith rhetoric with bots in their case. Since their goal is just to convince the least checked-in person to disengage or believe their side a bit more by seeing their side first.
Yeah, absolutely.
https://sh.itjust.works/comment/21079358
This fuckin’ dingbat I can’t even
Edit: So maybe I’m fooling myself, but I do feel like I’ve gotten a little bit capable with spotting which ones of them are the deliberate disruptors as opposed to people who got fooled by them and are echoing. The major tells of the totally fake accounts are:
That is my short maybe-totally-wrong field guide to identifying the bad accounts on Lemmy. Not 100%, your mileage may vary, I have no real idea but this is what I’ve observed and guessed at.
You were wondering why people weren’t reacting the same to Eurovision contestants calling it a genocide as with Bernie Sanders, which I felt was kind of an odd comparison.
Which
One
Was
Your
Favorite
You never told me…
Political alliances are bad because they would mean actually taking action. It’s much more comfortable to just sit around, criticize, and preach your moral superiority.
In particular, if you’re criticizing Bernie Sanders because he’s not awesome enough, then that means you must be so awesome you’re on a whole nother level. And if anyone disagrees, it just means they’re not awesome, it actually proves your whole point. Job done.