PhilipTheBucketFor anyone who like me was unaware why Trump all of a sudden cares about Greenland and Panama
Y’all act like this is solely a Trump thing, but the US was expanding and annexing territory in the arctic during the Biden admin, while getting all of their “allies” to expend all of their military assets & ammunition reserves on a proxy war and a genocide.
It would be unwise to assume this is another crackpot Trump scheme, and not something the MIC & intelligence agencies have been preparing for years.
Reported for misinformation. Usually I think the propagandists can just be dealt with by disagreeing in the comments and letting people figure out who is and isn’t full of shit, but this has crossed into the territory of being pure annoying noise.
Do you bother trying to look into anything, or do you just immediately label anything you don’t like as misinformation?
…colorado.edu/…/us-defines-outer-limits-its-conti…
www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-66984944.amp
Denmark donated all of their F-16s to Ukraine, and aren’t expecting the replacement F-35s for years, leaving them in a worse defensive position for Greenland: reuters.com/…/f-16-jets-being-sent-ukraine-denmar…
So your claim is that sending a few science vessels into the north impacted our ability to help in Ukraine?
I would not advise trying to engage in a back-and-forth.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wmVkJvieaOA
The whole series is an interesting and somehow still relevant look at how dishonest debate on the internet tends to work. It’s a little bit dated because it comes from the era of freelancers, not today’s polished professionals, but a lot of the techniques of argument are the same. There is simply no good result, by engaging with them in a factual discussion, any more than you can win a chess game against someone who insists on moving pieces wherever they feel like moving them and keeps insisting that you’re breaking the rules and they’re winning.
The Alt-Right Playbook: Never Play Defense
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Surprise, surprise. Philip doesn’t like pushback against his NATO propaganda, and wants people to look away.
I provided sources, Phil. They can decide for themselves. And your desperate plea for them to look away just gives away the game you’re playing.
Here’s what I think you should do:
- Stop using the buzzwords. I get what you’re trying to do by introducing “blue MAGA” and “Trump Derangement Syndrome” into the conversation, but to people who are paying attention, it’s a massive red flag about what you’re trying to do. It will overshadow any more authentic-seeming point you’re trying to make.
- Don’t tangle up multiple issues. You can say that the Biden administration supported a genocide in Gaza, or try to make this particular point about how invading Greenland is somehow consistent with previous US foreign policy, or that Ukraine is Nazis, or that Wikipedia is selling out their editors to fascist governments (that was you, right?). But combining all of them together into one account makes you stand out like a beacon. I think you want to silo your talking points more. Use one or at most two per account.
- If someone calls you out for being a propagandist, take that as a learning opportunity. What did you do that gave the game away? In this case, it was some kind of previous interaction I had with you. I don’t remember what it was, although I think it was about Wikipedia, but it was something totally nutty that you were saying that you were insisting made sense. It meant I was dead certain that I could open your profile to the first page and find lots of material to point out about where you’re coming from. If someone does call you out, definitely don’t double down and amplify the volume of that conversation. Just dismiss it and go back to what you wanted to talk about.
- I think you want to involve more general discussion and chatter into your accounts. Be yourself! Remember, you can have normal conversations. Not everything has to be about NATO. If you like hunting and riding four-wheelers, talk about that. If you’re just this guy who loves ATVs and being out in nature, but also thinks the US government is crazy for sending all this money to Zelensky when we have nothing to do with what’s going on in Ukraine, that’s going to blend in a lot better. Right now you’re acting almost like a caricature of a propaganda account, where everything has to tie back to Biden, NATO, and European geopolitics, all the variety of issues are all mushed together, and almost half your comments tie back to some talking point. A lot of the propagandists take this really low-effort style of commenting about their smokescreen of non-talking-point issues, but I think that’s a mistake, because someone who’s paying attention can see through it and it becomes a way to detect you.
I think you’re doing really well though! In particular, I think you did a pretty good job with the deflection to taking some factual claim you made in service of that larger Frankenstein’s monster of bad reasoning, and insisting that the original claim is factual, you backed it up and showed sources, everyone’s just trying to cover it up because they hate the truth. That part was good. It redirected (or tried to, if I had taken the bait) away from the larger issue and into weird minutiae where you can defend that one detail point. So you have the argumentation down pretty well. You just need to introduce more cover to make it a more realistic account, and do a better job of what issues to focus on how much, and I think you can do really well.
Doug HollandPhilip, this is a frickin’ masterpiece. You ought to charge admission.
The joy of reading it justifies not (yet) expelling @surph_ninja.
I’ll open up a Patreon. Freelance NATO propagandist. At the silver tier, you can sync a tier list of Lemmy’s greatest propaganda accounts to your client, so a link appears on every one of their comments showing their propaganda tier and a link to them getting ridiculed in some previous comments section.
I label anyone who uses “blue MAGA,” says Biden and Trump have equal levels of corruption, uses the phrase “Trump Derangement Syndrome,” and says that Ukraine is Nazis, misinformation, yes.
I’m not even slightly interesting in a conversation about how “annexing territory in the arctic” equals invading Greenland or how we’re expending all our military assets sending aid to Ukraine. I wish we were expending our military assets sending aid to Ukraine. If we were actually emptying the warehouses completely sending them whatever they need, and not putting silly bureaucratic restrictions on how they can use it while fighting for their lives, then they might be winning the war. Instead, they get just enough to continue a long, bloody, pointless stalemate which has been a catastrophe for both Russia and Ukraine.
Yes, you also repeatedly deny knowledge of the very world events you continually post articles promoting and spreading propaganda for (here we go again).
You’re an astroturfing propagandist.
Stupid and gullible I’ll tolerate here, but you’re starting to smell like a troll. Change my mind.
I gotta say, since I already spent way too much time re-reading this conversation. As much as I don’t agree with @[email protected]’s extrapolation of previous facts into how they apply for this conversation today. They make a clear arguement, based in the reality we all live in and back it up with how they got there.
Even looking over their post history, I find plenty of strong arguments they bring to conversations that I tend to agree with from my understanding of the world today. Once again, I don’t agree with what they are saying here, but I don’t believe this behavior is “trolling”. If we want open discourse people need to be able to have strong opinions regardless of how much everyone else agrees.
That’s my take, too, except for the part about looking at @surph_ninja’s (or anyone’s) post history. Life is too short and this thread too unimportant for such investigations.
Fair, life is too short for a lot that I do online, but I’m cursed with a day job that requires me in front of the computer all day and find looking over the comment/post history of a user can be helpful when trying to determine if I would consider them a troll worth blocking and never listening to again.
Yeah. It’s sort of sad that the nature of the network is such that it’s sometimes necessary to invest some effort in figuring out what the history is, of the person you’re talking to, whether they’re coming from a place of conversation or a place of broadcasting a bad-faith argument to distort the conversation, but them’s the breaks. I think it’s necessary sometimes to be a pain in the ass about these types of minor annoyances, or else they’ll take over and the whole place will be populated with only annoyance instead of real conversation between humans.
What do you think your post history says about you? What impression do you think people get from continually pushing US propaganda, telling other people not to engage with people or read sources that counter your narrative, and attacking everyone who disagrees with ad hominems?
Better yet, what do you think your constant comments on strategies for running bots is making people think? You really believe people are stupid enough to think, ‘gee, surely if he was an astroturfer he wouldn’t be telling people exactly how to astroturf.’ Hanging a lantern on it isn’t the brilliant strategy you seem to believe it to be.
Oops, you’re right, I need to make some smokescreen posts. I posted a B movie to a media community just now. Maybe too much effort, though. It took a few minutes, I could have spent that on like 5 random memes I found on the internet thrown around in a meme community.
With @surph_ninja’s follow-up links, it’s not quite ‘misinformation’. More like, bonkers extrapolation, based on slivers of cherry-picked truth. The nuttiness exposes itself.
Claiming that CIRES thing amounts to “the US was expanding and annexing territory in the arctic during the Biden admin”? Thinking a propaganda quote from 2023 shows “all [war allies’] military assets & ammunition reserves” are being depleted?
Nah, I’ll let it stand. When gullible people show how they swallow whatever they swallow and regurgitate, it’s educational (just not in the way @surph_ninja thinks).
Sounds good to me. The comment itself isn’t all that bad. I think, as you said, it’s extrapolating from something objectively true to leap to an endpoint that’s totally nuts.
A lot of my reaction was from the combination of this particular conclusion being totally out there, and it being in service of a particular type of pro-Russian-viewpoint talking point, and the pattern of that type of thing being a very clear and consistent pattern from this user in the past. But I do agree with you. Usually, it’s better to just let people talk. It’s educational.
I am not “pro-Russia.” I am simply not anti-Russia enough to promote the lies & narratives to justify US aggression, and you accuse everything critical of US foreign policy of being pro-Russia.
I’m a particular thorn in your side because I come with receipts, and it makes your attempts to get it censored fall flat. Though I’m sure you get away with it anyway in the Politics community mods.
See, this is what I meant about the chess game. You can say I accuse everything critical of US foreign policy et cetera. I can send you a big wall of text of about 10 different times in the last 24 hours that I was critical about US foreign and domestic policy. And it will make absolutely no impact on what you say. You’ve just got your thing you want to say, and you’re going to keep broadcasting it at everyone, and what they say makes no difference.
Do you want me to? I did that a while back when someone made the same accusation. If you want, I’ll dig up the comment and send it to you, to illustrate that this is one more thing you’re saying that has no connection to reality.
Like I say, I think engaging in this conversation is a mistake for you. It’s highlighting something that you really should be wanting to downplay. I’m happy to talk about it if you’ve decided you want to, though.
Yes, Phil. We know. You already spelled out your strategy for making sock puppet accounts believable, in this very same comment section. A real grand master in that chess game!
Do you believe your tepid criticism cancels out your imperialism defense here? Or your reflexive accusation of ‘Russian bot’ every time someone criticizes US foreign policy, or raises the alarm about the US currently escalating to world war by attacking on multiple fronts across the globe as we speak?
You know what doesn’t help your credibility? Your continual jump between ‘what are you talking about? I’m not aware of any such thing’ to ‘I’m actually thoroughly informed, and here’s why what they did is justified’ the moment someone provides a source. You can’t play dumb and pretend you have a better understanding than anyone of the facts. Pick a lane.
For anyone who’s still reading this trainwreck of a conversation. Check this out:
There’s some further wider context here: lemmy.world/comment/14154055
I’m trying not to prolong this exchange, because it’s no longer adding anything. I feel like at this point pretty much everything that needs to be said has been. You can draw your conclusions. The only thing I’ll add is that, at the point of the above links, I don’t think I had pegged surph_ninja as conclusively a propaganda account, let alone a ‘Russian bot’ which I’ve never said. I just thought he was talking nonsense. I read his sources and then was talking with him about his argument at face value. After a while of doing that, and encountering a particular breed of total non-logic and a particular style of argumentation in service of a particular viewpoint, I formed a pretty strong conclusion that he is doing pro-Russian propaganda. But I think some of the conversation from above is from back before that happened.
Edit: Changed from double quotes to single, around ‘Russian bot’. Happy now?
YSK There’s someone running around Lemmy posting misinformation against Wikipedia - Lemmy.World
He generally shows most of the signs of the misinformation accounts: * Wants to repeatedly tell basically the same narrative and nothing else * Narrative is fundamentally false * Not interested in any kind of conversation or in learning that what he’s posting is backwards from the values he claims to profess I also suspect that it’s not a coincidence that this is happening just as the Elon Musks of the world are ramping up attacks on Wikipedia, specially because it is a force for truth in the world that’s less corruptible than a lot of the others, and tends to fight back legally if someone tries to interfere with the free speech or safety of its editors. Anyway, YSK. I reported him as misinformation, but who knows if that will lead to any result. Edit: Number of people real salty that I’m talking about this: Lots
ClinicallydepressedpoochieIt’s not good. We let these people just throw shit at the wall constantly and no one has the time or ability to sort through it all. With plain text looking exactly the same no matter the argument the uninterested get snookered into thinking there might actually be a valid counter argument. You were right the first time. This shit is all noise drowning out the message and making people tune out.
Yeah. I’m not aware of a good solution. I don’t want to let every comments section have random “and THAT’s why NATO is terrible and China/Russia are by far the lesser evil in geopolitics as everyone knows” comments interjected into it unchallenged. I don’t want every comments section to get taken over by extensive arguments about who is and isn’t a Russian propagandist. And I don’t want every comments section to be picked through by some kind of arbiter of who are the “allowed” comments, so that anyone who’s provisionally identified as propaganda gets removed never to be seen again. Even if there were someone who had time to do that, which there isn’t, that’s not going to wind up being implemented perfectly if that were the system.
My MO is to call out the very severe propaganda when I see it, talk about how I see it as a problem and why, without getting drawn into the endless bickering into which the propaganda accounts inevitably like to draw anyone who responds to them. It doesn’t seem like an ideal solution, but it’s the best reaction I can see.
I do think it’s fair to ban the ones that are just laughably obvious, I guess, for the sake of all of our sanity, since they’re clearly bringing nothing anyone wants to the table. At the same time, all that is going to do is set a higher bar, which I’m sure they will be able to clear. And also, it sets a precedent for moderators aggressively policing comments sections and kicking out the “wrong” people, which the propaganda accounts are also able to manipulate to their advantage when that becomes the norm. That’s a whole other conversation. That’s why I mostly don’t go on lemmy.world, this community being one of a few rare and sensible exceptions.
I’ve started just blocking them on the off chance they are powered by AI. I’ll give one to comments to see if they will attempt good faith but if there is no sign they are capable I don’t want to be a part of their disinformation strategy ever again.
I think the answer is to let people self identify. Something like a profile and then allowing users(and instances) to sort or filter incomplete profiles and keywords/phrases. Sure you can get an AI to create unique generic profiles but the second you look at them you’ll be able to decipher the quality of their content and distinguish immediately.
Of course this could lead to more insular communities but I’m actually for that. I am for like minded people finding each other and organizing. In this way these people can juice each other up to maybe take action without some infiltrator coming in and difusing the momentum.
Yeah. I think Mastodon’s model where there are no “communities,” just networks of trust with users choosing to follow or interact with each other and where there is no way to automatically get your stuff shown to everyone until trusted people have affirmatively given you approval for what you have to say, is just a better model. The reddit-like model is just too open to anonymous accounts in groups manipulating the conversation.