Mastodawn

Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸

The amount of disinformation, deep fakes, and other misdirection I hear about from friends and relatives that they get from traditional social media is insane.

They have to tell me about it because I am almost always completely unaware, even though I am “on the Internet” just as much if not more than them.

This is a deep advantage of using Mastodon/the Fediverse right now. And it is not because fake stuff doesn’t exist here.

It is just not automatically sent to me by every owner, bot, and user. And if it is, it is generally swatted down hard.

#fediverse #mastodon #realInformation

@chris at this point is appears commercial social media is literally financially dependent on the worst forms of scam...

https://www.reuters.com/investigations/meta-is-earning-fortune-deluge-fraudulent-ads-documents-show-2025-11-06/

@mapto @chris I wrote Polish article about it based on these revelations some time ago. And reading about this (Meta's awareness and their deliberate lack of real action) literally made me feel sick :/

@madargon @chris the blind greed might explain it for some of the top management. But what about all others involved? How do they sleep at night?

But then I ask myself similar questions about the MAGA apparatchiks...

@chris It can be tough. I had someone tell me, with a straight face, that the reason Spanky met with Putin in Alaska was that Putin was blackmailing Spanky with proof that US fast food has human remains. Someone on YouTube said so.

I just can’t.

I actually looked the conspiracy theory up. It seems every year, for many years, a story comes up about fast food being tested & human remains being found in the meat. Followed by stories of food being tested just because, and, no. Of course.

Patrick Loftus 🖖

@chris It's all so tailored and personalized too. Just enough common between known social contacts of individuals to keep them all in the same bubble of bullshit.

Punch the monkey seems to be pretty universal though.

Debbie Belair Mar 12

@chris Also, there’s a lot of paranoia.

Chris Alemany🇺🇦🇨🇦🇪🇸Mar 12

@Scienceisnotopinions fed by all of it!

Baron Vonskinnback Mar 12

@Scienceisnotopinions @chris the paranoia is getting a lot worse because of how much lying is going on in public now and on the media, it's not even covert lying it's absolutely bald-faced bullshit that is easily disprovable but they stand by it anyway because opinion trump's truth now, so it becomes the person with the loudest voice in the biggest stick is right no matter what the truth is...

Tuukka R Mar 12

@Vonskinnback @Scienceisnotopinions @chris

At least in the Russia one reason they make this bald-faced bullshit is that many people there say "I know how to sieve out the thruth from along the propaganda in our news. Our propaganda is so bad that it is easy to recognize."
And then they aren't as careful as would be necessary for noticing the more important lies, made in a way that won't be so easy to catch.

Violet Madder Mar 12

I left corporate social media as soon as I realized the algorithms were trying to piss me off on purpose.

The things I WANT to see started drifting away, and rage/clickbait and propaganda were seeping IN and the advertisements were getting creepier and creepier and nope this is not okay I want out.

Hedgewizard 🐈Mar 12

@chris
When I have to venture on to legacy social media I treat it as a foray into enemy territory.

Trust no-one. That interesting post? Probably misinformation. The appealing video? Almost certainly AI. What looks like an update from someone I haven't heard from in ages? EVEN THAT CANNOT BE TAKEN AT FACE VALUE.

Click no links. Check everything before reposting or responding. It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you.

Nohaironheed Mar 12

@chris I've lost count of the amount of times I've had to point out to folk that the 'cute animals doing something funny' or 'close call' video that they've shared is AI generated. Harmless fun in those cases I guess but I'm amazed that others just don't see it. There's a certain amount of embarrassment once they realise they've been duped but it's not long before they share another video.

Magnus Ahltorp Mar 12

@nohaironheed @chris That is what the AI systems are optimised for, though: duping people. Not necessarily on purpose, but that is the side effect of how they are trained.

We've got a group re-thinking social media; I sent them this. Sums it up nicely.

@kentcountyindivisible

Pete Prodoehl 🍕Mar 12

@chris They are fed shit.
We are Fedi.

Joan of Contention 😷Mar 12

@chris Same. It's very much me living in a completely different world to most people I know. I have zero intention of changing my approach to social media (fedi only), but it's really disturbing.

Jack Yan (甄爵恩)Mar 12

@chris In 2014, I wrote pretty extensively about Facebookʼs bot epidemic (I used those words) and the site was being overwhelmed then. It kept worsening. We know now a lot of those were Russian bots. After a few years, #Facebook stopped removing them, even reported ones. The more bots, the harder for companies to find an audience, the more likely they will pay to boost. Even in 2014 they were chatting to each other to hide their tracks. I can only imagine how much worse it is now.

Kent Navalesi ☕️Mar 12

"But Mastodon doesn't have an algorithm to help you." 🤡

Linnèa the Library Monster Mar 12

@chris I’ve been off FB since like 2014 & recently quit Instagram. When I left insta I was a little sad though - I missed my collections. I turned to Pinterest & rly enjoy it now - far less social, much more pure inspo content.

Tumblr & Reddit are still pretty great even tho I had more fun on those platforms in the 2010s (said anyone on any social media in the 2010s, hah)

@chris We have zero tolerance for such bullshit, because most instance hosts and moderators do it not for profit, but out of passion.