Yeah, I mean on Reddit I would assume the people even against AOC/Mamdani are conservatives/Russians/bots trying to divide and conquer. But on Lemmy it almost seems like it really is just fabulously ignorant people. I say that not only because there’s a lot less bot/conservative activity on Lemmy, but also because I see a lot of comments from clearly real people that seem to think that in reality we can just magically skip to a situation where an ultra left government can materialize out of thin air if they personally want it badly enough.
I have to assume some of these people are literally underage and we all have pretty wild concepts about what’s possible in reality, especially the complex parts, when we’re that young. But some are clearly grown ass adults. It’s alarming.
There are clearly people who are just walking typing Dunning-Kruger effects with bad political opinions, but don’t show any kind of signs of being employed to spread disinformation and honestly seem self-consistent and high-effort about it in a way that makes it seem a little unlikely that they’re being fake about it.
But then, also, there are people who constantly spread the same little handful of talking points, don’t really seem to be putting much effort into making it believable and don’t seem self-consistent about it or even to be reading stuff that people reply to them with, sometimes make weird little errors which clearly indicate that they’re not from the US even though they care deeply about US politics, and so on and so on. That second population, I think it’s safe to say are deliberate mass-scale propaganda. It’s different on Reddit (and a lot more transparent, and they have populations of them like the pro-Israel propagandists who are not present on Lemmy), and to be honest I am also a little surprised that they have elected to spend effort on a tiny platform like Lemmy. But it seems obvious to me that they have done. And some of the nature of what they like to push makes it particularly interesting (as does the concordance that a lot of them seem not to be US-based which is very interesting to me.)
Yeah, I mean on Reddit I would assume the people even against AOC/Mamdani are conservatives/Russians/bots trying to divide and conquer. But on Lemmy it almost seems like it really is just fabulously ignorant people. I say that not only because there’s a lot less bot/conservative activity on Lemmy, but also because I see a lot of comments from clearly real people that seem to think that in reality we can just magically skip to a situation where an ultra left government can materialize out of thin air if they personally want it badly enough.
I have to assume some of these people are literally underage and we all have pretty wild concepts about what’s possible in reality, especially the complex parts, when we’re that young. But some are clearly grown ass adults. It’s alarming.
I think it is (at least) two populations.
There are clearly people who are just walking typing Dunning-Kruger effects with bad political opinions, but don’t show any kind of signs of being employed to spread disinformation and honestly seem self-consistent and high-effort about it in a way that makes it seem a little unlikely that they’re being fake about it.
But then, also, there are people who constantly spread the same little handful of talking points, don’t really seem to be putting much effort into making it believable and don’t seem self-consistent about it or even to be reading stuff that people reply to them with, sometimes make weird little errors which clearly indicate that they’re not from the US even though they care deeply about US politics, and so on and so on. That second population, I think it’s safe to say are deliberate mass-scale propaganda. It’s different on Reddit (and a lot more transparent, and they have populations of them like the pro-Israel propagandists who are not present on Lemmy), and to be honest I am also a little surprised that they have elected to spend effort on a tiny platform like Lemmy. But it seems obvious to me that they have done. And some of the nature of what they like to push makes it particularly interesting (as does the concordance that a lot of them seem not to be US-based which is very interesting to me.)