The Agora
In the spirit of the Ancient Greek Agora, we invite you to join our vibrant community - a contemporary meeting place for the exchange of ideas, inspired by the practices of old. Just as the Agora served as the heart of public life in Ancient Athens, our platform is designed to be the epicenter of meaningful discussion and thought-provoking dialogue.
Here, you are encouraged to speak your mind, share your insights, and engage in stimulating discussions. This is your opportunity to shape and influence our collective journey, just like the free citizens of Athens who gathered at the Agora to make significant decisions that impacted their society.
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Alright meet this with good information and I'll argue as a maga person. Vaccines cause autism. Also Tylenol. Also climate change is a hoax and all studies that point to it being real are liberal propaganda. Trans people are also mentally ill and not real. Leftists are extremely violent. Immigrants are violent and taking all our jobs. Immigrants mooch off the system. Guns keep people safe. Sandy hook was a false flag operation. Protestors are paid off by George soros.
I will now repeat this 50 times + 50 other conspiracy theories in the time it takes you to get a source for one of these claims, and once you get a source I will say "that source is liberal" and move on to another 20 conspiracies. This is literal poison for your brain. Whether you consciously realize it or not, hearing something objectively false enough times you start to believe it more.
This doesn't even mention the hate spread on that sub. Some examples: https://maga.place/c/LiberalLunatics
Dogwhistle that leftists are violent https://maga.place/post/18102
More divisiveness... https://maga.place/post/19232 +500 mentions of "woke liberal gets destroyed!!"
Here is about 20% of the posts from the last 30 days. 1/5 posts are propaganda.
https://maga.place/post/14921 Misinfo, she said "it's a common lie," did not dodge the question but did not answer it how they wanted.
https://maga.place/post/13936 Misleading at best, some people donated from abroad but they frame it as he is funded by some Arab investor and thats the only reason he's winning
https://maga.place/post/13207 misinfo again, all he talks about is fighting against authoritarianism
https://maga.place/post/12023 Hey this one is a perfect example, I wouldn't know this is fake except I personally got a ballet and know this person just hole punched through the envelope!
https://maga.place/post/10435 More fake news, they interviewed SOME people and implied this represents all of California.
I'm curious if I were spreading constant lies about how it was actually your friends and family that were raping and killing people and ruining America and do not deserve a trial, would you still champion my right not only to say that, but be seen by a wide audience? All you need to do is prove the first 5 lies false, while I make 20 more up.
Btw can you believe the democrats shut down the government?
And what percent of people actually believe that nonsense? Very few! Why? Because we do a reasonably good job educating the public.
There will always be people who believe some crazy conspiracy, but they're usually very much in the minority.
Posts you linked
There are three posts. Three. And none of them have any votes.
I could find so many examples of the opposite (hurt durr conservatives) on this instance and others and instances federated with it.
No comments and it's just a picture.
Is this the right post? This is just an article about shoplifting.
This is all pretty typical political mudslinging. If I had a nickel for every piece of misinfo I saw about Trump or Johnson, I'd have a few dollars. The same is true when Democrats are in power.
Yeah, that's pretty bad, but I would give the benefit of the doubt because it's easy to assume someone is right online, esp when you don't live in the area. My state has a similar hole (one, not two), so I always double check nothing is visible. If this was the case, it's pretty easy to just flip the ballot around...
This is a pretty typical strategy of finding a few people and claiming a trend. It happens on all political sides, and isn't really indicative of anything other than a crappy source, which Fox News is.
The first, yes, the second, no. You have a right to say whatever you want, I have a right to not listen or platform you. The only time your right to say what you want should be curtailed is if your speech amounts to an actual threat of violence, or a call for violence.
But this has nothing to do with whether we should federate or not. What you showed me is a bunch of conservative talking points and slanted news. There's plenty of liberal talking points and slanted news posted here and on federated instances, yet I don't see a call to defederate from those instances.
Yes. Both parties are responsible here. It's their constitutional duty to pass a budget. Republicans control the House, so it's more in their court than the Dems, but both have a shared responsibility to pass a budget.
Republicans will likely get the worst of it in the midterms.
Only sh.itjust.works accounts may cast a vote.
If you think very few people believe these conspiracies I'm glad you don't have to be around maga supporters. https://climate.uchicago.edu/news/2025-poll-americans-views-on-climate-change-and-policy-in-15-charts/ 40% of Republicans think climate change is false. 65% think it's not human caused. This is PROBABLY false. Most maga STILL think the 2016 election was stolen, despite all the investigations and interviews and recounting.
https://www.kff.org/health-information-trust/poll-trust-in-public-health-agencies-and-vaccines-falls-amid-republican-skepticism/ 30% of Republicans now don't keep up on vaccinations and that number is increasing. If we are educating people and propaganda isn't winning, what's your explanation for this? These aren't fringe ideas, MAGA is not the republican party from 2012.
About the posts not having many votes... there are very few users on the instance. It's to show what type of people are posting on it, and the language they use (democrats get their utopia of crime and lawlessness!). The whole instance has maybe 70 posts in total as of now, so those 3 posts are about 5% of all posts. If you want to see what it a large maga community looks like go look at the_donald, it was filled with posts with thousands of upvotes saying "leftist loonies lose again," "leftists who hate America get what's coming to them." Go look on archive.org or just Google the_donald to see what % was pure misinfo. Then they banned people trying to debunk it, because their free speech support is just RP. It's already documented what these communities turn into. Why do we have to repeat it again?
I'm pointing out that while you can find posts about misinformation on other instances, it's not 1/5 posts being INARGUABLE misinformation and propaganda. Also msnbc abc etc don't interview 5 people and then say "California is turning blue," these aren't the same level.
I DO call out misinformation when I see it, and most of the time it's the top comment is someone saying "can we stop lying like the right? I hate this guy too but this is just false." And the difference is I see that 1/40 posts that it's inarguably false, not 1/5. Slanted news (trump did something evil) is not the same as making things up (aoc dodges question).
That part about the government is also propaganda, many Republican senators literally left and will not discuss anything, which is... their job. You can argue if they're right or wrong, but the right is literally not even talking, so how are they going to have a budget?
But I do. I live in a conservative part of a conservative state: Utah (my district goes something like 70-80% for the GOP). Utah conservatives are a bit different than in other states (Trump was dead last in the 2016 primaries), but we still have our fair share of MAGA nuts. I also have some antivax neighbors to round out the bunch. My boss seems to like Trump (though they're an immigrant and can't vote).
That's where I'm coming from.
I think that tracks. Climate change was politicized in the 90s, so it makes sense the opposition wouldn't buy in until the evidence was overwhelming. That seems to have happened, and now the discussion is about whether people caused it (people in my area seem to say yes) and whether we need to do something about it (many believe scientist estimates are sensationalized).
Here's an article about local perceptions:
For reference, Utah votes 60-70% Republican.
It's 26%, vs 17% for the general population. From the article you linked:
I think this is largely due to a lack of trust in the CDC since Fauci's tenure (mostly stemming from misinterpretations of things he said). I mostly blame sloppy news reporting and government officials misrepresenting actual guidance.
That said, the vast majority of Americans still trust and follow their doctor's advice, according to the article you cited.
Well yeah, that's on a community explicitly for conservatives. You see similar headlines in the opposite direction in liberal communities.
And that's when it became a problem. If that happens here, we should defederate, but until they do anything more than post slanted news, I think we should leave things as they are.
Why do we have to repeat it? Innocent until proven guilty, that's why.
Sure, the ratio will be much different because those are more popular instances. But those other instances will have much more quantity as well, despite the ratio being smaller.
This instance seems to be a reaction to the majority of Lemmy instances being very leftist. So it makes sense they'd post mostly political stuff for their side, and political stuff tends to be heavily biased and loaded with rhetoric, regardless of side.
Well, MSNBC is slightly more reputable than Fox News, but not by a ton. Fox News is "news entertainment" and is closer to a tabloid than an actual news source.
I'm talking about random leftist rags that get posted here where they pull quotes out of context to make conservatives look even worse (not that they need much help...). I don't have a list right off because I tend to ignore stuff that's obviously biased, but I'll keep an eye out the next time I see one.
Wasn't that the House? I haven't been following the shutdown nonsense since it's all posturing and whatnot. All of my state reps are voting in lockstep with the GOP, so there's not much I can conceivably do here.
So you're saying the evidence for climate change is so overwhelming that... the propaganda swapped to saying it's real but oversensationalized and it's not much human caused, so there's no reason to worry. In other words, the propaganda is still winning. We just canceled a huge solar farm and most maga Republicans don't bat an eye.
Dude wtf are you talking about, they rate their doctors advice as the same as Trump and Dr oz LOL that is not trust in the medical system that is trust in the person they meet personally because everyone is a skeptic until they're sick, and blind cult loyalty. And evidently if a growing number are vaccinating less, they are clearly NOT following their doctors advice, even if most trust their doctor. And if it was because of fauci you would see the number increase in 2020, not in 2023...
Yes you can find bad faith liberal communities. Do you want me to go on c/politics and see if I can find one post in 10 pages that has a title as idiotic and divisive as almost every post on maga.place talking about democrats or the politicians? Or find a link to NBC where the headline is "idiot trump and his conservative buddies get what they deserved!!!" I VERY rarely see something like that unless it's a commentor who is upset at something trump did PERSONALLY affecting them or their friends/family.
K I scrolled through about 7 pages, 90% was factual information such as "ice moves into Portland, local governance is worried." The rest was "Americans worried about xyz trump policy" with polls of Americans. https://sh.itjust.works/post/49051824 The most not factual thing I saw in those 7 pages
True innocent until proven guilty, except they're supporting someone who is guilty, which they would only believe is doing a great job due to propaganda, which is all they consume and spread... it's like if I'm in a nazi parade and then I get sent to jail with them and say "Hey! I'm not a nazi I just liked some of the stuff in the parade!"
Dude what cmon go browse c/politics 99% of it is literally normal news, not crazy opinion pieces and propaganda, and the crazy ones nearly always have a comment at the top saying "don't be like this, downvote this garbage." You're comparing "new study says climate change to be fake!" To "trump says he hates people who take snap" and his actual quote is "I'm not a big fan of snap users, no." These are different universes of misinformation. Them having 1/5 posts be hateful or misinformation is not excused by "well they're posting a lot about politics so of course they would spread false information." I can see posts that I don't think are fair to Republicans and still recognize maga Republicans are absolutely firehosing false information and hatred.
Yeah it was the house I meant the senators are just chilling at home https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/news/mike-johnson-shutdown-house-republicans-away-rcna238797 Paid public servants btw definitely a both sides issue, holding snap hostage and refusing to discuss like children
The number who trust their doctor is around 84%. The number who are delaying vaccinations changed from 4% to 7%. The most reasonable takeaway is that 7% probably aren't part of the 84%.
Why?
People didn't have access to information about Fauci's claims until well after he made them. There were congressional hearings during his tenure, and another in 2024, so it makes sense for trust to deteriorate between his stepping down and the post-tenure congressional hearing.
That community is locked, so only mods can create posts. That user seems to do a good job of posting high quality sources, but they pretty universally are critical of the current administration, and they'd probably be less critical if a dem was in power. And that's fine, I think Politics is an example of a well run community.
I don't keep track of which communities/instances these are from (I mostly sub to communities here and on lemmy.world), but I have had several occasions where I commented on a controversial post (pointing out issues, for example), and it gets removed. I assume that means someone reported it and the mods removed it.
Maga.place is a small instance where most posts don't have any comments or upvotes, so it's likely nobody bothered to report problematic content or the mods aren't very active. That was absolutely a thing when I first joined Lemmy, and it wasn't grounds for defederation back then, nor should it be now. However, if we cannot work with the mods or admins, that's absolutely a problem and is grounds for defederation (and we've done that due to concerns about CSAM and whatnot).
Ok I guess agree to disagree, when 81% of Republicans trust antivax foundation founder Fauci, who says Tylenol and vaccines cause autism, that tells me the propaganda is winning. Maybe not the ONLY cause of vaccine rates going down, but when the head of the FDA is antivaxxer who has 81% support of maga, that means something.
Idk what politics sub you're looking at, politics@lemmy.world is not locked and is the biggest politics sub on lemmy. I'm fine with being politically biased (saying biden is bad for the country) but not with literal fake news (someone misreading a study saying it proves climate change is fake)
Yes your point is exactly right, and I block subs that do that. If there were an entire INSTANCE that firehosed bad information and/or banned people for discussing and was hateful, I would want to defederate from them (as I voted for when this instance voted to defederate from hexbear!)
The problem is this is not an instance that just has misinformation. The entire MAGA movement is based on misinformation. To support someone who removes all protections for climate change, wants to save the economy by giving tax breaks to billionaires, says law and order while breaking the constitution nonstop... it's just a propaganda based movement. If they want to come actually discuss something, then they can ask a legitimate question in another community (and people need to stop being nasty to them if it's a real question), but I don't want to help them spread propaganda and hate just in the hopes that one person might change their mind (they won't, trump still has about 90% approval rating from MAGA).
I think you mean RFK Jr? Fauci was and probably still is very much in favor of vaccines.
If you trust two doctors and they give different medical advice, and you only accept one as accurate, does that mean you stop trusting the first doctor? No. People can be wrong sometimes, so it's fine.
RFK Jr isn't even a doctor, he was a lawyer turned politician. I think it's reasonable to trust that he's doing his best even when he misinterprets medical studies, especially when he's under the gun to get an answer by a specific date (he said he'd "solve" autism by September, and that announcement was made at the end of September).
To be clear, I don't trust RFK Jr or Trump, I'm merely providing what I think is a reasonable explanation of the survey results. I think it's logically reasonable to trust your local doctor for your personal medical needs, and also trust RFK Jr for setting nationwide policy, even if he's wrong sometimes on specifics.
!politics@sh.itjust.works. That's the instance we're on, and without any further information, that's what I'm going to assume since this discussion is about sh.itjust.works policy.
Here are some sources that I find sketchy on !politics@lemmy.world:
That's just from the first page or two of results. A "mostly factual" post here and there is probably fine, but having several posts in the first page or two is concerning. Maybe mods remove even worse posts, idk, I don't sub there.
And honestly, this is fine, because generally speaking, the mods seem to do a good job removing the worst of it.
We don't know if maga.place will be run that way, or if they'll be a firehose of misinformation.
I don't know if that's actually fair. The MAGA movement is large, and a lot of them are frustrated with the current administration that's the face of the MAGA movement, so there's more division than cohesion IMO. The only thing they seem to agree on is "owning the libs," but they get mad when there's collateral damage to themselves.
That said, we don't know where on the spectrum of "MAGA" this instance is. Maybe they just picked the name because they thought it would be funny to "own the libs," or maybe they're actually a psyop. Until we know, I don't think we should defederate.
Ok but my point is they give the same credence to rfk's opinion on something as their doctor. That is literal insanity that could only happen through propaganda. Not ONE thing he has said has been legitimate or factual. https://www.health.com/rfkjr-beef-tallow-seed-oils-8744688 There are about 100 more examples like this https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/08/28/rfk-cdc-director-susan-monarez-fired/ Cdc leaders and experts say rfk is going to damage public health https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/09/rfk-jr-cdc-panel-vaccines.html There are z e r o legitimate studies that support vaccine skepticism, yet here he is. The fact that he said he'd solve autism is also literally insane! It's a complete misunderstanding of what autism is, again, based on propaganda. It's not a disease, it's a neurodivergence, and the "epidemic" of autism as he says is people actually being diagnosed. Which people would know if not for the propaganda telling them otherwise.
I'm using the biggest politics community on lemmy because that should give an idea of politics posts the general leftist makes, as compared to the average MAGA post.
The friendlyaetheist post was reporting what happened, so I don't know why you'd even mention it. It lists the sources it uses as it says them, credibility is irrelevant.
I'm not sure why you're smuggling in the implication that those sites aren't undeniably 100% factual? If I say "trump flounders after his tarrifs hurt the economy" this is 100% factual reporting, with biased language. I would not complain if the maga posts said "Biden flounders over war in ukraine." But they don't. They verifiably lie. Thedailybeast is CLOSE, but still nowhere near the level of the maga posts. And interesting you bring that up as the biased source, because under every slightly unfactual post from the daily beast the first comment is always stop posting this biased trash!
We have evidence that 1/5 posts are misinformation. The others were "person x says y about person z." If ANYONE in my life 1/5 things they said was propaganda meant to fool me, I would tell everyone I knew to stay away, he's trying to trick you. I also didn't verify the quotes, and I didn't count things like "former CIA director loses his cool about hunter Biden laptop" which is a dogwhistle that this is a real controversy and shows democrats are corrupt and trying to hide it. On the second page right now, you have:
CIA director loses his cool (dogwhistle, tries to make you believe hunter Biden laptop is important to distract from trumps constant crimes)
2 normal posts
2nd amendment pros outweigh the cons - contains lots of verifiably false information about how carrying guns prevents crime.
1 biased but factual post
Gen z candidate storms out of interview after being shown clip of her menacing federal officers - discrediting the younger generation, discrediting people who oppose ICE, you could argue this but I can ask any MAGA person I know and they will say everything I just did
4 normal ish posts
1 post on how people flee socialist countries, implying it's because they're socialist (arguable if its misinfo)
Kamala harris snaps at... no she did not. At no point in the text does it have one quote where she is responding aggressively or angrily.
1 normal post
1 post implying Biden overused executive powers, to signal trump doing it is fair play.
So in 1 page you have 7 normal posts, 1 hateful "owned the libs" post, 2 arguably misinformation posts, and 2 blatant disinformation posts. If I gave you the option of that as your homepage, would you say that's positive or negative? Even take out the other stuff, if I gave you a homepage of 10 normal posts and 2 blatant disinformation posts, and you didn't know which was which, would you find that acceptable? What about for your friends and family?
84% of MAGA still supports Trump. The only way you could still support trump is based on misinformation, full stop. Hate the democrats sure you can do that, but not SUPPORTING trump, saying he's doing a good job on the economy on health, it is IMPOSSIBLE to do that factually.