Fediverse vs Disinformation
Pointing out, debunking, and spreading awareness about state- and company-sponsored astroturfing on Lemmy and elsewhere. This includes social media manipulation, propaganda, and disinformation campaigns, among others.
Propaganda and disinformation are a big problem on the internet, and the Fediverse is no exception.
What's the difference between misinformation and disinformation? The inadvertent spread of false information is misinformation. Disinformation is the intentional spread of falsehoods.
By equipping yourself with knowledge of current disinformation campaigns by state actors, corporations and their cheerleaders, you will be better able to identify, report and (hopefully) remove content matching known disinformation campaigns.
Community rules
Same as instance rules, plus:
- No disinformation
- Posts must be relevant to the topic of astroturfing, propaganda and/or disinformation
Related websites
- EU vs Disinfo
- FactCheck.org
- PolitiFact
- Snopes
- Media Bias / Fact Check
- PEN America
- Media Matters
- FAIR
Matrix chat links
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I'm 100% certain Musk has been buying guerilla social media campaigns since at least the early 2010s.
Nobody gave a shit about some random CEO back then. But in certain spaces like reddit, he was talked of like a god.
This is memoryholed but at one point the mods of /r/technology put filters against the flood of Musk spam. When this was revealed, there was a minor brigading of pro Musk content to that subreddit. It's another in the long history of reddit incidents but nobody seems to remember this one.
That's when I clued into the patterns of this artificially generated Musk popularity. Why the hell did anyone care about this guy back then? It obviously wasn't organic content. The guy manufactured himself.
I remember watching the Tesla and SpaceX live streams over the years because of all the hullaballoo. Nobody else watched those. Nobody else cared. I watched and saw nothing special. He's nothing but another bumbling CEO. Most the time he'd try to sound smart and get smacked down by the actual scientists and engineers from the company who were on the panel.
There's another guy right now. Jeff Arcuri or whatever. He's on r/all every single day for the past several years. Who the fuck is Jeff Arcuri, you ask??? Some random comedian. But he's obviously been buying himself a top spot on reddit. Based on that kind of presence you'd think he's one of the most legendary comedians in history. Guy isn't even notable enough to have a Wikipedia page.
The SpaceX launch/landing videos with people cheering wildly the whole time always annoyed the shit out of me. I'm watching a documentary on Apollo 11 and you don't hear people constantly cheering in the control rooms. Like, they had actual work to do.
How dare those engineers who made one of the greatest strides in rocketry in decades celebrate a successful launch and landing.