You posted "Go vote Long Beach!" on the Long Beach reddit community around primary time, with a link to where people can find their voting place, but not anything like that on Lemmy (e.g. !longbeach@lemmy.world community)? Is that right?
mozz
joined 2 years ago
Biden being unpopular here would make sense. I think it's safe to say that this is a leftist community and the Democrats aren't all that left; I don't know anyone on the American left who's really happy about anyone in politics (except maybe for Bernie Sanders) even when they're not giving aid to someone who's actively starving and shelling children.
I say I'm confident that there's a big shilling operation on Lemmy because the behavior of the accounts doesn't make sense. They don't want to talk about Ranked Choice Voting. They don't want to talk about going to the Palestine protest. They don't want to talk about Ralph Nader or the Green Party, except every so often as a little aside about how voting is a waste of time but it you do then at least vote IDK whatever Green Party or something.
It's like if in 2016, instead of /r/sandersforpresident, there was /r/hondurashillary and they spent all their energy shitting on Hillary (for extremely valid reasons they would have had), and saying they weren't planning on voting at all because all the Democrats Bernie Sanders included were just bad, as a rule, because they're Democrats. I've straight-up asked some of these people, what do you think about this or that leftist issue, what can I do to help make the voting system better, and no one has an answer. The reasons not to vote for Biden are super passionate and super polished. The reasons to do anything else? Who cares. I don't know. Let's get back to what's really important: Not voting for Biden. That's what I'm here to talk about today. And, they seem genuinely not to give a shit if people don't like them -- like OP posting come rain or come shine several comically transparent anti-Biden stories, every single day, like it's... well, like it's his job.
Also, they slip sometimes. They say "Democrat Party." They make little fumbles about American history that I don't think would come from a native American. They have odd little mannerisms that you can notice if you watch them closely. IDK, maybe that gets into tinfoil hat territory, but I will say for myself that there are a bunch of particular accounts that I'm extremely convinced are part of an organized effort to influence the discourse.
I spent a good amount of time calling OP a shill in this thread without bothering to read the article. The combination of thehill.com + OP's bias + polls aren't really indicative of anything let alone deserving of the "multiple updates multiple times per day" conceptual weight they're being given in OP's posting history, led me to feel it was a better use of time to just talk about why are we talking about this again and why do we think OP posts this so much, as opposed to just obediently feeling like I'm obligated to spend time talking about it again, because OP feels like posting it again.
I mean I will say in my own defense that earlier today when for the other multiple time OP posted a whole story about how bad Biden's doing in the polls, I engaged with that story purely on its own merits. Here's the conversation that ensued:
- Me: It seems like this poll is polling everyone, not just likely voters, which is a relevant flaw in it
- Someone: "You should read articles before posting them" "You should also believe in science"
- Me: (Asks a question to try to Socratically teach them the point I was originally trying to make)
- Them: "What are you confused about?" (illustrates that they still don't get the pretty straightforward point I was making)
- Me: (Asks the question again)
- Them: (Finally answers the question, seeming to get what I was saying for the first time, but effortlessly pivoting to condescending about how limiting polls to likely voters is a bad idea)
And so on. It went on from there, but the point that I'm making is that engaging with this stuff on its own merits isn't the doorway to productive conversation it might appear to be. In my experience the shills will come out of the woodwork to make weirdly hostile bad-faith conversation with you for more or less an unlimited amount of time. I think blithely being okay with putting up with an unlimited amount of that isn't a fair thing to ask people to do.
Lemmy just likes shitting on popular things to feel superior
You keep on Kagi'ing
It is well documented that many political-influence organizations have extensive social-media-fakery arms, and I'm absolutely certain that most of them have as their #1 priority from now until November to get Trump elected. And Trump is clearly a pile of elephant shit in human skin, so going after Biden for a variety of random bullshit (or just talking down the whole concept of democracy in general) is their best angle of attack.
It's not self-evident that they've discovered Lemmy, but I feel confident at this point that they have. And if they have, it would be weird if they decided on posting only, that voting was a red line they didn't want to cross.
He did indeed.
Hammond was flamboyant, a born showman, and back in 1983 he had had an elephant that he carried around with him in a little cage. The elephant was nine inches high and a foot long, and perfectly formed, except his tusks were stunted. Hammond took the elephant with him to fund-raising meetings. Gennaro usually carried it into the room, the cage covered with a little blanket, like a tea cozy, and Hammond would give his usual speech about the prospects for developing what he called "consumer biologicals." Then, at the dramatic moment, Hammond would whip away the blanket to reveal the elephant. And he would ask for money.
The elephant was always a rousing success; its tiny body, hardly bigger than a cat's, promised untold wonders to come from the laboratory of Norman Atherton, the Stanford geneticist who was Hammond's partner in the new venture.
But as Hammond talked about the elephant, he left a great deal unsaid. For example, Hammond was starting a genetics company, but the tiny elephant hadn't been made by any genetic procedure; Atherton had simply taken a dwarf-elephant embryo and raised it in an artificial womb with hormonal modifications. That in itself was quite an achievement, but nothing like what Hammond hinted had been done.
Also, Atherton hadn't been able to duplicate his miniature elephant, and he'd tried. For one thing, everybody who saw the elephant wanted one. Then, too, the elephant was prone to colds, particularly during winter. The sneezes coming through the little trunk filled Hammond with dread. And sometimes the elephant would get his tusks stuck between the bars of the cage and snort irritably as he tried to get free; sometimes he got infections around the tusk line. Hammond always fretted that his elephant would die before Atherton could grow a replacement.
Michael Crichton's stories before Hollywood got hold of them carried a significant amount of insight about the nature of modern science.
I actually spent quite a while looking at it. Honestly, I found some things that I found a little suspicious, but nothing really all that compelling. I decided I was chasing ghosts and abandoned the analysis.
Since you asked, though, here's what the ratio for this post looks like over time:
So, pretty much, exactly ordinary and as you'd expect it.
I mentioned some things I found a little suspicious -- as an example, here's the graph for this post which I also would have predicted to be a magnet for fake voting:
That one, to me, looks hinky. The slow dropoff after an initially elevated ratio looks like exactly what I'd expect if there was an organized effort right at the beginning to drop a bunch of fake upvotes. But... there could be a bunch of alternate explanations. It's actually pretty difficult to get a prediction of what a "typical" post should look like, because there are a lot of variables and not a lot of data points (there aren't that many posts that display the right combination of "controversial post" + "enough votes in total to get above the noise.")
Like I say, I gave up the idea concluding that, on the balance, there's at least not a strong indication that anyone is dropping fake votes in big batches.
Men travel side by side for years, each locked up in his own silence or exchanging those words which carry no freight - till danger comes. Then they stand shoulder to shoulder. They discover that they belong to the same family. They wax and bloom in the recognition of fellow beings. They look at one another and smile. They are like the prisoner set free who marvels at the immensity of the sea.
Happiness! It is useless to seek it elsewhere than in this warmth of human relations. Our sordid interests imprison us within their walls. Only a comrade can grasp us by the hand and haul us free. And these human relations must be created. One must go through an apprenticeship to learn the job.
Games and risk are a help here. When we exchange manly handshakes, compete in races, join together to save one of us who is in trouble, cry aloud for help in the hour of danger - only then do we learn that we are not alone on earth.
-Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
I legitimately never understood the draw of watching sports, on any level, until I watched people playing hard video games and was fascinated by checking out what they could do and got to share in their vicarious enjoyment of their accomplishment when they overcame.
I was like oh, I get it. That's why people watch football. Makes sense now.
So there was just a burst of 11 upvotes for this story in 10 minutes, while during the same time period there were 3 downvotes.
I wonder if the same ratio will continue during the next 10-minute window or going forward; my bet is that the ratio will more or less reverse (or more), with downvotes dominating over time. What would cause an unusual number of people to all upvote this story all at once, right after it was posted?
Maybe I am wrong. Let's see.
Edit: I am wrong, I think. Beyond that fact that this post obviously isn't being downvoted heavily now that it's established, I spent a while looking at this question, and I found some things that maybe looked hinky, but nothing outwardly and obviously suspicious. And you can't really tell anything from the behavior right after a post -- it's all noise. After about 30-60 minutes, enough votes have been accumulated that you can say something about it, but before then, all bets are off.
But you posted "Go vote Long Beach!" on Reddit, though?