This isn’t about immediately filtered content, like the disgusting DuffMan George Floyd meme, or Holocaust denial. That’s pretty well kept in check by mod tools. I’m also not talking about cogent or even pointed political discussion.

I’m not even talking about necessarily in this community directly, however in a lot of other spaces I’ve noticed a lot of accounts using divisive language and terms like “The ineffectual left” “single issue voters” “ignorant right wing morons”. Lots of straw man arguments, lots of willful ignorance.

I’m not a centrist, I’m very very very far left however I know well enough not to patently dismiss the talking points of others, outside of course calls to genocide. I know what dog whistles sound like, and I’m hearing a lot of them lately.

Most egregiously I’m seeing very long form post replies that read very much like what is generated from LLMs.

So I guess my question is, how’re we all fairing with what might be the largest Turing test ever?

  • Agent641@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    Circle of life on the internet. Some public forums last longer than others. Some go full facist dictatorship, some devolve into anarchy, some die out completely. Nirvananet, Totse, gamefaqs, 4chan, 99chan, imgur, whirlpool forums, stack exchange, reddit, Lemmy. Theres no telling which way a rudderless ship will drift. You just do what you can, and get off when she starts going under

  • mechoman444@lemmy.world
    cake
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    2 months ago

    I have a comment on my profile where I express some observations about the cyber truck that weren’t expressly negative and it was down voted to hell.

    Maybe not so many trolls, but there’s a lot of pretentiousness.

  • yyyesss?@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    2 months ago

    yes, very much. i’ve been telling my partner it may be time to give up on Lemmy.

    the ones that kill me are the long-form posts that seem to be making one point then pivot in the middle and get confusing. they’re just muddying the waters but people who don’t read past the first sentence or two upvote so they gain traction.

  • LemmyBe@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    2 months ago

    It’s election season, so get used to this. Other countries have learned how to divide us using social media, not to mention the years of experience Fox New and Co. have in doing just that. On top of it, we now have AI generated posts to contend with. It’s not getting better anytime soon…personally, I just ignore any post that sounds like it’s inflammatory (which sadly are almost all political posts, and everything Musk).

  • Pojankolli@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    2 months ago

    I think some communities might benefit from a very strict no-politics rule. Because this right wing trolling is ruining lemmy for me.

    • YeetPics@mander.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      2 months ago

      Like when all the rightoids show up to a discussion and spam image macros of pigs shitting on their own balls?

      Get real, this is a left-centered platform, 98% of the trolls aren’t right wing, not by a country mile.

      • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 months ago

        The Russians are all over hexbear. Read the rare thread about Ukraine over there and it’s literally the same shit the Russian trolls say.

        These aren’t leftists, they are right wingers (barely) pretending to be leftists.

    • Ozone6363@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 months ago

      Hilarity.

      “Right wing” for this community is if someone is a capitalist.

      Ya’ll have a super left wing echo chamber that’s freaking out about any dissent.

      This sort of shit is exactly why everyone is a political extremist now. You insert yourselves into communities that only agree with you.

    • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 months ago

      “no politics” is what the right says when you suggest that maybe gay people are people. What you mean is a “no conservatives” rule.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    2 months ago

    Plenty of “genocide Joe”, lib bashing, “both sides”, implication that if you vote for Biden you’re complicit in genocide, and many other anti-vote and anti-democrat posts all around.

    Not sure what you’re reading that constitutes “dog whistles”, there have been some posts mocking right wing responses and some fediverse self-policing and knee jerk reactions to the female trapped in the forest with either man or bear discussion that have already gone through several evolutions and iterations.

    The mockery of singe issue voters is deserved taken in the context of the failure to vote being trump fascism and even more genocide. Not sure what you’re trying to offer there other than what? We should listen to more open to “genocide Joe” comments and become immobilized with ambivalence and again, let fascism win by inaction?

    Personally, I’m not hearing dog whistles. I’m reading people directly trying to influence opinion to not vote for Biden by any means necessary while willfully and actively avoiding any consequences to a trump win.

    • awwwyissss@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      2 months ago

      I’m reading people directly trying to influence opinion to not vote for Biden by any means necessary while willfully and actively avoiding any consequences to a trump win

      Exactly, Kremlin shills and trolls using Israel’s genocide as a wedge issue to get their asset into the White House again so he cuts support for Ukraine and pulls out of NATO.

      • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 months ago

        At this point it’s not just Kremlin shills. Netanyahu very obviously prefers Trump as well. These “leftists” don’t even realize they’ve gone full mossad.

        • awwwyissss@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          2 months ago

          Are you implying there are Israeli government shills on social media using this as a wedge issue? Seems unlikely to me.

  • AFK BRB Chocolate@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    2 months ago

    I’ve noticed a huge influx of anti-Biden posts and comments, to the extent that I honestly think we’re finally getting the reddit treatment. I remember there, when the Russian Internet connection went down, and for like a day all those kinds of posts nearly evaporated. And it seems like those accounts don’t just do the overtly political things, they also engage in other areas, usually with a conservative slant.

    • rustyfish@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      2 months ago

      I remember there, when the Russian Internet connection went down, and for like a day all those kinds of posts nearly evaporated.

      Oh shit, I remember this one. For a short time Reddit became a loooooooooot friendlier. Not friendly but friendlier. You could have a nice conversation with someone opposing your views and it came to an actual trade of insights. I valued that a lot. No fucking derailment with stupid ass nonsense and childish jibes. (At least for the most part. Reddit is after all Reddit)

      • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        2 months ago

        Ah yes, Mr RustyFish. I see you support Fishell Rustic Sanders for ruler of earth, purely based on his pro-fish stances.

        We may agree in a fish court, or even a basketball court, but at the end of the day, you win some, I win some, and we both smell like fish for having tried your suggestion of chopping up dead fish that washed ashore already dead…and running their guts and bodies all over our hair and bodies.

        Now I fear we’re two naked strangers slathering each other in fish corpses.

    • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      2 months ago

      We used to think that if we had user-generated content, we would all be immune to governments, corporations and other powerful actors spreading propaganda because we would get our information from each other, not them.

      Turns out: governments, corporations, other powerful actors are perfectly capable of paying “users” to “generate content” and not even disclose this.

      The Internet used to be an exciting development, now it’s just like, yeah it exists, so what.

      • AFK BRB Chocolate@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        2 months ago

        I remember, after being on the internet for a while, when the www standard was being adopted and all the web pages started popping up. It was so cool to see the kinds of content people were using it for. Then we got search engines like altavista, and it honestly seemed magical. It was like this egalitarian utopia, where all this knowledge was available to everyone; it was hard not to feel like it was the start of an amazing new phase for society.

        So it was just soul crushing to me when we first started seeing intentional manipulation and misinformation. Search results that were skewed by paid advertisements or google bombing, propaganda being pushed into discussion forums, and all the fake news… it all represented the end of that amazing new phase. Heartbreaking.

        • JackFrostNCola@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          2 months ago

          Oh man when i was young and go to play and explore with my Neopets, downloading things on limewire & chatting on msn messenger after dialling in to the ‘internet’ was magical.

          I should check on my neopets, it’s been… A while.

        • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          2 months ago

          I am too young for that, but I do remember discovering the concept of wikis and finding it amazing that websites could now be written by their audience.

          A fairly dead concept by now, nowadays the entire rest of the Internet is more interesting than wikis.

  • andyburke@fedia.io
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    2 months ago

    The growing intensity of straw manning over the past decade has hurt us all so much.

    Don’t try to characterize what “they” would do, then get mad at your hypothetical. We need to talk to each other instead of about each other.

  • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    2 months ago

    Yes, the hexbears and their .ml ilk have started to use alts to troll the larger forums. Their admins openly admit that their only interest within the fediverse is information warfare.

    Other instance need to be taking this as seriously as they would be taking a nazi instance admin admitting to the same things.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      2 months ago

      I’m new to the fediverse, and largely I don’t get it, yet.

      But aren’t the things you’re talking about the type of reasons you’d give to DEfederate from that one instance?

  • uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    2 months ago

    I’m seeing very long form post replies that read very much like what is generated from LLMs.

    Oh goodness, as one who has a bad habit of putting responses into essay form, I hope this doesn’t refer to me. I’m not an LLM. Honest!

    Okay, I’m pretty sure I’m human. It’s a damn convincing hallucination.