It's really bizarre if you compare the Lemmy comments with those on Reddit worldnews. The Reddit comments are generally pro Israël, some even banaly so (in the 'they had it coming sand the deserve what they get'- territory).
In a forum there should be dissenting opinions, however those are downvoted to oblivion. It feels very weird, I'm reluctant to use the word astroturfing, but there's a huge difference in the time of the discussion compared to a couple of years ago.
Israel has an app where they post links to social media posts discussing Israel for app users to go astroturf. They take their propaganda very seriously. They have a word for propaganda targeting foreigners: "hasbara." https://mepc.org/speeches/hasbara-and-control-narrative-element-strategy
Israeli work contacts flooding LinkedIn with their shit is one of the weirdest ways I see this online. It’s usually inappropriate to bring politics into the work sphere but in the days after the October attack, the business world came out in sympathy for Israel, as they should. The problem is that this was cemented as the only business friendly position from that point forward. Nowadays I see Israelis posting raw vitriol while everyone else is too timid to say anything except “we support Israel’s right to exist” or “we hope for peace in the Middle East” and other such fatuous trivialities.
Why is pro-Israel the only business friendly position? Simple. There aren’t any Palestinian startups. There are very few Palestinian CEOs.
When you don’t have a voice: you are wrong.
r/Worldnews just bans everyone that is pro Palestinian. And it is filled to the brim with obvious Hasbara bots.
Similar to other communities pro isreal communities such as r/Destiny. Every single one of them has banned pro-Palestinian voices.
Worldnews has always been the place where all the bad opinions and misinformed bullshit culminated. I remember threads with hundreds of first level comments all stating basically the same bullshit over and over again with no insight in sight
It is weird. The left leaning Canadian subreddit (r/onguardforthee) is generally pro Palestine but my city's subreddit is generally pro Israel. I've been watching my city's subreddit move right politically quite quickly.
Something I've noticed is that reddit as a whole seems to have gotten a lot more right wing since the whole API stuff. I'm not sure if it's actually because of users leaving, or if moderation took a huge hit and it's kind of snow balling into hateful commenting becoming normal.
I'm convinced the rightward swing is from people leaving. I imagine it's a self-reinforcing feedback loop, too. I wouldn't mind sometimes or even often being the underdog in a thread, as long as occasionally you could score a small win here or there. But when every comment is just going to get down voted to Hades, it becomes pointless.
It also just makes sense that people who are temperamentally conservative are both more likely to be politically conservative and be slower to abandon ship from a dying platform.
If you look at right wing subs yeah... Otherwise on reddit, denying the Uyghurs genocide and PRC propaganda are very casual
You'd think so, but my city's subreddit used to advocate for transit, better support for the homeless, healthcare etc and generally be very left leaning. They still are some of the time, but I've started seeing a lot of upvoted comments very literally calling for the implementation of drug use policies (ie death) from places like Saudi Arabia or the Philippines.
I guess it's possible it's part of the Western move right ward but it's jarring. I get it, the city's drug problem is at its current worst, but advocating for the actual murder of users is insane and I can't believe comments like that are at the top of threads. Even just a year ago those comments would be downvoted out of existence
Reddit is a powerhouse of online discussion. It’s the perfect place for astroturfing. Not to mention, Reddit is so desperate to become profitable that they’re bragging about “we know everything about our users,” so it’s obvious they’re selling data to data brokers, they’re selling data to google for their AI and google did a cool little quid pro quo with them to boost Reddit results in google search…why not get in bed with opinion brokers?
I wouldn’t be surprised at all. In fact, I assume it.
Reddit has been atroturfed to hell for a long time: https://web.archive.org/web/20160604042751/http://www.redditblog.com/2013/05/get-ready-for-global-reddit-meetup-day.html
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pro Israël how long since you've left reddit ? Because back there in the comments the only thing I saw were :
Being pro Israel is being pro a lot of those things in this day and age.
Reddit is 100% astroturfed by Israel, Ukraine, and Russia.
There is no Palestinian/Iranian astroturfing.
It's no covert secret that Russia benefits from chaos in Israel/Gaza. Russia is 100% amplifying the coverage of the conflict to their benefit.
They're not opposites, look at the rest of the comments on this post.
In a forum there should be dissenting opinions, however those are downvoted to oblivion.
As opposed to what, Lemmy World???? This place is the same just fewer users.
Not really. If you've been on Reddit for more than a decade you really could see a cultural shift. Lemmy feels smaller and more filterable. If you curate your subscriptions and exclude more extreme Instances it's quite all right.
Whenever I read Reddit outside of my niche subs it just feels almost distopian, is become a very weird place.
When I left reddit, I was subbed to like 30-50 subs, I only went on r/aspiememes despite most of my subs being about geopolitics and history because wherever I went there always were dude promoting genocide while all pretending to be from different side of the political spectrum
wherever I went there always were dude promoting genocide while all pretending to be from different side of the political spectrum
We are seeing that happen on Lemmy all 2024 so far.
please people on Lemmy are less insane than reddit. On reddit the top com would be an islamist guy upholding a KKK antisemitic conspiracies
please people on Lemmy are less insane than reddit
Laughable. Reddit actually bans the insane fringes, then they come here.
Meanwhile, civilians in Gaza endure a deepening humanitarian catastrophe. Law and order has broken down across the coastal enclave as Hamas’s civil control over northern Gaza and large swathes of the south has been ended.
I don't think the problem is Hamas failing to provide "law and order" but Israel's ongoing genocide that is causing the "deepening humanitarian catastrophe".
is that analysis based on the fact that Gaza now looks like a Metro 2033 area ?
That was kinda obvious since the beginning.
I'd say it's kinda obvious since about 80 years. The whole region is messed up.
I'm convinced that Hamas had no plans to destroy Israel with the 10/7 attack, they wanted to show the world just how bad Israel can over-react.
So they went out of their way to commit an atrocity to inspire a genocide.
Not it. They did it because Iran wanted to stop the Israel and Saudi peace talks. And make a distraction for Russia.
No, they committed 10/7 because they want to wage an endless war against Israel and wanted to show their backers they can throw a punch. They were hoping Hezbollah and others would back them, but they threw Hamas to the wolves.
That's an interesting idea. Though i think we must not underestimate internal Gazans cause. The HAMAS is basically running anti PA military dictatorship in Gaza enforcing an islamist rule through corruption of lower echelon political actors. The only way they managed to remain in power despite basically defrauding the UN and the Red Cross is by spreading the narrative "hey, we are yout heroic liberators (and everyone who disobeys us is a ******* jew)". Not that they're like the nazis, by "liberation" they mean "genocide".
The problem is that the HAMAS is... not very good at freeing Palestine. The only way they attacked Israel before is through rocket bombardment using 250$ ammo. Problem is that they never got out to fight Tsahal. However their authoritarianism only strengthen with time meaning HAMAS was very not freeing palestine and very much oppressing palestinians. So people started asking question about what the hell all that military budget and requisition were for. So they planned a "boots on the ground mission". This was supposed to be a show of force to make them look good. I'd even believen advisors suggested this idea. Except the main issue with the HAMAS is that, to them, all this garbage we call "guerilla", "civil defense", "policing", "resistance", "show of force" means the exact same thing : good ol' ethnic cleansing.
And an ethnic cleansing on a population of 7 000 000 000. Which means if you're an israeli citizens, yoiu likely have connections, be it former classmates or extended family, to a victim of the attack. this did not help with the Israeli state of mind rigth afterwards. [](to show the world just how bad Israel can over-react) That's exactly where I think they should have stopped being insane nazi islamist and read actual books. See I'm French, here we see U.S forces in WW2 as heroes, they are the "Libérateurs", same for the Brits. You want to know what's weird ? We do that, despite the fact the U.S.A.F sometimes entirely destoryed the wrong french cities. Yes that happen, for exemple in Royan. We know that, they killed our own peoples, the Liberation of France wa just american G.Is riding through France to enter Germany, but it doesn't change our opinion. Why ? Because the Vichy Regime were a bunch of fascistic traitors whose stupid and submissive policies led us to this situation. Same thing for the IIIrd Reich who was occupying the country.
No one will side with the HAMAS, few will side with Gaza despite mainstream media broadcasting many pro-palestinian voices (because now that the war is on it's cooler). Because people don't like flat out ethnic cleansing and they especially dislikes when their perpetrators run countries
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