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?

  • AFK BRB Chocolate@lemmy.worldEnglish
    127·
    6 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.

    • aodhsishaj@lemmy.worldOP
      59·
      6 months ago

      Yeah, that’s a lot of what I’ve been seeing, bad faith actors sowing dissent.

      Edit: ducking autocorrect

    • rustyfish@lemmy.world
      16·
      6 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)

      • AFK BRB Chocolate@lemmy.worldEnglish
        11·
        6 months ago

        Yeah, for sure. And before that time I used to wonder how much truth there was in the idea of the Russian troll farms - it seemed a bit like a conspiracy theory, even though it was pretty well documented in the Mueller report. But that day was such a dramatic demonstration. The whole site suddenly shifted so much to the left, and the toxicity dropped so much lower.

      • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world
        1·
        6 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.

    • Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zip
      11·
      6 months ago

      Maybe there are people that are outside of America and don’t have direct impact of who wins the election and they don’t have to blindly praise biden. Trump is a piece of shi but acting like criticizing Biden is some kind of a foreign conspiracy is funny.

      • Dasus@lemmy.world
        26·
        6 months ago

        Criticising him? No.

        Criticising him and going “I’m not gonna vote for genocide Joe”?

        Yes.

        If you were Putin, you’d do everything in your power to see Trump elected. And if you pretend Russian troll factories don’t exist then we know you’re in one.

        • Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zip
          15·
          6 months ago

          Just look at my comments downvotes. It really is about people being angry at others criticizing biden.

          I did not mention anything about voting btw just to be clear. I just don’t like the left behaving like the right. People should be free to criticize any leader. Just because orange man can do it worse doesn’t mean you should let biden run around doing anything he wants. We should demand for people’s best interests and well being.

              • awwwyissss@lemm.ee
                13·
                6 months ago

                The fact that other countries are absolutely trying to influence the US election by criticizing Biden, especially the Kremlin.

                • postmateDumbass@lemmy.world
                  8·
                  6 months ago

                  Yes a Trump victory is better for enemies of the US.

                  Yes Democrats/Biden are making a lot of dumb moves and doing their damn best to lose.

                • Diva (she/her)@lemmy.ml
                  1·
                  6 months ago

                  It’s me the Russian bot showing up to badmouth dear leader, I gotta be real with you though, nobodies paying me to post on a fucking random ass lemmy instance.

      • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
        6·
        6 months ago

        Maybe it’s because we saw this exact fucking shit swing the election in 2016 and a lot of people have no patience for it left.

      • PugJesus@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        6 months ago

        I’m just trying to remind them they aren’t welcome in decent places. I wouldn’t go to .ml or worse, Hexbear or grad, if you paid me.

    • fishos@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      5 months ago

      Nope, not a bot and anti-Biden registered Dem. You guys always want to Strawman anti-Biden comments as either “angry conservatives” or “Russian-psyops”. You don’t actually address the concerns either, just brush them off as trolls. Discourse on Lemmy is a echo-chambered joke already. It doesn’t need trolls to ruin it, you’ve done plenty well yourselves.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
    49·
    6 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
      27·
      6 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
        5·
        6 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
          1·
          6 months ago

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

    • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
      3·
      6 months ago

      It’s hilarious seeing them run the exact same “corrupt DNC” playbook when no Dems from 2016 are even in this race. They are doing it because they are lazy, and because there are still enough people who are so bought into this that it still seems to fool a handful of idiots.

  • andyburke@fedia.io
    42·
    6 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.

    • forensic_potato@lemmy.world
      9·
      6 months ago

      While I do absolutely agree that single issue politics is a real thing like you showed, literally the only reply to your comment was “if you are a single issue voter, you’re an idiot”.

      So I also think OP has a point here and we’re talking more about the people who use the term as an ad hominem attack, which I certainly have seen plenty of. And now Lemmy has provided us with yet another example of people taking something legitimate and turning it into a weakness/attackable offence. Like some trolls and racist people on the right now talk about DEI in negative terms

      • 𝕽𝖚𝖆𝖎𝖉𝖍𝖗𝖎𝖌𝖍@midwest.social
        2·
        6 months ago

        Fair points. I’m guilty of just saying “single issue voters,” without elaborating on every comment. That could easily be seen as an indirect ad-hominem attack. Maybe I should make a copy-pasta response for whenever I see someone arguing for single-issue decision making.

        That said, there are justifiable single-issue decisions. If Trump was spouting rhetoric about shutting down all support of Israel, yeah. I can stand behind folks “switching sides” over this. Free Choice, ditto. 2A I have a harder time with, but that’s because there are usually so many other issues that you’d think are more important. Not my decision, but I have less sympathy for people who think being able to own a gun is more important than the ability to unionize.

        Anyhoo, like I said: fair points.

  • LemmyBe@lemmy.world
    31·
    6 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
    29·
    6 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.

    • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
      15·
      6 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.

    • YeetPics@mander.xyz
      14·
      6 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
        8·
        6 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
      4·
      6 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.

  • weariedfae@lemmy.world
    26·
    6 months ago

    Yes it has been a stark difference that picked up this month. I was in what used to feel like a chill community and the sheer vitriol of the threads the past week has been really annoying.

    • aodhsishaj@lemmy.worldOP
      21·
      6 months ago

      The kind of trolls I’m talking about start a conversation with you, ask you leading questions and pull into a discussion though. Then BAM dog whistles. It’s insidious.

      I’m well aware of the old adage “Don’t feed the Trolls”

      My larger question is how do we deal with the leverage an LLM gives trolls?

      • Hal-5700X@sh.itjust.works
        21·
        6 months ago

        The kind of trolls I’m talking about start a conversation with you, ask you leading questions and pull into a discussion though. Then BAM dog whistles. It’s insidious.

        If that happens stop talking to them.

        how do we deal with the leverage an LLM gives trolls?

        Once again, stop talking to them. Let the mods do their job.

        EDIT or you can block them. You have the tools to solve the problem. Use them.

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]English
    21·
    6 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.

  • mechoman444@lemmy.world
    18·
    6 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.

    • AFK BRB Chocolate@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      6 months ago

      Just like with Reddit, there are a lot of people who use the downvote button if they just disagree, which isn’t really the intent. So you’re likely to get downvotes for any unpopular subjective opinion.

      • mechoman444@lemmy.world
        3·
        6 months ago

        Yeah I generally agree with that.

        I find that people really put a lot of stock into how much they like or dislike something subjectively rather than looking at it from an objective perspective.

      • XTL@sopuli.xyz
        2·
        6 months ago

        But if a post gets tons of downvotes, it’s not necessarily or even often because people don’t like the opinion. It’s usually because it was pure opinion stated as a fact or in hostile language or in unreadable writing or the user was otherwise behaving like an asshole.

  • Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zip
    17·
    6 months ago

    I see more posts about “have you seen this or that in lemmy recently” or “lemmy is worse than reddit” posts more often than these supposed trolls. Sure they exist but all of the time they are down voted or deleted.

    There is also someone saying in the comments that criticizing biden is a foreign conspiracy. Some of these Americans just look like a reflection of the right but call themselves left. I’m not American so I face no real threat(as far as I’m aware) regardless of who gets elected there. So I just think you can criticize “both sides” people without making your leader look immortal

        • Dasus@lemmy.world
          19·
          6 months ago

          What are you on about? We live in a global society, of which the US is a pretty influential part and also happen to have a very significant military.

          If Trump wins and does everything he’s been going on about, it’ll definitely influence the rest of the world, however indirectly. And it will directly influence a lot.

          Yes, it will affect Americans the most, but to pretend that it won’t affect the rest of the world is naive.

          • Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zip
            10·
            6 months ago

            I think you got lost in the same argument lemmy users get lost in. Go read my first comment again and see how I say I’m not American just to let others know I’m not very biased. I also mention as far as I know along with direct impact.

            My whole point was about being able to criticize biden but guess what we are back to Trump bad discussion which no one is disagreeing with. There’s a lot bigger threats while I live than trump or biden. It’s the reality my friend. That’s not to say that these elections don’t matter. Right wing extremism is growing around the world and it’s important for us to call it out. This however doesn’t need to stop people from criticizing actions of left.

            And I specifically asked about your hypothesis of US pulling out of NATO. As you haven’t provided any sources, I would assume it’s fear mongering. Some of you American left are mirror identical to the right.

      • Eyck_of_denesle@lemmy.zip
        2·
        6 months ago

        I’m on default and there’s always posts like this every week. Last week it was about the bear and how supposedly lemmy is more mysogynist than reddit. Before it was about how lemmy is too one sided and all the comments agreeing are zionists ranting that their comments get downvoted so apparently lemmy is filled with reddits ban list.

        I don’t have any problem with this but I left reddit cause I was getting more posts about rants about some other bad posts than the bad post’s themselves. Example stremio addons subreddit. That shit was filled with entitled miserable people angry that free software was being used by new people. I never saw that much toxicity even on any arch linux forums.

        There are some instances like hexbear, lemmy.ml, lemmygrad that I see people using words left may not like. But it’s definitely not as bad as it’s portrayed. Blocking these can help.

  • Socsa@sh.itjust.works
    15·
    6 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
      2·
      6 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?

  • yyyesss?@lemmy.world
    12·
    6 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.