Chinese propaganda is rampant on the fediverse
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Lemmy.ml is?!? That's who I signed up for though. I like the privacy stuff. So which instance is politically neutral but technically aligned, pirate party, self hosting etc?
If you're concerned about privacy, you should probably know that a lot in the fediverse is very open by design so that other instances can communicate effectively.
That's why everyone can see what you upvote/downvote, even if Lemmy itself doesn't show this to you in its UI.
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How do you know? I'm finding out because I can't post or comment about certain things 🤫
ML stands for Marxist-Leninist, that's more or less the Tell. They're not merely socialist, but authoritarian. Like MAGA, they treat dissent as hostile.
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Entire subs and communities, and servers are Chinese state actors. I wish we could daylight this bullshit, a single serving page with a method for rankings subs, servers with biases?
Show your evidence
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Register on a different instance and filter everything ml. It's a life changer with the Fediverse.
Or better yet, to back to Reddit
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I've gotten banned and censored from communities there for saying that Ukraine should fight back against Russia.
Unfortunately for you, the modlog is public
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This was true until I realized they're all over. Anything even remotely pertaining to China is flooded with the Chinese state actors reply guys and bots. In effect, using the protocols strength against itself. Is the protocol itself even able to be banned in China? Are they seriously active on here just to push their bullshit China marketing even harder. They've gone all out the last five years.
Even Chinese SA's have access to VPN's, proxies, etc. It's not like they would tie their own hands behind their backs to spread the good word, ya know?
Russia only needed a small number of inroads to influence the 2016 US election, and now? Pff, they hardly need to do anything, we're completely self-sufficient in propagandizing ourselves. It's entirely possible China's already created their own army of Overseas Useful Idiots.
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The lemmy developers are tankies and three big lemmy servers are entirely controlled by them, namely hexbear, lemmigrad and Lemmy.ml. You will find plenty of China, North Korea and for some kind of reason Russian propaganda on them.
Bullshit, hexbear and lemmigrad aren't remotely controlled by the Lemmy devs. Why do you people just lie like this?
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Diggaah, if you claim something the proof of burden is on your side!
Funny. I don’t know all of this users, but I know pugjesus and haven’t seen one pro-genocide post from him ever, but a shit ton educational history memes….
You didn't offer a shred of proof for your own claims, you hypocrite.
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It's widely-know. Just have to look at the post history of the creators. Particularly Desalines or whatever.
So no, you have zero evidence
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So no, you have zero evidence
I cited the evidence in the comment you just replied to. Just because you can't be bothered to read it doesn't mean it's not there.
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I cited the evidence in the comment you just replied to. Just because you can't be bothered to read it doesn't mean it's not there.
Lol, you literally didn't though. Why lie so obviously?
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Treat it like a troll post. Downvote and move on, if the name becomes familiar block them.
This goes for all propaganda not just the stuff you are against.
I still don't understand the point of downvoting here since it doesn't seem to affect visibility. You'll have the dumbest take on something sitting there at -36 and I still have to look at it.
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🫡 A natural consequence of leftist ideology.
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Ironically, the most active user on the current #2 China community, !china@sopuli.xyz, is an absolutely indefatigable anti-Chinese propagandist.
This person, @Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.org posts multiple times per day, usually quite sensible and well-sourced articles, but always on the same downer subjects (repression, Uighurs, corruption and so on) and never anything that paints China (let alone its government) in the slightest positive light. Since nobody else in this community can match their posting stamina, the end result is a community that, to newcomers, looks like one rando's "I hate China" blog. Hardly surprising that it's not a very successful community.
I've asked this user to consider dropping the tempo a bit, and been met with defensiveness. I complained in private to the mod, who is completely AWOL, and they didn't care. Oh well.
It's not even 1 account. It's a collection of sockpuppets. I started noticing them when they started posting in !Canada@lemmy.ca but apparently the streak goes quite further back. The latest ones are Sepia and tardigrade.
I've also suggested changing tactic a bit from being a complete bad-faith asshole to good-faith commenters to at least being nice. Nada.
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On the topic, I've been seeing plenty of war-hawk think-tank accounts who only post propaganda, like:
- Scotty@scribe.disroot.org
- Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.org
- randomname@scribe.disroot.org
- 0x815@feddit.org (and all their alt-accounts, including 0x815@feddit.de and thelucky8@beehaw.org )
They are clearly not involved in our communities.
Pretty sure these are all the same person. If you ever engage, you can recognize the same asshole attitude. I've seen multiple of them up/down vote comments where no one else has. Don't think they do that anymore cause it's too obvious.
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Unfortunately for you, the modlog is public
Yeah so check it.
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It's not even 1 account. It's a collection of sockpuppets. I started noticing them when they started posting in !Canada@lemmy.ca but apparently the streak goes quite further back. The latest ones are Sepia and tardigrade.
I've also suggested changing tactic a bit from being a complete bad-faith asshole to good-faith commenters to at least being nice. Nada.
Out of interest, how do you know it's sockpuppets?
To be honest I'm genuinely a bit interested in who this might be. I'm imagining a disgruntled Hong Kong exile with too much time on their hands. Also seems likely to be Chinese in that they have a top-down concept of information, not seeing that obvious and relentless propaganda will just backfire with a sophisticated and relatively informed audience. Perhaps I'm being slightly optimistic, but I can't see how they've convinced anyone here that "China bad" who didn't already think that.
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Yeah so check it.
You were temp banned, usually those are for a few days for the person to cool down. The removed comment was part of a chain advocating for the collective punishment of russian civilians
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There are a lot of people supportive of the PRC, both because the US Empire is declining and the PRC is positioned as an alternative to the US Empire's naked terrorism, and because Lemmy has a lot of communists. Lemmy has a lot of communists because the lead developers are communists, FOSS attracts communists, and because as Reddit bans communist communities they are often suggested to come here.
There's absolutely no credible evidence of CPC interference in Lemmy, this is a normal thing to happen to a FOSS alternative to Reddit.
This seems right. Personally I'm not sure I could roll my eyes harder at the fact that so many people in 2026 are so ignorant as to be prepared to call themselves "communists" - after all the famines, the purges, the 40 years in which much of Europe was struggling to escape (literally) from communism... And then I saw that you, too, call yourself a communist! So I guess I'll stop there.
Except to recommend you the Ones and Tooze podcast, in which the brilliant host (an ex-communist) recently did a whole series, in great and illuminating detail, on the various communist thinkers. Which I listened to... dutifully.
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Out of interest, how do you know it's sockpuppets?
To be honest I'm genuinely a bit interested in who this might be. I'm imagining a disgruntled Hong Kong exile with too much time on their hands. Also seems likely to be Chinese in that they have a top-down concept of information, not seeing that obvious and relentless propaganda will just backfire with a sophisticated and relatively informed audience. Perhaps I'm being slightly optimistic, but I can't see how they've convinced anyone here that "China bad" who didn't already think that.
What I've noticed:
- The posts themselves follow almost identical structure. Large quotes with poster emphasis.
- The posting topics is almost identical.
- The reliability of sources is hit-or-miss on all posts. Some are from legit sources, some are from really questionable ones. The questionable ones are common between accounts.
- The communities where they're all active are the same. Lately there's a bit more separation where some accounts frequent some communities more than others. E.g. some time ago we used to get Hotznplotzn, randomname and Scotty in !Canada. Now we mostly get Scotty.
- When you engage in conversation the lang expression, attitude and arguments are identical. This when I really noticed the pattern.
- I've had multiple accounts from this set group up/down vote their/mine comments, deep into a discussion that didn't attract other up/down votes.
- I've had a discussion that reached a dead end with one account, only for another to show up and restart it from a different angle attempting to reach a different conclusion. E.g. first discuss an economic side of some China-related issue, reach a dead end, restart with human rights abuses side on the same topic. That's while having the group up/down voting action going on.
- Two of the accounts were created on the same date, on two different instances, a few minutes away from each other. This was the smoking gun for me that this is the same person.
Some of these aren't damning on their own, but put altogether make me believe it's one person. Also they never deny that when pressed. The conversation just stops and they disappear for a day or two until the next post.
a disgruntled Hong Kong exile with too much time on their hands
Quite possibly. I think they may live in Germany or be German because I've seen some activity in German. Who knows. I doubt they're a paid actor because there's enough money in the official media machine pushing this line so I think you're right. Someone who really hates China/CCP/CPC, perhaps for a good reason of their own, with a lot of free time. It really sucks because there are really interesting discussions that can be had on any of these topics. There's another guy around here whose family emigrated from China because they weren't having a great time with the 1-child policy among other things. He's in the US and can have rational and interesting discussion about this stuff without bursting in flames.
E: Here's a recent unhinged discussion with Scotty.
![Cowbee [he/they]](https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/c18ce632-5fb5-4888-8226-3dc55a07acc4.jpeg "Cowbee [he/they]"){kind=avatar}