Ask Lemmy

Yes, this is why I had to qualify China with “probably”

Because you’re projecting western imperialism on China and guessing futures to make it sound imperialist.

No, because while China has denied or threatened Taiwan's sovereignty many, many, many times over the last 50 years, they have yet to actually make a militant move against them. But if China wants to spend the last 50 years talking shit about it, they don't get as much grace for not actually doing it. They clearly want to, although they get some credit for having restrained themselves so far. That's If China learns to rival their chip production, though, I dunno how much longer that will last.

This whataboutism

That wasn’t “whataboutism”, that was justification of Chinese censorship of western media with hindsight. I was simply arguing that, with hindsight, banning western media and social media was the correct choice, and I can’t fathom why any self-proclaimed leftie would disagree with that seeing the rise of fascism in the “free press” western world.

You might be right if you'd stopped talking on that topic there. But instead, you continued on into direct whataboutism when you had to point out all the western censorship. Again, that's only really relevant on the assumption that my disliking of Russian and Chinese censorship must mean that I approve of western censorship when that is not the case.

Oh no, the most prolific liars of all the world’s industry of paid liars

Hahahaha cope. US propaganda is much more pervasive and prevalent than Russian propaganda, much to the dismay of Russia.

Eeehhhh, that's not really an appropriate comparison. You're comparing state media with a known history of telling VERY blatant lies that always DIRECTLY favor the state that funds them, to the entire propaganda output of the US, both intentional and that spread by misinformed believers. Of course an entire nation and its culture produces more propaganda than a few specific outlets.

That said, let's assume you're right, and that while they are incredibly prolific liars, they are not the most prolific liars. Congrats, they're not the most prolific, but they're still competing for first place. And since you're so in favor of censoring foreign propaganda, shouldn't that be acceptable content to censor? I'm not sure I'm a huge fan of any censorship at all and would prefer an adequately educated populace, but you sure seemed to approve of the idea.

Notice how you avoided my question about your media consumption: do you consume media from China, Russia or Iran? Or are you, de-facto, living in a similar information bubble to people in a nation with stronger censorship?

I didn't really want because this sort of questioning almost always turns into an attempt to ferret out some way to invalidate me rather than the argument I make. But since you insist, fine.

Do I routinely seek out explicitly Chinese, Russian, or Iranian media? No. Do I ensure I get information and viewpoints from sources all of the world, including from regions critical of western states and regimes? Yes. Am I highly critical of western news, especially where it relates to the interests of the western oligarchs? Oh god yes.

Maybe, just maybe, the US and EU don’t censor not because “they’re free nations”, but because by means of global dominance over the previous century, they didn’t need to censor in order to prevent their own citizens from consuming media from designated enemy states. Once people start questioning this and they lose the global narrative hegemony, they’re forced to censor (tiktok, Russian Media, online ID verification soon, etc.).

Hey, thanks for that. Could you maybe elaborate on anything else I already have a firm grasp of? Like maybe you could explain how this relates to my already expressed distaste for western censorship?

The discussion at hand is what tankies support, not what nation states are doing today

Well, yes, tankies don’t work in hypotheticals, we work in facts. You can’t just imagine catastrophes and genocides worse than Gaza and pin those to tankies because you would be making them up.

You're the only one making any sort of comparison to Gaza, which, to be clear, is an atrocity for which a great many people should face punishment as war criminals. The only thing I've said that you could maybe related to Gaza is the part about tankies making excuses for the most brutal of regimes. I spoke in hyperbole. That's my mistake. I should have known a tankie would come along and split hairs over the slightest imprecision in my words so that they could find excuses to treat me like an idiot.

representative of why some people suspect that .ml is heavily astroturfed by Russia and China

Westerners simply can’t conceive that someone working outside western propaganda wouldn’t be a paid actor.

Well, the alternative is that a ton of them are parroting propaganda on accident for the propagandists. Which, to be fair, the west has our own propaganda-parroting idiots. Either way, a lot of very obvious misinformation in direct support of China and Russia comes out of @lemmy.ml accounts. It may not be intentional propaganda, but if it suddenly became Russian and Chinese propaganda, I frankly wouldn't expect much to change in that regard.

If you look at some of the more specific behavior instead of just dismissing the idea, though, you'll start to understand why people suspect it. If you mention Russia or China just about anywhere on Lemmy that hasn't defederated lemmy.ml, especially if you're saying something negative about them, you get @lemmy.ml users popping up out of nowhere to defend China/Russia. Dissent from Russian or Chinese actions is frequently censored, especially when it's well founded since they could just publicly mock you if you were obviously wrong. I kinda get it for China since they're still at least partially communist (they've clearly incorporated some capitalist aspects, I guess to stay competitive, but they also don't seem to have wholly abandoned communism, either), but I just do not fucking get it for Russia. They're no longer communist at all, and they're very clearly harboring some imperialist intentions with their invasion of Ukraine, but Lemmy.ml refuses to accept that Russia maybe shouldn't have done that. The only non-propagandist take on it I can come up with is that they're so full of vitriolic hatred of the west that they're willing to support literally anyone who opposes them, regardless of why, and that's not a very generous take.

I could probably come up with more reasons, but I'll just summarize with this. Not everything that comes out of Lemmy.ml in support of Russia or China is astroturfed content, but I don't think it's reasonably to assume it doesn't happen at all since all major states astroturf all sizeable communities they think they can influence, and a lot of it bears a strong resemblance to what intentional astroturfing would look like.

ANY attempt to criticize Russia or China on .ml is almost always met with an attempt to paint the poster as a critically misinformed fucking idiot

Not true. Reasonable criticism of those countries is well met, what’s not well received is constant bashing based on western-manufactured lies.

Lol. Lmao, even. I'll try to go with the generous take that you yourself try to respond well to reasonable criticism. But to say that for Lemmy.ml as a whole? Absolutely not. Maybe if you stopped ignoring those posts, you'd understand a little better why people suspect the astroturfing.