Fediverse vs Disinformation

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Pointing out, debunking, and spreading awareness about state- and company-sponsored astroturfing on Lemmy and elsewhere. This includes social media manipulation, propaganda, and disinformation campaigns, among others.

Propaganda and disinformation are a big problem on the internet, and the Fediverse is no exception.

What's the difference between misinformation and disinformation? The inadvertent spread of false information is misinformation. Disinformation is the intentional spread of falsehoods.

By equipping yourself with knowledge of current disinformation campaigns by state actors, corporations and their cheerleaders, you will be better able to identify, report and (hopefully) remove content matching known disinformation campaigns.

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Same as instance rules, plus:

No disinformation
Posts must be relevant to the topic of astroturfing, propaganda and/or disinformation

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Did Left Journalists Buy Into Right-Wing Ideology–or Were They Bought? (fair.org)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Matt Taibbi, once a populist writer who criticized big banks (Rolling Stone, 4/5/10; NPR, 11/6/10), has aligned himself with Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, the kind of slimy protector of the ruling economic order Taibbi once despised. Putting his Occupy Wall Street days behind him, Taibbi has fallen into the embrace of the reactionary Young America’s Foundation. He recently shared a bill with other right-wing pundits like Jordan Peterson, Eric Bolling and Lara Logan. Channeling the spirit of Richard Nixon, he frets about “bullying campus Marxism” (Substack, 6/12/20).

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald, who helped expose National Security Agency surveillance (Guardian, 6/11/13; New York Times, 10/23/14), has buddied up with extreme right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, notorious for falsely claiming that the parents of murdered children at Sandy Hook Elementary were crisis actors. That’s in addition to Greenwald’s closeness to Tucker Carlson, the ex–Fox News host who has platformed the white nationalist Great Replacement Theory and Holocaust revisionism.

This is just a taste of what has caused many former friends, colleagues and admirers to ask what happened to make these one-time heroes of left media sink into the online cultural crusade against the trans rights movement (Substack, 6/8/22), social media content moderation (C-SPAN, 3/9/23) and legal accountability for Donald Trump (Twitter, 4/5/23).

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

There has always been a subset of political writers who suddenly veer into supporting authoritarian movements, surprising friends and colleagues. It has more to do with authoritarian family, when they were small children, than anything else. Later as adults, otherwise repulsive movements seem correct for such people, like water to a fish. This can happen even with gifted people who offer valid criticism in other areas.

One can find many examples, in other times and places.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I think you have two claims here:

There are many writers who have suprisingly veered towards authoritarianism.
This is the result of decisions based on a familiarity with authoritarian family structures.

I would argue the latter is much harder to demonstrate.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago

I was first introduced to this by the Swiss writer Alice Miller; her rewrite Drama of the Gifted Child was translated into several languages and is still in print. The revised is much more readable than the original