politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
You'll get the hang of detecting paid trolls (or peoplec onvinced by them), there are lots of signs like Never back down, change the narrative (die hard people do not often do that), has lots of info that is somewhere in betweed what you are discussing and line USAbad/Russia_china-not-bad, Always lean onto one side, even if it's subtle... sometimes not.
And dude are they 99% pro dictators/trump/anti-demicracy/... you get the idea.
For example, people calling out Biden for the Israeli war crimes, but conveniently forgetting Trump. And also because it was a pro Trump thing, now when Biden stepped down for reelection (shouldn't change anything, right? A warcrime or genocide is still there) they all vanished...
It's equally possible you're just assuming everyone who doesn't share your opinion is a paid troll. I got called a Russian troll multiple times for saying Biden had no business being in this election and that we could do better. Imo it's far more likely you're talking to a child than a "paid troll" if their opinions don't make sense and they dig their heels in. Assuming everything is some grand conspiracy instead of accepting that some people have different beliefs and opinions, or might just be that stupid, simply isn't healthy. Trolls and such exist, sure, but I don't think they are anywhere near as common as you're implying.
Sure, but it's also quite obvious when you stumble upon a real one. And I mean for example thinking 100.000 recent deaths is okay because NATO scary (for example) just boils down to either deluded or paid. IMO.
No, there's more to it. All the troll farms that get busted are disinformation machines, and most of them are sponsored by Russia.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/ukraine-takes-down-massive-bot-farm-seizes-150-000-sim-cards/
https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/07/09/feds-disrupt-bot-farm-that-spread-social-media-lies-for-putin/74343215007/
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/14/europe/russia-yevgeny-prigozhin-internet-research-agency-intl/index.html
There's also Cambridge Analytica. And there was the Mueller report.
It isn't a feeling, it's facts. And I have said it way before there was evidence. OP is right, it's easy to detect them. I use the tag feature to keep track. A lot of my tags vanished a couple weeks ago, so I assume there was a sweep or bills haven't been paid.. Some I had to readjust because my first impression was wrong, and they were indeed organic users that argued like bots.
I had been hunting bots on reddit for years, you get a sense for it, and also where they're from and what their intentions are.
They're plentiful but currently at a low, at least on Lemmy and Youtube.
Edit: For a while there appears to be also bots from everything left of Putin and Trump now, but they seem to be informative and fighting against the disinformation of the farms that have wrecked havock since 2015.
Edit 2: I agree with you though, there's a lot of real people that believe and repeat the lies they've learned from the bots
Maybe they "vanished" because they got what they wanted: an anti-genocide candidate. There's not much point in saying that Trump is a fascist here because we all agree on it.
It was just an example. Among many.
Kamala Harris is still abetting a genocide in Gaza. Walk away /s