Against Astroturfing and Social Media Manipulation

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Pointing out, fighting, spreading awareness about State sponsored and Company sponsored astroturfing on Lemmy and elsewhere. This includes social media manipulation, propaganda, and disinformation campaigns, among others.

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Conservative Bots and Bad Actors Are Swarming R/Millenials Right Now (www.reddit.com)

submitted 3 months ago by mecfs@lemmy.world to c/astroturfing@lemmy.world

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/17793163

It's unbelievable how vocal the minority of conservatives on reddit have suddenly gotten in the one sub where a large demographic of important voters often interact. Hmmm. Coincidence?

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[–] yggstyle@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'm aware of this tactic. There are a few well documented systems that work very efficiently at splintering groups. The problem with labeling any conversation that falls into the grey area, like it or not, is actually alienating the vast majority of nonpolarized viewpoints. Either you fall in line with faction a or b or you are the enemy of both. Political parties have used this effectively for decades. You beat the majority by splitting them into subfactions. This thread and topic is a spectacular demonstration of the result.

[–] TheObviousSolution@lemm.ee 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Doesn't matter, if a conversation is likely to influence someone, then that makes it the ideal target for a troll factory. Troll factories also don't just influence one side, they influence any "factions" people might crowd in. The most straightforward solution is eliminating high noise-to-signal ratios, in other words, misinformation and disinformation, and being transparent about it.But that will never be effective against people who just don't care about the noise-to-signal ratio and just care about the information that satisfies their ego. It will never be effective against cults.

There's a reason we need to filter out spam, and there's a reason we need to filter out disinformation and misinformation, it isn't just factions, but yes, it will necessarily devolve conversations into factions because some of them just don't curate the quality of their information.