this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2025
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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.


Community rules

Same as instance rules, plus:

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

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[–] antihumanitarian@lemmy.world 1 points 4 minutes ago

Ironic that a forum about disinfo has some thinking the gold bars, thrown off the Titanic, here are literal.

[–] regrub@lemmy.world 103 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

Credibility for .gov sources is only gonna get worse, it seems.

[–] GorGor@startrek.website 30 points 15 hours ago

That's the point.

[–] HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com 22 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

oh man and .gov was the sites I generally could trust. shit

[–] regrub@lemmy.world 29 points 16 hours ago

You can trust* .gov sites archived through archive.org if they predate the current administration.

*for most environmental/health related information, at least

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[–] qprimed@lemmy.ml 61 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

jfc, this reads like super low quality seo clickfarm trash. I am horrified that this is anywhere near a .gov site.

[–] pdxfed@lemmy.world 16 points 16 hours ago

2 weeks until it's .Fox instead of .gov

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[–] ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world 41 points 16 hours ago (11 children)

A gold bar weighs 400 troy ounces.

Right now gold is at $2,948.85 per troy ounce.

That's about 1,695 and a half gold bars.

A gold bar weighs 27.4286 lbs, so that is 46,507lbs of gold.

The standard armored car can carry up to 3,000 lbs, so it would take at least 16 armored cars to move that many bars.

I guess my point is that is a fuck load of gold. Where the hell do they think Biden was hiding it? In his guest bathroom?

[–] RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works 1 points 7 hours ago (3 children)

That's all an armored car can take? My pneumatic pallet jack can hold 5500 lbs.

[–] ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world 5 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Your pneumatic pallet jack doesn't hit potholes while going 60 mph.

[–] RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works 1 points 35 minutes ago* (last edited 35 minutes ago)

True but I figure they could carry more weight than 3000lbs. My car can tow that.

[–] booly@sh.itjust.works 5 points 5 hours ago

Your pallet jack can't safely carry that cargo, plus people, at highway speeds, 3-5 feet off the ground. I also assume your pallet jack isn't armored, so you've got to subtract the weight of the armor to get the surplus capacity actually useful for cargo.

The typical big armored bank truck you see transporting cash is rated at 25,000 lbs, but already weighs something like 13,000 lbs empty. The smaller vans, like what I assume the parent commenter is talking about, probably has to devote a larger percentage of its gross vehicle weight to the actual vehicle and armor.

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (2 children)

I find it extremely unlikely that your pneumatic pallet jack is allowed to hold more than 5,499 lbs.

It's a "max weight" not a "suggested weight".

But yes, a regular armored van can carry around max 3k and a super-heavy can carry max 9k.

[–] warbond@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

In my experience "max" safe working loads on electric and hydraulic pallet jacks are tested to 150% capacity to make sure it'll perform as advertised. Perhaps pneumatic jacks are tested to different standards, but that doesn't sound right to me.

What makes you say it's unlikely?

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 2 points 6 hours ago

Overloading equipment will inevitably lead to early failure, even if not right away. It's the same logic as skipping load bearings in a building because the beams are rated to a lower value than their average strength.

[–] RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works -1 points 7 hours ago

Do you need me to explain what the word "can" means? It seems like we are both fluent in English.

[–] jonne@infosec.pub 5 points 11 hours ago

And while the title mentions gold, the body of the article seems to indicate it's just money in a bank account? I don't see the gold thing repeated again.

[–] TachyonTele@lemm.ee 17 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Trump and Elon found a place for it all, don't worry.

[–] DarkDarkHouse@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 7 hours ago

Trump and Elon want to "check" Fort Knox to "see if" the gold "is there", but "oh no" it's "all gone".

Yuuuuge bathrooms at Mar-a-Lago

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[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 23 points 16 hours ago (4 children)

Anyone have a link to the real story this is based on? This page is practically unintelligible. Are the gold bars metaphorical? What the fuck are they talking about?

[–] RoidingOldMan@lemmy.world 28 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (3 children)

Anyone have a link to the real story this is based on? This page is practically unintelligible. Are the gold bars metaphorical? What the fuck are they talking about?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/02/20/fort-knox-gold-donald-trump-elon-musk/79314407007/

They're talking about the gold at Fort Knox.

"We're going to go to Fort Knox, the fabled Fort Knox, to make sure the gold is there. If the gold isn't there, we're going to be very upset," Trump said, per a C-SPAN recording.

Now today's update is that "gold is missing" (I use quotes because it's so obviously untrue). And according to Trump it's the Democrats that took it. Always the democrats. Black female ones too.

As if politicians need to steal gold bars. They receive that as a gift from Egypt as a bribe maybe, but they don't steal from Fort Knox. Makes zero sense. They can just trade stocks with insider info like everyone in congress.

[–] kn0wmad1c@programming.dev 17 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

If gold really is missing, the first two places I'd check are Trump's pockets and the Mar-a-Lago bathrooms next to the classified documents.

[–] Monument@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 7 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago)

He stole the gold during his first term and Ivana’s coffin doesn’t contain her.

[–] jonne@infosec.pub 2 points 11 hours ago

He hid the gold by melting it and turning it into commodes.

[–] adarza@lemmy.ca 28 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

they're gonna rob fort knox.

sadly, i did not have that on this month's bingo card. (there wasn't room for it!)

[–] TachyonTele@lemm.ee 17 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

According to the projection, they've already robbed it of $2 billion.

[–] Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 8 points 16 hours ago

And not even in a cool way with lasers and henchmen in silver jumpsuits.

What a stupid world.

[–] WHARRGARBL@lemmy.world 17 points 16 hours ago

Let’s not forget that all their accusations are confessions.

[–] takeheart@lemmy.world 15 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

The Washington Examiner:

In the Wednesday video, Zeldin accused the Biden administration of rushing out these funds and said they should remain under the control of the government.

He referred to the funds several times as “gold bars,” referencing a December 2024 video put out by the conservative group Project Veritas in which a former EPA employee told an undercover member of the group that the administration was attempting to distribute as much of the promised funds as possible before President Joe Biden left office.

So it's just someone using a metaphor. And shoddy journalism. Wrapping gold bars in quotes does exculpate anyone from shoddy journalism.

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 8 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

So literally just normal government operations that they are trying to spin into some kind of scandal, same as all the other bullshit coming out each day.

[–] GorGor@startrek.website 6 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

One could make the argument that they didn't do their due diligence and rushed out funds without proper oversight. Honestly it doesn't sound great rushing out that amount of money (IF true), but with the backdrop of what was coming, it is obvious WHY they rushed.

Really, the accusation of corruption is comical given this administration's actions.

[–] LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 4 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Simply moving something along faster isn’t malfeasance though, it’s efficiency. Unless there was some issue with what they did, but so far no one has pointed to anything that I can find. They just executed the grant programs as directed by congress.

[–] Zoomboingding@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

Yup. We often have practices that go above and beyond the requirements. Doing the bare minimum isn't misappropriation, it's following the rules.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 9 points 16 hours ago

There's a link early on to a separate, earlier page on epa.gov, which is also insane, which makes it clear that the "gold bars" are metaphorical. Someone allegedly said something about "throwing gold bars off the Titanic," some sort of nugget of theoretical truth I guess being that a lot of people were trying to get as much money out the door as possible before Trump came in and destroyed everything, and then Newsmax and Breitbart seized on the opportunity to deliberately misunderstand the metaphor as something literal, and also make up a whole bunch of total bullshit out of the whole cloth.

I didn't look too deep into it because it's clearly all gibberish. What I just typed is as far as I went. But there are links on the page, if you have some mental fortitude and want to go adventuring. I honestly don't think it's worth much time to look into.

[–] frustrated_phagocytosis@fedia.io 8 points 16 hours ago

Looks like a grant based program to electrify housing etc. was included in the inflation reduction act, and a fund to distribute funds to grant recipients was created. I'm guessing the total funding was $20 billion, to be distributed over several years. One of the manager/admins previously worked at a group that was one of those receiving the initial set of grant funds. Claims conflict of interest without citing evidence. Another group appears to involve Stacy Abrams, and looks to have been created from other groups to carry out the kind of work the fund was designed to address. Thus, it's new and has only 1 year of tax reporting available with little revenue.

What I'm getting out of this is that non-profit volunteers or admins who go into the federal government aren't allowed to work in their area of expertise, even with sufficient conflict of interest reporting, and that private citizens who support their preferred candidate for president aren't allowed to work with groups that recieve any federal grants, ever.

[–] danc4498@lemmy.world 21 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Meanwhile we need to ask what Trump is doing with $2 billion worth of gold bars.

[–] emmanuel_car@fedia.io 1 points 9 hours ago

My guess is a toilet that only needs to flush once to get rid of those pesky classified documents.

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 13 points 15 hours ago

It's obviously fabricated because everyone knows Joe Biden deals in copper

[–] adarza@lemmy.ca 16 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

already trying to smear a potential (she has not declared her intent to run yet) democrat candidate for georgia's open governor's race (kemp is term-limited).

[–] jonne@infosec.pub 2 points 10 hours ago

Yep, you're never going to hear the end of 'Gold Bars' or whatever from conservative media, to the point that it becomes shorthand and they just have to repeat those 2 words to get the Pavlov reaction from the base who won't even know the actual story it's based on.

It's like the Seth Rich thing they did to Hillary.

[–] HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com 9 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

this is nuts. how can I trust any government communication with his people at the helm.

[–] adarza@lemmy.ca 6 points 15 hours ago

it's "opposite day". today, tomorrow, and every day until this nightmare ends. pretty much everything that spews out of the anuses of this administration is a lie.

[–] TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world 9 points 16 hours ago
[–] RoidingOldMan@lemmy.world 9 points 17 hours ago

Wow. It's a list of his enemies and saying they stole gold bars.

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