this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2025
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50501

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50 States, 50 Protests, 1 Movement. https://fiftyfifty.one/ | #fiftyfiftyone
This is a community related to the 50501 movement. Find the main communities at https://50501.chat/.

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50501 on Reddit temporarily shut down over astroturfing (?); struggling on Facebook (piefed.social)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by cabbage@piefed.social to c/50501@piefed.social
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It seems the 50501 movement is facing some predictable problems on commercial platforms.

On Reddit, the 50501 subreddit has temporarily shut down over abuse. This comes after reports from users that the community is "obviously being astroturfed". No word as to when it will be back online.

It seems things are not much better over at Facebook, where there is apparently frequent calls to stop protesting this and that, with a Reddit user commenting that the group "feels like it's imploding".

This is hardly surprising given how commercial social media has repeatedly shown itself to be easily manipulated, but it's still fascinating that it's bad enough to shut down the whole Reddit community. Although we are certainly in a better place over here we are not immune: Make sure to be vigilant and to report suspicious activity.

If anyone is on Facebook, maybe now is a good time to give people there a few pointers towards Lemmy/PieFed.

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[–] BaldProphet@piefed.social 20 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Worth noting that we're getting astroturfing here, as well. Astroturfing is difficult to moderate because individual instances of it can be very subtle, but in large quantities it can be overwhelming.

[–] BeNotAfraid@lemmy.world 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Call every apologist, sanewasher and denialist out. Publicly, so other people can see how their statements are horseshit.

[–] Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 days ago

The problem I know I'm guilty of, is not checking usernames frequently, on reddit it felt pointless because of the sheer number of users. I've gotten better about paying attention though and tagging users I often see spouting bullshit lol