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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BaldProphet@piefed.social

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50501 on Reddit temporarily shut down over astroturfing (?); struggling on Facebook (piefed.social)

submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 2 days 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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[–] PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat 7 points 4 days ago

I've seen several people on Lemmy say that they're scared to attend this upcoming protest, it seems like a "false flag" and none of their friends who are plugged into protest movements have "heard of" the organizers and it might be a fake protest which isn't safe. They're going to sit this one out for their safety.

I don't think these people are literal bots necessarily, but I also don't think they are telling the truth about any of that. Why someone might want to spread that message is left as an exercise for the reader.