this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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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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"Let's see, baseball, rode a bike - that could be me, except for the part where I go out and do something incredibly stupid. All those things - Boy Scout, outdoorsman, right? You know who that is? A lot of people. Dennis Rader, the BTK killer, was all those things. Dennis Rader, remember him? He's the beat, bind, torture and kill guy. He liked to hunt. He was a family man. Everybody liked him. His mother liked him. All that stuff. Dennis Rader and Alex -- I'm sorry, but I can't just pretend because you're dead, you're like the superior person."

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[–] dantel@programming.dev 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Sorry, you are not making any sense to my little European brain.

You can see how the current US government is doing whatever the fuck they want, right? You can see that for Trump the constitution means absolutely nothing except when it benefits him or his narrative, right? How the POTUS controlling the SCOTUS leads to a situation where there are no consequences for them?

You can see that your interpretation of free speech is being abused constantly and benefits those who have money and spread misinformation and hate, right?

I have no idea what western, civilized countries you are talking about where you apparently are not allowed to protest - you can't possibly think this is a worse situation than what you have in the US.

And mind you there are tons of pro Palestine protests in countries I have on my radar. The only thing that's not allowed is glorifying the attack of the Hamas on Jewish people.

But yes, I am not saying there is no way to abuse this. Given a government which is shitty enough and courts which are not independent, obviously it can be abused.

But in no shape or form is it worse than the free speech interpretation in the US, where defamation, hate and lies are literally constantly spread by those with enough power and reach.

This 100% enabled Trump and the disgrace you call 'political debate' over there - which is nothing but political mudslinging non stop.

So yes, I think the small chance of hate speech exceptions being abused is absolutely worth the upsides.