DisasterTransport

• beer
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I hate it when this happens!

Hahahahahaha FUCK YOU ORACLE!

sorry, needed to get that out of my system

I don't do deep packet inspection on Lemmy traffic, nor am I a behavioral analyst. I simply think it stands to reason that if there are organizations who are capable of running influence campaigns that Lemmy would be a natural target. Any online forum is potentially at risk of targeted disinformation campaigns. I don't apply this logic on an individual basis, because witch hunts are just as counterproductive as being overly credulous. But I have a pretty simple razor that if someone is trying to incite me to violence, meet offline, or divulge personally identifying information I should block them whether or not they're some kind of operative.

I think there's a motive. If I were the FBI I wouldn't be too concerned about actual violent outcomes, so long as they were lone wolf attacks or the product of tiny cells of radicals. It's like a controlled burn in a forest. You get the fire out of the way before it reaches a critical mass. "Voting doesn't work, burn down a government building" is a real hard sell to someone with a stable job, but the people it does sell to might one day be the types of people to organize and lead a meaningful opposition. So you flush them out early and fast. Some people might die, but Director Patel told me to catch leftists, not to prevent violence. As an added bonus, each violent act turns liberals more and more against what they perceive as an inherently violent ideology. "These are terrible times, and maybe if it prevents another bombing mass surveillance is acceptable even if I don't like it," they might think. You don't have to go back too far to see that mindset in action. In the aftermath of 9/11 Americans saw an unprecedented erosion of their civil liberties. Terror is good for an autocratic regime.

That being said, I will grant that there's no evidence of this. But then again there wasn't evidence of COINTELPRO until the FBI field office in Media PA got broken into by a group of concerned citizens. Not that I'm condoning B&E. I also don't think it would be productive to point fingers even I'd there were evidence the FBI was doing COINTELPRO 2. "So and so is a fed" is actually one of the tactics used in COINTELPRO to sow discord in infiltrated groups. Just, maybe we should keep in mind that we're bound to see some discourse here that is trying to get us to play a useful idiot.

The difference between me and a conspiracy theorist is that I can point at past evidence. COINTELPRO is a historical fact, and part of that program involved infiltrating dissident groups and acting as agents provocateur. The Church committee found that the FBI engaged in "covert action designed to disrupt and discredit the activities of groups and individuals deemed a threat to the social order." The committee also found that the tactics employed by the FBI "would be intolerable in a democratic society even if all of the targets had been involved in violent activity."

I am not saying the FBI is definitely here now. What I am saying is it would be naïve to assume that they would not be willing to run an influence operation on public forums where people skeptical of the US government gather, and it would be foolish to assume that nobody else is carrying out similar operations for their own respective interests, state-level or otherwise.

Mastodon isn't American either and they still seized a Koliktiva server. Jurisdiction nothing. They can't arrest you, that doesn't mean they don't have an interest in influencing you. And they're one group of many who has an interest in running influence operations. Fuck dude, it could be Russia, it could be Mossad, it could be GISS. The barrier to entry is so low these days.

Lemmy is big enough to be a psyop target and has been for a while. This place is rife with feds and bots of every persuasion and they will try to influence you from every angle. As Lemmy grows it will only get worse. It's easy to brush off pushback for criticizing nation states but also be aware that the FBI in particular has a history of trying to push people towards violent radicalism and in person meetups. Do not trust anyone online. Especially if they agree with you politically.

Okay, that makes a lot more sense. Once you bring power into the mix people get touchy lol. Thank you for engaging, my understanding is embiggened on this blessed day.

It is a complete answer, but it also makes a lot of people feel like they don't know something they should. Repeatedly feeling that way is why they start to get defensive. In my experience. Its the repeated asking of questions they don't have "good" answers for. And so I try really hard when people share things with me to pay extra attention to how they are reacting to my questions.

The same structure holds true when I'm asking questions about peoples beliefs or any other topic. People really hate feeling caught out in a conversation. My girlfriend almost broke up with me towards the beginning of our relationship for being "too Socratic." And so now I try to be more conscious about what I ask, and when, where, why, and how I ask them. So far it's been working pretty well.

Anyway your experiences are your own, my point here was and still is that people don't react this way because they are stupid or incapable of self reflection but because sometimes we really do come off justly or unjustly as interrogators, and it's on us to learn to identify when that's happening and back off.

It is very real. I have experienced it myself. And when it happens I try to recognize that I am not a bad person, and neither are they. Sometimes you trip somebody else's insecurities. And it's on them when they let those insecurities get the best of them, and it's on me when i don't notice they're getting uncomfortable because they've said "idk man I just started this hobby" three times and instead of taking the hint and high fiving them for their kickass walking artillery robot miniature I ask what brand of paint they used and why. Spoiler: they used it because the dude at the store recommended it and they don't know anything about paint. Sometimes it is unreasonable to expect someone to be an expert, and repeatedly asking questions beyond the scope of their expertise is incredibly rude because it embarrasses them. That doesn't make anyone stupid or evil. It just makes us human.

My objection here is that the linked tweet avoids any accountability. "I'm just curious and therefore virtuous, and they are triggered because they lack self reflection" is beyond insufferable, it is corrosive. When you think like that it feels like self acceptance, but it's also complacency. Conversation is hard, especially for autistic people, but that doesn't give us license to act like jerks and refuse to learn from the experience.

How long until he reaches ironic, post-ironic, post-post-ironic, and finally terminal brainrot?