Is it just me, or does it feel like Lemmy is being hit with a wave of political spam?

voluble@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 409 points –

I notice a large number of ragebait-y political communities being spun up by new users with thousands of posts & ai profile header photos. I notice comment sections are more acrimonious, and foreign disinfo talking points are circulating a lot more prolifically than before the US election started ramping up.

Anyone else notice this? Any idea on how to combat it on this platform? Are there any communities built around creating block lists of obvious troll/ai/disinfo accounts & communities?

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The most powerful country in the world is a large disinformation piñata. You whack it with a few memes and poor decisions come out.

You can’t fault hostile intelligence for giving it a go, and there are a lot of hostile intelligence services.

You can’t fault hostile intelligence

Yeah, I can! 😂

We manipulate other countries similarly, so you can fault them but there's an element of hypocrisy in doing so.

It's only hypocritical if you approve of it's use that way, which I do not. It would be naive or even stupid to expect those countries not to retaliate, but I don't like it when anyone interferes in a diplomatic process.

No. You, flicker, are clearly in charge of all the decisions of the US Government when it comes to foreign interference.

Yeah, the US has been doing this to other countries for decades. The internet just made it more accessible and easier for the rest of the world to participate en masse.

other countries

Somehow I really doubt we exclude ourselves

We just call it the news when we do it to ourselves.

You whack it with a few memes and poor decisions come out.

... ouch. ~sigh

Yeah, pretty much.

It's also by design.

The flaws are designed to be exploited by the rich and powerful.