this post was submitted on 20 May 2024
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Midwest.social is the only whole instance that I suspect of being operated at least partly by shill / propaganda accounts. Maybe that's a weird outlandish accusation to make, but some of the admins are on the "no voting for Biden amirite" train which is unusual. And it's not the holistic "we are out of our gourds on all geopolitical issues" way that Hexbear users are. Midwest.social is like radical left people but a large part of the left radical criticism seems to be directed only at the Democrats. And, the whole "We are Midwest, we are from Ohio, look, it says [Ohio] right after my user name so you know I'm from the Midwest" thing is weird. There are plenty of regional servers but none of them give me the same "yo wtf is up with that" vibe like midwest.social does.
IDK. Maybe that sounds uncompelling, like an extraordinary claim with very sketchy evidence. But I looked around it a bit and it seemed just sort of off in a way that's hard now for me to articulate beyond saying that it seemed weird.
I don't think it's outlandish; that's exactly what I've noticed from every single post coming from the instance or it's users and why it feels like Hexbear. Just constant, obnoxious hot takes about throwing away their vote because "both sides bad" instead of constant obnoxious hot takes about communist countries.
I joined it because "Midwest". To be frank though. Local posts are in the 10s a day. I never see them unless i select local only. I've seen a fair bit more left position represented than would seem representative of the Midwest. Not that it's a bad thing. There is an instance pinned post about the administration standing with the protesters. Which again isn't specifically a bad thing. (I'll look at the discourse inside later) I see screechy hyperbolic posts about "genocide Joe" getting generally down voted. So I can't make any real comments about any strong vibe. But no. Not all of us are coping with severe head trauma like archcomrade.
I think it's safe to say he may just be loud, obnoxious, and perceived as being more representative than they are. Due to how inactive the rest of us seem to be.
There are dozens of us!
I would say my experience on midwest.social aligns with Lemmy's population as a whole - generally left of (US) center, with a few further left folks. Most of the content is either midwest-specific news or LOTR memes, probably makes sense that the only content that gets widely upvoted by Lemmy at large is the left-leaning memes.
I haven't seen anything nearly as extreme as the posts/comments from hexbear/grad/ml, but I wouldn't be surprised if users from those instances have accounts on multiple instances to push propaganda.
Thank you for the kind words.
For what it's worth, that was my expectation when I joined midwest.social. I wasn't trying to find one that aligned with my politics - I was just wanted to be around people local to me - but I came to really enjoy the politics on m.social regardless and because of that i've become connected to more people in my community in minneapolis that share my politics than I ever would have thought to go looking for here.
I obviously don't think I'm coping with anything like head trauma, but I think lemmy.world has become a little obstinate around electoralism and hostile toward dissenting opinions and is deserving of a little agitation. For what it's worth; mostly my conversations on lemmy.world end up being constructive If i let the conversation go for long enough and let the sharp pass by unacknowledged. Some present in this thread notwithstanding.
I don't think I ever would have noticed the selective reporting and exposure in a liberal echo-chamber if it weren't for the diversity of opinions I get with being in m.social. Even with topics and views people generally agree on, posts that sound like critique of established electoral party lines get treated with suspicion in .world, and I would be lying if I didn't take a little satisfaction in the speculation around my covert allegiances.
Dude I absolutely loved when I first visited Lemmy and found a variety of political views including some I thought were dead wrong. It's like the real internet. And yes that actually includes places like slrpnk, as an example oriented around anarchism or "anti-electoralism" -- the difference being that it seems like they like anarchism first, and have for a while, and not voting for Joe Biden is yes a natural outgrowth of that now that this election is happening, but they still spend most of their time talking about the anarchism, not almost all of it on the Joe Biden part. They're not deeply and suspiciously constantly and consistently interested in talking to you about specifically bad things about Joe Biden... they seem like they're being sincere about what they believe, as opposed to just trying to bring up "anti-electoralism" as a convenient excuse to take up time and bandwidth talking bad about voting (and about voting for Joe Biden specifically). Which they then do extremely consistently, and extremely constantly, and recast people who are disagreeing with them as if they were saying something else that isn't what they're saying.
It's like the difference between someone who likes some type of drink I don't like, but it's fine and we can hang out, versus someone at the club who's loudly talking about one particular brand of drink and offering it to people and doesn't seem all that interested in any type of conversation that doesn't revolve around consuming that particular type of drink. Like yeah buddy. I have no ill will for you but I would prefer that you weren't at my table if that's what's up.
I find this more than a little ironic because this is exactly the way i feel about every critique of Biden being met with "but Trump is so much worse." Maybe the feeling is different, because for you it seems to be just a few people at the party but for me it's every table saying the same thing.
I don't even feel that strongly about not voting for Biden, I just feel irate about every bit of bad publicity about him being treated as an opportunity to reinforce the voting pattern of everyone present.
Like, I get it, Trump is a fucking monster, but I personally find aspects of Biden intolerable and at least Biden has a slightly greater chance of being moved by critique from within the base than Trump. If people want to respond to every critique with 20 layers of sarcasm, then I'm going to keep mocking them for how ridiculous I think they sound.
Look at this thing I found on the front page -- it's Biden doing something that's both dumb and evil, and the top comment is cursing at him about it and calling him a dickhead.
Look at this thing where I said "at this rate, all the Palestinians will be dead before he works his way slowly and gradually around to the idea that maybe he’ll have to do more than a sternly worded phone call with Netanyahu in order for the killing to stop." and got a bunch of upvotes.
I'll only speak for myself, but the thing that causes me to get sarcastic is when I write that and then someone replies back to me and says "I know it’s hard to comprehend that there’s people that aren’t Trumpers/Republican that don’t support genocide Joe." It's like he's reading from a script, and just sort of blindly throwing out stuff that's on his script. Honestly, something like that -- where someone seems like they're not even trying to connect what they're saying with reality, even of the messages (let along the outside world) is more what leads me to say "Yeah okay man, you're full of shit."
Look around you, man. Everyone is fine with criticizing Joe Biden. I don't think everyone's really gonna see it exactly the same way that you do or I do or whatever, but trying to claim that you're being browbeaten for criticizing Joe Biden, when you are literally surrounded by people who themselves give criticism to Joe Biden, is going to make people think you are lying. Surely you can see that?
I don't think either one of us is referring to the other (and if you are then I'll be honestly lowkey devastated), I'm always happy to see you in the comments in any thread and have had several constructive conversations with you.
I saw both of those posts. The one thing I'll say about that first one is that it's only 3 hours old, and there are already several comments dismissing it as a 'Biden hate-boner' and a number saying 'yea this is fucked, but I'm voting Biden anyway because Trump is so much worse" apropos of nothing.
edit: as of 11 this morning, 3 of the top 5 most active comments are parroting the same 'vote for biden' sentiment i was referring to, including the top comment
And I'm sure there are honest to God bad faith agitators here, that second link is pretty clearly stirring shit. But I'm not here beating a drum of anti Biden sentiment, I almost exclusively respond to comments that are dismissing real critiques with electoral nonsense about zero-sum FPTP essentialism, or accusations of 'tankie' russian shilltrollmaga operatives, or insistences we delay action on Biden's inadequacies until the election is over. I think for a lot of people here, the election is the only thing that matters and will quickly forget about these issues come December, which is why I think it's unacceptable to let people evade addressing them just because there's a boogeyman lurking around the corner.
Yeah but they're allowed to say that, no? That's way different from saying "how dare you criticize Biden" or anything, and it's still notable to me that the top consensus view is that Biden is being a dickhead about it.
Honestly this, to me, is the most depressing thing about the shills being here -- like I would love to be in an environment where all of the people who don't like Israel killing as they've always done (which is, as far as I can tell, almost all of us) can say "Jesus Christ what a shitbag" when Biden gets up and says something like this, without needing to add in all these little qualifiers that we need now, because the discourse has become so distorted.
Are people evading addressing Gaza? Is there like a shortage of posts about how it's still happening and how Biden is complicit? This just sounds like a strawman to me. Like who here is cheering for the FPTP system (instead of just pointing out that it's a reality for this election and we should act accordingly)? Is there like a shortage of coverage of Gaza or the US's involvement in it under Biden? Most of the stuff I see talking about any of this gets upvoted and treated pretty sensibly, not like "evaded" or anything.
I consider responding to that coverage with the voting qualifiers as essentially evading the question, because it reframes 'something bad Biden is doing to lose support' into 'our personal obligation to vote for him regardless' and is frequently accompanied by 'if you say you won't it'll be your fault he loses' instead of it being his fault for making the choive in the first place. It's the reason anarchists are anti-electoralism; it neuters any actual organizing efforts by misdirecting it towards something that is effectively predetermined
It's the atomization of the issue that moves the focus onto the individuality of voting, instead of a recognition that - in political systems- more force is needed if anything substantial will change.
Are they allowed to say that? Sure... just as much as anyone is allowed to say 'genocide Joe will never get my vote'. And then you'll respond to them, and there we go another time around the block.
And if I'm being 100% transparent, I don't pay much attention to the threads where everyone is in agreement. I don't have more to add if people are already in recognition of the problem; it's when i see the deflection of blame onto protestors that i get worked up enough to jump in. maybe that has warped my perception, or maybe it's warped by the hexbear threads I still have federation with that makes the denial over here so intolerable. I don't know. All I know is that if the vibe I'm reading is true to reality, I don't have much optimism for the outcome in November (no matter who wins)
Agreed
lmao yes I am sure that there are propaganda campaigns targeting a website of chronically online open source nerds, whose active userbase is less than one percent of one percent of Facebook's. yes.
I know; I was surprised about it too. IDK; maybe they just don't like to leave stones unturned or something?
And it's not less than 1% of 1%, it's 3% of 1%. There are DOZENS of us
It's not outlandish to say they are extreme Leftists - their sidebar says it straight up:
They perhaps could have made it even more clear by naming themselves "Midwest.Leftists" instead of Midwest.Social:-).