Well that is part of the defense mechanism. There really are trolls, bots, agitprop etc. So we now anyone who is using an argument that Trump or Putin ever made, must be an enemy (genetic fallacy). And is hence is “fair game” to attack and lie about to protect the narrative. Being called a bot is like the ultimate dehumanization.

I don’t think it’s reddit culture, it’s bigger than that. People are just badly informed and the disinformation is total. Journalists who even slightly deviate are fired all over the world.

Maybe there is so much noise now that people rely more and more on mainstream media that are completely captured now.

The complete post-truth doublethink the liberals are doing these days is shocking. There is no difference between MAGA Trump supporters and the vast majority of liberals these days. I don’t think they are capable to be truthful any more.

It really shows what happens when the mainstream media is owned by oligarchs and use the right propaganda to hone in on the “emotional truths” of a group. For them it’s about justice and and evil and a good. US supporting Israel commit genocide is evil. US supporting Ukraine become demcoratic is good. Russia attacking because of NATO expansion is evil.

So everything that doesn’t fit with this narrative, that they are the good guys, is dismissed or rationalized. Easy when it just so happens if the arguments are made by their evil enemies. Historical facts simply don’t matter.

Where does that idea even come from?

Ironically it’s the same logic Israel uses against the Palestinians. They want to destroy us and can’t be reasoned with, so it has to be total war.

I don’t get how people honestly think Trump is Putin’s bitch. Trump is a malignant narcissist and impossible to be “handled”. He’ll throw anyone and everyone under the buss and had no problem escalating with Russia. The thing is that Trump like his base simply don’t give a shit about any Slavic people, even if they’re married to one. The republicans are simply not susceptible to the “justice and democracy” nonsense the liberals are selling. So Trump does whatever serves Trump and he had no problem arming the worse of the far right elements in Ukraine:

From this

Manafort duly resigned, and the RussiaGate racket erupted–a connivance that went some way to ensuring the “pro-Ukrainian agenda in American foreign policy” wasn’t compromised one iota.

Indeed, Trump’s term in office was typified by ever-escalating hostility between Washington and Moscow, the Oval Office resident going to dangerous lengths his predecessor had consistently refrained from to arm and galvanize the most reactionary and violent elements of the Ukrainian armed forces, including the notorious Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion, and tear up Cold War arms control treaties, much to Moscow’s chagrin.

I’m curious, how would copyleft license improve the quality of browser development? That is really about funding and management.

I never realized until now why they use the “45” so much. Just move one of the black bars and it’s a fucking swastika… And Haitians are really a stand-in for black people.

The real problem is that we allowed the plutocrats to control both the news and social media and the government. Basically the US doesn’t have a free press any more but a quasi-government controlled oligarch media. As long as these neoliberal policies continue the degradation of institutions and politics continues.

Something drastic would need to happen to purge this incredibly power imbalance from the captured state. A kind of reformation or practically a coup.

I was wondering if gaslighting was the right term to use, but decided to use it anyway. Maybe it is not appropriate here, maybe I’m hypercritical of your words, but I’m very much aware of what it means.

Gaslighting is today used in political context because of Donald Trump. Definitions change. And I think it fits here maybe not specifically because of what you said, but for the context. It is not the first time I heard “reddiquette about upvoting never existed”. It’s not just 1984 style historical revisionism, it’s self-righteous american jerks like you LOUDLY screaming “NEVER HAPPENED! LOL WHAT, ARE YOU ON COKE?” (paraphrasing you here, might have gotten your words slightly wrong)

If you look at other replies, you now also see a moving of the goalpost: It was just the monoculture of neckbeard circlejerks. Or it was just some “purists” who argued about it. But it’s always been this way.

Except I was there (3000 years ago). I’ve seen comments not downvoted that were disagreeable but well stated. Sometimes it still happens. They were not made invisible because they contributed to a discussion. I remember it. And it’s still in the long forgotten, now hidden reddiquette. Threads exists where this was argued about. Your comment is just wrong and it is rude. I am not insane.

Even when the fascists loose, they win. Gaslighting is now a routine tool of the liberals to reframe their narrative. Liberal was at war with Tankie; therefore Liberal had always been at war with Tankie.

I also see four lights, so maybe don’t take my post too seriously.

I’m surprised that you deduce from that article that echo chambers are a good thing or “work”. If you’re here purely for entertainment and funny memes instead of discourse, then that’s fine. But you can honestly do that better on reddit, more niche communities as well.

And you seem to be advocating that everyone should defederate or block all three major socialist instances…

And that is what I meant, Lemmy has already failed. Because instead of seeing the actual enemy, the very real rise of fascism, nationalism and escalating war and genocide, they focus their aggression on the mythological tankie. Absolutely unwilling to tolerate any dissenting opinion outside the mainstream.

I can understand that people get a severe culture shock from the dirtbag left from chap traphouse because they are not well behaved, and there are boneheads in every movement, but even fucking lemmy.ml?

You make no counter points just baseless and heinous accusations.

Doesn’t look like anything to me (lol)

He didn’t deny the ills and the repression in the USSR but showed with sources that there were significant economic upsides. He states that Russia isn’t communist or socialist any more. At no point does he deny Russia’s invasion is illegal. He at no point denies genocide.

So what does make him a tankie? That he has a different analysis of the history about how this war came to be? Which wasn’t even the topic of discussion! You can argue about the quality of the sources or survey - but you were already ready to call him an odious tankie and shitpost.

People equate anyone socialist or antiwar or anti US empire with being a tankie and putin apologist. Which leads to the wholesale censoring and defederation.

I do agree that mods are WAY too ban-happy on lemmy.

Arguably neither that post nor the political discussion belongs in that community.

It was meant lighthearted, but trolling by fascists (maga) or agitprop (putin) does have an mental effect. That is my point, the culture and attitude has changed. To say it hasn’t changed is just factually incorrect.

This is the factually incorrect comment, heavily upvoted:

Lol what? What year did you join Reddit? As someone who’s been there since 2008, I promise you that this is nothing new.

He’s not just laughing at me, implying I’m some reddit noob, and then attempts to gaslight me. But I’m the meanie? Ohwee.

You’re saying you don’t waste time and when someone disagrees on facts, they are wrong and you move on. Could you imagine that if the mainstream constantly fed you one version of events, you might be the one being so sure that the historical events are one way that you end up saying 1+1=3?

You rely on facts being what they are because a google search results in sources trusted by you say so. All neoliberal sources fed by the US state department. And the dissident arguments and evidence just happens to be the same as a certain russian dictator - so they must be wrong. Which is called a genetic fallacy.

Luckily blocking, banning and defederation is easy on lemmy, so we can just live happily ever after in our echo chambers.

Thanks, really interesting analysis! I’d argue that profit seeking is significant in this change though. Polarizing content leads to anger and higher engagement. So any algorithm that is written or trained to increase profit from advertisement will encourage that outcome.

I believe there are other influences too, the fascists and putin trolls (agitprop) has led to some “automatic downvote and ban reflex”. On lemmy the mods are basically power tripping non stop in trying to curate their fief into a single minded community that brooks no dissent. There is one narrative and anyone dissenting is a <insert slur>. On all sides, people are just sick of the bullshit and are on a hair trigger.

This seems to the be result of the last decade of mainstream media and social media being run for profit through engagement. I have no idea of how to reverse this.

The problem is that the mainstream is simply declaring historical events one way and any other dissenting viewpoint or evidence is suppressed. And there IS evidence.

The fascists (and Putin’s propaganda trolls) have been successful in disruption any dialogue between people from the actual left: socialists. Not the neoliberal “democrats”.

And now you do their work for them: You censor the socialists (marxist-leninist, maoists) because some “dirtbag left” troll once was mean to someone. You probably can’t even link to an example of what you accuse entire group of. But this tankie slur gets repeated and amplified more and more. People simply call you tankie, downvote and everyone piles on without thinking.

The problem is that disinformation and post-truth doublethink on the so called “left” (=neoliberals) is almost indistinguishable from MAGA like OP.

If you check out lemmy from an instance that hasn’t defederated from the socialist instances you’ll see that basically half of lemmy activity is invisible - the socialist half. The result is rather predictable.

Your link directly contradicts that “everybody… always…” thought this since there is discussion about it. My point is that it’s an attitude problem and the aspiration to do better has an effect. And this had an effect and that has changed.

Yeah the “happen to be” was meant to be slightly sarcastic. The only answer is to make conscious and smart decisions to be more inclusive and representative instead of profit motive. Unfortunately there seems a lot of pushback with hatewagons that will make producers more conservative.

Thanks, sometimes it does feel like going crazy!

I really wish we could design systems that allow to come closer to that old ideal again. But maybe that age has simply passed and all of our attitudes have changed forever. For example instead of just voting up or down, you could vote for example “funny” or “contributes” or “misinformation”. Maybe there are even some clever statistical algorithms in the background aiding that. Somehow technology ought to evolve to further good discussion.

This is simply incorrect. It’s true that they now evolved completely to that, but you are wrong stating that it was always like this. It’s still in the reddiquette: https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/205926439-Reddiquette

Vote. If you think something contributes to conversation, upvote it. If you think it does not contribute to the subreddit it is posted in or is off-topic in a particular community, downvote it.

This used to be understood that people often treated it as agree/disagree but that you are “supposed to be better than that”. And that made a difference.

It’s historic revisionism to say it was always like this because clearly there was discussion about this if you go just 10 years back: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/search/?q=downvote

Basically any anti-imperialist and anti-US empire critique is stamped as Putin/China apologism and downvoted or outright banned. You don’t even have to be a socialist to be “odious”. And of course the big instances have already defederated from the major socialist instances.

Not sure what year but the culture definitely changed somewhere around 2008-2016. A big part was trump of course, but before that the rise in android and iphone and becoming more popular to a broader segment of the public (e.g. “boomers”). Before it was tech enthusiasts all on desktop PC. This was also before toxic gamer culture.

If you don’t think it changed you must have trauma induced amnesia.

Reddit culture (and lemmy by extension) changed so much in a short time. Just a few years ago you weren’t downvoted just because someone disagreed with your opinion. The polarization and culture war turned reddit users completely dogmatic and as immune to arguments or facts as magats.

The same is true of lemmy. Most users prefer to defederate from socialist instances because “tankies”. Which really shows how right wing “limbrols” have become. They hate socialists with a different viewpoint on US empire more than they hate fascists. The fascists have succeeded in utterly destroying reddit and lemmy as a platform for useful political discourse.

We now have the vast majority of “liberals” on lemmy upvoting comments using racist slang terms for Russians to dehumanize them, just like they did for enemies in Japan, Vietnam or Korea. The fascists have made massive inroads.

The OP meme almost seems quaint to me now. The real culture war is elsewhere now.