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.
Same as instance rules, plus:
After a GMU student wrote a provocative essay asking when violence against tyranny is justified, the university promptly forgot its own revolutionary roots — and called the cops.
Why Israel Fears the Faces of Dead Palestinian Children on Its Streets (David Issacharoff | Haaretz, 2025-04-21)
Why Israel Fears the Faces of Dead Palestinian Children on Its Streets (David Issacharoff | Haaretz, 2025-04-21)
Pope Francis telephoned a church in Gaza nearly every night since October 2023. But the New York Times didn’t include that fact in its obituary.
Significantly absent in the long obituaries for Pope Francis in both the New York Times and the Washington Post were mentions of his deep concern for the suffering of the Palestinian people in Gaza. In Francis’s last public message on Easter Sunday, just hours before he died, he had called for a ceasefire in Gaza, and condemned the “deplorable humanitarian situation” there.
The obits also failed to note that Pope Francis had personally telephoned the Holy Family Church in Gaza just about every evening since Israel invaded the territory in October 2023 — including the Saturday night before Easter. The church’s pastor, Rev. Gabriel Romanelli, remembered: “He said he was praying for us, he blessed us, and he thanked us for our prayers.” Other church members said that the Pope “would make sure to speak not only to the priest but to everyone else in the room.”
Pope Francis’s concern for Gaza and Palestine did not start in October 2023. Rev. Munther Isaac, a Palest
In its coverage of Jewish Voice for Peace’s Trump Tower protest, Fox News obscured the Jewish identity of protesters—while echoing antisemitic conspiracy theories and racist tropes.
Khury Petersen-Smith on Yemen Distortions (Podcast 28mins)
The Yemeni people are paying the price both for the fighting and for the distortions around it, from political elites and their media amplifiers.
This week on CounterSpin: CBS News on April 14 said:
We’re following new violence in the Middle East. Israeli strikes hit a major hospital in northern Gaza. At least 21 people were reportedly killed. The emergency room is badly damaged. Israel accused Hamas of using the hospital to hide its fighters.
Meanwhile, Houthi militants in Yemen said they fired two ballistic missiles at Israel. The Israeli military initially said two missiles were launched and one was intercepted, but later said only one missile had been fired.
There’s information in there, if you can parse it; but the takeaway for most will be that framing: “violence in the Middle East,” which suggests that whatever happened today is just the latest round in a perennial battle between warring parties, where you and I have no role except that of sad bystander.
When it comes to Yemen, elite media’s repeated reference to “Iran-backed Houthi rebels” not only obscures the current fighting’s political origins and recent timeli
After claims of censorship, Kneecap's pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel sentiments at the 2025 edition of Coachella have generated controversy.
The US government and the media are breathing new life into this zombie idea that the Covid virus was released from a Chinese lab.
For a while it seemed like the dubious hypothesis that the virus that causes Covid did not jump from animals to humans, but was released from a Chinese lab, might be fading away. But the US government and the media are breathing new life into this zombie idea, contributing to the vilification of China and undermining actual scientific research.
Senator says Bukele staged margaritas at Abrego Garcia meeting, wanted it by pool
Sen. Chris Van Hollen detailed his meeting in El Salvador with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the Trump administration wrongfully deported.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28433704
The New York Times reported that one of Bukele’s aides planted the tropical-looking drinks on the table to make it look like Abrego Garcia was living large. Van Hollen confirmed this on Friday. “This is a lesson into the lengths that President Bukele will go to deceive people about what’s going on,” he said, “and it also shows the lengths that the Trump administration and the president will go to, because when he was asked … about this, he just went along for the ride.”
Van Hollen added that Bukele’s government wanted the meeting to take place by a pool: “They actually wanted to have the meeting [take place] by the side of the pool in the hotel,” he said. “This is a guy who’s been in CECOT. This is a guy who has been detained. They want to create this appearance that life was just lovely for Kilmar, which, of course, is a big fat lie.”
A federal website that used to feature information on vaccines, testing and treatment for COVID-19 has been transformed into a page supporting the theory that the pandemic originated with a lab leak.
Just a reminder that one of the biggest promoters of the lab leak theory is Trump's former CDC director Robert Redfield.
The accusation the virus originally escaped from a Chinese lab, while a possibility, has never been conclusively proven, and may have arisen in retaliation after the Chinese government circulated a video of Redfield as propaganda during the earliest months of the pandemic, in order to claim the U.S. was actually responsible for COVID.
Last June, Reuters released an investigative report which revealed the U.S. military had actually retaliated against the Chinese government's accusations by running a secret anti-vax campaign attempting to undermine China during the pandemic.
Tensions have since ar
The Siren Song of Rallying Around a 'Common Enemy' to Promote Progressive Causes (Podcast 73mins)
"Senate Weighs Investing $120 Billion in Science to Counter China," trumpeted The New York Times in 2021. "A New Economic Patriotism Can Help Unite Our Divided Congress," argued Newsweek in 2023. "US cedes ground to China with ‘self-inflicted wound’ of USAid shutdown, analysts say," cautioned The Gu...
"Senate Weighs Investing $120 Billion in Science to Counter China," trumpeted The New York Times in 2021. "A New Economic Patriotism Can Help Unite Our Divided Congress," argued Newsweek in 2023. "US cedes ground to China with ‘self-inflicted wound’ of USAid shutdown, analysts say," cautioned The Guardian in 2025.
In recent years, we’ve been exposed to the latest version of a centuries-old geopolitical message: We all have a common enemy, and we all need to unite to fight it by making our own country stronger. That enemy—most commonly China—is threatening to outpace, if it isn’t already outpacing, the US in infrastructural investment, educational programs, technological development, and elsewhere, and we need to devote millions, billions, even trillions of dollars to restoring the vitality of our institutions in order to reverse this trend.
But why must defeating an "enemy" be the justification for policy that has the potential to benefit the public? Why should we just accept the pre
In the case of Israel, corporate media have institutionalized the practice of dancing around the straightforward statement of fact.
To be sure, war crimes are all in a day’s work for Israel—and covering them up is, it seems, all in a day’s work for the corporate media. In a dispatch about how Israel “acknowledged flaws” in its “mistaken” account of its killing of the rescue workers, the New York Times‘ Isabel Kershner (4/6/25) cited Israeli military affairs analyst Amos Harel on how the Israeli soldiers who did the killing “had ‘good reason to be anxious,’ and that it would be wrong to assume immediately that the case was one of ‘murder in cold blood.’”
Naturally, it would be inhumane to assume that any aspect of genocide might transpire in cold blood. And as Israel continues its quest to normalize total depravity, Western journalism is becoming ever more cold-blooded, too.
A sweeping crackdown on posts on Instagram and Facebook that are critical of Israel—or even vaguely supportive of Palestinians—was directly orchestrated by the government of Israel, according to internal Meta data obtained by Drop Site News.
A sweeping crackdown on posts on Instagram and Facebook that are critical of Israel—or even vaguely supportive of Palestinians—was directly orchestrated by the government of Israel, according to internal Meta data obtained by Drop Site News. The data show that Meta has complied with 94% of takedown requests issued by Israel since October 7, 2023. Israel is the biggest originator of takedown requests globally by far, and Meta has followed suit—widening the net of posts it automatically removes, and creating what can be called the largest mass censorship operation in modern history.
While some local papers have been scathing in their coverage of the ex-governor, the New York Times seems to be largely buying what Cuomo's selling.
In a piece critical of Democratic Party support for Cuomo, the Atlantic‘s David Graham (3/3/25) wrote, “If, in order to curb the far left, Democrats like [Rep. Ritchie] Torres are willing to embrace an alleged sex pest who tried to cover up seniors’ deaths, is it worth it?”
The same might be asked of some in the corporate media, with the New York Times at the top of the list.
Revealed: The shocking far-right agenda behind the surveillance tech used by ICE and the FBI.
Clearview AI’s founders always intended to target immigrants and the political left. Now their digital dragnet is in the hands of the Trump administration.
cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/28198303
Thousands of newly obtained documents show that Clearview AI’s founders always intended to target immigrants and the political left. Now their digital dragnet is in the hands of the Trump administration.
2 Instances are being used for coordinated vote manipulation, and should be defederated. chinese.lol lemmy.doesnotexist.club
cross-posted from: https://hackertalks.com/post/8713785
The instances being used are
- lemmy.doesnotexist.club
- chinese.lol
Here is an example of the coordinated downvoting https://hackertalks.com/post/8692093
Of course its a controversial user who got someone angry enough to automated downvoting @[email protected]
But you can see every post they make gets 53ish downvotes from these two instances, plus some organic ones after a few hours.
Current downvoting Accounts :::spoiler bot-list
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Jo
Here’s another super weird pro-Trump article in The Guardian. TL;DR Trump’s tariffs might work, if we start defaulting on treasury bills that would be good, the grand upheaval of 1982 was great stuff.
It’s hard to say if the president truly knows what he’s doing. But there is a precedent for the US causing short-term chaos and reaping long-term gain, says economist James Meadway
How do social forces shape belief, and can we strengthen our media literacy in response?
A network of X accounts is targeting Canada ahead of the election
The accounts are pumping out thousands of posts about the Canadian economy and alleged support within Canada for U.S. President Donald Trump’s annexation threat.
Probably something we should all be watching closely over the next few months:OMB lays out requirements and deadlines for Trump admin AI promotion
From Federal News Network Blurb:
Agencies have 10 new deadlines around artificial intelligence, including developing a new generative AI policy and a new strategy to remove barriers to using these capabilities. A new 25-page memo from the Office of Management and Budget lays out a series of new requirements and updates existing ones as part of the Trump administration's promotion of AI. One of the new requirements is agencies have until early December to develop the generative AI policy that sets the terms for acceptable use and establishes adequate safeguards and oversight mechanisms. Another new requirement is to develop a strategy by early October that removes bureaucratic requirements that inhibit innovation and responsible adoption of AI.
You may remember back in Feb. when the U.S. and U.K. both refused to join allies [signing an international A.I. agreement](https://www.
