- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Rattled by a horde of MAGA trolls, here’s what I learned about today’s social media miasma.
Last Friday I made a post on Bluesky and X, concerning U.S. President Donald Trump’s description of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “Governor.” It occurred to me that, numb as we are to Trump’s stream of blather, the importance of that remark was being overlooked. It was an overt declaration by the president of the United States that he does not recognize Canadian sovereignty. That’s scary.
So, my post: “For a US president to refer to the Prime Minister of Canada as ‘Governor’ isn’t just rude. It’s a hostile act.”
The post got little attention on Bluesky. On X, for whatever reason, it went berserk. Over the weekend it racked up close to 3,000 reposts, over 29,000 “likes” and more than 5,000 replies. Those replies came almost entirely from Trump-loving trolls, piling scorn and abuse on my concerns. “Yeah but it’s Canada so who gives a fuck?” said one.
Do the responses represent a genuine glimpse of U.S. opinion on Trump’s bully-boy act?
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Get off of twitter accept that its a lost cause. stop wasting your time arguing with people who think it’d be funny to kill you.
I guarantee a large chunk of those are AI bots
You know those are just bots, right?
This title is pure drama
Anyone with any sense doesn’t use Twitter anymore. This is like throwing bait into a shark tank and being surprised by the reaction.
Do the responses represent a genuine glimpse of U.S. opinion on Trump’s bully-boy act?
No. Xitter is a far-right echo chamber, so such abuse is to be expected. I’m not sure why this person is even posting there.
Wah! I refuse to leave the leopard cage and don’t understand why there are leopards in it!
I know right, what did they expect would happen in the platform owned by a literal Nazi?
The purpose of troll farms is to overwhelm people with a wave of opinion, making it seem like it’s the opinion of the majority even if it’s only a minority, to make readers doubt their own opinions as they see to much support which really is only 1 person for every 1000 comments if that.
@breakfastmtn You have to remember that a lot of the accounts on X aren’t real people, they’re bots.
Its bad on TikTok too. I’ve seen lots of news clips on TikTok of Trump and the 51st sate comment. Most comment replies to these videos have been from Maga supporters. Along the lines of “Canada should be honored to become part of the greatest country on earth”.
It’s very disturbing and very serious. An outright sign of war. It’s a tarrif war for now but I worry about what it will be in future.
I’d seen warnings posted that this, in large part, is and is going to be a psychological type of warfare. I thought it was nonsense at first, till I saw the barrage of verbal attacks against Canadians continuing to grow in numbers and frequency at sites like Reddit… telling us we’re useless and might as well give up. But then it occurred to me that when our enemy wants us to think we’re doing it wrong, it’s because they know we’re doing it right!
So if they are, in fact, attempting to defeat us psychologically, then we need to fight back the same way: We need to maintain and guard our right thinking and perspective by continuing to read and post and share those articles that prove our efforts are working! When we read something that discourages us, we need to follow it up by also reading from the reams of encouraging news out there! Foremost, we need to remind ourselves and each other that we aren’t alone in this… that, as Canadians, we are 40 million strong! And not only this, but we also have the support of Friends from all around the world, many of them even joining us in our efforts!
So we need to keep standing together and standing strong… knowing they would love nothing more than to see us give up, and in fact need for us to give up cause they know what we’re doing is working!
Go Canada & Friends! 🍁🌍
Also, Twitter has a lot of bots. More than ever before. This shapes discussion in many ways. Most basically, posts meeting certain narratives get more upvotes, quote tweets, etc. resulting in an algorithmic boost. Add in Xitter’s desire to “boost engagement” by bidding controversial content. Finally, so many people are leaving Xitter, or at least using it less at it’s quality declines.
Thanks. I don’t use Twitter, so it’s good to hear what’s going on over there.
I still have my Xitter account and pop in now and then. It’s declining steadily. It’s just weird if you step back and look at the difference in discussions on different topics, combined with what gets boosted. They’ve locked down their API Access, so it’s harder for researchers to measure, but it’s my impression that it’s got to be over 50% bots.
I’m sure most of that is going to be old school, using basic swarms to upvote content you want to boost, but with LLM AI getting more sophisticated by the day, and more cost effective, there’s going to AI driven bots actually writing plausible posts soon.
I think the crypto and scam space shows the leading edge, since scammers tolerance for lower quality means they can be early adopters.
But what do I know? I’m no expert. The Dead Internet Theory might stay be true, or we might have a few more years.
Also, good to get into the Fediverse. It may soon be the last refuge if humans.
You’re more of an expert than I am! I don’t get it… what do they think they’re accomplishing by ridding themselves of human users?
I don’t think it’s intentional on Xitter’s part, necessarily. It’s a bit of an arms race, and Xitter under new management had cut back on all sorts of staffing.
I also don’t think many people stick on Xitter even notice. The algorithm seems to create a bunch of parallel silos, with outside intrusions provoking a swarm response almost.
In the case of Trudeau posts, most engagement seems to be from MAGAts and Qonvoyers, with probably some choice comments from “Joe McDonaldski” from the Canadian Oblast of Ontario or something.
From Xitter’s perspective, a bunch of MAGAts and Qonvoyers reply, upvote, and engage with “Governor” Trudeau, viewing ads while a bunch of the flock pay for the Xitter check mark.
I think clearing the bots would be difficult, require continuing investment, and possibly reduce revenue in the short term.
I’m just on Xitter for legacy purposes, I rarely see anything meaningful. Granted the algorithm mostly has me figured out, and will show me stuff I already agree with, but just a bit further towards the edges of discourse. I’m under no illusion, I’m certain bad actors are influencing discourse all along the political spectrum.
But speaking generally, what’s the end goal with all these bots? The way some people speak, the net’s almost all bots as is. I don’t believe it, otherwise I wouldn’t bother signing on anymore… but if that’s in fact where we’re headed, what do people think they’re accomplishing in the long run by flooding the Internet with these things? Won’t it be just them and their little bots in the end?
Post to X
Get trolled
Many such cases
This quote from a political scientist they interview for the article is one of the most baffling statements I’ve seen in a while. I keep staring at it.
“You know, it’s sad,” Givens says. “I was one of the first Americans to study the far right in Europe. I’ve looked at various aspects, anti-immigration stuff, anti-discrimination policy, the roots of racism. I did a video for PBS called ‘Can democracy survive racism?’ This was back in 2019.
“And now I’m like, ‘Damn, I didn’t think the U.S. was going to be the first to fall.’”
It is simultaneously nonsensical and the essence of “this explains a lot”.
Even some of us in Australia could see it coming. Back in 2023, one of our former PMs interviewed a member of a CIA taskforce that had created a predictive model for civil wars. Normally it’s used on other countries, but they tried applying it to the US and you can guess what the results were.
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/americas-coming-civil-war/id1674095396?i=1000626742633 https://open.spotify.com/episode/0MVeiDPgEtLRMsg3kMHV2K https://www.audible.com.au/podcast/Americas-coming-civil-war/B0CH8QQ4N2
Yeah, Americans are very keen on the idea that the situation will resolve violently through civil war (or revolution).
I’m skeptical. More likely they will quietly submit, as they have so far. Non-US countries should consider the entirety of the US a hostile regime until I’m proven wrong, the same way they do with Russia or Belarus.
Honestly, with the way Musk is tearing through departments and the cybersecurity threat his team poses, none of the US’s allies (e.g. Australia) should be sharing intelligence with the US any more. If we’re smart, we should be treating the US as having been compromised by hostile foreign powers.
I’d forgotten that episode. Time for a relisten, Turnbull has done a good job with that podcast.
He probably needs another host though, someone else to bounce off to liven him up a little.
I heard Shorten is about to become quite a lot less busy…
They searched the world for clues of downfall by authoritarian fascism but ended up right back at home.
I think they’re just kind of fucking stupid.
While the situation in the US is indeed very dire, I would say that places like Hungary did fall first. I am also afraid that the US wount be the last to fall. Many countries in Europe are shaky at the moment.
Oh, it absolutely won’t be the last, but the source was always in the US (via Russia, perhaps). European fascists recently held a summit and the standout quote, from Marine LePen, no less, was “Donald Trump has shown us the way, and the way is strength”. Orban said that “The Trump tornado changed everything, yesterday we were outcasts, today we’re mainstream”.
The rise of the far right worldwide is in no small part driven by US social media profiting and enabling the grotesque drive of misinformation and radicalization that was deployed first in the nromalization of the Tea Party and the justification of the war on terror nonsense and then weaponized during Brexit in the UK.
It was always going to be the US first. And with US backing as a wealthier hostile actor, others will likely follow. Keep an eye on Germany to see if the US implosion acts as a driver or a deterrent. Not everywhere will behave the same, but the dominoes are thudding down now.
And all of this comes down to the last US election. As far as I’m concerned, anybody who could have voted for Harris and didn’t is a fifth-columnist, as is anybody who could vote for a non-fascist party with representation in Europe and doesn’t.
I wonder if this is will be the end of Germany and France’s 70 years long alliance.
There’s a scenario where it’s still not and it’s somehow worse.
As a general rule, nothing curated by an algorithm is genuine.
Iterate that for an algorithm controlled by an American corporation.
Then iterate it again for Musk.
Combine that with everyone having left Twitter who isn’t maga.
No, your experience on Twitter is not representative of the average American.
Lemmy also has algorithms mind you.
They all do.
Ok so nothing is genuine? That’s your take?
Sounds like a reasonable conclusion.
That’s the opposite or “reasonable” lol
I don’t see what’s unreasonable about saying that you shouldn’t take the things you read on algorithmic social media sites as representative of any population at large. That it’s not a “genuine” representation of any population.
Every social media is “algorithmic”. So, yes, it’s unreasonable to say you should take nothing you read anywhere as representative.
The thing that is surprisingly hard to keep in mind is that the US is a culturally fascist country. It has been for a very long time. It’s what a fascist democracy looks like.
It is a country with long standing and broadly shared and accepted foundational mythology. It glorifies the military, and the “All American” young adult. There’s a strong cult of tradition, a deep distrust of learning and knowledge, and firm belief in the United States as a country and people of “action”. Despite their own claims to the contrary, they believe that disagreement with the US is betrayal, particularly on the part of people who arr not white and born of white US citizens. They always have an external enemy (and often an internal one, too) to judtify any action. They have contempt for countries and peoples they see as weak, and a huge hard-on for machismo.
American exceptionalism, which is taught to every school child in the country, is a fascist doctrine.
You can go down the list of fascist qualities outlined in Ur-Fascism and see that the US has always ticked off a large majority of them. The only thing that’s different today is that Americans are confronting someone trying to turn it into a disctatorship.
It’s not the fascism that bothers people about the current shift, but the governing structure the current fascist-in-chief is trying to impose.
It’s founders were pretty clear that they wanted the roman republic with a dictator on a 4 year term. They even have a city named Cincinnati.
What do you expect when you engage in the platform ran by a wannabe-Nazi?
