Submitted 15 hours ago by DSN9@lemmy.ml to fediverse@lemmy.world
Chinese propaganda is rampant on the fediverse. We need to discuss ways to combat this. One group- memes or something is wholly controlled by Chinese state actors. What do you think?
Days in the fediverse comm without explicit anti-communism and red scare fearmongering: 0
There are a lot of people supportive of the PRC, both because the US Empire is declining and the PRC is positioned as an alternative to the US Empire’s naked terrorism, and because Lemmy has a lot of communists. Lemmy has a lot of communists because the lead developers are communists, FOSS attracts communists, and because as Reddit bans communist communities they are often suggested to come here.
There’s absolutely no credible evidence of CPC interference in Lemmy.
This seems right. Personally I’m not sure I could roll my eyes harder at the fact that so many people in 2026 are so ignorant as to be prepared to call themselves “communists” - after all the famines, the purges, the 40 years in which much of Europe was struggling to escape (literally) from communism… And then I saw that you, too, call yourself a communist! So I guess I’ll stop there.
Except to recommend you the Ones and Tooze podcast, in which the brilliant host (an ex-communist) recently did a whole series, in great and illuminating detail, on the various communist thinkers. Which I listened to… dutifully.
Communists govern the largest economy in the world by PPP, and capitalism is falling apart at the seams as the spoils of imperialism are beginning to be cut off. The global south is escaping underdevelopment, and this is forcing austerity in the west, explaining the surge to the right. In the US Empire, communists are more and more common than ever before:
Famine was ended by communists in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, etc. These areas had woefully inefficient systems of agriculture, such as the kulak system, which served to enrich one group of people over the laborers they employed. Collectivization combined with industrialization is why food security was achieved after the introduction of socialism to these countries, and the famines commonly attributed by western historians to communism were the last of a long line of regular famines.
Similarly, purges in the largest majority of cases meant expulsion from the party or position, not execution, except in times of crisis, like the 1930s when fascism was on the rise. They were not done arbitrarily, but as a response to corruption, subterfuge, and sabotage.
It’s also a bit silly to suggest that people spent “40 years trying to escape communism.” Right up to the end, the majority of people in the USSR wished to retain both the USSR and the system of socialism. This is proven not just from eyewitness reports of support, but also vote totals:
Moreover, after the fall of socialism in Europe, the majority of people want it back or say they are worse off. This is compounded by the fact that over 90% of the Chinese population supports their government and system. Socialist countries run by communists have higher approval rates than capitalist states.
Looking at Adam Tooze, I don’t see much indicating him as a former communist. He grew up in West Germany in the height of the Cold War, is trained in liberal economics such as Keynesian economics, though his grandfather was allegedly a soviet recruiter, which is cool. I’m not really convinced I could find much out of his mini-series on Luxemburg, Trotsky, Stalin, or Lenin, considering I’ve already read works both by them and about them in greater detail than a podcast is going to cover.
Their idol Mao killed approx 160 million humans.
Treat it like a troll post. Downvote and move on, if the name becomes familiar block them.
This goes for all propaganda not just the stuff you are against.
That assumes you accurately define propaganda. I think we’ve all faced half baked allegations as such, and had people vote with the accuser, you want everyone to be seperated from each other on here because they misunderstood a point, or understood different facts, or because they are a dumbass on a different topic?
Just downvote, and move on, unless the person is stalking you, looking at you hexrat, or whatever fucking mammal.
This was true until I realized they’re all over. Anything even remotely pertaining to China is flooded with the Chinese state actors reply guys and bots. In effect, using the protocols strength against itself. Is the protocol itself even able to be banned in China? Are they seriously active on here just to push their bullshit China marketing even harder. They’ve gone all out the last five years.
I still don’t understand the point of downvoting here since it doesn’t seem to affect visibility. You’ll have the dumbest take on something sitting there at -36 and I still have to look at it.
Entire subs and communities, and servers are Chinese state actors. I wish we could daylight this bullshit, a single serving page with a method for rankings subs, servers with biases?
Show your evidence
What’s rampant is imperial core propaganda. You see the “Chinese propaganda” as “rampant” because you’re used to seeing only imperial core propaganda, which is how the internet looks on corporate media, including corporate social media.
The first step is to understand the media, which Media Bias/Fact Check and the Ad Fontes Media* are never going to teach you. The only people who are taught it are those who get degrees in marketing, public relations, political science, history, and journalism; and even then only some of them.
The new post-Trump/“post-truth” media literacy curricula won’t teach it to you either, because it was paid for and crafted by the US military-industrial complex: New Media Literacy Standards Aim to Combat ‘Truth Decay’. This week, the RAND Corporation released a new set of media literacy standards designed to support schools in this task.
The standards are part of RAND’s ongoing project on “truth decay”: a phenomenon that RAND researchers describe as “the diminishing role that facts, data, and analysis play in our political and civic discourse.”
None of it is a secret, though, and it can be learned.
- Noam Chomsky - The 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine
- Propaganda model
- Edward Bernays
- Walter Lippmann
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Powell Memorandum
- The Trilateral Commission’s report, The Crisis of Democracy
* I’ve criticized MBFC & Ad Fontes before:
ah yes, corporate media such as… the BBC
truly yank brained
There’a a global positive shift in opinion on China that’s happened over the first year of Trump. The trend was already there in the Global South but it’s now happening everywhere. Add to that there are more people on Lemmy from non-NA/EU countries than on US-centric platforms like Reddit and this shift becomes more apparent. In Western countries the positivr opinion on China is less of an ally and more of a neccessary partner. If you’re primed to not see anything positive about China, then even positive views around partnership could appear as pro-China propaganda. Here’s a pic:
I’m no fan of Tankies or the CCP, but I’m really not seeing any more pro-china propaganda than you see elsewhere, mostly excitement as a result of their green tech stuff or HSR (while ignoring why China has a
I am seeing a surprising amount of anti-china paranoia from the UK press right now that frankly seems like it’s engineered by the US given its timing. Like articles about diplomats using burner phones as if that isn’t standard (for all countries).
You should go away and stop wildly fear mongering.
I am sure
I heard they’ve stopped all fear mongering in China
Lol right? Dude the Chinese bots and reply guys are so obvious.
Poo bear’s gotta up his game on 🐻
leftists* are rampant on the fediverse
🫡 A natural consequence of leftist ideology.
Ironically, the most active user on the current #2 China community, !china@sopuli.xyz, is an absolutely indefatigable anti-Chinese propagandist.
This person, @Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.org posts multiple times per day, usually quite sensible and well-sourced articles, but always on the same downer subjects (repression, Uighurs, corruption and so on) and never anything that paints China (let alone its government) in the slightest positive light. Since nobody else in this community can match their posting stamina, the end result is a community that, to newcomers, looks like one rando’s “I hate China” blog. Hardly surprising that it’s not a very successful community.
I’ve asked this user to consider dropping the tempo a bit, and been met with defensiveness. I complained in private to the mod, who is completely AWOL, and they didn’t care. Oh well.
never anything that paints China (let alone its government) in the slightest positive light
Feel free to change that. Just use quite sensible and well-sourced articles.
It’s not even 1 account. It’s a collection of sockpuppets. I started noticing them when they started posting in !Canada@lemmy.ca but apparently the streak goes quite further back. The latest ones are Sepia and tardigrade.
Ultimately the problem is that the mods for the communities they frequently post to have allowed this to go on for years. They have to know by now what’s going on, and by doing nothing they tacitly endorse it.
Out of interest, how do you know it’s sockpuppets?
To be honest I’m genuinely a bit interested in who this might be. I’m imagining a disgruntled Hong Kong exile with too much time on their hands. Also seems likely to be Chinese in that they have a top-down concept of information, not seeing that obvious and relentless propaganda will just backfire with a sophisticated and relatively informed audience. Perhaps I’m being slightly optimistic, but I can’t see how they’ve convinced anyone here that “China bad” who didn’t already think that.
You have discovered .ml? Yeah the lead devs are tankies lol
So they’re trying to capture mind share of technologists. Nice play, I’m embarrassed.
Register on a different instance and filter everything ml. It’s a life changer with the Fediverse.
Plenty of Russian propaganda too. Every “conservative” community or server is essentially acting in Putin’s favor.
Don’t forget USAian propaganda. By far the most prevalent under this regime.
Both often go hand in hand
Do you have a shred of actual evidence for this? Or is it just the standard lib ad-hom of accusing those who disagree of being evil foreigners?
Because the USA and Europe are shining beacons of truth and human rights.
What you’re describing is false moral equivalence used as a deflective propaganda strategy.
What you described is a state enemy used to deflect attention from the many enemies within this state.
On the topic, I’ve been seeing plenty of war-hawk think-tank accounts who only post propaganda, like:
They are clearly not involved in our communities.
Pretty sure these are all the same person. If you ever engage, you can recognize the same asshole attitude.
You can safely assume that anything on .ml or lemmygrad is. Just don’t subscribe to them. I can give you a block list that encompasses most of the ones who don’t stay nicely in .ml land. We should have shareable block lists like BlueSky to get new users up and running quickly. I hope that PieFed eventually does some stuff like this.
It’s safe to assume that the enemy is promoting propaganda while our noble nation is promoting the truth!!! \s
Ah. Enlightened centrism.
The difference is that I don’t get banned/censored on western instances for criticizing Trump or US military interventions.
You can export your settings, remove everything unrelated to blocks, and share it. Then other users can import the json file and it will be added to their existing blocklist.
Good hint, but there needs to be an online registry of them where you can subscribe to them and get updates automatically when they change. This is how Bluesky works and it works very well.
Lemmy.ml is?!? That’s who I signed up for though. I like the privacy stuff. So which instance is politically neutral but technically aligned, pirate party, self hosting etc?
politically neutral <> pirate party
Pick one
Yes Lemmy.ml is the most popular of the tankie instances. They will ban you, remove your posts, etc in most major communities if you say anything negative about CCCP, Russia, Communism, etc.
I can recommend lemmus.org as a very fast and efficient instance. Remember, you don’t have to have an account on the instance who’s communities you want to access. You can access communities on all instances from any instance. So the policies of your home instance don’t really affect you much. They only affect the communities hosted there.
If you’re concerned about privacy, you should probably know that a lot in the fediverse is very open by design so that other instances can communicate effectively.
That’s why everyone can see what you upvote/downvote, even if Lemmy itself doesn’t show this to you in its UI.
Go on then, git!!
I think you are having delusions
Change instance and block the lemmy.ml, lemmygrad.ml and hexbear.
What do you recommend instead? I sign up on another instance? Which one?
Any really. .ml is the main chinese hot pot
Maybe db0? At least based off what you’re after in your comments.
Of course there’s also the more regional instances, such as feddit.uk, lemmy.ca, etc.
Can I take my account with me? Or spin up a new account and username?
You make a new account.
You can export your settings and subscriptions and import them elsewhere. You’ll lose your post/comment history though.
Your instance is the lead actor in that
Yes, imperial propaganda is completely normal and overwhelming. It doesn’t matter which empire. It’s just brainwashed sinophobia to blame “China” alone.
And Russia
The lemmy developers are tankies and three big lemmy servers are entirely controlled by them, namely hexbear, lemmigrad and Lemmy.ml. You will find plenty of China, North Korea and for some kind of reason Russian propaganda on them.
Bullshit, hexbear and lemmigrad aren’t remotely controlled by the Lemmy devs. Why do you people just lie like this?
Ah yes, the communities of the zionist genocidal apartheid apologists.
You could have just said “rabidly anti-tankie people” LMAO
There are apologists of genocide in this communities? Where?
Everything in the world is propaganda or advertising. You have a choice to believe it or not.
The propaganda technique used here “cynicism framing.”
Math? What a wacky overstatement…
I wouldn't say necessarily China controlled. Social engineering is great for making people replicate the engineering without noticing.
But indeed I notice a lot of posts that benefit China since I joined in some years back (thanks Spez), specially in news and country-specific communities.
I’m so embarrassed I’ve been using a tankie instance without knowing it for months and only recently realized it
Well you can listen to all the Hitlerites from axiss.world if you like. Or actually interact with the politically literate people on .ml
Don't worry OP, you could always move to a different instance. You've already done the hard part, figuring them out lol.
You either handle all propagandas or handle none
Unfortunately I’m not sure how you could handle all propaganda. As long as you have oligarchs and states it will exist.
We have fact checkers, we have reputable historians, we have videos confirming stuffs, we have human right organization confirming stuffs. Propaganda points from Zionism for example are intentionally not remove . I support removing all clear propaganda points whatever it is from China, Russia, the west ,Iran and Israel
Real comment ⏫
Chinese reply guy ⬆️
Zionist reply guy. See how easy it is to make false accusation?
Lemmy was created by Chinese state actors, so no surprise there.
Piefed was created by the CIA, NSA, and Kissinger’s ghost.
You can tell in the name.
Fed.
ahem
piefed.social
murmelade@lemmy.ml 23 minutes ago
I love these posts, they’re always a treasure trove of accounts to block.