Has anyone else noticed how prevalent Hexbear posters have suddenly become? Maybe sometime last week I noticed nearly every political post had at least one long thread of Hexbear users that do nothing but repeat CCP talking points while waving anyway anything even remotely reliable as Western propaganda. That or getting all excited about trolled libs. The way they tell it, you’d think everything from DW, to Fox, to Propublica, to straight up AP News articles, are all written by the same people.
Not to mention, their info on the Fediverse observer is either straight up wrong or there’s some serious botting going on. According to that, the instance is less than a month old, yet somehow they already have one of the largest, most active userbases, along with far and away the most comments of any instance.
Seems to me like Lemmygrad on steroids. Considering we defederated from them, seems like a no-brainer to block Hexbear as well.
So glad this thread could become such a perfect microcosm of why we need to defederate.
Maybe sometime last week I noticed nearly every political post had at least one long thread of Hexbear users that do nothing but repeat CCP talking points while waving anyway anything even remotely reliable as Western propaganda.
Just curious, are you old enough to remember the media role in the run up to the Iraq War? The US media spread outright lies on behalf of the military industrial complex, to a degree that made it obvious to anyone watching once things started to go south after the war was well underway. It may not be quite as obvious these days as it was back then, but that kind of media manipulation is still very common. These days, you also have direct social media manipulation on top of that. In my opinion, it’s a terrible idea to accept the media narrative at face value, and you should at least consider other arguments and try to dig into the evidence a little more yourself instead of just saying someone is a shill. I think you’ll start finding the reality might be different than what you were initially led to believe.
Also on the topic of media manipulation, here is a GREAT video that everyone imo should watch: https://youtube.com/watch?v=2BO83Ig-E8E
It was absolutely not obvious at all to Americans back then. Or more accurately, they wanted to believe the lies so they did
73% of Americans were in favor of invading Iraq
Same thing happened in Vietnam. In fact, public opinion only really changed after the politicians started saying that it was ‘time to scale down US involvement’ or whatever, which only came years after many people in the Whitehouse realised the war was unwinnable. In the meantime, and despite all the famous protests and anti-war marches, the public was pretty happy to follow the official line that America was the good guy and that communism had to be stopped.
You could do an interesting analysis of this phenomenon using Gramsci’s idea of Cultural Hegemony as a framing device.
Not sure if I made it clear enough, but I meant it became more obvious once the war started going badly and the weapons of mass destruction had not turned up.
Some of us saw right through that shit immediately though
Thanks for posting this. This is another great case that illustrates how western media manipulation happens.
You can’t defederate, I’m the only person keeping !ohio@midwest.social and !cleveland@midwest.social active. The power and frequency of our posting is a boon to the rest of the Lemmyverse.
Your instance, along with exploding heads and lemmygrad, are ruining the fediverse. I’ve stopped recommending it to anyone because of people like you.
Here you are brigading
Midwest.Social, and you constantly push authoritarian propaganda throughout the fediverse.Your instance, along with exploding heads
BOTH SIDES
Hexbear is actually one of the oldest Lemmy instances, been around for over three years. Due to technical issues around our high number of active users and having to rely on volunteer labour, we have only been able to federate within the last few weeks.
The way they tell it, you’d think everything from DW, to Fox, to Propublica, to straight up AP News articles, are all written by the same people.
Because they are. This isn’t even a radical far left idea. Ever heard of “Manufacturing Consent” by Noam Chomsky? That’s one of the main arguments, that the media is owned and controlled by the capitalist class.
Seems like you’re missing a ton of nuance in manufacturing consent, and have turned from the frying pan into the fire in that sense.
Yes, Western media is biased towards corporations. This is most clearly seen in anything labeled “finance” or “money”, but is pervasive.
But the only time I can ever think of Western media doing anything on the scale of censoring the 1989 Tiananmin Square Massacre is the Iraq MWD debacle. And they’ve never done anything like the Great Firewall.
As a rule the US government does not mislead its own citizens the way Russia and China do.
And even if you’re 100% on board with every word Marx has written, I don’t understand how that leads one to defend modern day Russia and China.
The West absolutely has problems. And it’s good and right to point those out and try to fix them. But to try to paint the East as the answer to stand against the West is dangerous and dumb.
And they’ve never done anything like the Great Firewall.
The great firewall is for your own protection, just look at how you guys react to a small group of users with different opinions!
Are people stupid enough to believe this?
Lemmy was built by communists and the audacity of these liberals to come here and demand shelter from exposure to communists is really something
I have no problem with communism, I have a problem with authoritarian propaganda.
Let’s not pretend that your politics aren’t inherently authoritarian as well.
Either you support capitalism (or worse), which is grossly authoritarian as it inflicts massive violence not only via warfare but through mass starvation and deprivation, or you support socialism, in which case you have two options:
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The violent overthrow of the current system (spoiler alert: that’s a very authoritarian thing to do!)
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The gradual reform of the current system, meaning maintaining the status quo for an exceptionally long time as we ever so slowly creep our way to a more just economic system while countless people starve, go homeless, die without healthcare, end up in yet-another war and so on (which is a very authoritarian proposition, just throwing away the lives of the poor in your own country-not to mention those in the developing world-just so you can have a neat and tidy reformist approach that doesn’t rock the boat.)
Everything is authoritarian
Ok…
Leaving this here for anyone else who got this far and feels confused:
Hey, what about this tangentially-connected thing from 70 years ago?
Using wikipedia as a reference for political ideology is like asking W Bush which countries are good and bad
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name your favourite anti-authoritarian system. you wanna have a revolution to create it? whoopsie doopsie, you’re literally forcing people (maybe at gunpoint!!!) to do something that they don’t want to do, you fucking authoritarian tankie monster. next you’ll be saying you want to get rid of corporations (extremely authoritarian over those business owners)
Honestly, federation with Hexbear has improved my Lemmy experience 1000%. I think it would be silly to defederate because a vocal minority of libs don’t like their worldview to be challenged. You can individually block the instance if you don’t appreciate the vibe.
As far as I can tell they embrace leftist unity which is something we could all use more of.
So glad this thread could become such a perfect microcosm of why we need to defederate.
You asked about us. We came out in force to answer you. Why is that surprising or evidence of anything? We don’t have a downvote feature, so we’re used to responding when we disagree. And of course we’re going to defend ourselves.
Its so funny how you guys became so used to being able to live in an echo chamber of western capitalist propaganda on reddit, then moved here, then had that bubble popped by us and lemmygrad, then became INCREDIBLY DESPERATE to get away from opinions you previously were sheltered from. Its just a funny reaction to witness. Meanwhile, liberalism is something I can never really escape. Because its everywhere. I dont actually have the option to completely unplug.
Anyway, if your instance defeded lemmygrad I have no doubt you’ll get your way with us sooner rather than later.
