It's really bizarre if you compare the Lemmy comments with those on Reddit worldnews. The Reddit comments are generally pro Israël, some even banaly so (in the 'they had it coming sand the deserve what they get'- territory).
In a forum there should be dissenting opinions, however those are downvoted to oblivion. It feels very weird, I'm reluctant to use the word astroturfing, but there's a huge difference in the time of the discussion compared to a couple of years ago.
Israel has an app where they post links to social media posts discussing Israel for app users to go astroturf. They take their propaganda very seriously. They have a word for propaganda targeting foreigners: "hasbara." https://mepc.org/speeches/hasbara-and-control-narrative-element-strategy
Israeli work contacts flooding LinkedIn with their shit is one of the weirdest ways I see this online. It’s usually inappropriate to bring politics into the work sphere but in the days after the October attack, the business world came out in sympathy for Israel, as they should. The problem is that this was cemented as the only business friendly position from that point forward. Nowadays I see Israelis posting raw vitriol while everyone else is too timid to say anything except “we support Israel’s right to exist” or “we hope for peace in the Middle East” and other such fatuous trivialities.
Why is pro-Israel the only business friendly position? Simple. There aren’t any Palestinian startups. There are very few Palestinian CEOs.
Worldnews has always been the place where all the bad opinions and misinformed bullshit culminated. I remember threads with hundreds of first level comments all stating basically the same bullshit over and over again with no insight in sight
It is weird. The left leaning Canadian subreddit (r/onguardforthee) is generally pro Palestine but my city's subreddit is generally pro Israel. I've been watching my city's subreddit move right politically quite quickly.
Something I've noticed is that reddit as a whole seems to have gotten a lot more right wing since the whole API stuff. I'm not sure if it's actually because of users leaving, or if moderation took a huge hit and it's kind of snow balling into hateful commenting becoming normal.
I'm convinced the rightward swing is from people leaving. I imagine it's a self-reinforcing feedback loop, too. I wouldn't mind sometimes or even often being the underdog in a thread, as long as occasionally you could score a small win here or there. But when every comment is just going to get down voted to Hades, it becomes pointless.
It also just makes sense that people who are temperamentally conservative are both more likely to be politically conservative and be slower to abandon ship from a dying platform.
Reddit is a powerhouse of online discussion. It’s the perfect place for astroturfing. Not to mention, Reddit is so desperate to become profitable that they’re bragging about “we know everything about our users,” so it’s obvious they’re selling data to data brokers, they’re selling data to google for their AI and google did a cool little quid pro quo with them to boost Reddit results in google search…why not get in bed with opinion brokers?
I wouldn’t be surprised at all. In fact, I assume it.
"Ah yes the rtardd muslims can't use propaganda
It's true because since they are in 1400 or something according to their calendar they haven't discovered internet yet. I know it because I live Shitplaceville in Minnesota, US and therefore I know it because americans always know all the things"
Not really. If you've been on Reddit for more than a decade you really could see a cultural shift. Lemmy feels smaller and more filterable. If you curate your subscriptions and exclude more extreme
Instances it's quite all right.
Whenever I read Reddit outside of my niche subs it just feels almost distopian, is become a very weird place.
I think there is a bit more dissenting opinions over here. At least they catch the eye more as the isn't hundreds of comments. But even sorting by controversial doesn't really help as the highly downvoted stuff is usually rather crass.
Yeah it seems sometimes Lemmy got a hard one for Hamas...still don't know why somebody would favor one of these two since they both commiting genocide...
Edit: Oh, you're German. You know, the mistake y'all made in WWII wasn't going against Jews. It was committing a genocide. The lesson to learn wasn't: "Always support the Jews." It was: "Always oppose genocide." Not racial essentialism, but moral essentialism. Y'all just swapped out Aryan supremacy for Jewish supremacy. And now y'all are on the wrong side of a genocide once again.
(It's not the first genocide America's been on the wrong side of, either.)
In lemmy votes don't seem to matter that much, unless you're viewing comments with the "Top" or "Controversial" sorting. But perhaps that's a symptom of having not so many users.
Meanwhile, civilians in Gaza endure a deepening humanitarian catastrophe. Law and order has broken down across the coastal enclave as Hamas’s civil control over northern Gaza and large swathes of the south has been ended.
I don't think the problem is Hamas failing to provide "law and order" but Israel's ongoing genocide that is causing the "deepening humanitarian catastrophe".
No, they committed 10/7 because they want to wage an endless war against Israel and wanted to show their backers they can throw a punch. They were hoping Hezbollah and others would back them, but they threw Hamas to the wolves.
That's an interesting idea. Though i think we must not underestimate internal Gazans cause. The HAMAS is basically running anti PA military dictatorship in Gaza enforcing an islamist rule through corruption of lower echelon political actors. The only way they managed to remain in power despite basically defrauding the UN and the Red Cross is by spreading the narrative "hey, we are yout heroic liberators (and everyone who disobeys us is a ******* jew)". Not that they're like the nazis, by "liberation" they mean "genocide".
The problem is that the HAMAS is... not very good at freeing Palestine. The only way they attacked Israel before is through rocket bombardment using 250$ ammo. Problem is that they never got out to fight Tsahal. However their authoritarianism only strengthen with time meaning HAMAS was very not freeing palestine and very much oppressing palestinians. So people started asking question about what the hell all that military budget and requisition were for. So they planned a "boots on the ground mission". This was supposed to be a show of force to make them look good. I'd even believen advisors suggested this idea. Except the main issue with the HAMAS is that, to them, all this garbage we call "guerilla", "civil defense", "policing", "resistance", "show of force" means the exact same thing : good ol' ethnic cleansing.
And an ethnic cleansing on a population of 7 000 000 000. Which means if you're an israeli citizens, yoiu likely have connections, be it former classmates or extended family, to a victim of the attack. this did not help with the Israeli state of mind rigth afterwards.
[](to show the world just how bad Israel can over-react)
That's exactly where I think they should have stopped being insane nazi islamist and read actual books.
See I'm French, here we see U.S forces in WW2 as heroes, they are the "Libérateurs", same for the Brits. You want to know what's weird ? We do that, despite the fact the U.S.A.F sometimes entirely destoryed the wrong french cities. Yes that happen, for exemple in Royan. We know that, they killed our own peoples, the Liberation of France wa just american G.Is riding through France to enter Germany, but it doesn't change our opinion. Why ? Because the Vichy Regime were a bunch of fascistic traitors whose stupid and submissive policies led us to this situation. Same thing for the IIIrd Reich who was occupying the country.
No one will side with the HAMAS, few will side with Gaza despite mainstream media broadcasting many pro-palestinian voices (because now that the war is on it's cooler). Because people don't like flat out ethnic cleansing and they especially dislikes when their perpetrators run countries
It's a complicated history but even the Hamas Founding charter, which is certainly unreasonable in its fundamentalism with Sharia Law and is antisemitic, does not call for the extermination of all Jewish People. The 2017 Revised charter accepts a Two-State Solution of the 1967 Borders. Check Article 7 and 13 of the 1988 Charter to see yourself, compare it to Article 20 and 24-26 in the revised version. Hamas has committed atrocious acts, there's no need to make things up about Hamas to show they've done terrible things.
Ending the occupation and having a Palestinian election for the Palestinian people to choose their own leadership is the way to diminish support for Hamas and other Armed resistance groups. Further terrorizing the West Bank and Gaza will only increase their support, which has been shown historically not only within the Occupied Palestinian Territories but throughout history.
The Blockade, described by the Israeli Defense Minister as a 'total siege' long before 2023, was a strategic decision in 2005.
They are getting what they deserve then. October 7th was an atrocious terrorist attack. It was not an act of war, its victims were not legitimate targets of war. They were children, the elderly, and concert goers.
Their supporters are 72% of Palestinians.
That would be genocide. It’s not that simple.
Well it happend in the past with the Nazis, despite the large number of supporters for them the Allies attacked and as a german I must say it worked out pretty well for us.