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?
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I’m Chinese on fediverse. Guess I’m propaganda now.
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. This shift is driven by real economic and geopolitical pressures. E.g. US tariffs and military threats, Chinese investment and cheap EVs, etc. 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 even more apparent here. In Western countries the positive opinion on China is less one of an ally and more of a necessary partner. In Canada, the opposition to trade with China shifted from 80% in 2020 to 32% at the end of 2025.
If you’re primed to not see anything positive about China, then even positive views around partnership could appear as pro-China propaganda. Also people in the Global South are much more aware of US and European atrocities so when you present China’s atrocities as a counter to people’s positive opinions, it looks unserious and hypocritical to them. If you see their hypocrisy callout as a propaganda method and you call it out as such, you lose all good faith credibility with them.
Pics:
PS: Along with this shift, comes the realization among some that a lot of what they thought about China came from corporate US interest via US-owned media that pushes a line useful for that interest. This has happened to me and multiple RL friends and family in Canada. The conversations on the last thanksgiving table have changed a lot since 2024. At present we’re in the necessary partner camp.
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.
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.
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.
Irony thy name is Hector.
Speak of the devil. The long palsied arm of [redacted.]
Is the hexbort here in the room with us right now? There’s a fancy saying my people have, if you’re smelling dog shit everywhere you go, look under your own shoe.
At least I don’t use alts to upvote my comments and downvote yours. Like yourself. Sad stuff Hec. Sad stuff.
Great anecdote comrade. We have sayong, if you do not think good, do not think much. Now if you will excuse me trollsky.
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.
Anything even remotely pertaining to China is flooded with the Chinese state actors reply guys and bots.
What racist, afraid of your own shadow scummy behavior you display.
When I check facebook, just in passing as I use marketplace occassionally I check the enshitified feed, and there is a lot of chinese propaganda on there, pushing their advancements, science, it’s a concderted effort for sure.
The Chinese are really bad at propaganda though, they never had to try with their own people, so they put that same amount of understanding into it here and it falls flat, at least so far. They are getting better with their fluff pieces, but as far as manipulating us, they suck at it, unlike the Russians, they get us, they know just how stupid we are.
Even Chinese SA’s have access to VPN’s, proxies, etc. It’s not like they would tie their own hands behind their backs to spread the good word, ya know?
Russia only needed a small number of inroads to influence the 2016 US election, and now? Pff, they hardly need to do anything, we’re completely self-sufficient in propagandizing ourselves. It’s entirely possible China’s already created their own army of Overseas Useful Idiots.
I’m a big fan of using previous baseless conspiracy theories to justify current baseless conspiracy theories.
brain in a box so he doesn’t have to think anymore
I’m assuming that made sense in your head?
Downvote and move on, if the name becomes familiar block them.
Sorry, but you forgot a step:
Downvote and move on, if the name becomes familiar report them and then block them.
Moderators should help so not all users will need to block these bad actors.
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
lemmy.ml is just like that, maybe you want to look for a new home instance.
Sinophobia will get you nowhere. Those “Chinese State Actors” on the Fediverse are largely Western crackers who read theory and oppose Imperialism. You shouldn’t bogeyman an entire nation you don’t know anything about, this is xenophobic and also works against the working class.
I tend to agree with sentiment. Its more useful idiots type then cynical profesionals feeling.
One group- memes or something is wholly controlled by Chinese state actors.
As one of the moderators of !memes@lemmy.ml i encourage OP to look at the sort of posts i make and tell me - do you really think i’m a “Chinese state actor”?
Do you think all these posts i make in, eg, !hoch@lemmy.ml and !goodnews@lemmy.ml and !badnews@lemmy.ml and !eleven@lemmy.ml… these are all part of a carefully-crafted cover, and I’m actually being paid by China to delete totally-not-racist posts depicting their president as a yellow cartoon bear?
And for this service, to maintain my cover, they also pay me to create memes like this and this and this and this and this and this (and defending that one against less informed nerds) and this and this and this (a small sample of my OC here)?
And do you think China paid for this understandable explanation of asymmetric cryptography using high-school level math, because someone asked, deep in a thread about a service which I’d also already debunked the snake-oil privacy claims of?
Really?
Capitalist propaganda is rampant on the fediverse. We need to discuss ways to combat this. Most big instances -generalist, tech or something are wholly controlled by bourgeois people who would rather uphold state violence than democracy. What do you think?
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 need for HSR)
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).
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 that regime.
I tend to find Lemmy to be pretty good at being critical of the US
Lemmy world isn’t
Both often go hand in hand
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.
Or better yet, to back to Reddit
Best advice here. ML is a goddamn dumpster fire
Lol. This coming from a .worlder
I’m sorry to say that lemmy is not popular enough to be on CPC’s radar.
The CPC’s propaganda budget is mostly focused on what Chinese people would read if they get over the great firewall (mainly YouTube and Twitter).
Second to that is the general “feel good” stories, like scenery, food, or panda (recently high-speed trains), aiming at the mainstream Western public. You may see those on lemmy, but it’s very unlikely that the state propagandists are the ones posting them here.
That sounds like something chinese state propagandists would say.
Of course it is. Its what the block button was made for.
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.
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
I don’t see many self-hosters celebrating the wonders of capitalism.
Not dominated by Chinese, Russian nor Western state actors. That’s all I’m asking for. Where truth isn’t censored.
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.
Why is Lemmy.ml the most popular tankie instance? I’ve been played by Poo bear, interesting. Thanks I will switch.
ml literally stands for Marxist Leninist aka tankies aka red fascism
So which instance is politically neutral
There is no such thing as “politically neutral.” What you perceive as neutral is that which is hegemonic.
I’m a big fan of my instance im on so fat. sh.itjust.works/
They are more focused on a working platform then silecing dessent
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.
Defederations and bans essentially work like a shared blocklist for all users on that instance. Plus you get a local feed with other users who have similar interests, and blocked users/instances don’t use local server resources.
Subscribing to a blocklist seems risky, because it’s likely that many users would subscribe to a single, popular blocklist. Then it would become a centralised point of control which can silence people across much of the Lemmyverse.
Yes, but I’d rather be able to control it myself than try to find a whole instance that perfectly matches my needs. You can always unsubscribe from the blocklists.
It’s safe to assume that the enemy is promoting propaganda while our noble nation is promoting the truth!!! \s
The difference is that I don’t get banned/censored on western instances for criticizing Trump or US military interventions.
criticizing trump or us military interventions is pretty much all i do on ml, grad, hexbear
i eventually leave or get banned from the anarcho lib comms for doing that.
Well sure you can criticize Trump there. But try criticizing the CCCP, China, or Russia.
we have reservations about, and criticize them all the time.
what i don’t really see being tolerated is insistent propaganda talking points or trolling, and even then most will talk to you if you are reasonable.
Insistent propaganda talking points and trolling are tolerated if they are from the Russian or China/CCP perspective. Honestly that’s about all there is on their news or politics discussions.
communists will mostly discuss communism and related
I can and do
I engage regularly there in precisely those discussions.
You can criticize them as long as you aren’t doing so from a liberal, anti-communist perspective. The genuine flaws of existing socialism are better analyzed by those that actually study socialism and socialist countries.
Ive been banned for criticzing the PRC explictly from a socialist perspective.
You were temp-banned, for dogmatically repeating debunked claims pushed by liberals, in the face of evidence to the contrary. You appear to be free to comment there.
You don’t get banned on hex, grad, or ml for it either, either. People should really check the mod logs a few times daily.
I’ve gotten banned and censored from communities there for saying that Ukraine should fight back against Russia.
Unfortunately for you, the modlog is public
Yeah so check it.
You were temp banned, usually those are for a few days for the person to cool down. The removed comment was part of a chain advocating for the collective punishment of russian civilians
That’s a US military intervention.
Okay… From the last couple days.
Removed Comment He’s also either blackmailed or employed by china (multiple visits including his honeymoon, where he spent the night not with his wife but in the room with a number of school kids that he also brought with him… On his honeymoon) by NihilsineNefas @slrpnk.net reason: Misinformation
mod Removed Comment There are lots of countries, including all the western countries where fewer people answered affirmatively to that question, where people are far more free to express their opinions than in China, though. The most obvious reason being that the majority of the world’s countries do not have a Great Firewall. This is what shows that there is a bias in the Chinese answers – or possibly a bias the other way in the western ones, but either way it means the results are not meaningfully comparable. edit: > What’s happening is that working class speech is relatively free, while capitalist and corporate speech is not. That’s why the vast majority say they have freedom of speech, while we know the state censors private, capitalist speech. “I don’t want to work the 996 work week” is the epitome of working class speech, whereas supporting it is corporate speech. China chose to censor it. by turdas @suppo.fi reason: misinformation
Time mod Action
mod Banned realitista @lemm.ee from the community Technology reason: Rule 1 expires: 7 months ago
mod Removed Comment More like someone who lives in a country that survived communism and the oppression that it brings and who would never go back. Why don’t you guys move to China or North Korea (or inexplicably Russia which you also brigade for). Try living in the utopias you brigade for? by realitista @lemm.ee reason: Rule 1
mod Removed Comment You should pop on over to North Korea and tell us how great it is there. by realitista @lemm.ee reason: Rule 1
mod Removed Comment .ml is leaking again. by realitista @lemm.ee reason: Rule 2
mod Removed Post Trump wants green card applicants legally in US to hand over social media profiles reason: Duplicate
mod Locked Post Trump wants green card applicants legally in US to hand over social media profiles
mod Removed Post Elon Musk is named after a character in a book written by a Nazi, Werner Von Braun reason: Video link
mod Locked Post Elon Musk is named after a character in a book written by a Nazi, Werner Von Braun
mod Removed Post Donald Trump said on Thursday the survival of Ukraine is important to the United States, a shift in tone days before the House votes on a $61 billion aid package for Ukraine reason: Twitter links not allowed, articles only.
mod Removed Comment That’s a false equivalence. Every country is imperialist if you go back far enough. My concern is about today’s political and security situation, not that of 200+ years ago. by realitista @lemm.ee reason: Rule 1
Ah. Enlightened centrism.
your mom is rampant on this dick
哈！Gottem！
Woah what is this chicken scratch box logo? Must be said Chinese propaganda OP is calling rampant.
😎
Your instance is the lead actor on that one
