• @TropicalDingdong
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    1972 years ago

    Bro this isn’t news. Its r/TheDonald, Lemmygrad, and half of youtube and facebook. This has been happening since 2016.

    • @jeffwOP
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      872 years ago

      I’d still say it’s news, it’s just confirming that Russia has continued their same pattern of behavior. Early on the troll farms actually infiltrated communities (I remember reading that they targeted the Bernie subreddit too), but now they just upvote, like, and share unwitting US pawns

      • @[email protected]
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        392 years ago

        Yeah I thought it was weird when so many Bernie supporters switched to Trump. They’re political opposites.

        • @jeffwOP
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          492 years ago

          Not just that. The whole “Bernie or bust, never support democrats again!” Stuff

          • @BeardedSingleMalt
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            102 years ago

            There were waves of people who claimed that because their guy Bernie didn’t get the nom, they threw a fit and were outright voting 3rd party instead of Biden. Of course, none of them ever went to the polls to vote in the primaries because [insert 14 different excuses]

          • @Serinus
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            2 years ago

            Yeah, that stuff was incredibly transparent I don’t think it got many real people… But if they get just one in five hundred former supporters then it still moves the needle.

            It’s insane that our margins are what they are. A lot of this stuff just shouldn’t have debate. It’s too common sense.

            • fkn
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              2 years ago

              First past the post creates these razor thin margins. It’s not organic. If we had a ranked choice required plurality then the margins would widen in most races and flip in others.

        • @toasteecup
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          122 years ago

          I know a former Bernie bro. He switched to trump because “the system fucked Bernie and trump is trying to fuck the system”

          • @jeffwOP
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            82 years ago

            Lol who downvotes someone for telling a story. Come on guys, he’s not advocating for this, just sharing a story.

            • @toasteecup
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              22 years ago

              Give people a vote system and they’ll prove they suck I guess. Thanks though

          • @[email protected]
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            42 years ago

            I wonder if some of these were former Ron Paul types. I know I was briefly until I learned more about him. Honestly I just wanted weed to be legal nationally.

            • @toasteecup
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              22 years ago

              Honestly, I’m not sure. I know he worked for the DNC for a while, but I also know a deep end right winger became close friends with him so who the hell knows what happened. Dude always struck me as a bit impressionable

        • @grue
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          2 years ago

          Before the 2016 election, there were a few actually-good parts of Trump’s platform that he had in common with Bernie, such as opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and a few other things that I can’t remember at the moment.

          Those commonalities were pretty much all either Trump supporting the right thing for the wrong reasons or just blatant lies, but some of the stupider Bernie supporters were duped, I guess?

          (FWIW, I supported Bernie but still voted D in the 2016 and 2020 general elections.)

          • @Serinus
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            52 years ago

            And I’ll likely vote against Biden in the primary, but when it comes to the general I’ll compromise. Compromise is a core part of democracy.

            • @[email protected]
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              2 years ago

              Exactly. I can’t stand Hillary, but I absolutely voted for her in the general. Because the alternative was considerably worse. Many of us saw through Trump’s bullshit and recognized him as having the complete opposite mentality of what makes somebody a good president. It’s not even about politics. Trump isn’t a politician! He bragged about dodging taxes. He bullies people. The list goes on and on. And when he was elected, many people were sounding the alarm that there’s no way this guy is voluntarily leaving office. If he gets impeached and convicted, loses the re-election, or hits his 2 term limit, it was pretty obvious how he was going to act. And what really drove it home was the vast number of crimes he committed while in office. He knew that being president was the only thing shielding him from criminal prosecution. There’s no way he was going to leave office peacefully. Even during the primaries, he refused to pledge his support to whoever won the nomination if it wasn’t him. He shoved other world leaders out of the way so he could stand in front of them. He doctored a National Weather Service map with a sharpie because he couldn’t possibly admit that he made a mistake about where a hurricane was headed. He spent his entire presidency bullying people on Twitter.

              I mean, yeah, Hillary and Biden suck. They’re neolibs. But if Trump is the alternative, I’ll be the first in line to vote for the neolibs. And sadly, being in my 40s, Biden is probably the best president we’ve had in my lifetime. I may question his true allegiances, but I stand with nearly every decision he’s made while he’s been president. I just wish we could get a left wing populist president in my lifetime. Everybody thought Obama was that person, but I saw through his shit when he was campaigning. He made a lot of promises that he would never be able to keep, and when push came to shove he turned out to be a neolib all along. But if I had to choose between Obama and Trump, Obama all the way.

          • @[email protected]
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            162 years ago

            No. That is simply untrue.

            First, if you feel Bernie and Trump are both populists then that term means absolutely nothing.

            Second, people don’t go “I like this guy because he wants to tax the rich, have universal healthcare and wants to go regulations to help stop climate change,” and then when that guy loses think “this other guy who acts nothing like the candidate I supported and has literally the opposite policies might hear me so I’m all in on him!”

            This is a fiction made up to push to narrative that it isn’t foreign propaganda.

            • @grue
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              2 years ago

              First, if you feel Bernie and Trump are both populists then that term means absolutely nothing.

              “Populist” can mean different things and have different connotations. Bernie was a positive sort of populist, in the sense that he advocated for policies that would help the working class. Trump was a negative sort of populist, in the sense that’s a euphemism for “demagogue.”

              • Vashti
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                02 years ago

                Populist really just means telling people what they want to hear. Bernie and Trump are both populists, they just have (largely) very different audiences.

    • Hyperreality
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      582 years ago

      It wasn’t even subtle.

      I remember posts with thousands of upvotes from this website called thedurian. I googled the people who ran it, one of them had a linkedin which mentioned his location as Moscow and that he had previously worked for RT.

      Given I was banned for posting screenshots, I suspect the mods of /r/thedonald were in on it.

      • @Serinus
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        92 years ago

        TheDonald started as a joke that was legitimately funny. As soon as anyone tried to call it out as a joke, that person would be banned within seconds. That’s not normal, volunteer moderation.

        There were people with the power to ban paid to control that sub. They took shifts, likely from Russia.

    • @[email protected]
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      282 years ago

      “Id rather be a Russian than a Democrat”

      Right around the time Russians stopped being “damn commies” to “antidote to the degenerate west” to them.

      • @asteriskeverything
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        92 years ago

        Oh SHIT I actually forgot that was a thing commonly heard. Frankly it’s been brain breaking news headlines (and usually the even with context it was accurate headlines) since 2015 so hard to remember it all.

    • @Hazdaz
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      162 years ago

      And there is literally nothing to declassify. This has been happening out in the open for years. The FBI has been warning us about this shit multiple times. Yet the funny think is that people don’t think it is happening to them.

    • @someguy3
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      2 years ago

      I noticed a decent number of Russian memes (before Trump) trying to make Russia and Putin look cool, and remember wondering if they were from Russians actually trying or from Westerners having lolz.

    • @asteriskeverything
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      32 years ago

      There’s another lemmy instance to watch out for??? Unless it’s old hat already, I don’t see much beyond .world stuff

      • @kameecoding
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        92 years ago

        hexbear is another one that’s defederated thankfully

      • Miqo
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        72 years ago

        IIRC, lemmy.world defederated with lemmygrad a while ago.

        • @asteriskeverything
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          12 years ago

          Ah ty. Now I want something like r/subredditdrama but it’s to keep track of this stuff lol. I miss consuming harmless drama

          • @orclev
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            22 years ago

            Honestly there needs to be some way to easily see who is defederated from who, and ideally why.

            • @asteriskeverything
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              32 years ago

              So far it’s safe to assume it’s because the user base are tankies/pro russia/far right and spread those comments while also causing problems in whatever instance defederalizes them. I just want the tea

              • @orclev
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                12 years ago

                Really? Can you provide a link or the relevant search keywords to find such a thing?

    • @lemmylommy
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      12 years ago

      Thank you for supporting the 24h news cycle, where everything is breaking yet nothing matters past a day because „it isn’t news“ anymore.