The world has a propaganda problem. Fediverse is in the world.

Lemmy is a software; there are multiple instances (servers) that run lemmy and federate (talk) to each other. So it does not sanitise your feed the way corporate social media does. The advantage is that you do not end up in an echo chamber. The downside is that you get the weirdest and most incoherent conspiracy theories known to man. But you're (hopefully) an adult, and can use your reason to decide what's what.

Don’t let the crazies make you self censor.

China, right? Yeahhh…

It sucks because I’ve been hearing about advances in social living out there, as well as seeing its indie game development scene explode, and I’m pretty envious and supportive - but I’m also absolutely going to highlight the worst of their government.

But unlike America, they don’t seem to have a notion of separating the government from its people. I know a random Chinese gamer isn’t responsible for Uyghur Muslim genocide. They still regard it as “xenophobia”, or “ignoring America’s crimes”.

The world has a propaganda problem. Governments and regimes worldwide have been spending millions and millions in propaganda for a century, the society we live in is rotten to the core, the average person is brainwashed to pick a side and thinking in left and right. Mass media have been a tool of the propaganda and have been used as a distraction weapon since their creation.

Lemmy borrowed it's layout from reddit which is shaped and tailored around censure and propaganda. Just look at the all frontpage, the most popular subs are the same as reddit and you can't really post anything useful in these, your observation about propaganda had to be turned into a question to fit in the ask lemmy sub.

Was it Russia and China by any chance?

If they were .ml, hexbear, or several other instance users... Yea. Their instances are echo chambers for their own dumbass ideologies.

Different instances have different ideologies and cultures they prefer, which cannot happen on twitter or other monolith services.

You'll just have to learn to ignore the absolute braindead takes rampant from some instances, and don't feel bad for blocking the cretins that don't care for human rights.

What were the 2 countries you criticised?

If you mentioned China or Russia in these comments then yes there are lots of tankies. And yes they parrot propaganda but you may actually be interacting with someone who has internalised said propaganda not an organized campaign like you would see on reddit and Facebook. So view it as an opportunity to interact rather than something to wholely avoid.

A KGB agent and a CIA agent meet up for drinks off the clock, and after a few drinks they start to talk shop. The CIA agent extols the strength of the Party's propaganda, "All your citizens believe the propaganda! It's incredible! So little dissent." The KGB agent responds, "No my friend no, we are good at what we do, but you are the true masters of the art. No one at all questions your propaganda!" to which the CIA agent says, confused, "What do you mean? We don't have propaganda?"

the world is full of useful idiots who derive meaning from being propaganda parrots.

it sucks, but just block them. they aren't going away, and in their POV you are the propagandist.

There are a few topics that just can't be discussed rationally on here. I've blocked many communities and users, as well as setting up a keyword filter. I'm not here for much more than a diversion anyway.

Lemmy has a echo chamber problem.

People don't want to challenge their beliefs, their want a space in which all agree on the same stupid thing.

When I joined I was curious about how Lemmy/federation works. When it was explained to me it was said that with this approach there will be no one big Hitler who controls the discourse.

I had a hunch that this means that we will just get a bunch of smaller Hitlers. And... Well..

The problem in itself is that Lemmy means that you host a whole bunch of communities. Thats to much power concentrated in one place.

It should be that everyone hosts one community and all communities can talk to each other.

Then an Ideologie wouldn't have a one-stop-for-all place to fester.

Everyone of us is an idiot in some way. We need other people with different views to make us aware of our idiocy. Otherwise we stay ignorant and stupid.

So I don't think you interacted with bots. You interacted with cultists.

This place has a very communist leaning userbase and with that comes a with a lot of tankies and chiaboos.

In the end USA and Europe have a lot of similar issues and that's growing so it's not like they are morally superior, but ya know tankies and co are very good at ignoring issues just as much as any red blood American.

You see, your problem is that you left a comment on a .ml instance that doesn't align with the hive mind. Those are places where someone will look you dead in the eye and tell you with the upmost certainty that China is a utopia and North Korea is the free-est country in the world. Tis a silly place

I am probably gonna find a pipebomb in my mailbox

You weren't flamed for mentioning established facts, but for dogmatically repeating easily disproven claims. People brought receipts and explained how your views were not actually based on evidence but instead propaganda, and now you've deleted those comments, making it hard for others to verify that they were indeed wrong. You weren't using internationally-recognized consensus, but purely western consensus, portraying that western consensus as the totality of international thought.

Either way, no, no paid trolls nor bots, just a bunch of communists. Lemmy was made and developed by communists, so there are lots of communists here.

You probably spoke to .ml users. They are some of the most wilfully ignorant pro-CCP and pro-Kremlin users. Some are, without a doubt, paid trolls.

As another user mentioned, look if the username ends in .ml but there are such propagandists who have non-.ml accounts and post nonsensical verbages that .ml usually parrots.

So many comments about blocking.

Whatever happened to just ignoring people? Everyone these days is block this block that.

I have been online since bbs days, never blocked anyone. I don't get it.

I would rather notice the bullshit repeating talking points and ignore then then pretend they dont exist. Helps keep my aware.

Don't feed the troll, but no need to not acknowledge they are there.

I see you've met hexbear and lemmy.ml. They're not trolls or bots. They're just plain ol' idiots.

Block and move on. I think I've blocked most of ml at this point, but there are a few normal users. At least 2.

100% but I wouldn't call it a problem. I find it's often refreshing to see the stupidity around you and not have it hidden behind a veil. I think you also get more genuine information here it just requires more from you to not get got.

PSA: in the settings you can block whole instances, and if you want to eliminate this annoying problem, just block *.lemmy.ml and any instance that contains the string "hexbear".

Problem solved.