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[–] 27 points 11 months ago (11 children)

Combined with the feature removal, this sounds like an attempt to discredit the discovery that majority of MAGA accounts are just bots.

They are just claiming it wasn't working correctly.

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  • [–] [S] 0 points 11 months ago (9 children)

    Hmm... you might actually be right. The article covers real events, but I reread it after your comment and I think the choice of emphasis and the things they chose to include are definitely at least a little odd.

    they suspected many far-right accounts are actually foreign individuals cosplaying as Western reactionaries to farm clicks

    That's not what most people suspected.

    many of the site’s most prominent far-right nationalists are actually international grifters

    (Then the screenshot of someone claiming to be from Russia, who was actually based in Ireland. Which is backwards from the way that most of these have been working.)

    It was difficult to prove this, as Twitter is incredibly buggy, so sometimes different people have different user experiences.

    Then focusing repeatedly on the US government as the main culprit, when that's not the data that most people have been observing.

    I think you are right.

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  • [–] 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    they suspected many far-right accounts are actually foreign individuals cosplaying as Western reactionaries to farm clicks

    That's not what most people suspected.

    What? Yes it is, most people with a functioning brain know most far right accounts are run by foreign individuals. You know this because each one has had a moment like this:

    Everyone knows the Reich wing is easily manipulated, due to their gross ignorance and unwillingness to learn. Magats are only allowed to parrot fox entertainment talking points and other Reich wing news media, or be ostracized.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Yes it is, most people with a functioning brain know most far right accounts are run by foreign individuals.

    It's the emphasis on "individuals" and the out-of-left-field supposition "to farm clicks" that I objected to. The idea that they are being run not from within the US is 100% accurate, yes.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago

    Ah ok, that read like you were saying it wasn't a known issue. But yeah, it's definitely not individuals, it's foreign, and probably domestic, governments. I don't doubt for a second that the group of pedophiles has outsourced their own propaganda.

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  • [+] 0 points 11 months ago* (5 children)
  • [–] [S] 5 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    Super interesting. This source has always been ringing some kind of distant alarm bell for me, because of things that are just a tiny bit off like the examples I quoted above. I think I'll take it out from !lefty_news@ibbit.at. I couldn't care less about the MBFC rating, but Wikipedia's list, I give a good bit of weight to.

    I'll leave this story up, because what the hell what's the harm, but I think I'll start to avoid them in the future. This is all good to know.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    It is so aggravating that "Mostly Factual" makes the situation (and the many, many news sources that can legitimately be called "Mostly Factual" or worse) sound so much better and more reliable than they actually are.

    I prefer my news sources to be Entirely Factual thank you very much, that should be the minimum acceptable standard of factualness. Even then facts can be still be omitted or framed in a misleading way and a lot of harm can be done that way, and that's why it's only the absolute minimum required to be credible. The fact that we call news organizations who can't even reach this basic standard "Mostly Factual" is itself misleading and that's such bullshit. It would be better described as "Only Occasionally Known to Lie And Mislead" or "Carefully Hides Some Lies Among Mostly Truth".

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 11 months ago

    Wikipedia's list is much more useful. "Reliable," "unreliable," or occasionally "sometimes one sometimes the other depending on subject matter / date of publication / similar, here's more detail."

    You know, useful categories for someone trying to decide what source to include.

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  • [+] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)
  • [–] [S] 1 point 11 months ago

    They do sometimes have useful and pertinent information, sure. But they also are screamingly wrong about a lot of stuff. They rate the New York Times as highly factual when they absolutely are not ("They are considered one of the most reliable sources for news information due to proper sourcing and well-respected journalists/editors. The failed fact checks were on Op-Eds and not straight news reporting."), they rate MSNBC and Al Jazeera as "mixed" which is the same as the New York Post, they put Newsweek above both of them at "mostly factual" ("We also rate them as Mostly Factual in reported rather than high due to having to make corrections on false information after publication.")... they're just kind of generally all over the place.

    It is more or less just one guy and his subjective impressions of each source, which normally would be semi-okay even if far inferior to Wikipedia's consensus and analysis based community approach, but that one guy also has some flagrant biases (chief among them that a source has to be pro-Israel in order to be "factual" in his world.)

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  • [–] [S] 11 points 11 months ago (10 children)

    So, I don't really know what's up with the Tel Aviv thing. I think pretty much every story I have seen about this gets one important thing wrong though. Look at this MAGA heat map:

    I'm almost sure that what you're seeing there is residential proxies. It didn't completely make sense to me that so much was centered in India (and also that we see random other countries that aren't all that geopolitically active featured in the data). Seeing the map makes it obvious (to me) though: Someone is buying up proxy services from places where they can be had for cheap, and then running their fake accounts through those proxies.

    I don't think we actually know where the call is coming from, although the geographic distribution and the fact that some of them showed in Russia represents a strong hint.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    I don’t think there was enough time for this heat map to be generated in a rigorous way. And I’m not defending any side by saying that. Just noting that it might not be great to help spread it.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    You are 100% correct, I think.

    https://xcancel.com/RandomTheGuy_/status/1992498741010719204

    Another reason not to publish stories from The Canary, I guess.

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (3 children)

    There's a "community note" added to show that that's the map of proliferation of circumcision, for whatever that's worth. Stop getting your sources from random Xitter posts.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 11 months ago (2 children)

    Way ahead of you, read the rest of the comments and where I dropped the source of this from lefty_news because yes it is crap.

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    [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    So conflicted. On one hand, I don't really want to trust something that comes out of musk/xitter... But on the other see that most of the maga and Isreal accounts come from India and Africa seems so plausible...

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  • [+] 1 point 11 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] [S] 0 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    That map is fake I think. It's a map of male circumcision, supposedly, and I guess it looks moderately plausible as that although I still have a couple of questions.

    Regardless, I think the volume of random misinformation and distraction, and fake news / accusations of things being fake news, surrounding this entire revelation, is itself pretty illuminating.

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  • 15 comments in c/pravda_news@news.abolish.capital view that post
    [–] 11 points 11 months ago
    [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    Make Africa Great Again.

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  • [+] -9 points 11 months ago (12 children)

    The Canary is worse than a tabloid. This story is disinformation

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  • [–] 13 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    I mean... you gotta say why. You can't just say "fake news" and dip.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    Rather ironic that you've destroyed your own credibility with this comment.

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  • [–] -2 points 11 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    Found another Israeli/Russian bot!

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  • [–] -1 points 11 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (2 children)

    OP in your link every where is massively downvoted for not realizing most people knew this already. We didnt think they were bots. We knew they were foreign people getting paid to be bad actors and influencers.

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  • 11 comments in c/hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se view that post
    [–] 10 points 11 months ago* (1 child)

    Not a trustworthy news source. They haven't vetted any of this information, they're literally just reposting tweets that have since been shown to be fake. For example: https://x.com/RightWingCope/status/1992436934032208008

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago

    It's funny how fast the news spread, isn't it? The first time I saw it, I thought to myself, these things must be quite easy to fake. But since so many news orgs are posting about it, they must have vetted it.

    But hmm... Your post is also about the map and not about the locations which is different from the news report. Not really a counter claim.

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  • [–] 8 points 11 months ago (4 children)

    Israel is a puppet of the US Government, so they can continue manifesting destiny without the direct backlash of their citizens.

    Israel is the 51st State

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  • [–] 17 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    At this point I'd argue that the US government is Israel's puppet.

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  • [–] 5 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Why America Supports Israel - GDF

    Analysis: America’s 51st state? US pressure comes to bear on Israel - Al Jazeera

    Why blaming the Israel lobby for western Middle East policies is misguided -MEE

    Why Does the United States Support Israel? - Jacobin

    Chris Hedges Report: Shared Mythological History Of Israel And US

    The US' support of Israel comes from ideological grounds, Christian Zionism, and more significantly from Foreign Policy grounds, from MIC profits to weapons testing to destabilization of the region for dominance.

    Despite the blackmail Israel has on US politicians, it is by far Israel that is the puppet of the US. Israel is entirely dependent on the US.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    I would have just assumed this.

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Holy shit, that should make some noise

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  • [–] 2 points 11 months ago

    Beautiful. Very nice. Thanks for the feature, Xitter.

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  • 1 comment in c/lefty_news@ibbit.at view that post
    [–] 8 points 11 months ago

    Well, that's... definitely not a good sign.

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