• 21 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • The party doesn’t care about him, specifically. His polling has been under water for months, and anyone who’s not utterly delusional knows he’s about to get thumped by Stein. They’re now worried that if he stays in the race over the next month and a half, he will continue to be a lightning rod for Democratic attacks, especially on abortion, and that’ll continue to dampen Trump’s messaging. Still not convinced NC could go blue, but if it does, Robinson will be hugely responsible for it. He’s a fucking moron who makes Trump look sane and stable.









  • When analysts first noticed Spamouflage five years ago, the network tended to post generically pro-China, anti-American content. In recent years, the tone sharpened as Spamouflage expanded and began focusing on divisive political topics like gun control, crime, race relations and support for Israel during its war in Gaza. The network also began creating large numbers of fake accounts designed to mimic American users.

    Spamouflage accounts don’t post much original content, instead using platforms like X or TikTok to recycle and repost content from far-right and far-left users. Some of the accounts seemed designed to appeal to Republicans, while others cater to Democrats.


  • Blackbeard@lemmy.worldMtoNews@lemmy.world[META] MBFC bot
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    27 days ago

    I argued against the bot for a week. I hated the damn thing, and I pointed to the negative feedback as evidence in my discussions. I also held off on making sweeping assessments or making any rushed decisions because a vote manipulation ring was simultaneously uncovered, and we had no idea how deep the manipulation went. Could the feedback have been manipulated? No idea! Should we go by votes only? No idea!

    I took the time to let the team read the feedback and discuss the costs and benefits, and in the end the votes were only part of the picture. Another part is the visceral commitment of a vocal minority to overwhelming the community with commentary (and reports) to such an extent that the people who are calm and supportive get drowned out and downvoted, along with anyone who happens to agree with them. Not entirely sure those folks have committed as much energy to downvoting every critical comment as was the case on the other side though.

    The team took 12 days to work through disagreements (there were many) so we could come to a consensus position, and lo and behold, the bot is gone. The fact that the people who want the bot gone feel like they’re being dismissed is flabbergasting to me. It’s gone. Mission accomplished!



  • Blackbeard@lemmy.worldMtoNews@lemmy.world[META] MBFC bot
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    27 days ago

    Yeah, we were told they disrupted a downvote ring. I have no fucking idea where those accounts voted, except that we took vote totals with a grain of salt because we were in the dark. I’m frankly used to being bombarded with downvotes every time i comment in this community (edit: One person went out of their way to downvote each of my last 7 comments, for example.). So in my eyes, votes were (and continue to be) compromised, and we were informed about the ring while we were deliberating bot feedback. I tried to connect the dots with incomplete information because I’m not an admin. What else are you looking for here?


  • Blackbeard@lemmy.worldMtoNews@lemmy.world[META] MBFC bot
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    28 days ago

    Yes, cutting a snippet out of a sentence with broader context is a classic form of bad faith argumentation:

    if we’re not allowed to point to votes as a source of valid information, then sorting by “top” is equally invalid.

    The “if” conditional is pretty fundamental in that sentence. To cut it out and then paraphrase it to mean something it doesn’t is one of the oldest tricks in the book.