Lemmy is far too small and unimportant to attract any governments or psyops. Extremism comes in all flavours.
Are you sure though? I’m just imagining Xi being like “write that down, write that down!” after every crazy take
Or it’s the perfect, extremely cost effective training ground for Russian propagandists before they get promoted to Facebook and Reddit.
The main dev instance is literally a safe space for Russian and Chinese propaganda. Why is this so difficult to believe?
Because it’s nonsense, think of it logistically.
Why would shills bother with Lemmy when they’re already extreme? Why water a floodplain, you know? They’re already converted; they don’t need any more shilling. Why wouldn’t they pull all their resources to mainstream social media like twitter or reddit, which has everyones attention? No international news or big influencers exist on Lemmy. It is a loss of resources.
People are just extreme. Being paranoid and calling everyone you don’t like a shill or a bot ignores the fact that some people just have extreme views. They ain’t bots, they ain’t shills, they’re just bigots in safespaces and afraid of discussion. Pretending that extremists naturally don’t exist makes you as paranoid as they are. This community has been called psyops, and myself a foreign agent more times than I can count. You’re not a shill. I’m not a shill. Don’t stoop to their level, basically.
(I’m not saying they aren’t affected by shills. The propaganda they willingly consume originates from psyops on different websites, but they aren’t the prime target)
