I notice a large number of ragebait-y political communities being spun up by new users with thousands of posts & ai profile header photos. I notice comment sections are more acrimonious, and foreign disinfo talking points are circulating a lot more prolifically than before the US election started ramping up.
Anyone else notice this? Any idea on how to combat it on this platform? Are there any communities built around creating block lists of obvious troll/ai/disinfo accounts & communities?
Keep in mind that American elections are coming up and Americans think the internet is only about them. So we’re not only being dragged into this by disinformation campaigns.
Do we though?
You might not. Many Americans might not. But the internet is annoyingly US-centric and can be frustrating to use as a non-American. A random example: Numerous times I’ve gone to sign up/purchase something and put “Canada” as the country and the “State” and “Zip code” boxes never changed. I have been denied purchases and registration several times because the website was coded to only accept US zip codes even if I change the country.
So many sites just assume everyone is American, speaking American English, and interested in American things.
Yes.
Ok I’m convinced
Good.
Now go and tell your fellow countrymen.
lol I will say the dumber ones do think everything is America. I don’t think this applies to the nerds here on lemmy for the most part though
It definitely applies to most Americans here too. Almost anything that’s exclusively US is posted like nothing else exists. Both thread and comments are written like they aren’t aware the rest of the world exists. It’s VERY prevalent here just like anywhere else online, and it’s infuriating for everyone outside the US.
Smarter Americans do it too. It’s mostly small things, like saying they are from “Georgia” which is a country, while “Georgia, USA” is the state. Using the “Politics” communities (and subreddits) for USA Politics, while all the other countries just post it in their country community (/subreddit). Talking about “southern people” as if that internationally means southern USA people. “Why is my hospital bill so big???” without mentioning they are from the USA (we can figure that one out easily). I can literally keep going on and on.
Yeah unfortunately it’s not primarily astroturfing… these people do it for free
Yeah, it’s been proven America has no impact on the rest of the world at all.
Besides a strong military ally it has indeed not had much positive impact.
Lol negative impact inexplicably doesn’t count. Our president totally having just no power to reduce or increase negative impacts. yep very intelligent viewpoint here
I have no idea what you’re trying to say.