In the past week I’ve been absolutely roasted for criticising two different countries. Normally I’d be okay with that, I can handle a mild toasting and after all debate is a good thing.
On both occasions though I was flamed for mentioning human rights issues that are established facts and have been known for many, many years. I was critical of the actions/laws of their governments and not the people, their race, religion, general political ideology or nationality.
On both occasions I was bombarded by long posts that parroted propaganda, and in the case of one country I was told (on multiple occasions) that I was ignorant, racist and even fascist for mentioning the issues I did. I’m not complaining about how I was treated, but as a reminder, I was discussing internationally-recognised human rights concerns that can be verified and based in fact.
I could just be paranoid but I’m fairly convinced the responses weren’t from patriotic citizens. I think they were paid trolls or bots, and I think their purpose was to quiet negative talking points about the countries that were mentioned.
Has anyone else had a similar experience?
I don’t do deep packet inspection on Lemmy traffic, nor am I a behavioral analyst. I simply think it stands to reason that if there are organizations who are capable of running influence campaigns that Lemmy would be a natural target. Any online forum is potentially at risk of targeted disinformation campaigns. I don’t apply this logic on an individual basis, because witch hunts are just as counterproductive as being overly credulous. But I have a pretty simple razor that if someone is trying to incite me to violence, meet offline, or divulge personally identifying information I should block them whether or not they’re some kind of operative.
So no, you have no evidence, you just take it on faith - sorry, assert that it “stands to reason” so that you can dismiss anyone who disagrees with you out of hand.