• DaddleDew@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    9Gag is pretty bad with them as well. They used to push anti-vax and anti-mask disinformation with obvious bad faith arguments there during the COVID period. Then when the “special military operation” started in Ukraine they immediately switched to posting pro-Russia bullshit.

    Until then I was only thinking this sort of nonsense was there as a result of the website being more open to diverse political views, for better or worse. But that sudden switch made me realize that it was actually a team of people trying to sow the seeds of disarray in any way they could for the Western world by pushing disinformation like this on websites mostly frequented by young adult males, who can be vulnerable to radicalization. To think back to it, it was obvious that they were using a bot farm to upvote their content as well. I haven’t set foot on that echo chamber or propaganda and conspiracy nonsense since then. I can only assume this sort of thing is still going on there.