Full disclosure, I live in Africa and don’t have a dog in this fight. I like proper discourse and it’s alright if I and another person disagree on something, what is important is that we communicate and understand where the other is coming from. The ultimate goal is the satiation of needless and avoidable suffering for all minds.
I’ve only been on Lemmy for a few days but across any sub I’ve noticed any criticism of China or the CCP is met with immediate downvotes and anything remotely positive of the US or really any western country whatsoever meets a similar fate.
Anything pro-African is mostly neutral but in essence ignored, no upvotes, no downvotes, no comments.
Has anyone else noticed this? Am I completely off base here? And is there anything else here that seemingly gets downvoted automatically. It would be sad to see the fediverse and Lemmy be nothing more than just another echo chamber on the web.
Finally, I am posting this assuming it will also be downvoted to hell based on the title alone and that itself will be some monochrome of truth of the situation here.
Anything pro-African is mostly neutral but in essence ignored.
This is sad.
I’m American, and I want the Fediverse to be Euro, Africa, South America heavy. Basically anyone but the usual suspects that dominate news. I want to see stuff from other countries.
I was fortunate enough to get to visit Tanzania, and it was great. It’d be nice if your continent took over the world. Please…
Anyway, be aware that many of the authoritarian shills actually live in the US, Western Europe or wherever. Some do not, but the bulk seem to.
They’re just terminally online.
They don’t know squat about what’s actually going on in North Korea or Iran or China, and they wouldn’t be here if they did because lemmy.ml is banned China, Iran, and obviously North Korea.
Talk to the Eastern European Fediverse folks.
They know precisely what the deal is. You do not hear them praising the Soviets, that’s for sure.
Because you have to get your friends to move to Lemmy too so the USSR/PRC loving weirdos become a lower % of total user base. Not kidding.
Nations aren’t worth devotion.
The founders of the platform are tankies. Dessalines, for example, is a tankie that banned me for criticizing china.
It’s probably because Americans are wanting a revolution to overthrow the pedophile Zionist class that has highjacked our country ✊🏼🇦🇱
… Albania?
As an example
There are absolutely pro-authoritarian agitators here who feel the need to inject their venomous or smug anti-west rhetoric at any opportunity, just looking to start an argument or push propaganda.
As far as posts about African nations being ignored I’d say that’s par for the course for the West. We’re wildly ignorant about the continent, so much so that we say that someone is “from Africa” while ignoring the 50+ countries that exist there. Our news doesn’t cover it unless we can bomb it or exploit it.
Less Anti-West, more like Anti-US. And the China drones are another thing entirely.
That would be understandable, the US is a shame, particularly these days. There are few places with that much wasted potential to make the world a better place.
Putting all patriotism aside, I don’t think there’s any reality in which the US uses its potential to make the world a better place.
The big difference nowadays is that it’s become patently clear that the US government isn’t even trying to make the US a better place.
As the self proclaimed leader of the free world there was a time where there was an attempt but behind it was always those with anterior motives. As for today I wonder what their goal is. Their leader only seems to care for himself alone and anyone following him will likely be left eating dust. That’s not to say the leaders here aren’t exactly the same. In fact I see a lot of similarities between the US and here these days.
Yeah - the whole tankie thing is another matter entirely
That’s probably the best way to put it. We used to have a sense of hope here in the US. We could have made things better, raising the global standard. Instead we allowed corporations to poison everything to the point that our leaders are openly evil.
If you had hope in the US, you weren’t paying attention.
Ha ha, no. The US never has, and never will, make the world a better place, in our lifetimes.
Do you think things would be better if they didn’t intervene in WWII? Initially they were staunchly isolationist.
The internet has been largely anti-west since as long as I can remember, but the pro-CCP thing is newer.
Part of it is because they’re one of the only “flag carriers” of socialism, so to speak, and that blinds some really desperate socialists who can’t see they are about as far from socialism as America.
Full disclosure, I live in Africa and don’t have a dog in this fight
This upset China
Lol there is actually a pretty strong pro CCP contingent at least in east Africa. I personally think they are idiots to assume people in China care about them more than their own government which honestly doesn’t care about them in the slightest. Same to the west or India. There are people simping to these different countries or political ideologies but what is needed is for people here to overcome on their own and that’s the last thing they want to hear.
For every post and comment where China and the United States comes up there’s at least another companion post and comments talking about it. Just like this thread.
There’s about a dozen users who have been arguing with each other for about three years now. Discourse simply cannot be neutral about this dynamic with how they approach the topic.
And just an FYI; Some of the same folks will also crashout if you oppose Zionism, or insult the Epstein class.
Honestly being from Africa and with their belt amd road initiative there id think you have more involved than a lot of us in the west.
Many are very pro-ccp and they did aid greatly in independence but the deals that are happening are predatory. When they come to build they don’t train anyone. They come, they isolate their workers from the “dirty Africans”, they bring their own food, they build the road and leave. In return they are given favorable deals for land and resources that will pay out many fold more than what was given. In the meantime the road they built will be collapsing and useless while they are still still extracting raw materials. The only ones who are pro-ccp are the ones who can’t think about next week or next year or ten years from now, all they see is right in front of their face and absolutely nothing else.
Might be helpful
Yeah, there are certain “tankie” instances (such as hexbear.net, lemmygrad.ml) that are like that, and most sane people block them to protect their sanity, so no one counters them
I’m speaking of Lemmy.world
I don’t know of you’re aware yet, but the fediverse discerns between two different types of content: local and federated. Local content is hosted on your instance, lemmy.world. Federated content is hosted on another instance and federated with your server. You can distinguish between the two (on the web client) by checking if the community/thread/user has an @[instance] behind it. My guess would be that you stumbled into a @lemmy.ml community. There you’ll find a rigorously enforced “alternative” world view, as you decribed.
For those of you picking at OP “not having a dog in the fight”, because they’re in Africa, that is irrelevant to OP’s point.
There has been a major uptick in people supporting socialism under the guise of social programs. Many will claim to support socialism because they favor things like universal healthcare, fair wages, unions, and similar policies. In reality, however, these things have nothing to do with socialism itself. They are social welfare programs that can be implemented under virtually any form of government.
What many of these people are actually advocating for is social democracy, not socialism. The fact that both terms contain the word “social” does not make them the same thing. Socialism, traditionally defined, involves some form of collective or public ownership of the means of production. Universal healthcare, labor protections, welfare programs, and unions do not inherently require that.
The most frustrating part is that many people simply redefine words to fit their preferred narrative. They make declarative statements that are objectively incorrect, then dismiss the actual definitions when challenged. At that point, it becomes nearly impossible to have a productive conversation because you’re no longer debating ideas, you’re debating the meanings of the words themselves.
Socialism, traditionally defined, involves some form of collective or public ownership of the means of production. Universal healthcare, labor protections, welfare programs, and unions do not inherently require that.
Universal healthcare and other social programs are, in a democracy, an example of the public owning the means of producing healthcare or other industries.
I agree that this is generally the case, but it isnt the case here on Lemmy. Lemmy has a disproportionately large number of people across the left side of the political spectrum, from people who are as you describe, to actual semi-reasonable socialists, to tankies.
I encourage you to read through my common history.
Socialism, traditionally defined, involves some form of collective or public ownership of the means of production.
Weird to complain about people calling social democracy (a path to socialism) socialism, socialism but redefine socialism to include state ownership of the means of production, in the same post.
Like if you’re being strict about what socialism is China and Sweden are equally not-socialist.
100%
CCP was a very strong grip here.
I’m going to get crucified for what I’m going to say. But here is when I noticed it. A few years ago lemmy was one of the only places AI was getting hated on very hard. Like other places had some small posts or conversations but they were pretty mature. But lemmy was hateful.
What I noticed was that it reminded me of something at the tip of my tongue. Then it hit me. The posts were all the same posts I saw in republican spaces. Like word for word same headline. Same energy, same bullshit. Except instead of immigrants it was AI.
I’m going to stop you people right there because I know what the fuck the comments will be already. So just stop. This isn’t a comment about consequences of AI pro or con. It’s a comment about an observation. Something I’ve noticed and the more I saw the more it made sense.
Lemmy was targeted hard and was one of the early generators of anti AI sentiment. It was impressive. What made it all make sense is that as much as we hate AI, it’s here. It’s not going away. Like any new frontier, the people who are first to new land will become the powerful and rich for the next generation. If I’m not fast enough, maybe I can make others slower. If we know CCP is here. And we know countries are trying to race their industries to build new patents and innovations in this new frontier, then it makes sense why such a small site like lemmy full of early adopters was targeted. It’s why posts were reminiscent of the astro turfing we all saw in republican spaces about immigrants. It’s not the there are not problems its about amplification, framing and narrative building.
CCP want western nationals to be behind the ball on innovation. They contributed massively to pushing stories early on about AI taking jobs, raping your women and stealing our way of life. If you really want to see CCP in action then search up the early AI posts here if they haven’t already scrubbed them.
