Melvin_Ferd
@Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world
- Comment on Australians banned social media. Now they are worried about teenagers going outside with e-bikes 3 days ago:
How do you know their age?
- Comment on London stabbing rates vs X posts about London crime 1 week ago:
What is response? Do you think people going into to the streets against armed forces should pack up because the authoritarians have total control over the streets and can kick in heads at their discretion. Fuck that, people show up to oppose them regardless what they control to contest them and at the very least make it harder for the authoritarians rather than making it easier for them.
Who gives a shit if they boost right wing content. That shouldn’t stop anyone. That is a defeatist attitude that is spread all over the left and it needs to fucking stop.
If they boost their content, you go to the comments. It’s a numbers game. You’re not arguing with the chuds. You’re playing the game. Same game most people are all aware of yet others are blind to. You need numbers. Humans are social. They change opinions slowly over time, but only if they see the herd moving. This is why they’re attempting to control these platforms and convince the left to abandon them.
Regardless, the reality is they don’t just boost right wing content. They boost content that sells ads. Engagement sells. So when you all leave, it rebalanced everything to the right and their content spread. Leftist creators tried to break through and failed without Engagement. Right wing propaganda spread further and faster than ever before.
Arguing with CHUDS online is the biggest industry there is. There’s a reason for it. Call it whatever you like but it’s undeniable fact. These platforms are critical to stopping fascists. Fascist rely on public displays of strength and power. It’s the only place you can make them look like assholes effectively in front of the people that they’re trying to appear strong to.
You talk about wasting time. The biggest waste of effort and time is posting the same fucking anti trump slop here on lemmy but can’t be bothered to do it anywhere else. We all know he sucks and what they’re doing. This content isn’t created to hand to people who agree with you. People need to be flooding the zone with it.
- Comment on London stabbing rates vs X posts about London crime 1 week ago:
Regardless if they own them. It’s still where the most amount of social relevance is. Some are there and it’s growing. But the left cannot win anything going forward unless they beat the fuck out of the reich on these platforms. They own it, but they can’t just flip a switch saying censor lefties and allow their ideas to spread. We’d all know and it would wildly turn a lot of people away from them. They are forced to leave the gates open. So instead they convince us to self censor. Reality is we all should be there now, building groups and putting their ideas against the ropes. It’s a numbers game. Play the game. Give them no area to spread bullshit uncontested.
- Comment on London stabbing rates vs X posts about London crime 1 week ago:
And compare that to the leftist handing social media over to the right uncontested.
- Comment on Why do some users have zero upvotes on their posts/comments? 1 week ago:
This mentality is insane to me. But it explains so much about right vs left.
Like are you a knight of the lemme round table or something. What path has one taken to get to the point that you remove your own upvote on your own post so that is dealt with fairly?
I can’t with you people. It is claustrophobic watching every MAGA individual aggressively take every advantage and turn even their biggest fuck ups into victories. Meanwhile in left leaning spaces people are making sure they take the opportunity to seize every defeat from the clutches of victory
- Comment on Why do some users have zero upvotes on their posts/comments? 1 week ago:
I feel like this should be the motto for leftist every where. It feels so on brand
- Comment on Anon time travels 2 weeks ago:
I just tried searching up a desk on google because I wanted to see what it looked like in someones room. Instead all I got was 100% links to wayfair for pages. I kept scrolling and it was all wayfair links. I remember when I would search for something and it was links to shit people posted, not businesses.
- Comment on Using AI to create rage bait 3 weeks ago:
You just showed that you’re no better than a MAGA.
- Comment on Using AI to create rage bait 3 weeks ago:
Deleting Facebook does not delete MAGA content. What is gone are the views and framing of events from the left.
Facebook’s user base are primarily older, Apolitical low-information voters, community groups, parents, workers, retirees, church groups. These are not MAGA voters, they are regular people who mostly passively scroll and absorb whatever dominates their feed that day.
When large numbers of left leaning users deleted accounts, MAGA content didn’t shrink. It rebalanced the algorithm. Comments and posts became more dominated by right leaning voices because fewer people were there to counter them.
Silence functions as consensus.
When passive scrollers see MAGA or right leaning content, they don’t think ‘this is extreme’ they instead think ‘this must be normal or widely accepted’. Without content that shows where it is wrong, these right leaning messages begin to shift public opinion. You can see this reflected in polls, these are regular folk not MAGA. Public opinion you’ll hear how protestors are violent or burning down cities, vaccinations are dangerous, ANTIFA is a terrorist organization, media is always fake and lying, etc…
Here is something that is very critical to allof this. Research shows a small, committed minority can flip majority opinion once it crosses a critical threshold, around ten percent. That minority does not need to convince everyone. It only needs to dominate what people see often enough to make its position feel normal.
Social consensus through the influence of committed minorities
Here is the abstract
We show how the prevailing majority opinion in a population can be rapidly reversed by a small fraction 𝑝 of randomly distributed committed agents who consistently proselytize the opposing opinion and are immune to influence. Specifically, we show that when the committed fraction grows beyond a critical value 𝑝𝑐≈10%, there is a dramatic decrease in the time 𝑇𝑐 taken for the entire population to adopt the committed opinion.
Does it mean every time when you have a small dominate minority that opinions will flip? No. But it does give evidence to the idea that there is some small value like 10% of a group needed to change their views for the rest of the group to flip 100%.
MAGA understand this, the left seem to be out of the loop on this however. This is why we see right leaning content that is more engaging and users who flood the zone.
In 2024 there was 1.9 billion spent.
Facebook Says 10 Million People in the U.S. Saw Russia-Linked Ads
Far-right news sources on Facebook more engaging
How right-wing influencers are bending reality in Minneapolis
MAGA are using platforms like Facebook to become > committed agents who consistently proselytize the opposing opinion and are immune to influence. And they can only become those agents when the left is not there to challenge them. When we all left Facebook and x and whatever else, we played right into their hand.
You can put hundreds of millions of people in the streets, but if digital spaces are dominated by MAGA frames then public opinion will turn against any protests or efforts.
Online perception shapes IRL legitimacy.
Leaving Facebook feels morally correct. But it’s a retreat.
Public support matters. Views matter. Presence matters. Framing matters. Abandoning the largest passive audience on the internet only serves to accelerates the normalization of MAGA
- Comment on Using AI to create rage bait 3 weeks ago:
Can you explain how sharing a link like this is helping MAGA
- Comment on Using AI to create rage bait 3 weeks ago:
Do you mind if I add this as the description
- Comment on Using AI to create rage bait 3 weeks ago:
The fact that you think having a Facebook account connect to that is immeasurably ignorant.
Not sure what this means
But I’ll digress. You go ahead and justify your contribution to MAGA any way you choose.
You contribute more to MAGA by giving them free access to people’s content rather than fighting against their misinformation. The minute you deleted your account was the minute you start contributing to MAGA success
- Comment on Using AI to create rage bait 3 weeks ago:
Looks like you went back to watching Bluey. I’ll check back in after the next recorded setting protest and you can let me know how unified you’re feeling.
- Comment on Using AI to create rage bait 3 weeks ago:
You’re wrong on a few things here.
There are more than enough reasons to be on Facebook right now depending on what you’re trying to accomplish. Personal feelings about the platform are valid reasons to stay off, but they are not good enough if you also expect people to show up to protests. It is callous to dismiss Facebook as a place to organize and use a unified voice while expecting others to take on risks without making efforts at a lower level that can accomplish the same goals.
Whether people like it or not, memes are far more powerful than protests in the current media environment. We have seen massive protests with hundreds of millions of people in the streets and nothing meaningful came from them. Attitudes did not change. Policy did not change. The same politicians are still in power.
To prove my point look at Howard Dean. His entire national political career was ended by a single meme. One moment, repeated endlessly, reached more people and shaped public opinion more than huge demonstrations that required arrests and injuries ever did. That is how influence works today. If there are no measurable goals or direction, then protests are just something people do to feel like they participated. Some of us think effort should happen earlier and at lower risk stages before asking people to put their lives on the line. Expecting people to risk losing an eye, being arrested, or worse just to feel symbolically united and then go home is not strategy.
If you want real outcomes, you start where people already are and use the tools that actually move opinion and behavior right now.
- Comment on Using AI to create rage bait 3 weeks ago:
Your intention is to rage bait. Otherwise what why comment to announce you’re not going to honestly engage with this
- Comment on Using AI to create rage bait 3 weeks ago:
You made a comment on a post to say ‘didn’t read’ and you’re accusing me of baiting
- Comment on Using AI to create rage bait 3 weeks ago:
I’m not sure what the purpose of protesting for us means.
Protests carry a significant risk. There are severe financial, medical, legal and career risks. With how things are there is even risk to lives.
What I struggle with understanding is given this risks what is the reward for protesting. If we’re asking others to bare these things, should there not be a due diligence on our part to make sure we did everything we could to ensure these protests are successful.
All protests are not equal. Civil rights protests or Montgomery bus boycotts came with clear measurable goals that protestors knew the risks and rewards. Other protests where shit shows like occupy Wallstreet or many of the Iraq war protests where laws were already locked in and there was no actionable goal.
So what i struggle with here is what do you mean protests are for us because it sounds like you think protests should be more like occupy or the Iraq protests rather than any of the civil rights or bus boycotts.
Facebook is going to make money no matter what. That’s because there are so many people using it. Which is why it’s why everybody but the left use it to raise awareness. I get the moral argument but you still have to be aware of the consequences. Not using Facebook means they spread their message to the average person. If you want any support or success you have to engage and convince that vox populi to support your efforts or your dead in the water before you even started.
- Comment on Using AI to create rage bait 3 weeks ago:
You’re arguing decorum after opening by dismissing the post solely because it came from Facebook. That’s not principled discourse that’s selective tone policing
Engage with the content. If you don’t want to engage, then move on. Don’t come here to smugly dismiss it. But writing it off based on platform and then lecturing others about how questions should be phrased. That’s hypocritical.
You don’t get to police comments after you’ve already derailed the conversation.
- Comment on Using AI to create rage bait 3 weeks ago:
It was a genuine question. What is inflammatory about it. Some people don’t care some do.
- Comment on Using AI to create rage bait 3 weeks ago:
.ml crew are the worst of the left.
- Comment on Using AI to create rage bait 3 weeks ago:
Yes it is how that works. It’s exactly how that works. It’s why the right invest everything they have on controlling it. This is basic stuff.
- Comment on Using AI to create rage bait 3 weeks ago:
The problem is you here. This is why the left has lost so much ground over the past ten years. You’re just not thinking. I dont’ think you understand this isn’t 1967. It’s time to wake the fuck up. Protesting is effective but their ability to diminish those efforts are greater and until you nullify that then you’re just jeopardizing every effort people make going out there to protest.
- Comment on Using AI to create rage bait 3 weeks ago:
That is exactly the point I am arguing. Going out to protest will not be as effective if you aren’t able to counter the efforts they will use on digital spaces to smear and spread bullshit like what is shown in this post. It’s jumping critical steps in making a proper defense before going on the offense.
- Comment on Using AI to create rage bait 3 weeks ago:
Wait, so then what is the goal of protests? It’s awareness is it not. What is the point of that awareness?
- Comment on Using AI to create rage bait 3 weeks ago:
But not having a facebook account grows their base so much larger leading to another victory come election time. I don’t understand how any person things protesting is effective but combating this stuff online is not. You get more bang for your buck every single time with online effort. There’s no way to argue you don’t.
- Comment on Using AI to create rage bait 3 weeks ago:
It would let you know their tactics and how they’re convincing people to attack the left. Being aware makes it easier to pull people away from the right especially during elections if people think they’re lying or out to lunch like they did with the left.
- Comment on Using AI to create rage bait 3 weeks ago:
Honest question, are you good just passively watching all this MAGA shit spread?
- Comment on Using AI to create rage bait 3 weeks ago:
Facebook is a mess, no question. But if your goal is to counter MAGA narratives, it’s still the best return on effort right now. That’s where the misinformation is spreading fastest, and it’s where more people are needed to consistently challenge lies and keep them from going unopposed.
- Submitted 3 weeks ago to mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world | 48 comments
- Comment on At this point, what should we do about the ICE raids? If an ICE agent breaks in without a warrant or holds you at gunpoint, what do you do? 4 weeks ago:
‘Don’t reinvent the wheel’
Wait, this is horrible advice. It’s the opposite of what any successful entity does. The wheel here is a problem that the authoritarians have solved long ago. If you’re not reinventing it then you’re cooked before you even go to the store to buy your markers and bullshit cardboard supplies. They have studied the same old civil protests for decades. They have made laws to prevent protestors from being effective. They have decades of behavioral studies and actionable propaganda that they pull out and dust off every time you even think about sharing one of those ‘no kings’ or ‘general strike’ posts. Any protest you can imagine they have solved. If you don’t reinvent the wheel, you’re going to look fucking stupid when you show up with another 700m people and go home having accomplished nothing except get your leadership and organizers arrested.
That wheel needs to be reinvented. Look at the truck convoy. Hate them all you want but they did something brilliant. It was brilliant because at their top they had people who studied and knew police and authoritarian response and they found solutions to break them. After all, they were the authoritarians. They first drove through the streets across America to build awareness and hype. It’s a fucking parade. People came out and cheered on over passes as they rolled through. Others joined. Then they filled cities with so many vehicles and trucks that the police had no idea how to even responsed. How do police safely weave themselves into that formation to make arrests. Then what do they do with the trucks just sitting there? The truckers made it a street party to prevent police from committing violence. They invited families down to enjoy music and hot tubs while also shutting down major parts of cities everywhere neutralizing police ability to do their job.
The left do not have the same effort at the top. It’s lacking. But they need to figure it out super fast because I promise you if you’re just showing up to the streets with the same old shit then you’ve already lost. That wheel needs to be reinvented quick