To The Fediverse

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The fediverse is a collection of community-owned, ad-free, decentralised, and privacy-centric social networks.

Each fediverse instance is managed by a human admin. You can find fediverse instances dedicated to art, music, technology, culture, or politics.

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Fediverse is a portmanteau of “federation” and “universe”.

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Fediverse vs Disinformation - Divisions by zero (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 5 months ago by Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/fediverse

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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/24353606

I'd like to introduce a new Lemmy community intended to help keep Fediverse moderators and users informed about current/trending disinformation campaigns.

I'm currently seeking to compile a list of reliable sources related to political/social/corporate disinformation campaigns. If anyone has any recommendations, I'd love to hear about them in the comments. Once I have a curated list, I'll publish it in the community sidebar for reference.

To get things started, I've already reposted a few articles from https://euvsdisinfo.eu/, which was the main inspiration for this community.

My hope is that, alongside the excellent projects developed by @db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com (such as fediseer, fedi-safety, and threativore), this community will play a small part in making the Fediverse a better place to visit.

From the community sidebar:

Propaganda and disinformation are a big problem on the internet, and the Fediverse is no exception. [...]

By equipping yourself with knowledge of current disinformation campaigns by state actors, corporations and their cheerleaders, you will be better able to identify, report and (hopefully) remove content matching known disinformation campaigns.

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[–] ericjmorey@lemmy.world 5 points 5 months ago

I hope this isn't part of a disinformation campaign, but if it is, it's an impressive commitment to disinformation.

[–] infinitevalence 4 points 5 months ago

Thanks for trying to help with this. I have had to give up and book some people and communities because I could not stand the manipulation and lies.

[–] rhacer@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago (2 children)

So who decides what's disinformation? How do you correct it when something that has been called disinformation turns out to itself be disinformation?

I'm thinking about things like the lab leak theory or the Hunter Biden laptop, both of which were called disinformation, but ended up being either plausible or true?

[–] Flatworm7591@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Sorry for the late reply. I didn't want to post a quick and unconsidered answer, and didn't have time to write a long reply at the time.

So who decides what’s disinformation?

My aim is to compile and maintain a list of credible sources and repost their content in this community, so it is more visible to Lemmy users and the wider Fediverse. At the end of the day, it's up to more people than just me to decide what topics to post on and what sources to use, since anyone can post. But as moderator, I will be quick to remove any content that doesn't fit the brief.

How do you correct it when something that has been called disinformation turns out to itself be disinformation? I’m thinking about things like the lab leak theory or the Hunter Biden laptop, both of which were called disinformation, but ended up being either plausible or true?

Those are interesting examples. Both are cases where there was a clear political motive behind the stories that were run (or not run) in the media. But in both cases I think it was pretty obvious to me, even at the time, that both stories were not being honestly covered.

Snopes had a pretty good take on the lab leak theory, and many well respected scientists also called for this theory to be properly investigated, even publishing an article in the journal Science.

With the Hunter Biden laptop story, the lack of media coverage on that was a form of censorship by omission, arguably, and is certainly notable in terms of media bias. And the widespread claims of the story being "Russian disinformation" by US "intelligence" officials were definitely an example of a US administration disinformation campaign to discredit the story. It's not just the Russians and Chinese who want to bury stories that make them look bad, after all.

But having said all that, I'm no more infallible than the next guy. But I'll do my best to post updates on situations that are evolving or where new information comes to light.

[–] rhacer@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

Your response gives me hope that you are going about this in a POV neutral fashion. I be wish you the best of luck.

[–] sneezycat@sopuli.xyz 2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

Journalism should be like Science. Yeah the results are nice, but they need to be peer reviewed. We need open journalism that shows traceable source material for the claims it makes, so that one can do the research themselves.

Of course, this has its own difficulties and problems.

[–] ericjmorey@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago

Any journalist knows that when you reveal your sources, you find it harder to have any useful sources and you become less relevant.