Rattled by a horde of MAGA trolls, here’s what I learned about today’s social media miasma.
Last Friday I made a post on Bluesky and X, concerning U.S. President Donald Trump’s description of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as “Governor.” It occurred to me that, numb as we are to Trump’s stream of blather, the importance of that remark was being overlooked. It was an overt declaration by the president of the United States that he does not recognize Canadian sovereignty. That’s scary.
So, my post: “For a US president to refer to the Prime Minister of Canada as ‘Governor’ isn’t just rude. It’s a hostile act.”
The post got little attention on Bluesky. On X, for whatever reason, it went berserk. Over the weekend it racked up close to 3,000 reposts, over 29,000 “likes” and more than 5,000 replies. Those replies came almost entirely from Trump-loving trolls, piling scorn and abuse on my concerns. “Yeah but it’s Canada so who gives a fuck?” said one.
Do the responses represent a genuine glimpse of U.S. opinion on Trump’s bully-boy act?
Get off of twitter accept that its a lost cause. stop wasting your time arguing with people who think it’d be funny to kill you.
Anyone with any sense doesn’t use Twitter anymore. This is like throwing bait into a shark tank and being surprised by the reaction.
The purpose of troll farms is to overwhelm people with a wave of opinion, making it seem like it’s the opinion of the majority even if it’s only a minority, to make readers doubt their own opinions as they see to much support which really is only 1 person for every 1000 comments if that.
I’d seen warnings posted that this, in large part, is and is going to be a psychological type of warfare. I thought it was nonsense at first, till I saw the barrage of verbal attacks against Canadians continuing to grow in numbers and frequency at sites like Reddit… telling us we’re useless and might as well give up. But then it occurred to me that when our enemy wants us to think we’re doing it wrong, it’s because they know we’re doing it right!
So if they are, in fact, attempting to defeat us psychologically, then we need to fight back the same way: We need to maintain and guard our right thinking and perspective by continuing to read and post and share those articles that prove our efforts are working! When we read something that discourages us, we need to follow it up by also reading from the reams of encouraging news out there! Foremost, we need to remind ourselves and each other that we aren’t alone in this… that, as Canadians, we are 40 million strong! And not only this, but we also have the support of Friends from all around the world, many of them even joining us in our efforts!
So we need to keep standing together and standing strong… knowing they would love nothing more than to see us give up, and in fact need for us to give up cause they know what we’re doing is working!
Go Canada & Friends! 🍁🌍
Also, Twitter has a lot of bots. More than ever before. This shapes discussion in many ways. Most basically, posts meeting certain narratives get more upvotes, quote tweets, etc. resulting in an algorithmic boost. Add in Xitter’s desire to “boost engagement” by bidding controversial content. Finally, so many people are leaving Xitter, or at least using it less at it’s quality declines.
Thanks. I don’t use Twitter, so it’s good to hear what’s going on over there.
I still have my Xitter account and pop in now and then. It’s declining steadily. It’s just weird if you step back and look at the difference in discussions on different topics, combined with what gets boosted. They’ve locked down their API Access, so it’s harder for researchers to measure, but it’s my impression that it’s got to be over 50% bots.
I’m sure most of that is going to be old school, using basic swarms to upvote content you want to boost, but with LLM AI getting more sophisticated by the day, and more cost effective, there’s going to AI driven bots actually writing plausible posts soon.
I think the crypto and scam space shows the leading edge, since scammers tolerance for lower quality means they can be early adopters.
But what do I know? I’m no expert. The Dead Internet Theory might stay be true, or we might have a few more years.
Also, good to get into the Fediverse. It may soon be the last refuge if humans.
You’re more of an expert than I am! I don’t get it… what do they think they’re accomplishing by ridding themselves of human users?
I don’t think it’s intentional on Xitter’s part, necessarily. It’s a bit of an arms race, and Xitter under new management had cut back on all sorts of staffing.
I also don’t think many people stick on Xitter even notice. The algorithm seems to create a bunch of parallel silos, with outside intrusions provoking a swarm response almost.
In the case of Trudeau posts, most engagement seems to be from MAGAts and Qonvoyers, with probably some choice comments from “Joe McDonaldski” from the Canadian Oblast of Ontario or something.
From Xitter’s perspective, a bunch of MAGAts and Qonvoyers reply, upvote, and engage with “Governor” Trudeau, viewing ads while a bunch of the flock pay for the Xitter check mark.
I think clearing the bots would be difficult, require continuing investment, and possibly reduce revenue in the short term.
I’m just on Xitter for legacy purposes, I rarely see anything meaningful. Granted the algorithm mostly has me figured out, and will show me stuff I already agree with, but just a bit further towards the edges of discourse. I’m under no illusion, I’m certain bad actors are influencing discourse all along the political spectrum.
But speaking generally, what’s the end goal with all these bots? The way some people speak, the net’s almost all bots as is. I don’t believe it, otherwise I wouldn’t bother signing on anymore… but if that’s in fact where we’re headed, what do people think they’re accomplishing in the long run by flooding the Internet with these things? Won’t it be just them and their little bots in the end?
As a general rule, nothing curated by an algorithm is genuine.
Iterate that for an algorithm controlled by an American corporation.
Then iterate it again for Musk.
Combine that with everyone having left Twitter who isn’t maga.
No, your experience on Twitter is not representative of the average American.
Lemmy also has algorithms mind you.
They all do.
Ok so nothing is genuine? That’s your take?
Sounds like a reasonable conclusion.
That’s the opposite or “reasonable” lol
I don’t see what’s unreasonable about saying that you shouldn’t take the things you read on algorithmic social media sites as representative of any population at large. That it’s not a “genuine” representation of any population.
Every social media is “algorithmic”. So, yes, it’s unreasonable to say you should take nothing you read anywhere as representative.
Post to X
Get trolled
Many such cases
The thing that is surprisingly hard to keep in mind is that the US is a culturally fascist country. It has been for a very long time. It’s what a fascist democracy looks like.
It is a country with long standing and broadly shared and accepted foundational mythology. It glorifies the military, and the “All American” young adult. There’s a strong cult of tradition, a deep distrust of learning and knowledge, and firm belief in the United States as a country and people of “action”. Despite their own claims to the contrary, they believe that disagreement with the US is betrayal, particularly on the part of people who arr not white and born of white US citizens. They always have an external enemy (and often an internal one, too) to judtify any action. They have contempt for countries and peoples they see as weak, and a huge hard-on for machismo.
American exceptionalism, which is taught to every school child in the country, is a fascist doctrine.
You can go down the list of fascist qualities outlined in Ur-Fascism and see that the US has always ticked off a large majority of them. The only thing that’s different today is that Americans are confronting someone trying to turn it into a disctatorship.
It’s not the fascism that bothers people about the current shift, but the governing structure the current fascist-in-chief is trying to impose.
Wah! I refuse to leave the leopard cage and don’t understand why there are leopards in it!
I know right, what did they expect would happen in the platform owned by a literal Nazi?
The media needs to catch up with the notion that they can’t rely on Twitter to be an accurate pulse on the world sentiment. It’s not the same people at X. It’s not people at X in a lot of cases with the bots.
It likely went “berserk” because X’s algorithm and the bots are tuned to whip up keywords like “governor” and “Canada” used together.
Canadians will need to do the right thing and hurt America in the spot they like most: their pocketbook.
This will hurt us too, no doubt. Monetarily, probably more. But I don’t think the average American are prepared for what kind of hurt we can put them through.
The U.S. is a terrorist organization. They always have been. They’ve always been at war and are always looking for war.
Anyone who thinks different just needs to look at the atrocities they’ve committed in the past.
Look at the atrocities they’re doing now and it’s widely being accepted as OK. Ethnic cleansing, removing one people’s from a location they’ve lived in forever, annexation of sovereign nations, discussing negotiations of a country without the country under attack being invited to discuss their future, nazis in the henhouse, Nazis taking to the streets to proclaim victory, mass racial action, concentration camps for migrants, using <insert excuse here> to bolster their wants.
This isn’t a stable country, this is a country beginning to show its true colours and hopefully they get ripped apart from the inside.
Someone needs to put down Trump and his rabid MAGA movement.
MAGA is just a modern day term for nazisim.
genuine glimpse of U.S. opinion
yes… of a vocal subset of the maga cult. magas generally have some similar views but it’s the extremist trolls that you encounter most online… because they’re so fucking persistent and they’re everywhere specifically looking for opportunities to hurt others and spread the gospel of a leaky diaper.
the maga nuts are about one-third of the country. another third is furious and pissed-off, and the last third has no fucking clue how bad it really is and how much worse it’s headed for.
Well yeah, but what do you expect.
If it had been about a US state, the responses would have been exactly the same. Magas hate anything that doesn’t agree with them, so what chance could Canada stand on a hatehole like twatter?
They forget. We burned down the white house once, and we’ll fucking do it again.
Don’t just stop at the White House. A Tsar Bomba dropping on DC would be more worthwhile.
Maybe, but sometimes you just have to bloody the bullies nose and they’ll leave you alone.
Which is what I suspect we all want, eh?
