Fediverse

What’s rampant is imperial core propaganda. You see the “Chinese propaganda” as “rampant” because you’re used to seeing only imperial core propaganda, which is how the internet looks on corporate media, including corporate social media.

Previously:

The first step is to understand the media, which Media Bias/Fact Check and the Ad Fontes Media* are never going to teach you. The only people who are taught it are those who get degrees in marketing, public relations, political science, history, and journalism; and even then only some of them.

The new post-Trump/“post-truth” media literacy curricula won’t teach it to you either, because it was paid for and crafted by the US military-industrial complex: New Media Literacy Standards Aim to Combat ‘Truth Decay’. This week, the RAND Corporation released a new set of media literacy standards designed to support schools in this task.

The standards are part of RAND’s ongoing project on “truth decay”: a phenomenon that RAND researchers describe as “the diminishing role that facts, data, and analysis play in our political and civic discourse.”

None of it is a secret, though, and it can be learned.

• Noam Chomsky - The 5 Filters of the Mass Media Machine
• Propaganda model
• Edward Bernays
• Walter Lippmann
• Council on Foreign Relations
• Powell Memorandum
• The Trilateral Commission’s report, The Crisis of Democracy

---

* I’ve criticized MBFC & Ad Fontes before:

• https://lemmy.ml/post/12705767/8913172
• https://lemmy.ml/post/13566156/9605612

You are your own algorithm. If you see a lot of propaganda or whatever, it's because you chose that content at one point or another. And you can just as easily stop seeing it by unfollowing and blocking.

Also, evidence. I see no signs of rampant propaganda on the fediverse, not on Lemmy or on Mastodon. Now, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. But that's where you should provide examples so I can check for myself.

leftists* are rampant on the fediverse

Ironically, the most active user on the current #2 China community, !china@sopuli.xyz, is an absolutely indefatigable anti-Chinese propagandist.

This person, @Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.org posts multiple times per day, usually quite sensible and well-sourced articles, but always on the same downer subjects (repression, Uighurs, corruption and so on) and never anything that paints China (let alone its government) in the slightest positive light. Since nobody else in this community can match their posting stamina, the end result is a community that, to newcomers, looks like one rando's "I hate China" blog. Hardly surprising that it's not a very successful community.

I've asked this user to consider dropping the tempo a bit, and been met with defensiveness. I complained in private to the mod, who is completely AWOL, and they didn't care. Oh well.

Do you have a shred of actual evidence for this? Or is it just the standard lib ad-hom of accusing those who disagree of being evil foreigners?

On the topic, I've been seeing plenty of war-hawk think-tank accounts who only post propaganda, like:

• Scotty@scribe.disroot.org
• Hotznplotzn@lemmy.sdf.org
• randomname@scribe.disroot.org
• 0x815@feddit.org (and all their alt-accounts, including 0x815@feddit.de and thelucky8@beehaw.org )

They are clearly not involved in our communities.

There are a lot of people supportive of the PRC, both because the US Empire is declining and the PRC is positioned as an alternative to the US Empire's naked terrorism, and because Lemmy has a lot of communists. Lemmy has a lot of communists because the lead developers are communists, FOSS attracts communists, and because as Reddit bans communist communities they are often suggested to come here.

There's absolutely no credible evidence of CPC interference in Lemmy, this is a normal thing to happen to a FOSS alternative to Reddit.

I'm no fan of Tankies or the CCP, but I'm really not seeing any more pro-china propaganda than you see elsewhere, mostly excitement as a result of their green tech stuff or HSR (while ignoring why China has a need for HSR)

I am seeing a surprising amount of anti-china paranoia from the UK press right now that frankly seems like it's engineered by the US given its timing. Like articles about diplomats using burner phones as if that isn't standard (for all countries).

There'a a global positive shift in opinion on China that's happened over the first year of Trump. The trend was already there in the "Global South" but it's now happening everywhere. This shift is driven by real economic and geopolitical pressures. E.g. US tariffs and military threats, Chinese investment and cheap EVs, etc. Add to that there are more people on Lemmy from non-NA/EU countries than on US-centric platforms like Reddit and this shift becomes even more apparent here. In Western countries the positive opinion on China is less one of an ally and more of a necessary partner. In Canada, the opposition to trade with China shifted from 80% in 2020 to 32% at the end of 2025.

If you're primed to not see anything positive about China, then even positive views around partnership could appear as pro-China propaganda. Also people in the Global South are much more aware of US and European atrocities so when you present China's atrocities as a counter to people's positive opinions, it looks unserious and hypocritical to them. If you see their hypocrisy callout as a propaganda method and you call it out as such, you lose all good faith credibility with them.

Pics:

From

PS: Along with this shift, comes the realization among some that a lot of what they thought about China came from corporate US interest via US-owned media that pushes a line useful for that interest. This has happened to me and multiple RL friends and family in Canada. The conversations on the last thanksgiving table have changed a lot since 2024. At present we're in the necessary partner camp.