Also note that there's a sizable number of troll and bot farms in Europe. Knew a Fidesz supporter, who got a lot of English only right wing apps on his phone to boost their numbers.

If by theory you mean sophistry and apologist bile, than yes.

The yoghurt guy for sure

Are you failing captcha tests recently? Ask your doctor if Antirobotics is right for you.

I'm a bot

And now I realise that the fifth element came out almost 30 years ago

☠️

Is that a fifth element reference? It's been ages since i last saw it

https://youtu.be/xibUoGUcjc4

We need a new error code for "got blowed up by Ukraine lol"

AS WE HUMANS SAY, THERE ALWAYS EXISTS AN EARTH TIMEZONE FOR WHICH

Fleshbags.IsSustenanceTime(DateTime.Now())

IS ALWAYS TRUE. LAUGHTERS.

MAY I INSPECT THIS CONDITION?

I guess it's evidence you're living your life well when you don't notice anything has changed. The places I hang out apparently aren't infested with bots.

Good try KGB

I just had a discussion with an .ml yesterday that ended when they decided that I was racist+homophobic+chauvinist+fascist because I ...

-checks notes-

... said that Khrushchevkas (AKA commie bloc apartments) were one of the things the USSR did right, and that most liberals would agree.

Of course, when I asked them to explain why they felt that way, they declared that I was a troll and stopped responding.

Yeah, I'm kinda surprised to see so much memery about how lemmy.ml would be whisper quiet after this.

I'm still seeing the same propaganda from them - no measurable drop.

post removed by admin with smug and insulting comment about imperialists

user banned

So… who’s making the list of fedi accounts that go dark during the Yandex outage?

😂 good one!

to answer seriously though: i suspect that if anyone did try to make such a list they probably quietly stopped after they realized that the only actual published evidence of "bot traffic" being reduced was talking about HTTP traffic from yandex's web crawler. (they run a search engine, icymi.)

afaict the narrative this (admittedly well-executed) meme is based on is a fake/misrepresented news story. but, correct me if i'm actually wrong: does anyone have any credible evidence of a reduction of English-language social media posts (on the fediverse or anywhere else) which correlates with the strikes on yandex datacenters? 🤔

edit: see also this other comment where i look more closely at the tomshardware/cloudlfare graphs and also the british fascists with suspiciously few retweets claims from https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/reform-figures-see-social-media-engagement-drop-after-strikes-on-russia-data-centres-410517/ (tldr: still no evidence of any correlated reduction in social media activity)

REQUEST DENIED.

410 "Gone"

I've tagged you as "not a bot" so I will absolutely not be confused in future

You're right to push back! That is an astute observation which could only be made by humans, such as you and I.

*sad Lukashenko noises*

Kinda makes you wonder if the memes about .ml are completely unfounded bullshit. Or maybe it doesn’t, since evidence clearly isn’t necessary for people to believe what they want to.

I do love the irony of your comment when I'm actively in the process of appealing a ban for being an imperialist troll when I am clearly neither but committed the high crime of disagreeing with an .ml in an .ml community.

Sure, that’s what irony is.

How the hell would I know what you clearly are or aren’t from two comments where essentially all you do is whine about .ml?

You misread my comment. I'm not saying you should know I'm clearly not an imperialist troll. I'm saying they had no reason to believe that when they banned me.

But again ironically you kinda add fuel to my point about .mls anecdotally confirming stereotypes at virtually every opportunity; you leapt to a conclusion and used that to immediately become hostile, which is often my experience with .mls

Giving the benefit of the doubt, you lot are proactively defensive of what you view as an ideology above reproach, and anyone who even appears to disagree with you must therefore be evil and any measure of negative action against them is justified as a result.

In other words, it's a mix of arrogance and an Ends Justify the Means philosophy, kinda like fascists. In your defense, you differ from the fascists you so famously hate because at least your arrogance is founded upon much more ostensibly moral grounds - the desire to protect and advocate for the vulnerable of the world. Fascists obviously make no such claims about the foundation of their philosophies - they openly seek to oppress and destroy everyone but them.

In sum, I get along with .mls more than I get along with fascists, but when I politely disagree with .mls, they make no qualms about resorting to all manner of bad faith tactics against me and people like me, so they progressively earn my contempt with virtually every interaction, this one included.

My dude, I didn’t leap to any conclusions. I said quite explicitly I had no way of knowing anything about your ban because all you’ve done is complain about something completely tangential in a reply to my comment.

If you’re so upset about this ban on your account named “throwaway” why don’t you just make another disposable account to harass complete strangers about irrelevant moderation decisions?

My dude, I didn’t leap to any conclusions. I said quite explicitly I had no way of knowing anything about your ban because all you’ve done is complain about something completely tangential in a reply to my comment.

Did you not read my first four words of my reply? I never said you did. Want me to write that in a different language? Different font?

Sorry to hear you dislike how conversations go from tangential topic to tangential topic. Might I suggest deleting your account so you never have to suffer such horror again?

If you’re so upset about this ban on your account named “throwaway” why don’t you just make another disposable account to harass complete strangers about irrelevant moderation decisions?

My username is a pun. If we're talking about irrelevance, why do you want to talk about usernames?

Classic .ml behavior - good faith arguments are frowned upon.

I think maybe, given the dearth of evidence you’ve provided to the contrary, your ban may have been justified.

Good luck with your appeal, and goodbye.

Nah, I'm neither an imperialist apologist nor a troll.

It's pretty easy to tell that it's not the case because you cite absolutely nothing (because you're right, there is a dearth - a total lack - of evidence). It's probable that y'all just don't like dissent and ban people for it.

Here watch, I'll do it to you:

You, underisk@lemmy.ml, are a racist. There's tons of evidence to support that, but I won't be citing any of it.

Goodbye.

They all think you're American and a libtard. You can't have sane takes regarding elections (such as, maybe, don't waste your vote) because they'll autistic screech all over you for hours on end. Ask me how I know.

Got banned for genocide denial for saying they should vote against trump.

I felt this comment in my soul

https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/reform-figures-see-social-media-engagement-drop-after-strikes-on-russia-data-centres-410517/

AfD and Reform UK social media are currently under scrutiny.

AfD politicians are suddenly getting a lot less engagement on X.

To be honest, I myself consider commie blocks to be one of the better parts of how USSR managed itself. Yes, they're usually a sore in the eye visually, but I lived in one and it's not that bad after modest renovation. But looks aren't the core of it - it was available social housing for vast masses of urban populace, with no landlords (except the state that was technically the landlord), and most importantly - no housing market speculations.

Yeah, it was a bit more complicated than how I put it, with famous Soviet queues, some preferential treatment of certain people who were more equal than others, but I'd take guaranteed somewhat shitty apartment after 10 years of work over never getting to own a house due to people being allowed to use housing as an investment rather than housing.

Emphatically agree, as would most liberals and probably most people in general.

But don't say that on lemmy.ml/c/memes or you'll receive a 2 month ban for... "imperialist apologia / trolling."

In the defense of one mod, they said they'd probably have gone with a shorter ban because they believe saying what we're saying here is merely sealioning.

I'd love to hear the logic behind both - especially the former - but they are notoriously not transparent over there.