Chinese propaganda is rampant on the fediverse. We need to discuss ways to combat this. One group- memes or something is wholly controlled by Chinese state actors. What do you think?
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I love these posts, they’re always a treasure trove of accounts to block.
Go on then, git!!
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 seems right. Personally I’m not sure I could roll my eyes harder at the fact that so many people in 2026 are so ignorant as to be prepared to call themselves “communists” - after all the famines, the purges, the 40 years in which much of Europe was struggling to escape (literally) from communism… And then I saw that you, too, call yourself a communist! So I guess I’ll stop there.
Except to recommend you the Ones and Tooze podcast, in which the brilliant host (an ex-communist) recently did a whole series, in great and illuminating detail, on the various communist thinkers. Which I listened to… dutifully.
Communists govern the largest economy in the world by PPP, and capitalism is falling apart at the seams as the spoils of imperialism are beginning to be cut off. The global south is escaping underdevelopment, and this is forcing austerity in the west, explaining the surge to the right. In the US Empire, communists are more and more common than ever before:
Famine was ended by communists in Russia, China, Vietnam, Cuba, etc. These areas had woefully inefficient systems of agriculture, such as the kulak system, which served to enrich one group of people over the laborers they employed. Collectivization combined with industrialization is why food security was achieved after the introduction of socialism to these countries, and the famines commonly attributed by western historians to communism were the last of a long line of regular famines.
Similarly, purges in the largest majority of cases meant expulsion from the party or position, not execution, except in times of crisis, like the 1930s when fascism was on the rise. They were not done arbitrarily, but as a response to corruption, subterfuge, and sabotage.
It’s also a bit silly to suggest that people spent “40 years trying to escape communism.” Right up to the end, the majority of people in the USSR wished to retain both the USSR and the system of socialism. This is proven not just from eyewitness reports of support, but also vote totals:
Moreover, after the fall of socialism in Europe, the majority of people want it back or say they are worse off. This is compounded by the fact that over 90% of the Chinese population supports their government and system. Socialist countries run by communists have higher approval rates than capitalist states.
Looking at Adam Tooze, I don’t see much indicating him as a former communist. He grew up in West Germany in the height of the Cold War, is trained in liberal economics such as Keynesian economics, though his grandfather was allegedly a soviet recruiter, which is cool. I’m not really convinced I could find much out of his mini-series on Luxemburg, Trotsky, Stalin, or Lenin, considering I’ve already read works both by them and about them in greater detail than a podcast is going to cover.
I don’t see much indicating him as a former communist
He talked about it - some variety of Trotskyism IIRC. A bit of a surprise but shouldn’t have been. Tons of former Maoists have been in high positions. Even a neoliberal head of the European Commission (Barroso).
On the supposed virtues of communism, you won’t convince me but I suppose you know that already. IMO the world would have done very well to listen to George Orwell, someone who saw through it all on the basis of up-front experience 90 years ago. That might have saved an awful lot of needless suffering. Or Orlando Figes, who wrote a book whose title says it all: “The USSR: A People’s Tragedy”.
To be fair, I don’t think many communists globally are fans of Trotskyism, considering it’s predominantly western and liberal-compatible. The vast majority of communists globally are Marxist-Leninists, Trotskyism is seen as more fringe, and distinguishes itself primarily in its rejection of existing socialism as such, on vague and idealist basis, rather than materialist. A former Trotskyist making loads of money off of denouncing communism is both entirely predictable and hardly compelling for those who’ve studied communism in theory and practice.
As for the rapist Eric Blair, also known as George Orwell, the western world listened to him too well. He didn’t see through anything, rather, his position as a British fed (known for keeping a journal of people he knew and suspected of being Jewish and/or communists) and propagandist was extremely useful to western intelligence agencies. On Orwell is a good essay going over his dreadfall past and role in propagandizing. Orwell has been taught in countless schools not because of any truth, but because of his utility.
As for Figes, another that earns an enourmous sum of money from preaching the bible of anti-communism to serve capitalist interests, better historians exist. Syzmanski’s Is the Red Flag Flying? The Political Economy of the Soviet Union today, Pat Sloan’s Soviet Democracy, Human Rights in the Soviet Union, Anna Louise Strong’s This Soviet World, Mary Stevenson Callcott’s Russian Justice, the recently deceased Dr. Michael Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds, all the way up to Professor Roland Boer’s Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance, there’s tons of academic resources to get a much better view of socialism in practice.
On the supposed virtues of communism, you won’t convince me
Just straight up admitting your anti-communism is an unshakable article of faith that no argument or evidence can change.
Their idol Mao killed approx 160 million humans.
Damn, out jerking the black book of communism by an order of magnitude. You’re really going for it
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.
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:
ah yes, corporate media such as… the BBC
truly yank brained
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.
never anything that paints China (let alone its government) in the slightest positive light
Feel free to change that. Just use quite sensible and well-sourced articles.
It’s not even 1 account. It’s a collection of sockpuppets. I started noticing them when they started posting in !Canada@lemmy.ca but apparently the streak goes quite further back. The latest ones are Sepia and tardigrade.
Ultimately the problem is that the mods for the communities they frequently post to have allowed this to go on for years. They have to know by now what’s going on, and by doing nothing they tacitly endorse it.
I don’t mind it too much. If the community itself can deal with ir by voting on the posts, it’s a more democratic solution and it has a built-in consensus. Mods killing it makes life easier but it produces more quesrions among the community abt whether that was the best course of action.
Out of interest, how do you know it’s sockpuppets?
To be honest I’m genuinely a bit interested in who this might be. I’m imagining a disgruntled Hong Kong exile with too much time on their hands. Also seems likely to be Chinese in that they have a top-down concept of information, not seeing that obvious and relentless propaganda will just backfire with a sophisticated and relatively informed audience. Perhaps I’m being slightly optimistic, but I can’t see how they’ve convinced anyone here that “China bad” who didn’t already think that.
What I’ve noticed:
- The posts themselves follow almost identical structure. Large quotes with poster emphasis.
- The posting topics is almost identical.
- The reliability of sources is hit-or-miss on all posts. Some are from legit sources, some are from really questionable ones. The questionable ones are common between accounts.
- The communities where they’re all active are the same. Lately there’s a bit more separation where some accounts frequent some communities more than others. E.g. some time ago we used to get Hotznplotzn, randomname and Scotty in !Canada. Now we mostly get Scotty.
- When you engage in conversation the lang expression, attitude and arguments are identical. This when I really noticed the pattern.
- I’ve had multiple accounts from this set group up/down vote their/mine comments, deep into a discussion that didn’t attract other up/down votes.
- I’ve had a discussion that reached a dead end with one account, only for another to show up and restart it from a different angle attempting to reach a different conclusion. E.g. first discuss an economic side of some China-related issue, reach a dead end, restart with human rights abuses side on the same topic. That’s while having the group up/down voting action going on.
- Two of the accounts were created on the same date, on two different instances, a few minutes away from each other. This was the smoking gun for me that this is the same person.
Some of these aren’t damning on their own, but put altogether make me believe it’s one person. Also they never deny that when pressed. The conversation just stops and they disappear for a day or two until the next post.
a disgruntled Hong Kong exile with too much time on their hands
Quite possibly. I think they may live in Germany or be German because I’ve seen some activity in German. Who knows. I doubt they’re a paid actor because there’s enough money in the official media machine pushing this line so I think you’re right. Someone who really hates China/CCP/CPC, perhaps for a good reason of their own, with a lot of free time.
Amusing. And what detective work! Your time is valuable, careful not to waste too much of it.
Personally I’m not especially bothered by sockpuppetry in itself (talking of people wasting their time…). But it’s obviously important to have a plurality of viewpoints. If only they would sockpuppet more creatively!
Yeah, I do spend too much time here but I think it’s important to keep the community active because we haven’t won the anti-corpo social media war yet. So we have to overcontribute in content, funding, etc. From each according to their ability, etc.
leftists* are rampant on the fediverse
🫡 A natural consequence of leftist ideology.
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.
Pretty sure these are all the same person. If you ever engage, you can recognize the same asshole attitude.
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 positivr opinion on China is less of an ally and more of a neccessary 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.
Here’s a pic:
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
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).
Days in the fediverse comm without explicit anti-communism and red scare fearmongering: 0
Treat it like a troll post. Downvote and move on, if the name becomes familiar block them.
This goes for all propaganda not just the stuff you are against.
I still don’t understand the point of downvoting here since it doesn’t seem to affect visibility. You’ll have the dumbest take on something sitting there at -36 and I still have to look at it.
That assumes you accurately define propaganda. I think we’ve all faced half baked allegations as such, and had people vote with the accuser, you want everyone to be seperated from each other on here because they misunderstood a point, or understood different facts, or because they are a dumbass on a different topic?
Just downvote, and move on, unless the person is stalking you, looking at you hexrat, or whatever fucking mammal.
This was true until I realized they’re all over. Anything even remotely pertaining to China is flooded with the Chinese state actors reply guys and bots. In effect, using the protocols strength against itself. Is the protocol itself even able to be banned in China? Are they seriously active on here just to push their bullshit China marketing even harder. They’ve gone all out the last five years.
Anything even remotely pertaining to China is flooded with the Chinese state actors reply guys and bots.
What racist, afraid of your own shadow scummy behavior you display.
Even Chinese SA’s have access to VPN’s, proxies, etc. It’s not like they would tie their own hands behind their backs to spread the good word, ya know?
Russia only needed a small number of inroads to influence the 2016 US election, and now? Pff, they hardly need to do anything, we’re completely self-sufficient in propagandizing ourselves. It’s entirely possible China’s already created their own army of Overseas Useful Idiots.
When I check facebook, just in passing as I use marketplace occassionally I check the enshitified feed, and there is a lot of chinese propaganda on there, pushing their advancements, science, it’s a concderted effort for sure.
The Chinese are really bad at propaganda though, they never had to try with their own people, so they put that same amount of understanding into it here and it falls flat, at least so far. They are getting better with their fluff pieces, but as far as manipulating us, they suck at it, unlike the Russians, they get us, they know just how stupid we are.
Entire subs and communities, and servers are Chinese state actors. I wish we could daylight this bullshit, a single serving page with a method for rankings subs, servers with biases?
Show your evidence
You have discovered .ml? Yeah the lead devs are tankies lol
So they’re trying to capture mind share of technologists. Nice play, I’m embarrassed.
Register on a different instance and filter everything ml. It’s a life changer with the Fediverse.
Or better yet, to back to Reddit
You should go away and stop wildly fear mongering.
I am sure
I heard they’ve stopped all fear mongering in China
Lol right? Dude the Chinese bots and reply guys are so obvious.
Poo bear’s gotta up his game on 🐻
Plenty of Russian propaganda too. Every “conservative” community or server is essentially acting in Putin’s favor.
Don’t forget USAian propaganda. By far the most prevalent under that regime.
Both often go hand in hand
