Democrats spent the last year asking where their Joe Rogan was. Hasan Piker is one of the few left-wing figures with the audience they covet — but the party is deeply hostile to the spontaneity and independence that make figures like him appealing.
Democrats spent the last year asking where their Joe Rogan was. Hasan Piker is one of the few left-wing figures with the audience they covet — but the party is deeply hostile to the spontaneity and independence that make figures like him appealing.
I realize I’m late so am just responding here for posterity, but - while I’m open to evidence - in my experience the people who were banned were clearly or very likely bad faith astroturf and propaganda accounts. They were clearly trying to split the vote, depress left turnout, and would just repeat LLM-generated junk rather than respond to any good faith debate.
And I think the bans were right in retrospect because the timed (not typically perma) bans expired and those people still magically disappeared completely from Lemmy after the election.
In the end, they probably did their job. Trump is in office destroying the country/world, and right now there are probably real people in this thread who think their “both sides” opinions are being censored in part because of the echoes of the noise those bad faith agents made way back in 2024.
Lol, no they weren’t/didn’t.
Lol, no we didn’t.
I’m standing with ya, brother! Thank you!
“Democratic National Committee officials who crafted the party’s postmortem on its loss to President Donald Trump in the 2024 election reportedly determined that the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza cost Kamala Harris votes, contributing to her defeat.”
https://www.commondreams.org/news/kamala-harris-gaza-2024
And that’s the same tired argument that was made then. Why do you find it so hard to accept that some people just aren’t onboard with either of the two main parties? Look around. Tide is turning. Lots of people on Lemmy now are open to third parties now. Are they all propaganda accounts too?!
This is why you all lost the fucking election. Because you can’t wrap your head around the fact that you may be wrong about things.
Facts: Lemmy had about 40,000–50,000 monthly active users worldwide in November 2024. There were 236 MILLION U.S. citizens voting-age. 154+ MILLION actual ballots cast. Third-party advocates made an even smaller slice of that already microscopic global user base. It’s utterly ludicrous for anyone to think that third-party voters on Lemmy could have split the vote or had any meaningful say whatsoever in the presidential election.
Yet you are ok with them being censored because you were scared of them. How’d that work out? They were banned, and guess what? Trump still won. Again.
I was told I would “disappear” after the election. Maybe it looks like I did because I had to create a new username (not for ban evading–I actually blocked the instances I was banned from). But here I am.
Am I a ‘propaganda’ account, still going, 2 years after the election?
Not only that, but I see lots of people being accused of being alts of those ‘propaganda’ posters. So did they really disappear if their alts are everywhere? Hmmm…
You want democrats to win the next election? Then pick a candidate who can win. You all lost to Trump twice. Think about that.
Also, even if every single person who voted third party, changed their vote to Harris, she still would have lost. That’s how big the margin of her loss was. Lemmy wasn’t even close to making a dent in any of that, so to blame Lemmy posters for it is crazy.
It costs next to nothing to include Lemmy in a social media astroturf and propaganda campaign, and is even easier and more effective because the small userbase means people’s posts are viewed less suspiciously (case in point: Your entire “the userbase is too small lolol” argument here). I am absolutely certain a few people I interacted with during that time were astroturf, MAGA-in-disguise or propaganda accounts. Re-read the part of my reply about necessary but not sufficient causation, to address your “third party vote” argument (I said nothing about third party voters, note, but you also ignore depressed turnout).
But to get a little meta: I’m engaging in good faith discussion and giving reasons for my arguments. And you come here, respond to me twice (edit: three times?) with condescending derision when I wasn’t even talking to or about you, and are making an illogical claim that a 50K userbase somehow means Lemmy is immune from propaganda (whether state or individual). You then downvote me, which I didn’t do to anyone I disagree with here. It’s childish and petty.
We are two people who probably want the same left-based outcomes and have disagreements on the method to get there, but you’re ranting to me about random things in this thread that I didn’t even say. You’re being extremely unpleasant, unkind and uncivil. I stand by what I said.
Second edit: Seeing your profile and comment about being banned, here’s a direct question: Did you go by the username UniversalMonk prior to the election? The MO, aggressive response style, and AI-generated profile stuff is almost identical.
Thread was under my comments in this thread, so I responded. No that was not my username. I had to change my username because of doxxing attempts and numerous KYS dm’s I was getting. From searching just now, looks like your person is still an active current poster. I guess he didn’t ‘disappear after the election’ either.
I don’t use my old username anymore, and the instance it was on, closed. The person who told me to kill myself several times back then, and tried to dox me, is still around and still posts too. lol
I haven’t been rude or uncivil to you at all.
My profile isn’t ai generated. I’m here right now replying to you. I wrote my profile. Just because someone disagrees with you, it doesn’t mean they’re ai or that they’re bots or that they’re propaganda. Your comments are an exact snapshot of the time period I was talking about. So neither you or I left, and neither of us have changed our minds. Which means you believe in what you are saying, and I believe in what I’m saying. IMHO, neither of us deserve to be censored just because we don’t agree.
The fact that you’re attributing the entirety of Harris’ loss on the vocal leftists online opposed to the genocide is absolutely ridiculous.
That’s a strawman version of what I said and I’ll explain why. First, I blame propagandists and bad-faith posters. That means, foreign actors paying troll farms, accelerationists, MAGA-in-left’s-clothing. Second, multiple causes can be necessary but not sufficient to an outcome.
Did online propaganda of this type help Trump’s victory? Certainly. Was it a sufficient cause on its own? Probably not. But we’ll never know, hence the “probably,” which you’ll note is different from what you imply my comment said.
lololol For lemmy. Which in 2024, had 50,000 active users at most, compared to 236 MILLION voting-age U.S. citizens. And of those 50K Lemmy users, what, maybe 20 were advocating for third party. How much do you think someone would pay 20 people to post on a platform that is so small?! lolol Think about what you are saying.
And they were banned, but what did it do? How did the election turn out? How do you think the election would have turned out if Lemmy didn’t exist? lol
I wish someone paid me to post. LMAO
This is the correct answer. So censoring people based on their views wasn’t a great look for Lemmy. And it didn’t change the income anyway.