this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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Not defending tankies, but do you think people on hexbear are paid to do so, or just have different political views? If your definition of propaganda is posting about your own specific political views, then pretty much everything is propaganda.
I could say that I think FOSS and decentralization are good principles, and that can be considered leftist propaganda.
propaganda /prŏp″ə-găn′də/
noun The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause.
Material disseminated by the advocates or opponents of a doctrine or cause.
Yep, so I'm right, hexbear is just as much propaganda as, say, News, Worldnews, or any other political instance/community.
Lemmy is very politically active, because to choose lemmy is to reject Reddit. People pick Lemmy over reddit for political reasons, such as preferring FOSS and decentralization, which tend to align far more with leftist beliefs.
Case closed.
Wait wait wait wait wait….
So is it propaganda or not? The second portion of that definition (or is it a whole second definition?) is quite a bit more vague.
Yes, but not in the same sense of "government sponsored bot propaganda," and in the same sense as News and Worldnews are propaganda.
Hexbear is made up of users that genuinely seem to believe in their ideologies, rather than being sponsored by some state like others have implied.
You can be genuinely convinced that you are speaking the truth and still spew propaganda. It's all about the manner in which you are presenting your political agenda.
Anecdotal elucidation of this:
Back in 2022, when the Russians invaded Ukraine, there was a neutral sub on reddit called UkraineWarVideoReport. It was a basically a CombatFootage sub to neutrally document the war without the goreporn focus of CombatFootage. Titles were something akin to "Russians take out target in X Region" or "Ukraine defends region Y using Weapon-System-gifted-by-country". None of this is propaganda.
As the sub grew more and more popular, propaganda started and soon, the sub was just filled with "Ukraine heroes smash Russian Orcs again LOL" or "Russians demolish Ukronazi brigade for good". Both are propaganda, using loaded words in order to push their view point. Once those propaganda posts got out of hands, I left the sub because no valuable information is to be gained there.
It is a separate definition. It didn't copy correctly. I fixed it.
Anyway I would say it constitutes propaganda based off the first definition.
Just like all of Lemmy.
Yes, which is why we're saying OPs meme is wrong.
And that's fine (more or less, I wish people would be more responsible about using sources that frame things objectively rather than ones that are biased towards their opinion) on political communities. It's annoying on communities that aren't made for politics.