In the past week I’ve been absolutely roasted for criticising two different countries. Normally I’d be okay with that, I can handle a mild toasting and after all debate is a good thing.

On both occasions though I was flamed for mentioning human rights issues that are established facts and have been known for many, many years. I was critical of the actions/laws of their governments and not the people, their race, religion, general political ideology or nationality.

On both occasions I was bombarded by long posts that parroted propaganda, and in the case of one country I was told (on multiple occasions) that I was ignorant, racist and even fascist for mentioning the issues I did. I’m not complaining about how I was treated, but as a reminder, I was discussing internationally-recognised human rights concerns that can be verified and based in fact.

I could just be paranoid but I’m fairly convinced the responses weren’t from patriotic citizens. I think they were paid trolls or bots, and I think their purpose was to quiet negative talking points about the countries that were mentioned.

Has anyone else had a similar experience?

  • historicaldocuments@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    That being said, I will grant that there’s no evidence of this.

    The question about whether the feds are on lemmy is falsifiable. There just needs to be enough people in congress willing to make that a primary issue to overrule whatever security laws/apparatus are in place and publish the info. There’s even recent precedent of one guy doing just that. Waiting until there’s complete evidence won’t move the ball forward at all. Even having a bad discussion has a random chance of moving the ball forward (subject to time constraints).

    Not Suspicious on the Internet:

    • Being Wrong
    • Poor spelling or Grammar
    • Asking questions, even if they’re dumb

    Suspicious on the Internet:

    • Calls to extreme violence in a discussion where everyone was generally chill
    • Calls to not discuss a topic until there’s evidence to discuss
      • Drawing parallels between documented historical events and current events don’t count
    • Suggesting a course of action that’s either prohibitively expensive or time consuming as the only path forward