#it is a us government propaganda site

[infiniteglitterfall]

the cradle is not a valid news source omfg.

There are a lot of shitty news sites out there. Fact-checking is free, but you'd never know it from looking at a lot of the articles that get traction on social media.

you would, however, increasingly see the far right embracing the left.

me, in a weary sing-song, every fucking time I see an outrage-clickbait headline: "what does the article actually say."

thecradle.co: "The US House of Representatives passed an amendment on 27 June barring State Department officials from citing the Gaza Health Ministry’s death toll of the ongoing Israeli war on the strip.... Sixty-two Democratic lawmakers voted in favor, as well as all but two Republicans."

me: "i thought the problem was that the UN had inexplicably started giving totals from the Gaza Media Office, which had WAY higher total deaths for women and children than the actual Health Ministry, and then everyone found out the Media Office was lying its ass off when the UN switched to the Health Ministry numbers. What's their reasoning?

"Is it the thing where almost 78% of their casualty numbers this spring came from unspecified media sources? Or is it because yes, the Ministry of Health's casualty numbers lined up pretty well with the UN's and Israel's in past wars, but this is the first time that the UN and NGOs haven't been verifying the death count in real time? Or that the Associated Press found hundreds of duplicate IDs in even the list of fully identified recent deaths from the Health Ministry? Wait, is it that the Ministry of Health has been claiming that like 75% of the deaths were women and children, but releasing detailed reports that show that it's really 38%-52%, depending on the month? ok fine maybe there's a reason that this was an almost unanimous vote."

thecradle.co: "...that's not relevant"

me: "...seems like it is tho"

thecradle.co: "we're not here to answer questions"

me: "..."

thecradle.co: "anYWAY, Rashida Tlaib is a real-life Palestinian-American and SHE said, 'Since 1948... there has been a coordinated effort, especially in this chamber, to dehumanize Palestinians and erase Palestinians from existence... [Israel's committing] genocide in Gaza, and in real time, and this amendment is an attempt to hide it … This is genocide denial.'"

me: "how has there been a coordinated effort in the senate to erase Palestinians from existence for 76 years? the u.s. is the largest provider of foreign aid to palestine on earth. i've literally read the entire detailed record of the 1950 senate hearing on Palestinian refugees--"

thecradle.co: "again, i am NOT TAKING QUESTIONS, I am just TELLING YOU--"

me: "okay, okay, geeze"

thecradle.co: "my point is that she said, 'My colleagues want to prohibit our own US officials from even citing the Palestinian death toll. So let me read it into the record. Here are the latest casualties of Palestinians killed: 37,718 Palestinians, including more than 15,000 Palestinian children and more than 86,377 Palestinians have been injured.'"

me: "isn't that the old, blatantly incorrect, two-times-too-high number of deaths of Palestinian children, from the Gaza MEDIA Office? Not the Health Ministry? omg, it IS. The media office is claiming 15,002 children, and a total of 44,844 total deaths. You can only even find that shit printed in Al Mayadeen, which is also a fake news site."

thecradle.co: "I don't know that kind of stuff. I just report the facts."

me: "sure, if the fact is that she lied. wait. she's upset that they're telling the State Department not to use the Health Ministry's numbers and SHE'S not even using the Health Ministry's numbers? was she even listening?"

thecradle.co: "...In November 2023, US Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs, Barbara Leaf, said when asked about skepticism over the Gaza Health Ministry death toll that the numbers could actually be higher."

me: "did you actually just close by quoting someone speculating wildly nine months ago?"

thecradle.co: "listen, our about page makes it very clear that we are definitely journalists and we definitely aren't owned by anybody, and we will expose whatever shocking truths we want."

me: "...so...."

thecradle.co: "...did you hear that ben gvir is the most hated man on earth?" me: "i thought you claimed to report the NEWS."

anyway, I am just as thrilled as always to see my united states elected representatives getting their info from the least reputable sources possible. and then being signal boosted by the least reputable sources possible.

it's almost as thrilling as the knowledge that people react to "hey that's not true" as if you'd just murdered a Palestinian civilian right in front of them, instead of as if you were telling them that thousands of Palestinian children thought dead were still alive.

[socialistexan]

The biggest consequence of the American migration to Redbook with the impending tiktok ban?

This is essentially the closest and most unfettered access people in the US have had to Chinese people essentially ever. We've existed on the same sites and apps before, but we were so siloed that we almost never interacted. Now Americans are getting a direct interaction and seeing how we're all just people.

The US Government ran so hard on sinophobia for so long (Republicans and Democrats both) that Americans just sort looped around and they're going directly to the people.

Best case scenario is this builds some solidarity internationally and demystifies the Scary Boogieman Other and we have a generation of people that finally see through all of it directly into humanity of The Other and won't be so easily misled later in life by propaganda and bigotry.

Or it's just a little blip that lasts two weeks and all the zoomers end up on some tiktok clone made by Zuck and Elon.

[southpauz]

I am genuinely frightened for the future of America, its people, and every other country that America imposes itself upon.

Trump's administration falls under literally EVERY defining characteristic of Fascism.

Far-right conservatives have completely overtaken our mainstream media, forcibly silenced them, or bought them out so they can praise and sane-wash Trump over fear of retribution.

His administration is owned by the ultra wealthy who control all of our social media apps/sites. Every large corporation owner was in attendance at Trump's inauguration, sitting in FRONT of his cabinet. Tiktok is spreading pro-Trump propaganda, Zuckerberg intends to "remove factchecking" from Meta platforms (like Facebook and Instagram itself), and Bill Gates just said he had a fascinating talk with Trump recently and was impressed by him.

Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, bought Twitter and completely turned it into an alt-right misinformation machine that spews hatred over diversity and acceptance and directly impacted people's impression of the election which lead to Trump's victory. He changed the algorithm on Twitter to boost nazi, transphobic, racist rhetoric alongside retreating similar posts to his audience and changed the algorithm to suppress democratic posts.

After Trump's inauguration Elon was on stage and he gave an enthusiastic NAZI SALUTE. TWICE. ON TELEVISION.

They're targeting our education to keep us dumb and complacent little worker bees so we don't learn how to critically think and see through the propaganda and lies they spew.

They are targeting minorities, especially the trans community and undocumented immigrants, to make people fight a different "enemy" than the people ACTUALLY harming them: the 1%.

They are targeting women's right to their own bodily autonomy in order to keep making sure they keep having worker bees to keep making them more money and to foster a disdain for human rights in our population by linking our government to evangelical Christian morals.

We are in danger.

Please do your proper research and make sure you take your information from multiple sources, including primary sources like court and governmental documents, to prevent bias.

Please look into local programs, volunteer opportunities, and social gathering events so you can get to know your community better and help build more solidarity and safety.

Please keep your eyes open to help your neighbor who may be targeted by this administration. Make sure to should "LA MIGRA" if you spot any ICE vehicles to alert your undocumented friends and neighbors, and remember that police can't come into your home without a warrant and you have the right to remain silent.

Most importantly: DO NOT GIVE UP. It feels so hopeless, but the only thing that can make it worse is if we give up. Becoming compliant in advance only speeds up fascist takeovers.

Resist. Be careful. Care for one another. I love you guys.

Unless you voted for or currently support Trump. Go fuck yourselves you pieces of shit.

[probablyasocialecologist]

From Hamas’s perspective, was Operation Al Aqsa Flood a successful operation? Hamas undoubtedly knew that Israeli retaliation would include the killing of many Palestinian civilians, even if the horrific scale of Israel’s assault was unforeseen. Was October 7, then, a collective martyrdom operation launched without the consent of 2.3 million Palestinians? And, for the many people who proclaim their support for the Palestinian cause but reflexively condemn the violence of the October 7 attacks, how can they realistically separate the two?  Drop Site conducted a series of interviews with senior Hamas officials alongside a comprehensive review of its statements and those of its leaders. I interviewed a variety of Hamas sources on background for this story and two—Basem Naim and Ghazi Hamad—agreed to speak on the record. I also spoke to a range of knowledgeable Palestinians, Israelis, and international sources in an effort to understand the tactical and political aims of the October 7 attacks. Some people will inevitably criticize the choice to interview and publish Hamas officials’ answers to these questions as propaganda. I believe it is essential that the public understand the perspectives of the individuals and groups who initiated the attack that spurred Israel’s genocidal war—an argument that is seldom permitted outside of simple soundbytes. Hamas leaders cast their operations on October 7 as a righteous rebellion against an occupation force that has waged a military, political, and economic war of collective punishment against the people of Gaza. “They have left us no choice other than to take the decision in our hands and to fight back,” said Dr. Basem Naim, a senior member of Hamas’s political bureau and a former government minister in Gaza. “October 7, for me, is an act of defense, maybe the last chance for Palestinians to defend themselves.”

[...]

Hamas has emphasized that its aim on October 7 was to shatter the status quo and compel the U.S. and other nations to address the plight of the Palestinians. On this front, informed analysts say, they succeeded. “On October 6, Palestine had disappeared from the regional agenda, from the international agenda. Israel was dealing unilaterally with the Palestinians without generating any attention or any criticism,” said Mouin Rabbani, a former UN official who worked as a special advisor on Israel-Palestine for the International Crisis Group. “The attacks of Hamas on October 7 and their aftermath played a crucial role, but I think just as much credit, if you will, goes to Israel, if not more so,” he added. “If Israel had responded in the way that it did in [previous assaults on Gaza] in 2008, 2014, 2021, it would have been a story for a number of weeks, there would have been a lot of hand wringing, and that would have been the end of it.” “It's not only the actions of the colonized, but also the reaction of the colonizer that has created the current political reality, the current political moment,” Rabbani said.

9 July 2024

[captainjonnitkessler]

While unsurprising, the rhetoric being spewed by Louisiana's lawmakers is fucking terrifying to me.

I feel so lucky that I was raised by a bunch of atheist because honestly I managed to go the majority of my childhood happy, without being shamed or acquiring a persecution complex...but now looking out at the current climate we live in...damn, they really hate us, don't they? I mean "godless" is one of the main insults getting thrown around on most campaign trails, which isn't new it just hurts.

I feel like I am a bad person because I only just found out about what's going on in Louisiana.

Sorry, just screaming into the void a bit. I hope you have a good day

For anyone who's not aware, Louisiana just passed a law requiring every single public classroom in the state, from kindergarten to college, to display the Ten Commandments.

Unfortunately, this is just the latest in the rapidly-escalating war between Christofascists and secularism. Multiple states have proposed this law, Louisiana is just the first to actually pass it. Oklahoma's Department of Education is claiming that they're going to force teachers to start teaching from the Bible. Seven states have passed laws requiring schools to display "In God We Trust" signs.

Here's the thing I think a lot of people on this site are too young to remember or weren't involved enough in religious politics to notice, and the reason the "edgy atheist who just hates religion" stereotype has gained so much traction on here: The New Atheist movement was very much a response to constant barrages of shit like this. Getting America to be even as secular as it is has been a constant struggle. Conservatives have been openly blaming atheists for school shootings, mass murders, and serial killers for decades. People who stand up and try to get religion taken out of schools and government immediately become targets for massive hate and harassment campaigns. People - conservatives and liberals alike - react with hatred and anger whenever someone stands up to get religion out of places where it doesn't belong. I think the past fifteen years or so have gotten a lot of people believing that separation of church and state is an obviously "safe" position that almost everyone is in favor of, but it very much is not and never has been.

I believe that conservatives are going to try to use the current Supreme Court to essentially abolish the separation of church and state, largely because many of them are openly stating their intent to do so. Louisiana is already being sued about this - if it makes its way to the Supreme Court, I think there's a decent chance of the current court ruling in favor of Louisiana, which is going to unleash the floodgates of Christian propaganda in public schools. It is frankly a dire situation, so I'm sorry if you were here looking for reassurance lol.

As always, the best action I can recommend is to get involved. You're definitely not a bad person for not knowing about this! But if you want to stay on top of religious news, I recommend the Friendly Atheist blog. The Freedom From Religion Foundation fights to get laws like this taken down. You can check your local city for secular humanist meetups. You don't want to burn out or enter a doom spiral by only ever dwelling on bad news, but I find that having people to talk to or action you can take is a good way to ward off despair.

And please, please, vote. Vote in federal and state elections, vote in your local city council elections, vote in your school board elections. A LOT of this is happening at local levels, and being involved in your local politics is possibly the most effective thing you can do!

[feministdragon]

Transcript:

"Many people still believe that the spread of transgender ideology represents a harmless fad, or a phase, or a problem of youth culture or social media, I've chosen to talk about the wider context and conditions that have allowed this ideology to take hold.

Transgenderism is a predatory, an authoritarian, neoliberal ideology, and one that couldn't take hold outside of the context of the rape culture that Steff described. I want to make this as clear as I can in ten minutes. My slideshow is just a series of books, my sources, and if you want to record them, go ahead.

So the first point to make about neoliberalism is that it's basically synonymous with globalization and with corporatization. It is not just a flawed economic policy, it is a corporate backlash against the political left and a tool of colonization. The 19th and 20th centuries saw the rise of a strong political left, indigenous Renaissance movements, workers unions, successful independent struggles that ousted colonizers, anti-war protests, and women's rights movements.

By the 1990's the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund had a response. They adopted policies that would reverse the progress these movements made. They began to hand out financial loans to governments only on the condition that they undergo what is euphemistically called ‘structural adjustment’, a term to ponder in relation to this issue, for the benefit of multinational corporations.

This structural adjustment has three basic components. Firstly, governments have had to make natural resources, lands, and public infrastructure, available for purchase by foreign corporations. Secondly they are compelled to drastically cut back public spending on health, education, welfare, and social services. Lastly, regulations and legal protections that restrict corporate profiteering, like laws that protect workers from exploitation need to be removed.

This is neoliberalism: the commodification of nature and the removal and defunding of social services and protections, ramped up for the age of multinational corporations. Neoliberalism and its so-called structural adjustments are packaged with rhetoric about freedom. The story is that our so-called free market—in which private sector employers face minimal barriers to profiteering—fosters job and opportunity creation and a trickle-down effect that gradually enables the empowerment of the self-made individual or employee and choice for consumers.

In her book the Shock Doctrine, Noemi Klein points out that people—especially people who have been fighting for centuries for true liberation—don't actually take these sorts of reforms lying down, so alongside propaganda, disaster conditions have been crucial for imposing neoliberalism worldwide. That's why Klein calls neoliberalism disaster capitalism.

Structural adjustment often follows a state of emergency, a natural disaster, or a military invasion or coup. Multinationals and profiteers and agribusiness and tourism move in and benefit. And because women are made especially vulnerable when land is sold off and degraded, subsistence lifestyles are destroyed, wages drop and welfare and health care are harder to access.

One of the industries that has profited most from neoliberalisation is prostitution. The global sex trade lobby is extremely strong at the moment, and of course in a neoliberal climate, it sells us the idea that prostitution is a legitimate business and that pimps are just job creators, in an industry we are now supposed to call sex work, and perceive to be empowering for women as individuals, disregarding the factors of poverty, land theft, sexism, and rape.

Combine this with tourism and the internet and you have huge industries, and sex tourism, trafficking, and pornography—one in ten websites are porn sites. The industry is worth more than the combined revenue of the top ten web technology companies. To encourage porn consumption, porn is also normalized through mainstream media. All of this fuels a climate, described by Steve earlier, a climate of male sexual entitlement, rape and violation, objectification, body hatred, dissociation, dysphoria, and anorexia.

These are the disaster conditions that transgender ideology exploits and that enable whole populations to buy into the idea that not only can women be bought and sold like products, but womanhood itself is a commodity to which men should be entitled. Transgenderism is a neoliberal ideology that treats the natural fact of biological sex itself as something to be plowed over and substituted with the cash crop of gender identity.

It is "empowering" for the individual to reject biological sex, and substitute it for a customized gender that expresses one's own essential tastes. Just like your clothes and shoes are meant to do, and even your car and your cell phone screen protector and your toothbrush.

The mindless mantra, “trans women are women”, encapsulates both the ideology and attitudes of transgenderism and the neoliberal zeitgeist in three words. It implies the destruction of nature, of biology, of our own bodies, including through the radical mastectomies increasingly conducted on adolescent girls, mainly lesbians. It is based on the commodification of women and it leads to the removal of legal protections and social supports designated for women and based on sex. And using this mantra, ‘trans women are women” like a threat, because if you don't accept it you're a ‘bigot’, men are colonizing woman's hard-won spaces, organizations, movements, and safe houses, as well as lesbian culture.

This mantra is also having the effect of consolidating the domestication of the whole political left—peace groups, unions, socialist organizations like Anna described—and assimilating them with the establishment as they ingest and then commit to and prioritize transgender mythology, purge feminists and independent critical thinkers from their ranks, and build stronger ties to the liberal political parties and big money, also promoting gender identity and funding the pride parades.

In this way the lie that trans women are women is the neoliberal answer to the myth of the resurrection within the Catholic Church. It is the one mad thing that you need to accept these days to demonstrate that, despite whatever else you believe in or work toward, you are ultimately willing to surrender your critical faculties and submit to power and to groupthink.

People would never buy the idea that men can get pregnant or that a lesbian can have a penis outside of the disaster conditions we feminists call ‘rape culture’. The conditions of male sexual entitlement—a woman being raped somewhere in the world every single second of the day, normalized porn objectification, dysphoria and body hatred.

In a culture that honored women, cared for children, and was grounded in the natural world, the spread of transgender ideology would not occur. Voltaire’s famous warning that 'those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities' is also pertinent.

Despite all these large-scale pop-up social movements taking place throughout the West at the moment, it is actually a dangerous and threatening climate. We live in a climate in which the absurdities of transgenderism are promoted so widely, while they cause such serious irreversible harm, and it's so taboo to question. Women who speak out now face ostracism, and losing their livelihoods at the hands of the very same people who are currently joining mass movements that claim to fight for the planet and for social justice.

But as Audrey Lorde famously said, “Your silence will not protect you.” So to women out there holding their tongues to stay safe I say, “We're living in an era of rising authoritarianism, and this ideology is a key vehicle for it. You need to find your sisters. Now is the time to speak the truth where you can—in spite of those who will turn on you, who'll refuse to offer you solidarity—and find your sisters. We're here, we're healing, and finding our voices together, and we want you among us."

[astarless-fights]

For those on tumblr not in the know, Mark Zuckerberg lobbied the United States Congress to ban Tiktok from the United States after proving difficulty to overcome the loss of users to Tiktok. Through gifts and stocks, the House Energy and Commerce Committee successfully banned Tiktok. It needs to be very clear to those who have not been able to pay attention: The Committee interviewed Tiktok's CEO with questions that did not relate to Tiktok but instead to META. This precedent is very alarming. What is fine for one, is not the other- even if the other isn't participating.

Some key points:

Tiktok stores (stored, depending on what day you see this) all United States data on US soil in Texas and gives backdoor entry to the NSA. - This is important for the United States to check for the bad people on all platforms.

Listed members on the committee asked questions of activities Tiktok does not participate in but all of META does. Giving us immediate confirmation our government is fine with domestic platforms selling our data without consent.

An incredibly concerning detail showed its face while this was going down. All META platforms have access to every device's data using the same WIFI you connect to and they use that data.

META has given me the urge to puke for several years but last year was a moment of true question of how I move forward in a world that already seemingly has my data, even if I did not consent to the passing around of it.

When META decided to include AI in their system after investors seemed to require everyone to do so, the question of safety crossed my mind. META had announced the platforms were using everything you produce and have produced (posts, videos, photos) to not just train their own AI system, but they were also sending your information to a 3rd party as well. This included a setting toggle for consent that was default ON.

When the masses found out and toggled it off, META redesigned the Settings page to make it harder for you to find the consent option. They also made it so it wasn't just a "toggle" but now you had to write to them.

When the masses found out again (because we don't want this) how to get there, they redesigned the settings page again, hid the consent deeper, and required you to write to them with proof they even used your information... So that you can consent or not to consent to use their information.

I have been on this app since 2008 and relied heavily on this website when I was 14 while trying to escape the all seeing eyes I was friends with on Facebook. During this, tumblr became an amazing news resource for bills about to pass that endangered every bit of what the internet is known for: free speech and free of choice.

Back then, this site was all I had. I worshipped Tumblr for giving me emotional outlets and outside opinions during a very rough and miserable transition as a teen. So when Tumblr shared Bills trying to regulate our internet that would prevent reaching sites like Tumblr, I campaigned to my 150 student school and the two 1000 student public schools near me to reach out to our representatives, especially those 18 year olds waiting for a new horizon. With this, our representative and our governor in South Carolina, reached out to us at the time, letting us know they didn't realize how loved these spaces were and that they needed protecting. Communicating knowledge is powerful.

Having sites like Tumblr and Reddit circulate incoming bills like this was required to know about it. No one on Facebook saw any of that coming and they definitely won’t find out now with Zuckerberg making sure of it.

I have always seen the importance of internet regulation but for whatever reason (propaganda pushing) the People who work for us (reps, congress, the house, the committees) always wanted to pass bills that prevented people from talking and accessing new information.

The Tiktok ban passed by our government is not a good sign for anyone who uses the internet. The total amount of Americans who use this app to create community, careers, businesses, market their art, is at 102.3 million. That's a shit ton of businesses and communities that just end on the 19th of January.

And you might think, well why wouldn't they backup to another platform and I am sure many will, but Tiktok has such a unique algorithm that actually pushes businesses into the limelight and because of that, there is a massive community there that uplifts businesses that are falling behind. Currently, there is no other algorithm on US soil that compares to just how much it uplifts accounts that don't do well starting out. We lost so many creators after Vine because no other app could translate the humor and creativity. It's going to be a bigger loss after Tiktok goes because of that same issue.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

If they are willing to ban a site that is very minimally connected to China, an incredibly huge resource for Americans for everything and anything and all for an increase in paycheck, what else will they be banning in the future when money is waved in their faces by one entity? They already went for one where the American people are heavily reliant on and one that is supposed to be protected under free speech and free of choice. If META wants something dead, give it a year, and it will die.

The Internet and social platforms have always been protected by free speech and freedom of choice. But these aspects have also been on the chopping block since the wild wild west of internet. I fear, this will not stop with just Tiktok.

[destiel-news-channel]

Hey I just wanted to thank you as a queer Jewish woman for calling out that dick calling you a Zionist just for believing Jews deserve to be safe and to have self-determination while also acknowledging how Zionism is board spectrum of beliefs in regard to that self determination of the Jewish people and what it could entail and not a catch all term term for 'bloodthirsty colonizer' despite how non Jewish people are using it and the Nazi propaganda that comes along with it. Yes there are branches within the movement that do have anti-arab rhetoric but as a whole it's all about the right to return to their homeland and self determination.

You should definitely want better for those who live in the Gaza strip and I do hope one day Palestine will have statehood and self determination of their own but that isn't gonna happen until both sides work out their history and hateful rhetoric and of course jihadist like Hamas no longer in power and people such as Netanyahu out of office.

(Sorry to break to most of you but neither Israel or Palestine are going anywhere and those who are chanting 'death to Israel' are fucking hypocrites considering half of the world's Jewish population live there. You can't be against genocide but then turn around and say you support genocide of a group you don't like. Also Biden has been trying to keep Bibi (Netanyahu) under control on the tactics used to fight Hamas and has been pushing for a ceasefire for a year because what happened on Oct 7th was nothing but evil but at this point I think most of us just want the hostages home. Trump will let Bibi do whatever he wants now that he's back in the white house and won't hold back. Most of the general Israel population want peace and believe in the two state ideas as do a lot of Jews outside of Israel. The government sucks but the people are no different than you and me)

Most of this site seems to have fallen into antisemitism and won't listen to Jewish voices so it's a breath of fresh air to see someone be an ally and call this shit out. Thank you.

(ps you don't need to reply to this I just wanted to send this)

Hello, I am doing my best to share Jewish voices and raise awareness about and combat the rampant antisemitism on this site. I am glad to know that I am helping at least a little bit!

[pettytiredandjewish]

Ya know what…

I’m so tired of this crap. I’m tired of being scared and having nightmares. I’m tired of seeing people that I thought were friends post/share antisemitic shit/ propaganda and misinformation that hamas created. I hate having to be cautious about people and their intentions. I don’t like having to make a mental list of people that would help me if something happens- I don’t want to drag them into this shit show…

I hate that most of y’all are just sharing/posting misinformation/propaganda about this war. Y’all stop fucking getting your information from social media/and Hamas run “news sites”. Fun fact Hamas is in control of Gaza and certain news media’s. They can tell the world that Israel is doing so and so and y’all would fucking eat it up (and y’all do that). And don’t get me started on the fucking trauma porn- y’all are so obsessed with seeing those photos and pictures, and here’s the thing- no one knows if they are real/“posed”/ai generated and same with the “stories”… heck y’all even twist up the stories just to make Israel the only bad guy in this war…

Most of y’all don’t even care about Palestine. If y’all did why are you not condemning Hamas and their government? Y’all claim you want this to stop- Israel has offered multiple ceasefire deals but Hamas turns them down because they don’t fucking care. They don’t care that civilians are getting k*lled. Hamas end goal is to exterminate Israelis and Jews. They even admitted it but y’all were just turned a blind eye. Hamas is taking control of the narrative of this war and y’all are fucking falling for it…

I don’t trust anyone who uses Zionist/zionism as a slur, wishes death against Israel and their citizens, calls the IDF the IOF, those who turns a blind eye to the antisemitic shit that y’all are causing/or joining in on, chatting genocidal slogans, the list goes on and on….

You claim that y’all don’t blame Jews- just those “Zionist”. I don’t know how to say it but the majority of Jews are Zionist and a lot of us don’t want this war. (Also most of y’all don’t know what Zionism is and are spreading false information about it). Also stop calling Israelis terrorist. They are not- I’ve said this multiple times, citizens are not their government…

Blaming Jews for this war does make you antisemitic. Harassing Jews/attacking Jews/wishing death upon Jews/ cheering and supporting terrorist organizations that want Jews dead/ all of this plus more doesn’t help Palestine. But it does make you a raging antisemitic asshat. This is why we Jews are fucking scared and terrified. History is starting to repeat itself and y’all are contributing to it. Y’all wanna know why Jews are wanting to leave their home countries- because we don’t feel safe because of this shit that is happening…

I could keep going but I’ll stop. This is just me venting out my frustrations. I’m so frustrated that y’all are doing this. I’m tired and scared. If y’all don’t like this- I don’t give a damn. I said what i said. Just know that if y’all start spitting out antisemitic shit on this post- I will call you out and block you…

Am yisrael chai ✡️

And to those who lost people in this war and to those who were killed just because they were Jewish- May your memory be a blessing.

[psychotrenny]

I just can't get over the whole obsession with "Kremlin Bots/Psyops" like do these people realise how fucking stupid they sound? Like they are so insanely parochial, so hopelessly indoctrinated into the principles of the US American Civil Religion, that they just refuse fathom anyone having a moral and rational reason to oppose their nation and its institutions. Like debating over the minor stuff is normal and the sign that you're an intelligent and free thinker, but the second the criticisms start hitting a little too hard then clearly you have to be some malevolent foreign agent who has been paid or created purely to lead good americans astray. Like you can really smell the cultural Christianity because it's literally no different from all the preachers who denounce any opponents of Christian supremacy as agents of Satan himself. It's just a dumb trick to protect your brain from uncomfortable thoughts about the beliefs you hold and the systems you support and the implications this has to your personal sense of moral superiority.

And ironically enough, repeating this stupid cliche in fact makes you sound like some sort of robot or some agent of the US state. But although US government does indeed make use of bots to spread propaganda on social media, on a site like tumblr the vast majority of accounts saying this sort of thing are very much real; they just belong to chauvinist and willingly ignorant liberals who've taken it upon themselves to do that work for free. It would be nice if they found another hobby though; even if you love the US empire you have to admit that this sort of thing is never very convincing. Sometimes they're funny, mostly they're annoying, but I think it would be in everyone's best interest if all the "vote blue" drones just shut the fuck up

[labelleizzy]

Lifted from a friend, but this is IMPORTANT.

I'm going to be blunt.

I know that what's happening is stressful. I know that many of you are trying to stay distracted for your own well-being.

I'm also fully aware that to some of you, I'm coming across as a politics obsessed alarmist.

But this is really important: yesterday multiple lines were crossed that weren't just Trump, being Trump. Lines were crossed that make it very clear that we're in the beginning stages of a coup.

*Elon Musk, who isn't a member of our government, basically shut down a government organization. He locked members of our Federal Government out of their computer system, HAD THE EMPLOYEES SEARCHED, and then copied the personal information of all 2.5 million of our federal employees, for who knows what purpose.

*Last night 88 FBI agents were marched out from their place of employment, like criminals, because Trump felt that they weren't "loyal" to him. That is dictator behavior.

* Last night the few remaining real news sources that we have, were told that they will be removed from their place in the Whitehouse and that they will be replaced with "news" sources like Brietbart. Meaning our trusted news sources will have no access to what is happening in the Whitehouse, while conspiracy sites are given free rein. That is how dictators control the media, shutter access to the real news and have the ability to spread propaganda. Hitler did that.

*Let's not forget that Musk, who once again has no right to do so, has had emails sent to all 2.5 million of our Federal Employees, trying to force them to quit their jobs. Many of them have.

*Today over 1,000 Federal Employees were fired, illegally. Dictator behavior.

*There have been protests across the county and around the world that none of us have heard about because our existing news sources are already being silenced. Most of the information that I posted has only been covered by 1 or 2 news sources (mainly Reuters) because the rest are too scared of the repercussions.

I could go on and on.

My point is this, this is not the time to be complacent or to bury our heads in the sand.

This is real. It is really happening. You aren't imagining it. Reacting to this is healthy and normal. Those are reactions built into us with the purpose of keeping ourselves safe.

We aren't safe.

We need to contact people within our government NOW.

Lawsuits and elections aren't going to save us from this constant daily onslaught.

_Only direct action will._

[mariacallous]

Earlier this week, journalists at WIRED and The Washington Post reported that a “Russian-aligned propaganda network notorious for creating deepfake whistleblower videos” appears to be behind a coordinated effort to promote false sexual misconduct allegations against vice presidential candidate Tim Walz.

At WIRED, David Gilbert wrote that researchers have linked a group they’re calling “Storm-1516” to the campaign against Walz. “Storm-1516 has a long history of posting fake whistleblower videos, and often deepfake videos, to push Kremlin talking points to the West,” Gilbert explained. A few days earlier, NBC News also reported on Storm-1516, citing its work as demonstrative of Russian propaganda’s growing utilization of artificial intelligence and more sophisticated bot networks.

Two days after the WIRED report, Washington Post journalist and Russia expert Catherine Belton reported on another bad actor implicated in spreading the allegations against Walz: John Mark Dougan, a former Florida cop with a long and winding record that includes internal affairs investigations, early discharge from the Marines, and a penchant for posting confidential data about thousands of police officers, federal agents, and judges on his blog, which led to 21 state charges of extortion and wiretapping. To escape that indictment, Dougan fled to Moscow, where he soon put his conspiratorial blogging skills to work, effectively enlisting in the Russian intelligence community’s “Internet war” against America.

Records show and disinformation researchers argue that Dougan is responsible for content on dozens of fake news sites with deliberately misleading names like DC Weekly, Chicago Chronicle, and Atlanta Observer. Lately, he’s reportedly started using a GRU-facilitated server and AI generator to create phony videos like the deepfake video showing one of Walz’s former students accusing him of sexual abuse.

With a little more than a week until the U.S. presidential election, Meduza spoke to Renée DiResta — the author of Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality and an associate research professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy — about Russian propaganda, how it’s evolved over the years, and how American social networks are responding (and not responding) ahead of the November 2024 vote.

Timestamps for this episode:

(5:00) The Role of Social Networks in Identifying Fake Accounts

(9:35) Government and Platform Collaboration on Inauthentic Behavior

(16:46) A Case Study: Maxim Shugaley and Russian Influence in Libya

(21:45) Twitter’s Public Data Dilemma

(24:25) Bespoke Realities and Content Moderation

(25:57) The Tenet Media Case

(27:28) The Role of Influencers in Propaganda

(35:26) Marketing and Propaganda: A Historical Perspective

(38:27) The Democratization of Propaganda

(39:36) Name Your Poison: Tyranny or Chaos

[infiniteglitterfall]

OMG, COULD EVERYONE PLEASE STOP IMMEDIATELY BELIEVING AND REPEATING DISINFORMATION?!

Sorry, I just. Was just on Twitter, and I snapped.

I literally haven't seen one true statement about Israel on social media in MONTHS.

It's gotten to the point that I'm seriously considering starting a sideblog fact-checking all of it.

PLEASE STOP BEING GARFIELD I AM BEGGING ALL OF YOU

BE NERMAL FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

I've written at least one really long post about fact-checking things before. I have another saved as a draft somewhere.

But all you really have to do at this point is GO LOOK AT AN ACTUAL NEWS SOURCE.

What do I mean by an Actual News Source?

An actual news source will tell you where it's getting its information.

Basically: Wikipedia rules apply at all times. Citation. Fucking. Needed.

Except with news articles, I don't mean a detailed footnote.

I mean, if they say, "Rosco Flubberish reported seeing a pig fly across Whatever Place. 'It was a flying pig,' he said," they're fine.

If they say, "Sources close to the President reported that the Department of Farmland Creatures launched a pig into the air this afternoon," they're fine.

If they say, "There have also been reports that pigs flew," they are purely making shit up.

Just check CNN or something. CNN checks their shit, and they're very quick on the draw.

NBC has been very reliable too, in my experience. So have ABC, Newsweek, the Jerusalem Post, the Guardian, the New York Times, the AP, PBS, the Washington Post, and Reuters.

You can break through most paywalls by putting archive.is or 12ft.io before the https:// of the URL. Or just go to either of those sites and paste the URL in the box.

Nobody is perfect. I've seen some articles from all of the above that were accurate, but left things out that I personally thought were important.

Journalists are humans, humans fuck up.

(Also, NONE OF THIS APPLIES TO OPINION PIECES ON ANY TOPIC. Opinion pieces are exactly that: opinions. They don't seem to be fact-checked anywhere, as far as I can tell. They range from super-accurate and informative to complete nonsense.)

(Surprisingly unreliable sources in my experience: Democracy Now, Jacobin, Workers World Party. The latter two act like news sites but are basically running nothing but opinion pieces; Democracy Now can do important deep dives, but I've also seen news coverage from it that was wildly misinformed in that same way.

On the flip side, Slate and the Atlantic are largely opinion -- the Atlantic more than Slate, maybe -- but they often have really well-researched analysis of political situations. Ditto Teen Vogue, and sometimes Vox.)

You don't have to read CNN or the NYT or whateverfor fun. You don't have to make it one of your news sources.

Just. Do a quick check on Google News before you assume anything is true, and then run it through a bullshit filter as described above.

You are being actively lied to, all the time. So am I. We all are.

And people will believe and repeat literally anything that sounds about right.

That's just human nature.

That is WHY none of us are immune to propaganda.

if you want my personal shortlist of Bad Sources, as in Sources That Consistently Publish Absolute Falsehoods:

Any and all state-owned or state-controlled media. For example:

Al Jazeera is owned by the Qatari government, and so are a bunch of other news sites.

Mehr News, the Tehran Times, Al-Quds TV, and Al-Alam are owned by the dictatorship of Iran.

Oops. Looks like every form of broadcast Iranian news media is owned by the dictatorship of Iran, which has a monopoly.

Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, Palestinian News and Info Agency, and Al-Hayat Al-Jadida are owned by the government of Palestine (the Palestinian Authority)

Al-Aqsa TV and Felesteen are owned by Hamas.

TASS / Russia News Agency, Russia Today, and a fuckton of others are owned by the Russian government.

State Media Monitor seems to do a pretty great job of tracking and listing these things. Check out your own country there!

I specifically listed those ones because some of them (especially Al Jazeera, Mehr News, and TASS) are sites I've seen come up frequently on Tumblr, or in my attempts to fact-check what people are saying here and on Twitter. The rest are just more examples from the same governments.

Al Jazeera deserves special notice because it's become a very popular leftist news source. Believe me, I used to read it all the time too.

It can be reliable and accurate sometimes. But:

It consistently tweets things that are unsourced, never appear anywhere else, and that would be big news you'd expect it to follow up on if they were true. It seems to be following a strategy of "tweet every rumor you hear in case it's true, so you can get the scoop."

It also does this with its liveblogs of the war. And ALL its coverage of the war at this point is liveblogs. So things that are verifiably true will run right next to things that are complete hearsay, but are too long to just tweet.

This is especially dangerous because as far as I can tell, Al Jazeera doesn't delete anything that turns out to be false.

I've also seen regular news articles in Al Jazeera, on multiple topics, that veer from Absolutely True Statements to Wildly Exaggerated Numbers and Speculation. Stuff you wouldn't expect a source on, like statistics or descriptions. And there's no way to tell the difference unless you already know a topic really well, or are fact-checking them while you read.

One especially terrible example, from Gazan activist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib:

Al Jazeera has never posted or published a correction.

Alkhatib has also blamed it for destabilizing the region, although he's exaggerating about it being Hamas's official propaganda outlet:

TL;DR: If you see a Tumblr post making any kind of factual news statement without a link, at this point you need to assume it is absolutely not true. And either scroll on past, or go check Google News.

If there IS a link, you need to click through to see what it's from and what it actually says.

(Honestly, you need to do that with Wikipedia too. I've repeatedly clicked through on citations that absolutely did not say what the article implied they did.)

And pro tip: on mobile, you can just smack a button to sort Google's news results by most recent, and it helps A LOT. There's gotta be a way to do the same on desktop, but if there is, it's not immediately visible, which sucks.

[cleverthylacine]

The TikTok Migration to RedNote

On TikTok, I lurk, and now I'm lurking on RedNote. (I'm not searchable yet. Will let those interested know when that changes. Still figuring out the settings.)

A bunch of people got mad about the TikTok ban and decided that they would take their cookies and leave and go to an ACTUALLY Chinese app. I'm not sure why they picked RedNote rather than DouYin, but I think it was a good choice. I'm following other lolitas there mostly, because I don't need any Mandarin to like people's outfits. I did have a semester of Mandarin and am wondering how hard it would be to pick up some more, though, especially since I'm seeing all kinds of Americans from every imaginable background type doing so.

All over YouTube there are videos now of TikTokers on RedNote crying because we have been welcomed onto the app and treated kindly.

There is a lot of very expected anger about people discovering that no, in other countries it's not normal to pay more than half your paycheck for rent and half of what's left for food. Chinese people are saying that they thought it was government propaganda when they were told that Americans are expected to pay for ambulances, and healthcare, and that a $200 grocery bill for the week is not unusual.

I'm glad to see people getting radicalised about the class system in this country, but that's not actually the main thing I'm talking about in this post, though.

There are people who are deadass shocked that they haven't been insulted, trolled in a mean way, or been exposed to explicit unsolicited come-ons (there's one guy who posted shirtless selfies who is a little @@;; that he has 16000 gay male Chinese followers, but he's not getting spammed with raunchy photos).

So I value freedom of speech on political matters very highly, but there are two things I think are going on.

The first one is that yeah, a lot of Chinese people probably are better socialised than Americans, BUT

The second one is that Americans put up with a lot of shit in the name of freedom of speech that we shouldn't and after the changes on Meta last week I will only be using IG to communicate with Japanese brands and Facebook not at all, because they're going the other direction.

I think that if some chode did send me a nasty DM on RedNote and I reported it, something would be done about it. It's not that I don't think people will be nice and kind if they're not forced to be.

It's that chodes and Nazis and frankly racist and misogynist people will run everyone else off a platform if they are allowed to, and this app has somehow stopped that from happening, probably by not letting people be completely predatory bullies and assholes to one another.

English-language social media probably needs to stop letting people do that. It is not a violation of your free speech rights to tell someone they can't use a platform to be abusive.

I saw a video of a person of mixed race and unclockable gender who was wearing loose, oversized clothes sobbing because nobody was insulting them horribly, everyone who had commented on their post had been genuinely nice. Their experience of every other social media platform has been unchecked bullying everywhere. I don't know whether they'd ever been here, but we all know bullying does happen here, too, even if we're loads better than any of Meta's products.

People should not EXPECT to be viciously harassed every time they join a new site. That's horrible. It's also something I never really questioned before.

And I still think (always will) that you should be able to post any content that you want on AO3 in the works, but it's not okay to bully people in the comments.

[misfitwashere]

Twenty Lessons On Tyranny

From the Twentieth Century

TIMOTHY SNYDER

JAN 20

1. Do not obey in advance. Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.

2. Defend institutions. It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of "our institutions" unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. They fall one after the other unless each is defended from the beginning. So choose an institution you care about -- a court, a newspaper, a law, a labor union -- and take its side.

3. Beware the one-party state. The parties that remade states and suppressed rivals were not omnipotent from the start. They exploited a historic moment to make political life impossible for their opponents. So support the multiple-party system and defend the rules of democratic elections. Vote in local and state elections while you can. Consider running for office.

4. Take responsibility for the face of the world. The symbols of today enable the reality of tomorrow. Notice the swastikas and the other signs of hate. Do not look away, and do not get used to them. Remove them yourself and set an example for others to do so.

5. Remember professional ethics. When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become more important. It is hard to subvert a rule-of-law state without lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges. Authoritarians need obedient civil servants, and concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor.

6. Be wary of paramilitaries. When the men with guns who have always claimed to be against the system start wearing uniforms and marching with torches and pictures of a leader, the end is nigh. When the pro-leader paramilitary and the official police and military intermingle, the end has come.

7. Be reflective if you must be armed. If you carry a weapon in public service, may God bless you and keep you. But know that evils of the past involved policemen and soldiers finding themselves, one day, doing irregular things. Be ready to say no.

8. Stand out. Someone has to. It is easy to follow along. It can feel strange to do or say something different. But without that unease, there is no freedom. Remember Rosa Parks. The moment you set an example, the spell of the status quo is broken, and others will follow.

9. Be kind to our language. Avoid pronouncing the phrases everyone else does. Think up your own way of speaking, even if only to convey that thing you think everyone is saying. Make an effort to separate yourself from the internet. Read books.

10. Believe in truth. To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.

11. Investigate. Figure things out for yourself. Spend more time with long articles. Subsidize investigative journalism by subscribing to print media. Realize that some of what is on the internet is there to harm you. Learn about sites that investigate propaganda campaigns (some of which come from abroad). Take responsibility for what you communicate with others.

12. Make eye contact and small talk. This is not just polite. It is part of being a citizen and a responsible member of society. It is also a way to stay in touch with your surroundings, break down social barriers, and understand whom you should and should not trust. If we enter a culture of denunciation, you will want to know the psychological landscape of your daily life.

13. Practice corporeal politics. Power wants your body softening in your chair and your emotions dissipating on the screen. Get outside. Put your body in unfamiliar places with unfamiliar people. Make new friends and march with them.

14. Establish a private life. Nastier rulers will use what they know about you to push you around. Scrub your computer of malware on a regular basis. Remember that email is skywriting. Consider using alternative forms of the internet, or simply using it less. Have personal exchanges in person. For the same reason, resolve any legal trouble. Tyrants seek the hook on which to hang you. Try not to have hooks.

15. Contribute to good causes. Be active in organizations, political or not, that express your own view of life. Pick a charity or two and set up autopay. Then you will have made a free choice that supports civil society and helps others to do good.

16. Learn from peers in other countries. Keep up your friendships abroad, or make new friends in other countries. The present difficulties in the United States are an element of a larger trend. And no country is going to find a solution by itself. Make sure you and your family have passports.

17. Listen for dangerous words. Be alert to use of the words "extremism" and "terrorism." Be alive to the fatal notions of "emergency" and "exception." Be angry about the treacherous use of patriotic vocabulary.

18. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.

19. Be a patriot. Set a good example of what America means for the generations to come. They will need it.

20. Be as courageous as you can. If none of us is prepared to die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny.

[actuallyobsessive]

This blog is more or less inactive. I don't know if I plan to use it anymore. Regardless, it has 4x the follower count of my main blog, and I'd be missing a great opportunity if I didn't use that platform to share something important.

Palestine is facing a genocide. Around 25,000 people have been killed since October and Israel shows no signs of stopping.

No matter what your political or religious beliefs may be, what's happening in Palestine is unacceptable. If you are a fellow human, you should not be okay with this.

Below are some charities and organizations that are helping people in Palestine. Even if you can't donate, I encourage you to share these sites with people who can. And if you're a religious person, please keep Palestine in your prayers.

Palestinian Children's Relief Fund - Provides aid to children affected by the war in Palestine.

Ceasefire NOW - Write a letter to congress and demand a ceasefire.

Anera - Provides food, blankets, hygiene products, and other necessities to Palestinians.

US Campaign for Palestinian Rights - Find activist groups for Palestinian liberation in your area.

Please don't stop talking about Palestine, and be sure to educate those around you about what is going on. There is a lot of propaganda on the internet and in the news, and as a result, many people simply don't know the scale of what is happening to Palestinians. Always be critical of what you read online, including this post.

Palestine will be free. Please don't give up on them.