Posting this because no one else seems to want to, and it’s a discussion worth having outside of drama or personal conflicts. I’m undecided and can see both sides, but it’s important to address.
Potential benefits of a limit:
- Frequent posters hold significant influence and could, in theory, push misinformation or propaganda (though I haven’t seen evidence of this it’s a fair concern).
- A community dominated by one or two voices might discourage new members from participating.
- Encouraging quality over quantity could increase the value of individual posts.
Potential downsides of a limit:
- Could reduce overall community engagement.
- If set too low, it might discourage meaningful participation from well-intentioned members.
- It could inadvertently encourage the (mis)use of alt accounts.
These are some pros/cons but certainly not all! I encourage more discussion below.
I don’t think Lemmy had any particular influence on the election, no, because of the small number of people here. I actually don’t think UniversalMonk is part of any influence campaign, personally, although there is no way to know. I just said I thought they were trying to influence the election, not that there was any detectable impact from it. Certainly as soon as the election happened, they switched from promoting Rachele Fruit relentlessly, to promoting conservative ideology just as relentlessly, which would seem to indicate that the Rachele Fruit stuff was purely a tactical front because of the election.
In a broader sense, separate from this individual user, it is absolutely well-documented that there are foreign influence campaigns distorting social media to promote electoral outcomes operating on a massive scale. I think that is why Trump got elected, and I think it’s why the far right is experiencing this massive surge right now all over the world, and liberal democrats like Biden, Trudeau, Scholz, and Macron are dealing with these insurgencies against their power which they’re not coping with well at all. I think the problem is actually vastly understated in the media. I think it’s one of the most powerful forces shaping world events right now, and it barely gets more than a footnote while the effects are talked about all the time in how politics is changing and new policies that are coming about because of it.
I am very surprised, as it sounds like you are, that it is on Lemmy. But also, it is very clear to me that there are influence campaigns on Lemmy, even if UM is not part of them. For whatever weird reason they decided that a few tens of thousands of MAU was enough to get someone involved in it. I think most people have a sort of anecdotal sense that it’s happening, based on the various tides of propaganda that come across from time to time, and I’ve seen users fuck up in ways that unambiguously indicated it (a random example being someone who claims to be American and preaching nonstop about Democrats, then using non-American numbering and then not understanding it when it’s pointed out to them that Americans don’t punctuate their numbers like they just did.)
My main point about the election is that Lemmy, I guess like literally every other social media outlet except maybe Signal or something, had influence campaigns operating on it. Any given group of a few tens of thousands of people was laughably too small to influence the election. But, by casting a wide net, I think they produced quite a significant impact on the election, and I do think Lemmy was a part of it.
I just looked him up, and he still promotes her and mods a community based on her political party. His profile seems to rage against the duopoly, so seems he is firmly still in third-party mode.
Maybe, but if that’s true, I think it happens on both sides of the political spectrum. Just as many Democrats engage in that as Republicans.
Also, Lemmy is overwhelmingly left-leaning. So in that case, isn’t Lemmy part of that surge trying to influence the campaign? They were heavily promoting all things Democrat, and heavilly downvoting anything that was third party or republican.
According to your logic, and your numbers, Lemmy is part of that influencing agent. And it seems to be trying to continue to influence things.
And since Lemmy is part of a political influence scenario, then that means you are too. As am I.
I do not think that American Democrats or Republicans are capable of running an operation that is anywhere near this successful. They are, for the most part, corrupt idiots. I’m talking about foreign influence campaigns which are designed to destroy the US by getting Republicans elected, not Republican influence campaigns which are designed to win by getting Republicans elected.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ4-ajeeFzY
Fair.