Do you mean investors are trying to manipulate stocks by planting stories? Yeah, I think so. But intelligence agencies have whole training programs on how to manipulate narratives, and a very long track record of doing so.

See: Israel’s hasbara apparatus,

GCHQ leaked documents on infiltrating and derailing socialist discussions,

Church Committee Hearings,

“The Cultural Cold War” by Frances Stonor Saunders.

The top hits for my “WSB” search are:

• World Sports Betting

• r/WallStreetBets

• World Superbikes

I don’t think any of their goons are astroturfing (well, maybe World Superbikes). Did you mean a different entity?

Corporatism leads to imperialism by the need to seek profits in new markets. Wherever we see lots of defense of imperialism, there is corporate backing behind it. That’s why I think lemmy.world is astroturfed. There’s a strong anti-communist and pro “free market” capitalist tendency on there. Posts that attack the Global South as the world’s villains. On the other hand, there are also many people on lemmy.world that speak out against imperialism and capitalistic exploitation. But the recurrent waves of reactionary politics on lemmy.world indicate to me the presence of astroturfing trolls. This makes sense even on a relatively small platform like Lemmy because it threatens to become a nucleus for organizing against capitalism.

Good evidence of astroturfing on Reddit. That Reddit took action and banned the Palantir agents only provides evidence that exposure of the op is the problem. Not evidence that Reddit acts in good faith.

Frequent Guardian readers more likely to agree with anti-China narratives, study finds.

Article warns that you will be profiled based on interests.

Article then profiles you based on interests. Proceeds to sell you VPN subscriptions.

There’s a strong Italian influence in the character names, which are often quirky, pun filled, and dirty. I feel like the movie could be a Renaissance Italy sex comedy a la 70s horror films, but with a comedic twist. Like Suspiria or Vampyros Lesbos, but comedic.

China states that it is to cut off supply for military applications. More likely it was a tit-for-tat response to the CHIPS act. Cut China off from the most advanced chips, they cut the US off from the raw materials to make chips.

If it is actually about military applications that’s more worrisome. US generals have predicted war with China in the near future as a foregone conclusion.

Trade war is one thing. Military conflict between the two global superpowers would be disastrous.

Putin is openly anti-communist.

Agreed that it likely depends on the region it was bought in. For most businesses and government services I have found the quality of customer service has dropped through the floor in North America as compared to 20 years ago. I worked in customer service for years and it’s always been a horrible job. But it can be made better or worse by how the department is managed.

Lenovo Canada’s customer service, shipping, and possibly quality control teams appear to be overworked because the result is slipshod work, ignoring the customer, and general incompetence. Again, I worked in the field and don’t blame the individuals.

They are trading on their good name, and eroding it at the same time. Glad to hear it’s better in Europe.

The whole shipping, returns, and reliability experience for Lenovo was rather bad for me (Lenovo Canada). My Legion shipped with a faulty motherboard and faulty power supply. Bought in Canada, but I work in China. International warranty didn’t cover China so I paid for replacement power supply out of pocket. Then multiple usb keys were fried before I figured out it was my laptop. Back in Canada they fixed it, but jerked me around on the turnaround time. Overall bad customer service, shipped a lemon. It was cheap for the specs though.

Ooh, pool depth diss!

Propaganda is usually truthful or exaggerated truth. It’s the framing that is important. Some facts are focused on. Some facts are omitted.

I acknowledge that Russia, China and the DPRK have made mistakes and even done things that are deeply questionable. But I’m interested in comparing their mistakes or misguided actions to those of the most powerful military empire on earth. The one involved in hundreds of military actions and dozens of coups since its inception. The one with the largest per capita prison population on earth. The one which controls many of the world’s financial levers.

There is a difference in the scale of their mistakes or bad actions. Propaganda distorts that difference of scale. It focuses on the crimes of the “enemies” / “axis of evil” / “rogue states” but doesn’t examine context or culpability of the empire. They’ll choose one conflict, downplay 9 others, and give a one-sided view of that one conflict.

That’s how propaganda works. Every state produces propaganda. One state produces billions of dollars of propaganda each year.

Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty is straight up State department propaganda.

Calculator?! Those thieving, energy-sucking piles of garbage! Abacus till I die!

But seriously, AI is insidious in how it data mines us to give us answers, and data mines our questions to build profiles of users. I distrust assurances of anonymity by big data corpos.

Would be funny if Boeing started cutting corners with their hitmen, too.

What if we didn’t even have ads on the internet?

That’s because you haven’t tried cool ranch yet

Purchased upvotes and downvotes that make criticism invisible