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?

  • AskewLord@piefed.social
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    2 months ago

    yeah i made that mistake when i was new here.

    the dogpile and death threats reminded me of reddit!

    • aloofPenguin@piefed.world
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      2 months ago

      death threats?!?!

      sheesh, they really are unhinged. thank goodness I blocked them almost immediately upon joining since I heard about them, but this is something we need to improve on imo, perhaps a sort of warning?

      doubt it will happen though, since Lemmy devs are the instance admins, but maybe on some neutral instance chooser site or the other? (may already exist and I don’t know about it)

      • PapaSkwat@lemmy.today
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        2 months ago

        I’ve gotten death threats and stalkers too.Some extremist users in the fediverse are very unhinged and have no life.