I swear, every time most of the time I see someone being particularly rude, ignorant, and inappropriate on a post (usually political in origin, or they swing it to being political) I click on their profile and see it has been created that same day.
They are only there to sow discord. Only to piss people off. Idk if we can just report them (for what?) but I’d like to try exposing them before responding and interacting…
I am guilty of gobbling up the bait. I’ve started looking at profiles of people that piss me off exceptionally and noticed they’re burner bot loser accounts.
I guess i just want to say I’ve noticed it!
It’s not a “QAnon-esque conspiracy theory”. Russia’s online influence in American politics has been fairly well documented. That being said, I think it’s somewhat unhealthy to assume everyone who says something controversial is dishonest or a troll. Not good for discourse.
im not saying governments dont astroturf or anything, i meant it was a QAnon-esque conspiracy to assume that there were paid shills and bots around every corner and the vast majority of anti-american sentiment comes from a Russian cabal or something, especially on a comparitively tiny online space like lemmy. Like i’ve fairly frequently seen the accusation that lemmy is filled with paid actors / bots working for various countries from people just because they’ve suddenly been exposed to views that they’ve never really encountered before.
The general consensus is that yes, Russians do troll. The conspiracy comes from the fact that EVERYONE you have a bad interaction with is a troll. No, a vast majority of Americans are just really shitty people and there’s a really good chance your argument is an organic one.