This study investigates the presence of left-wing extremism on the Lemmygrad.ml instance of the decentralized social media platform Lemmy, from its launch in 2019 up to a month after the bans of the subreddits r/GenZedong and r/GenZhou.

We conduct a temporal analysis on Lemmygrad.ml’s user activity, with also measuring the degree of highly abusive or hateful content. Furthermore, we explore the content of their posts using a transformer-based topic modeling approach.

Our findings reveal a substantial increase in user activity and toxicity levels following the migration of these subreddits to Lemmygrad.ml.

We also identify posts that support authoritarian regimes, endorse the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and feature anti-Zionist and antisemitic content.

Overall, our findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of political extremism within decentralized social networks and emphasize the necessity of analyzing both ends of the political spectrum in research.

https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/40188039

  • lelkins@lemmygrad.ml
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    4 days ago

    ay mates, lelkins lemmygrad person here

    i find the keywords hilarious, how the fuck are the top words just romanian slang for “good morning” AND the romanian word for “raise or carry something”? i could’ve said “lol i did that” but i barely speak romanian here

    also lmao tankie, loool taonkie look we are smart we use words like TENCHI end REDFAȘ

    don’t professional research papers require professional research words? i wasn’t allowed to write short versions of “do not” or “was not” in my uni paper!!

    also what do they mean by toxic? if i was the same way with the same shitposts but on reddit for example, i’d be given death threats becAUSE THAT FUCKING HAPPENED TO ME EVERY TIME I WAS IN PUBLIC AS A LIBERAL BACK IN THE DAY

    THIS IS THE LEAST TOXIC PLACE IF YOU ARE A NICE PERSON. IF I WAS POSTING MY DRAWINGS ANYWHERE BUT HERE AND LEMMYGRAD I’D BE PUT IN A CRINGE COMPILATION, OKAY?! GOD. DAMMIT.

    • VILenin [he/him]@hexbear.netM
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      3 days ago

      Turns out that being “academics” doesn’t change the fact that they’re just as stupid as every other turbolib moron

      • lelkins@lemmygrad.ml
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        3 days ago

        this implies i am smart lmao

        insert picture of queen from deltarune lighting up the acronym LMAO on her visor eyes

    • Chana [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      4 days ago

      When it comes to publishing the standards vary massively by which reviewers you get and where you are publishing. The veneer of academic language increases your chances of publishing but doesn’t need to be perfect. And this is from a conference, which, depending on the field, tend to have lower standards.

      But even the most prestigious publications are full of absolute garbage when it comes to social media “analysis”. That entire “field” is just a way to extract funding based on hype, buzzwords, and sucking uo.

      • lelkins@lemmygrad.ml
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        4 days ago

        wait, there’s a field on shitposting?

        why can’t i be hired on that? i could funny some posts and get paid for it??? WHAT

        • Chana [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          4 days ago

          If you learn Python and very basic stats and plots, yes you absolutely can. Sign up for grad school or a similar academic programming where they have $500k grants for nonsense like this and they will pay you to produce meaningless “topics” and “sentiments” that you can interpret without rigor - so long as your peers agree with you.

          • lelkins@lemmygrad.ml
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            3 days ago

            GOD DAMMIT

            i literally had a course in python like 4-5 years ago? and i’ve been trying so hard to just get a job as a junior developer because i paid GOOD money for certifications and shit

            i was literally the guy at uni who made a project that compared a government-backed british documentary about romani folk immigrants (“The Romanians are Coming”) with fucking top gear

            had i known about this i would’ve been jordan peterson 2 (jordan peterson but better and actually me)

              • lelkins@lemmygrad.ml
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                3 days ago

                how do i do that if i already have a job

                also i’ll study english in my master’s degree and then wonder why i always hated math cause i threw away the road to 100 thousand dollars a year and a fucking bookshelf full of eastern cartoon statues like ALL GOOD STEREOTYPICAL LINUX USERS DO

                I’M BROKE!

                and before anyone goes “uh UH not all linux users have anime collections” i would have a collection of luigi figures

                • Chana [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                  3 days ago

                  A good trick is to start a PhD, which is usually a paid position (either teaching or research), and exit with a Master’s after two years of courses if you aren’t feeling it. The stuff you do would be basically identical but you’d get paid for a nearly guaranteed nerd job at the university. And they waive tuition.

                  You don’t need to do this by any means but it is doable if you want to go in that direction.

                  • lelkins@lemmygrad.ml
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                    3 days ago

                    i also plan on getting a phd in english do not worry. if i got english enough i will go full english