this post was submitted on 20 Nov 2023
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[–] Cowbee@lemm.ee 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yes, but not in the same sense of "government sponsored bot propaganda," and in the same sense as News and Worldnews are propaganda.

Hexbear is made up of users that genuinely seem to believe in their ideologies, rather than being sponsored by some state like others have implied.

[–] Karyoplasma@discuss.tchncs.de 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

You can be genuinely convinced that you are speaking the truth and still spew propaganda. It's all about the manner in which you are presenting your political agenda.

Anecdotal elucidation of this:

Back in 2022, when the Russians invaded Ukraine, there was a neutral sub on reddit called UkraineWarVideoReport. It was a basically a CombatFootage sub to neutrally document the war without the goreporn focus of CombatFootage. Titles were something akin to "Russians take out target in X Region" or "Ukraine defends region Y using Weapon-System-gifted-by-country". None of this is propaganda.

As the sub grew more and more popular, propaganda started and soon, the sub was just filled with "Ukraine heroes smash Russian Orcs again LOL" or "Russians demolish Ukronazi brigade for good". Both are propaganda, using loaded words in order to push their view point. Once those propaganda posts got out of hands, I left the sub because no valuable information is to be gained there.