The original news was posted twice. Right now these posts have a score of 80 and 456 upvotes.
Being active on Lemmy has pretty much convinced me that claims about some evil algorithm being responsible for all the ills of social media are baseless.
this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
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I mean, its a news article posted to a news forum. And if we look at the comments the parent comments for the top 7 threads are:
-unrelated anecdote -praose for the idea behind the festival -something removed (probably some random racist shit). Notably the child comments seem to call out the original sentiment. -a request for more info -tangential conversation about what defines a "major incident"
- the classic "OMG wtf"
- a comment likening this to another "needle panic"
I don't know if your issue is with the content or the reactions but I don't see how either points to the issues with social media. It's a bit sensationalist and some of the comments arent exactly thought provokers, but there's nothing (that I can see) that screams "social media bad"
Being active on Lemmy, not this one incidence in particular. This is one example showing that the spread of misinformation does not require any sinister force pulling strings.
I have an interest in internet regulation and so read various takes. The spread of mis- and disinformation is a frequent complaint about social media. Often, "The Algorithm" is blamed, rather than human nature. The role of influencers and traditional media tends to be ignored.
But the way news is distributed also follows algorithms, so while Lemmy does not have an internal recommender algorithm like TikTok etc., what ends up on Lemmy is still partly driven by external algorithms
Lemmy has various options to sort, eg by active. That surfaces posts that create engagement. It's stuff that polarizes.
I find interesting stuff either by sorting by new in my subscribed communities. Or by looking for something that causes a stir. The last one creates exactly those problems that are often ascribed to "The Algorithm".
Not all, just a big part.
Fair. It's certainly an issue that someone like Musk could weaponize Twitter.
Yes. But not could, has.