It’s very deliberate.

One of the key features of an abusive relationship is shutting you down from people who can help you.

If someone’s in the middle of a disaster, and Joe Biden’s federal government comes and helps them out, it’s a catastrophe for the Republicans. It brings the psychotic lies people have been told about the government into contact with the reality of the federal government in the real world, which is one of the few ways they might be able to break out of their elaborate propaganda-bubbles.

If, on the other hand, they’re convinced that FEMA is now coming to kill them, but also their home has been washed away in a mudslide, then they might wind up fleeing the state, living with their family on their brother-in-law’s couches, trying to scrape by, becoming more and more desperate, with no one to give them any substantive assistance of any kind. The desperation increases. The fear of anything governmental or democratic can continue, and increase.

And then, when their brother-in-law offers them a rifle and an invitation to come with a few people and shoot up the election office, or the Democratic organizer’s home, because the government already tried to kill them once when they were at their lowest point, and they escaped only by the skin of their teeth, so it might as well be go time… well, they might accept the offer. Because why not?

By demonizing FEMA, the Republicans are turning what would have been a problem into a recruitment tool.

If they manage to hit 5% of the vote this election, which of course would mean a Trump win, then they will in no way, shape, or form have guaranteed ballot access in the next election. They’ll be lucky if they aren’t in prison or worse.

This person who’s going around calling herself a socialist, and also risking Trump getting elected, is showing an incredible level of thick-headed cluelessness as to what he plans to have the police and military do to anything that looks any type of left-wing, over the course of his second term.

They also won’t hit 5%, but that’s not even the main concern here.

If you didn’t vote in the midterm, you still can claim it. They just don’t give you as much.

Yes, yes. That wasn’t the question, though.

Where did you find this story? Do you usually read Fox News, and this headline jumped out at you and you had to spread the word? Did someone email it to you? Do you have a Google News alert set up, to send you stories involving Kamala Harris, so you can post them if they’re bad, and further your mission of anticolonialism? Did you see it on Facebook when one of your Republican relatives posted it? How did you happen to come across this Fox News story?

We’re doing Fox News, now? Huh.

Anticolonialist, how’d you run across this story? Just reading up on Fox News like all the anticolonialists like to do, and you decided to share this story when you ran across it? Or some other way?

Good point. I edited the post.

Reasonable. I wasn’t trying to jump down your throat about it. I was a little annoyed at the comments which are positing some sort of fantasy scenario where the bot is useful, but where people hate it for irrational reasons. But yours was a reasonable question, definitely, in particular because for at least one account, it looks like what you described is exactly what’s happening.

Big if true.

They have not. I just did some analysis of it, and there is one person whose account has downvoted almost every comment that the bot has left. They have around a thousand other votes, so it’s unlikely to be a single-issue votebot account, but they also have no posts or comments, which is suspect. It seems plausible that there’s something mechanical going on which might be concerning. On the other hand, it’s only one person. There is one other person who has given so many downvotes to the bot that it’s suspicious, also.

Aside from those two accounts, it all looks like real downvotes. There are accounts which have given hundreds of downvotes to the bot, but they’re all recognizable as highly active real accounts, so it makes sense that they would give mass downvotes to the bot.

People just don’t like the bot. Have you considered listening to the pretty extensive explanations they’ve given in this comments section as to why?

I’m saying that the bot is incorrect. Look up any pro-Palestinian or -Arab source on it, and you’ll find a pretty bald-faced statement that it is factually suspect, because its viewpoint is anti-Israel. Look up the New York Times, which regularly reports factually untrue things, including one which caused a major journalistic scandal near the beginning of the war in Gaza, and check its factual rating.

Every report of bias is from somebody’s point of view. That part I have no issue with. Pretending that a source is or isn’t factual depending on whether it matches your particular bias is something different entirely.

Can you give an example of someone who ever posted something disingenuous that MediaBiasFactCheck got in the way of?

It also has links to ground.news baked into it, despite that site being pretty useless from what I can tell. I get strong sponsorship vibes

It all just suddenly clicked into place for me.

I think there’s a strong possibility that you’re right. It would explain all the tortured explanations for why the bot is necessary, coupled with the absolute determination to keep it regardless of how much negative feedback it’s getting. Looking at it as a little ad included in every comments section makes the whole thing make sense in a way that, taken at face value, it doesn’t.

Most people don’t want the bot to be there, because they don’t agree with its opinion about what is “biased.” It claims factually solid sources are non-factual if they don’t agree with the author’s biases, and it overlooks significant editing of the truth in sources that agree with the author’s biases.

In addition, one level up the meta, opposition to the bot has become a fashionable way to rebel against the moderation, which is always a crowd pleaser. The fact that the politics moderators keep condescendingly explaining that they’re just looking out for the best interests of the community, and the bot is obviously a good thing and the majority of the community that doesn’t want it is getting their pretty little heads confused about things, instigates a lot of people to smash the downvote button reflexively whenever they see its posts.

I made !pleasantpolitics@slrpnk.net to test a new moderation approach which is designed to filter out a lot of the crap. I think you should try posting some articles there, and see whether you see the same hyper-critical anti-Biden content. I think I know what you’re talking about, and I think the filtering bot will probably be able to detect and ban almost all of the users you’re talking about.

I expected Biden to be pretty bad, just because he’s a rich white guy who’s been in politics all his life and the Democrats are usually pretty bad. I voted for him originally mainly just because he wouldn’t try to kill all the Mexicans or re-invade Vietnam or put trans people in prison or whatever like Trump would, basically your point of view in this message.

He surprised me. I couldn’t see Hilary Clinton forgiving student loan debt or pausing LNG exports or making these pitifully small sanctions on a pitifully small number of Israelis which is still better than most US presidents’ “here’s some more patriot missiles and rockets God bless your killing” approach to Israel. He’s still pretty far from what I would like to have, but I expected pure bullshit and he’s better than average. You’re not required to agree, but that’s how I see it.

Fun stuff.

Yes, Trump will absolutely threaten trans people’s safety in addition to being far more encouraging than Biden is with massacring Arabs. That’s not “using as a shield,” that’s just what’s up. Of course you already know this.

What if Bernie Sanders might get elected in the primary, but I decide there’s an element of his platform that I don’t like, and I stay home in protest instead of voting, and Biden wins the primary instead? Am I, then, a selfish piece of shit?

I feel like I just asked you this: Are you under the impression that I somehow have the ability to choose who wins the primaries?

I have one vote and you have one vote. My ability to affect the primaries is equal to yours. There are systems of media that conspire to make it tough for a person other than pro-corporate trash to win the primaries, but why are you talking to me like that’s my fault? And why are you saying that if the wrong person wins, then staying home to put in office an even worse person is going to help solve the problem?

I appreciate it. You are welcome to reuse it, if you like it. I’m just pissed off at the absolute self-defeating absurdity of these arguments and how self-righteously these people are screeching them. Welcome to the internet, I guess.

Stop electing pro-corporate trash in the primaries.

Are you under the impression that somehow I have the ability to elect different people in the primaries, and I’m just choosing not to?