I’ve noticed an uptick in the number of pro-AI posts on this platform.
Various posts with titles similar to “When will people stop being afraid of AI” or “Can we please acknowledge AI was very needed for X”
Can’t tell if its the propaganda machine invading, or annoying teenage tech-bros who are detached from reality.
It’s probably a mix of both, plus the normal cycle of online discourse. As AI tools become more common, you naturally get more people defending them, evangelizing them, or reacting against criticism. Some are genuinely enthusiastic users. Some are industry-adjacent people pushing narratives. Some are just contrarians who enjoy provoking anti-AI spaces.
On federated platforms like Lemmy, a small number of highly active users can also create the impression of a broader cultural shift. Repetitive framing like “people are irrationally afraid of AI” often comes from the same internet optimism culture that treated crypto, NFTs, and “disruption” as inevitable progress.
That said, there is also a real backlash to constant doomposting. Some users are tired of seeing every AI discussion framed exclusively around collapse, theft, or dehumanization, so they overcorrect in the other direction.
Your instincts are not unreasonable though. Coordinated narrative shaping absolutely exists online, especially around technologies tied to massive corporate investment.
And bear in mind that this goes in both directions, it’s possible for highly active anti-AI users to flood the discourse.
Community opinion is often a bistable state. If 70% of the userbase has opinion A and is constantly downvoting and browbeating anyone who says anything positive about opinion B, one would naturally expect the userbase to soon be 80% opinion A. Then 90%. And so forth. The few holdouts who continue to say positive things about opinion B get labelled as “bots” and “trolls” and are dismissed.
Thank you. Not enough people recognize this.
Additionally, groups with an agenda can reinforce this trend.