This comment breaks the site guidelines: "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."
Sinister insinuation about astroturfing is the internet's favorite pastime. The overwhelming majority of this, as far as we can tell from countless hours looking at the data, is pure imagination.
Is it possible that the manipulation is so sinister and so clever that it leaves no traces we can see in the data, and yet thousands of internet commenters see what we don't? Sure it's possible. But following that path means abandoning evidence. That way leads to the wilderness of mirrors. The only sane way to look at this is to require some evidence, some objective peg of some kind (we'll take anything!) to hang your suspicions on. The presence of opposing viewpoints, downvotes, and flags on divisive issues is no evidence at all. It just means that the community is divided.
As far as I can tell, the psychological phenomenon driving this phenomenon is that people are deeply reluctant to take in how wide the range of legitimately opposing views is. We're probably hard-wired to see the world as much smaller than it is. Bring us all, with that hard-wiring, into a community of millions of people on the internet, and the inevitable result is that people see spies, shills, astroturfers, and foreign agents everywhere. No—what you're seeing is that there are a lot of humans with very different backgrounds from yours. And on any issue with an international dimension, multiply that phenomenon by a hundred.
Will you provide that data for independent review?
Edit: it's not that you shouldn't be trusted. The issue is the old “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” For example, what if a large segment of the user base, that regularly contributed extraordinarily positive engagements, existed solely for the opportunities to frame certain conversations, even in the slightest, or even in preparation for something in the distant future.
I don’t think it’s possible. We have huge amount of evidences. This article alone has 150 references: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency They include analysis of internet activity of state-sponsored trolls, insider leaks, and even documents from US courts.
Are all companies selling such services charlatans?
Not sure I buy it. It's well established that you can buy followers, reviews, positive comments and even stories on all large public platforms, and they are quite public about it.
I think many Russian people, especially those who watch or read mainly Russian news, hold such views with complete sincerity. The internal propaganda is quite effective.
I definitely believe you. A Russian colleague, who is living in EU for several years, found it justified that Russia invaded Poland back in 1940. We were all baffled.
Anecdotally, my inlaws who are NOT Russian also hold pro-Putin and pro-Lukashenko views. I avoid politics with them.
Why? Because they mostly watch Russian TV (those Russian WW2 serials are addicting). The propaganda in the Russian TV talk shows and news is very well done.
It is just like any other echo chamber. Just like watching Fox News,listening to Limbaugh in US, etc.
There are echo chambers for all political spectrums and all countries.
I'm training a machine learning model that honeypots commenters like you with provocative news articles. Next, the comments section is cleaned up to eliminate commenter spam. It works amazingly well!
Good grief. You posted this 7 times. That's obviously abusive and obviously a bannable offense. I'm not going to ban you because I understand how crazy-making it is to represent a minority/contrarian view and feel surrounded. But please don't do it again. Also, you were posting unsubstantive and flamebait comments more than once before that. Can you please not? We're trying for something better than that here. The idea here is: if you have a substantive point to make, make it thoughtfully; if you don't, please don't comment until you do.
So let's drink to this comrades. I know I do; with all the trucking Russians everywhere. Novojstai! Let's drink buddies. Let's run the planets to the grounds. Davoi!. Let's drink vodka(s). Trucking russians.....
EDIT: I literally drink heavily due to the fucking russians. Russia and china should be nuked to the ground. Fucking basic tactics. Fuck these pieces of shits.
oh lol Dang is a russian operative. What could be better. My fucking post is flagged already. What could be worse. Fuck this network; ruled by russia and china, it seems. ADIOS. Good win fuckstar communist cockholes.
Until we have evidence that would carry in a court of law and assign blame at a person/country - divides in opinion will prevail and assigning those divides into categories serves no constructive purpose beyond distract from debate upon the facts.
Russian fanboys, sure. Actual Russian security forces, doubtful. They aren't idiots. They aren't going to pick a fight on HN were things are so easily moderated/downvoted/flagged. The real agents work deep inside their facebook/twitter/whatsapp nests. What we have here are pro-russia but nevertheless amature activists.
Again with the blanket accusations of astroturfing without any proof. Crying shill whenever you encounter an opposing opinion is not something a rational and free-thinking person does. What you're basically doing is refusing to engage intellectually on certain viewpoints which just so happen to go against the interests of your home country's government. From the perspective of an outsider, it looks a lot like the result of brainwashing.
I agree with you in principle, but the way you expressed it reads too much like a personal attack for my taste. I don't think it's a good way to make the discussion more rational after the initial accusation of astroturfing.
“ These agents were designed to achieve four objectives:[21][22]
to be undetectable using standard 1970s and 1980s NATO chemical detection equipment;
to defeat NATO chemical protective gear;
to be safer to handle; and
to circumvent the Chemical Weapons Convention list of controlled precursors, classes of chemical and physical form.[23]”
This is bad. But it was targeted. I worry about how easy it would be for terrorists to do something very bad with a large quantity of this stuff seeing it's so easy to move about.
I'm just eager for some international stability as the next person and I don't want the Cold War back (and I'd hope for a more Europe'zed world to be honest) but it's incredible how much reach of Russia and China tentacles the US allows these days. As a third-world citizen I'm very much surprised the US is basically on its knees hoping the two nations don't punch too hard.
I grew up under this rhetoric for those years you mention and I still think having a kind of Team America: World Police in real life is much worse and I don't want that back. But these are not mutually exclusive issues because super powers are supposed to balance each other out like the system of balances and checks with independent powers of a democracy. I like to think the world is on average a big democracy and no single super power should be its cop but China and Russia pretty much represent a joint state of affairs that is detrimental to every freaking human being. To see the US on its kees like I said is pretty depressing to the balances and checks expectations we all used to have.
In my experience, the US is facing an existential crisis stemming from a loud segment of the population, emboldened by Trump, that believes and promotes propaganda in a way that I thought was reserved for third world dictatorships.
I'm terrified of the day after the elections. If the left wins then, we risk retaliation from the gun-and-violence-glorifying right. If the right wins, then we still face violence from the same group at the inevitable mass protests.
Edit: the fact that the president can promote essentially unheard of networks, with an already questionable record, as "real news" (OANN, and Breitbart before that) demonstrates the ease of which the propagandists are operating. Once again, something that I would have considered unheard of, even in a third world country.
The people we put in place to protect us think they're gonna make it out just fine either way. It doesn't matter who wins, because the real battle the next few years will be about defining the new rules, not playing by the old ones.
The right wing is an extreme minority that has obtained influence mostly by hacking the system. Anyone who stands up to them and patches the exploits will have a post-facto mandate, but that only happens if they have the guts to do it ("it" being things like passing airtight restrictions on legislative procedure; packing the bench; and dismantling the means by which representation is warped, like the electoral college or the filibuster).
This is why as a liberal I have little faith in Biden, Harris, Pelosi, or Schumer.
>> If it was in his tea he never would have made it on the plane.
Everything is a function of dosage. We don't know how much was in his tea, nor how much of the tea he actually drank. "In the tea" is also functionally equivalent to it being on
his teacup, although that would be a more dangerous/aggressive attack. But they did use a doorknob as a vector in the UK attack.
Guy from Russia here. Not an expert, but I feel the pain when my country looks so negative in the news.
First, I wish Alexey fast recovery.
Second, Alexey wasn't a popular politic figure in past time, I believe that his peak of popularity was in 2013-2015.
Third, I think no one here is actually benefiting from this tragic event... the whole story just seems quite strange. Frankly, there a lot of more simple approaches that can kill a man - no need to use sophisticated things like chemical weapons (which actually doesn't work as intended).
I hope that this story will be more clear pretty soon.
>Alexey wasn't a popular politic figure in past time, I believe that his peak of popularity was in 2013-2015.
He was banned from being a politician. Banned from media with any kind of reach, banned from elections. And we don't know how popular or not he actually is -- in a country like Russia accuracy of polling, any kind of statistics that is threatening to the dictator is one of the first victims.
>Third, I think no one here is actually benefiting from this tragic event...
A ridiculous statement. It's a signal to those who oppose Putin. In the light of what is happening in Belarus the signal is pretty clear -- Putin won't tolerate any real opposition, and he will not allow the situation to deteriorate to the level where he's actually threatened. "If you are willing to oppose Putin we will poison you with invisible deadly substances, and state doctors whose careers completely depend on their superiors won't treat you" is what it conveys. The goal is to have a chilling effect on the opposition's activities.
>simple approaches
Simple approaches are not as good for conveying a message. Using Chechens from Kadyrov's personal guard(in case of Nemtsov), expensive and hard to obtain isotope(in case of Litvinenko), or chemical warfare agents (in cases of Kara-Murza, Verzilov, Navalny, Skripal) indicates that's it's a state poisoning/killing, something only the state can do. It asks those who are not yet poisoned a question "Are you willing to fight the state/regime who's willing to kill you, make you disabled?
It's rather surprising that the regime doesn't yet target family members. Although I'm not completely up to date on the subject. Maybe it already does.
> no one here is actually benefiting from this tragic event
The opponents of Nord Stream 2 are clearly benefiting from it.
People should ask themselves why he was flown to Germany of all places. People should generally ask more questions and try to see behind all the quick finger-pointing.
There will never be a power vacuum in world politics. If it’s not going to be US, it’s going to be China and/or Russia. I have been thinking quite a lot how will that world look. Will it be better or worse?
> Russia’s economy is smaller than Canada’s and per capita it’s citizens are poorer than Poles.
> Russia is not a world power and hasn’t been for a while.
IIRC, they know that. That's why one of their main foreign policy objectives is to sow division and discord. Russia is weak compared to NATO as a whole, but it's strong compared to most individual NATO countries.
They still have nuclear weapons. And they have enough propaganda / hybrid war capability to get Trump elected. Maybe not a world superpower but dangerous nonetheless.
I'm more interested in why Russia still tries to continue Cold War and fight the West. Contrary to what many Russians believe (or at least what they write online), West is not out to get them - other than to sell them shitty products made in China with crazy markup and make them watch internet ads.
Meanwhile China is slowly taking over Siberia with all the mineral and material goodies and they aren't doing anything about that.
Almost like it's more about pretending than about actual power.
A power vacuum can be filled with plenty of players, better or worse will probably be subjective and localized.
I wouldn’t want to be a Baltic or small Arab nation in general during the transition, but, for example, France & Turkey are already starting to enjoy the new room for activities.
Its actually not all that uncommon on controversial threads. I personally don't beleive its bots as much as people who create new accounts so they can break the "flamewar rule"
Not second, but very likely few dozenth or more. There were at least a dozen of high profile people in Russia who died under equally bizarre circumstances, with Kivilidi being the best known.
Another similar case in Bulgaria from 2015 when Russian agents are blamed for the poisoning. It was reported that the Berlin hospital inquired details about this case last week.
I think it is also used in industrial espionage cases, we just don’t hear that much about it. The SO of a former acquaintance of mine got poisoned really bad while working for an oil company in one of the Gulf states (I think Qatar). He got quickly transferred for treatment in the US, even though he’s from Eastern Europe.
It's even worse. Putin's failed attack on Skripal ultimately resulted in the murder of Dawn Sturgess[0] four months later. This was a case of using illegal chemical weapons on foreign soil, which puts Russia squarely in the same category of rogue nations as North Korea.
Readit News
Not saying anything in here is good/bad/other but you rarely see this level of flagged and down-voted comments in a HN thread.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Sinister insinuation about astroturfing is the internet's favorite pastime. The overwhelming majority of this, as far as we can tell from countless hours looking at the data, is pure imagination.
Is it possible that the manipulation is so sinister and so clever that it leaves no traces we can see in the data, and yet thousands of internet commenters see what we don't? Sure it's possible. But following that path means abandoning evidence. That way leads to the wilderness of mirrors. The only sane way to look at this is to require some evidence, some objective peg of some kind (we'll take anything!) to hang your suspicions on. The presence of opposing viewpoints, downvotes, and flags on divisive issues is no evidence at all. It just means that the community is divided.
As far as I can tell, the psychological phenomenon driving this phenomenon is that people are deeply reluctant to take in how wide the range of legitimately opposing views is. We're probably hard-wired to see the world as much smaller than it is. Bring us all, with that hard-wiring, into a community of millions of people on the internet, and the inevitable result is that people see spies, shills, astroturfers, and foreign agents everywhere. No—what you're seeing is that there are a lot of humans with very different backgrounds from yours. And on any issue with an international dimension, multiply that phenomenon by a hundred.
I've written about this a zillion times: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme.... See also https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... and https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... for how often I repeat myself.
There are some specifics to my use case, take this with a grain of sault. Hope this helps sorting genuine Putin-lovers from Kremlin bots.
Will you provide that data for independent review?
Edit: it's not that you shouldn't be trusted. The issue is the old “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” For example, what if a large segment of the user base, that regularly contributed extraordinarily positive engagements, existed solely for the opportunities to frame certain conversations, even in the slightest, or even in preparation for something in the distant future.
I don’t think it’s possible. We have huge amount of evidences. This article alone has 150 references: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency They include analysis of internet activity of state-sponsored trolls, insider leaks, and even documents from US courts.
Dead Comment
Are all companies selling such services charlatans?
Not sure I buy it. It's well established that you can buy followers, reviews, positive comments and even stories on all large public platforms, and they are quite public about it.
I ran a small (1 mln pageviews/month) online Russian-speaking community since 2003 and since 2014, my main preoccupation are Kremlin bots.
The population in Russia is mostly anti-Putin, they just do not speak up, because the state made sure they feel isolated.
Why? Because they mostly watch Russian TV (those Russian WW2 serials are addicting). The propaganda in the Russian TV talk shows and news is very well done.
It is just like any other echo chamber. Just like watching Fox News,listening to Limbaugh in US, etc.
There are echo chambers for all political spectrums and all countries.
Dead Comment
A) Russian-sympathetic people post their own sincere views
B) Russians for hire in Russia are brought in on all forums/social media
C) Russians use bots or non-Russian farms for the B)'s purpose?
If you are worried about astroturfing, you might email hn@ycombinator.com. They're pretty good overall at taking care of this kind of stuff.
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https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
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EDIT: I literally drink heavily due to the fucking russians. Russia and china should be nuked to the ground. Fucking basic tactics. Fuck these pieces of shits.
oh lol Dang is a russian operative. What could be better. My fucking post is flagged already. What could be worse. Fuck this network; ruled by russia and china, it seems. ADIOS. Good win fuckstar communist cockholes.
Deleted Comment
Did you somehow miss all the Apple vs Epic posts over the last few weeks?
They're not the most competent, either [1]. It's been two decades since Putin first came to power. That sort of cronyism corrodes any bureaucracy.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Lugovoy
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“ These agents were designed to achieve four objectives:[21][22]
to be undetectable using standard 1970s and 1980s NATO chemical detection equipment; to defeat NATO chemical protective gear; to be safer to handle; and to circumvent the Chemical Weapons Convention list of controlled precursors, classes of chemical and physical form.[23]”
It's a way for Putin to publicly murder someone without having to say he did it.
The whole point is that this is hard to replicate.
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In my experience, the US is facing an existential crisis stemming from a loud segment of the population, emboldened by Trump, that believes and promotes propaganda in a way that I thought was reserved for third world dictatorships.
I'm terrified of the day after the elections. If the left wins then, we risk retaliation from the gun-and-violence-glorifying right. If the right wins, then we still face violence from the same group at the inevitable mass protests.
Edit: the fact that the president can promote essentially unheard of networks, with an already questionable record, as "real news" (OANN, and Breitbart before that) demonstrates the ease of which the propagandists are operating. Once again, something that I would have considered unheard of, even in a third world country.
The right wing is an extreme minority that has obtained influence mostly by hacking the system. Anyone who stands up to them and patches the exploits will have a post-facto mandate, but that only happens if they have the guts to do it ("it" being things like passing airtight restrictions on legislative procedure; packing the bench; and dismantling the means by which representation is warped, like the electoral college or the filibuster).
This is why as a liberal I have little faith in Biden, Harris, Pelosi, or Schumer.
Everything is a function of dosage. We don't know how much was in his tea, nor how much of the tea he actually drank. "In the tea" is also functionally equivalent to it being on his teacup, although that would be a more dangerous/aggressive attack. But they did use a doorknob as a vector in the UK attack.
Dead Comment
First, I wish Alexey fast recovery.
Second, Alexey wasn't a popular politic figure in past time, I believe that his peak of popularity was in 2013-2015.
Third, I think no one here is actually benefiting from this tragic event... the whole story just seems quite strange. Frankly, there a lot of more simple approaches that can kill a man - no need to use sophisticated things like chemical weapons (which actually doesn't work as intended).
I hope that this story will be more clear pretty soon.
I'm from Russia, and I feel pain when people mix my country and my my country corrupt and criminal government.
+1000 - it often feels that people geniunely don't see any difference.
Here are some videos of the many videos from his anti-corruption campaign that made him popular and even a hero in the eyes of many Russians:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaika_(film)
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Is_Not_Dimon_to_You
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQZr2NgKPiU
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjY3IMXMmVE
For more, see
- https://fbk.info/english/english/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Corruption_Foundation
He was banned from being a politician. Banned from media with any kind of reach, banned from elections. And we don't know how popular or not he actually is -- in a country like Russia accuracy of polling, any kind of statistics that is threatening to the dictator is one of the first victims.
>Third, I think no one here is actually benefiting from this tragic event...
A ridiculous statement. It's a signal to those who oppose Putin. In the light of what is happening in Belarus the signal is pretty clear -- Putin won't tolerate any real opposition, and he will not allow the situation to deteriorate to the level where he's actually threatened. "If you are willing to oppose Putin we will poison you with invisible deadly substances, and state doctors whose careers completely depend on their superiors won't treat you" is what it conveys. The goal is to have a chilling effect on the opposition's activities.
>simple approaches
Simple approaches are not as good for conveying a message. Using Chechens from Kadyrov's personal guard(in case of Nemtsov), expensive and hard to obtain isotope(in case of Litvinenko), or chemical warfare agents (in cases of Kara-Murza, Verzilov, Navalny, Skripal) indicates that's it's a state poisoning/killing, something only the state can do. It asks those who are not yet poisoned a question "Are you willing to fight the state/regime who's willing to kill you, make you disabled?
It's rather surprising that the regime doesn't yet target family members. Although I'm not completely up to date on the subject. Maybe it already does.
The opponents of Nord Stream 2 are clearly benefiting from it.
People should ask themselves why he was flown to Germany of all places. People should generally ask more questions and try to see behind all the quick finger-pointing.
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Russia is not a world power and hasn’t been for a while.
> Russia is not a world power and hasn’t been for a while.
IIRC, they know that. That's why one of their main foreign policy objectives is to sow division and discord. Russia is weak compared to NATO as a whole, but it's strong compared to most individual NATO countries.
I'm more interested in why Russia still tries to continue Cold War and fight the West. Contrary to what many Russians believe (or at least what they write online), West is not out to get them - other than to sell them shitty products made in China with crazy markup and make them watch internet ads.
Meanwhile China is slowly taking over Siberia with all the mineral and material goodies and they aren't doing anything about that.
Almost like it's more about pretending than about actual power.
I wouldn’t want to be a Baltic or small Arab nation in general during the transition, but, for example, France & Turkey are already starting to enjoy the new room for activities.
Dead Comment
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Skripal
It's pretty much the ultimate flex, no? "We can kill anyone we want in any country, and you can't do shit about it."
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/18/i-almost-died-...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_Amesbury_poisonings
Yes, awesome "flex" when they supposedly failed both times, with one of the deadliest substances known.
It just shows how gullible people who believe these stories are. They can't draw obvious conclusions and totally believe contradicting claims.
The only thing stopping him is the Chinese would probably see that as open season in the US and retaliate.
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