All: could you please keep political talking points and the shallow-angry comment style out of threads like this? I know it's hard, but it's possible if you try.
Low-information internet attack mode is the biggest threat to Hacker News these days, and when you add that acid to one thread it seeps into others.
I've been a moderator over at Reddit for over a decade.
Personally I found Steve Huffman's claims to be disingenuous, deceptive, and self serving. I have no idea if there will ever be any consequences for that but I feel like Reddit would be a better place if there were.
During the elections r/politics and reddit generally was intensely pro Hillary. The margins who supported Trump did so regardless of some Russian originated postings of comments (like this one). Actually did you know I am an agent of the government of Malaysia. You've all been trolled and influenced in ways you don't even realize yet.
It is well known that "Correct The Record" has been influencing the discussions and votes. In the beginning it was easy to identify them, because they just copy-pasted political statements.
They were very active during the primary elections. In some subreddits we had discussions whether there were any people at all on reddit that were in support of H. That was how popular Bernie was, and partially still is on reddit.
There also military level manipulations going on directly from military bases, and also manipulations by some Israeli agencies. Also the UK has active agencies, but they seem more subtle.
And then we have manipulations by companies that want to support their product (or favourite politician). There are even click-farms that you can pay to work for you, and companies specialized in manipulating social media (as Correct the Record).
And we have groups that work together to get upvotes and downvote unwanted posts. We usually call this "brigading", and while it is forbidden, this is also very common on reddit.
In 24 hours you can see the upvotes switch between soccer and football. Each nation has its own favourites and opinions. And I think that this is a good thing. We as different nations learn to communicate with each other.
Compared to all the manipulating going on, the manipulations of "Russian bots" is not much. And as far I have seen the influence, it is really overhyped. Frankly, if you really want to destabilize the US, you can do that by letting the internal political corruption bring it to the ground.
By communicating on the other hand, besides all bots and trolls, we can learn to see problems and solutions of our and other nations. See many different sides of problems and politics. This can be beneficial to all nations.
(Even Malaysia ;-)
> In comments, Huffman also noted that these troubling accounts were most active in /r/funny, /r/uncen, /r/Bad_Cop_No_Donut, /r/gifs, /r/PoliticalHumor, and /r/The_Donald, a notorious pro-Donald Trump subreddit.
Russian trolls are active in many other subreddits such as /r/politics. But Huffman only lists the rightwing subreddits he personally disagrees with. He's using Russian propaganda to create his own propaganda.
Reddit needs a CEO who doesn't engage in amateur stuff like this.
Why does nobody talk about the fact that Clinton and Democrats spent 10s of millions astroturfing various online communities? You could see r/politics go from fairly balanced to rabid pro-clinton when CTR got fresh funding infusions. You can check Alexa rankings and see the massive traffic surges at the same time. You could see sentiment shift on weekends when the shills were off.
Hell, the CIA had an entire "Meme warfare division" according the vault7 leaks.
> Why does nobody talk about the fact that Clinton and Democrats spent 10s of millions astroturfing various online communities?
Because that's a conspiracy theory, based on one pet interpretation of one press release and ignoring all the times Correct the Record denied it (such as the instance in this article you posted: "Barrier Breakers accounts are always identified as Correct the Record").
The article you posted describes what they actually did ("Much of the effort appears to be fairly anodyne so far. An official-looking Twitter account, Facebook page, and Instagram and Pinterest accounts have been set up. The social media accounts seem to consist mainly of graphics and videos that deliver inspirational pro-Clinton messages, content that appears to have been designed in the hopes that it might go viral.")
I have little doubt that the CTR conspiracy theory was largely spread by the very real Russian astroturfers. It was super effective at effortlessly shutting down Clinton supporters online.
[+] [-] dang|8 years ago|reply
Low-information internet attack mode is the biggest threat to Hacker News these days, and when you add that acid to one thread it seeps into others.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] fastball|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fastball|8 years ago|reply
Because, for example, this account[1] never seemed to post anything political at all, but is included in the list.
1: https://www.reddit.com/user/reggaebull
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] aristocles|8 years ago|reply
Russians may have tried to stoke the flames of the divide in America, but its real, and its here.
[+] [-] slabity|8 years ago|reply
What is? This article? The source? Or the arguments in general?
Claims like this require hard evidence provided in the same context, or they will be dismissed outright.
[+] [-] Quequau|8 years ago|reply
Personally I found Steve Huffman's claims to be disingenuous, deceptive, and self serving. I have no idea if there will ever be any consequences for that but I feel like Reddit would be a better place if there were.
[+] [-] yanslookup|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] criddell|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fifnir|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] throwawaymanbot|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] tomp|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] tehwebguy|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scarmig|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 3wolf|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Arubis|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] throwawaymanbot|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] darepublic|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zyxzevn|8 years ago|reply
It is well known that "Correct The Record" has been influencing the discussions and votes. In the beginning it was easy to identify them, because they just copy-pasted political statements. They were very active during the primary elections. In some subreddits we had discussions whether there were any people at all on reddit that were in support of H. That was how popular Bernie was, and partially still is on reddit.
There also military level manipulations going on directly from military bases, and also manipulations by some Israeli agencies. Also the UK has active agencies, but they seem more subtle.
And then we have manipulations by companies that want to support their product (or favourite politician). There are even click-farms that you can pay to work for you, and companies specialized in manipulating social media (as Correct the Record).
And we have groups that work together to get upvotes and downvote unwanted posts. We usually call this "brigading", and while it is forbidden, this is also very common on reddit.
In 24 hours you can see the upvotes switch between soccer and football. Each nation has its own favourites and opinions. And I think that this is a good thing. We as different nations learn to communicate with each other.
Compared to all the manipulating going on, the manipulations of "Russian bots" is not much. And as far I have seen the influence, it is really overhyped. Frankly, if you really want to destabilize the US, you can do that by letting the internal political corruption bring it to the ground.
By communicating on the other hand, besides all bots and trolls, we can learn to see problems and solutions of our and other nations. See many different sides of problems and politics. This can be beneficial to all nations. (Even Malaysia ;-)
[+] [-] justherefortart|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] txsh|8 years ago|reply
Russian trolls are active in many other subreddits such as /r/politics. But Huffman only lists the rightwing subreddits he personally disagrees with. He's using Russian propaganda to create his own propaganda.
Reddit needs a CEO who doesn't engage in amateur stuff like this.
[+] [-] SippinLean|8 years ago|reply
8/10 of the top 10 subreddits he mentioned were left-wing or neutral:
* funny
* uncen
* Bad_Cop_No_Donut
* gifs
* PoliticalHumor
* The_Donald
* news
* aww
* POLITIC
* racism
[+] [-] galieos_ghost|8 years ago|reply
Hell, the CIA had an entire "Meme warfare division" according the vault7 leaks.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/05/correct...
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/xyvwdk/meme-warfa...
[+] [-] SippinLean|8 years ago|reply
Maybe no one's discussing it in this thread because this article is about something specific.
[+] [-] jjjsz|8 years ago|reply
Because that's a conspiracy theory, based on one pet interpretation of one press release and ignoring all the times Correct the Record denied it (such as the instance in this article you posted: "Barrier Breakers accounts are always identified as Correct the Record").
The article you posted describes what they actually did ("Much of the effort appears to be fairly anodyne so far. An official-looking Twitter account, Facebook page, and Instagram and Pinterest accounts have been set up. The social media accounts seem to consist mainly of graphics and videos that deliver inspirational pro-Clinton messages, content that appears to have been designed in the hopes that it might go viral.")
I have little doubt that the CTR conspiracy theory was largely spread by the very real Russian astroturfers. It was super effective at effortlessly shutting down Clinton supporters online.
[+] [-] frockington|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Arubis|8 years ago|reply
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