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actionscripted | 5 years ago

If you ever wonder about the extent of Russia's online efforts consider that the comments on this HN thread might be part of things.

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.

discuss

order

dang|5 years ago

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."

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.

sam_lowry_|5 years ago

@dang, I collected 5000 exit points of what seems to be sources of Kremlinbot activity here: https://gist.github.com/mikhailian/5d65694fdaaf0ccbab4c6cf39... watch out these are IPv4 and IPv6 formatted lists of subnets as exported from ipset.

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.

BrianOnHN|5 years ago

> countless hours looking at the data

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.

Const-me|5 years ago

> Sure it's possible.

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.

xorcist|5 years ago

Astroturfing doesn't exist?

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.

ogogmad|5 years ago

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.

sam_lowry_|5 years ago

The events in Belarus recently demonstrated that you are wrong.

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.

cwkoss|5 years ago

The reason why identifying bots on social media is so hard is that many propagandized humans act indistinguishably from bots on social media.

koonsolo|5 years ago

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.

sireat|5 years ago

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.

WhompingWindows|5 years ago

Just wondering, do you think it more likely that:

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?

relaxing|5 years ago

All of the above? All are well documented.

levleontiev|5 years ago

B. Also it's named "Lahta" by the region where their office is .

TheAdamAndChe|5 years ago

Perhaps, but implications of astroturfing don't really contribute anything to the conversation.

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.

osipov|5 years ago

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!

dang|5 years ago

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.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Buwuystai|5 years ago

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.

Zenst|5 years ago

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.

chokolad|5 years ago

Every comment different from mainstream narrative is downvoted into oblivion. Russia's online effort is seriously strong here /s.

Razengan|5 years ago

> you rarely see this level of flagged and down-voted comments in a HN thread.

Did you somehow miss all the Apple vs Epic posts over the last few weeks?

sandworm101|5 years ago

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.

levleontiev|5 years ago

>They aren't idiots Petrov and Boshirov with very similar travel documents and a lot of different evidences aren't idiots?

knolax|5 years ago

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.

yorwba|5 years ago

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.