[eveningcoffee]

If you are one then you know what it means, but for the sake of other argument and for the others to understand, being a "Russian agent" means foremost being a member of criminal enterprise and by this I mean real a state level criminal enterprise because Russia is built up as criminal organization and not as normal democratic governance.

In the context of HN, it means mainly comments and submissions with the aim to influence overall attitude in this community toward direction favorable to Russia, or more precisely, favorable to its current criminal leadership.

It is important to notice such possible actors as such actors most likely do not act in good faith. They do not provide correct information, instead of actual discussion, they attempt to create more confusion in readers. It is always not necessary (or even possible) to make somebody to believe completely fabricated reflection of reality. It may be simply sufficient to create enough confusion such that the reader could not differentiate anymore between the real and unreal or important and unimportant.

It is important to notice such possible actors not only here but all around, because like it was first explained, they are part of criminal enterprise, their goal is not to participate is mutually beneficial cooperation but to undermine the very core of the value system our societies stand on, replacing transparency with corruption and consensus with division.

In practice it means that possible "Russian agent" in HN community works for Russian propaganda "department", or "works", as being itself an useful idiot, being fooled by it to the level being indistinguishable from the actual "agent".

One of such clear examples is the claim that Patrick Lancaster is an independent and a journalist while neither of these claims is true. In reality Patrick Lancaster is a tool of Russian propaganda who produces scripted falsifications.

An open democratic society is in very unfavorable position against such manipulations while the attacker has strong media and social media control that is provably capable to create completely fabricated representations of very wide scale reality within the society it holds control over.

Therefore the responsibility is on the shoulders of the individuals of the open democratic society to first acknowledge existence of such agents and second notice their presence.

In practice it means that when such individuals are observed, caution should be applied, meaning that the factual claims should be not trusted but verified, their deceptive manipulative techniques should be observed and ignored.

I hope this comment provided enough content about "Russian agents" and also some tools to handle them.

PS. dang I think it is also something for your consideration.