[whearyou]

What are the chances that HN is getting astroturfed these days? Are mods strict about it?

I lots of relatively new accounts coming with what seems to me extreme, but altogether pop-culture acceptable opinions

[tomhow]

A large proportion of the software that runs HN exists to detect inorganic activity. It's quite obvious to us when significant numbers of comments are made in support of a particular agenda by new accounts or old accounts without regular, normal participation on HN.

Also, it's against the guidelines to allege or speculate about astroturfing (as is anything that is tangential to the primary topic), but we welcome emails ([e-mail]) from anyone who notices anything that seems suspect, and we're happy to investigate.

[oefrha]

I used to report quite a number of political/ideological-only accounts to mods through email. They're explicitly against the single purpose account rule. They usually got banned or at least warned.

Over the past year or two I reported a number of accounts that are basically pro-Israel-only, they post a ton of comments to any Israel-related thread and either nothing else or very little of anything else. Mods refuse to ban or even warn them, apparently because emotions run high, there are too many of them and there's priority in punishing the most egregious content so relatively mild ones get a pass, and if mods are being accused of being-antisemitic and they ban a bunch of these they would reinforce the image, etc. These are from memory and not exact quotes.

I don't buy it, and I've stopped reporting things to mods. (To be abundantly clear, anti-Israel-only accounts should 100% be banned too, but at least I haven't noticed as many as them. Any other kind of politics-only account should be purged too if the rules are to be believed.)

[hightrix]

100%. Especially on topics involving countries with vast online propaganda operations.

[agentifysh]

Not necessarily I see these green handles that just seem to pop up out of nowhere and they always have characteristically triggering/cynical tone to them, which usually triggers some type of reaction

Could be that these are being farmed but at a state level it might be easier to outright purchase aged accounts

[nonethewiser]

HN doesnt have any defense against it, and the userbase is small enough that it would be highly effective.

[sosomoxie]

[flagged]

[tomhow]

This is in breach of the HN 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 [e-mail] and we'll look at the data.

People on both sides of any topic are welcome to participate here and express their points of view, as long as they respect the guidelines. If you see users who "police it against honest reporting about their crimes", you should email us to point it out, as the guidelines ask.

Making sweeping claims like this without including any links so we can know what you're talking about serves only to poison HN.

[shykes]

> Unfortunately they visit this site regularly and police it against honest reporting about their crimes.

I think that's called "disagreeing".

[erxam]

Do keep in mind that basically every single Israeli goes through military training, which includes training in psychological counter-warfare (hasbara). Even the 'cool' Israelis you know in real life are spies at the beckon-and-call of Israel 24/7.

What I'm trying to say is that this is an intentional part of their strategy. They know what they're doing.

They probably have a small detachment assigned to every popular-ish website. For the long tail, they have bot farms.

[fortzi]

Luckily you don’t get to regulate who can participate in public discourse

[whearyou]

Posted by a 48 day account that mostly talks about Israel.

This has felt like a super postmodern interaction

[UltraSane]

What does Zionist actually mean when Israel as a Jewish State has existed for 77 years and seems likely to exist for at least as long. I'm genuinely asking here. People use the word all the time and I just don't understand what they are trying to say.

[jmward01]

Your account, while 10 years old, only has comments from the past year. It is becoming very hard to tell what accounts are real and which are fake. Social proof of account activity pre-llm (usable) could be a very important thing in the future.

[rudhdb773b]

> Social proof of account activity pre-llm (usable) could be a very important thing in the future.

It's already common practice to buy aged accounts with good reputations, so even that doesn't mean much.

[kilroy123]

I've seen lots of suspiciously new accounts hoping into these conversations. Saying questionable things.

[Bender]

What are the chances that HN is getting astroturfed these days?

Happens all day every day. There are many AI agents starting discussions and replying to comments. This is how The Crappening started on 4chan. Some of them are just future grifters. Some are training AI (I have replied to a few for fun). Some are propaganda bots. Those running the bots will reply with something equiv to Errrm Proof?? when called out. Without root I can not empirically prove it and the botters know that.

I predict about 2 years before the site will have more AI noise than real people. I have no idea what can be done about it aside from tracking the bots and reporting them via email to Daniel and I don't know what he could or would do. HN has always been very hands off which is mostly good but not for this scenario. If nothing is done it will just be bots grifting and AstroTurfing one another to the benefit of Google SEO and most of the humans would eventually go elsewhere with exception of some die-hards that refuse to recognize the situation.

[nananana9]

Anonymous internet forums will very likely die out if inference gets another order of magnitude cheaper.

The only solutions are (1) private forums, (2) strict verification or maybe (3) some sort of "web of trust" thing, if someone manages to make it user friendly and not suck.

[worldsavior]

Maybe this comment is also AI.

[danielparsons]

we need to start a paywalled private HN forum

[dyauspitr]

With things like Openclaw it’s kind of trivial to game forums now. You just have to tell an agent to “post arguments for/against this perspective on this forum.” Give it a few talking points to include if you want to get specific and let it run. Specify the tone so it sounds realistic. It’s literally going to do everything else essentially forever or until you run out of tokens. Comments in a forum are dirt cheap so it’s also going to be very cheap.

[nonethewiser]

Youd have to do a lot of work to make sure it's only a few short sentences, non-specific, and ultra-quippy though.

I mean I'm sure it can be done but if you ask an LLM to produce comment reply without more instruction it's going to write something a lot more thoughtful, respectful, and substantive than a forum user would.

[yadaeno]

Take a look at the Iran subreddit.

[jjtheblunt]

language question: what does astroturfed mean here? (i know that astroturf is artificial grass.)

[locusofself]

It's when people (or bots) acting in bad faith make a lot of noise to make it seem like there is a strong support for some (usually bad) position. It' a play on the term "grassroots". Fake grassroots=astroturfing

[kgwxd]

Which ones are the pop-culture acceptable opinions?

[fsflover]

You should point out the exact posts.

[ActorNightly]

I mean does it matter?

At this point, lines have been drawn. In conservative land, everything conservative is good, everything liberal is bad. So the only sane position to take is the complete opposite.

For example, if you see someone self proclaimed liberal being critical of liberals, that person is probably a conservative or its a conservative bot.

[fortzi]

Seems like you’re describing political polarization. Just on one side though.. Why?

[spaghetdefects]

That's not totally true when it comes to Zionism though. Much of the left and the right are united against Zionism. It's the older center liberals and right that are united in being pro-Zionism.

[tovej]

Did you mean to say Israeli? Cause that's what it seems like to me. The level of misinformation is staggering.

[nailer]

[flagged]

[unknown]

[jjtheblunt]

why would he be doing that?