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Comment by acqq | Hacker News Reader

"In September 2014 I started a crowdsourced series of stories about pro-Russia trolls"

I'm not inclined to google translate a lot of pages in Finnish, but can't it be that "crowdsourced" here means "a series of articles written by the unverified authors?" Which would be quite funny given their topic.

I don't know and I'd like to hear from somebody who does, somebody who understands Finnish? The same person could try to estimate if Jessikka Aro's articles were strongly biased?

Note: I definitely don't doubt that a lot of nasty internet communication was directed to her. The state of the internet is, you can be the saintest of the saints, once you're public enough, there will be (at least some) hate. I'm just trying to figure out how disproportional the reactions were, it's hard for me to get the idea reading only on this blog post.

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Here "crowdsourced" means that Jessikka Aro solicited for experiences from members of the public who have been targeted by trolls. As far as I can tell, any resulting articles have been written by journalists and have gone through the usual journalistic process.

I haven't actually read many of her articles, but my assessment is that she is not strongly biased. It is widely accepted as fact that pro-russian trolling is rampant also on the Finnish web.

> As far as I can tell, any resulting articles have been written by journalists

So she didn't sign these articles? Why would then anybody direct some campaign at her?

Something is missing in this story.

She wrote them. Take a look at one of her articles: http://kioski.yle.fi/omat/at-the-origins-of-russian-propagan...

Thanks. But what's "crowdsourced" with it? That article looks like a real investigation. Maybe the term was actually a loss in translation? That's why I hoped to get all the info from somebody who understands Finnish (and maybe even followed these news).

Edit: kaitai linked to an article that has a lot of opinions of other people. It is a better example of what she would maybe call the "crowdsourced" article (it has a bunch of quotes presented in a way to appear to support the message she wants to convey).

Basically the crowdsourcing here means that YLE published a article saying (shortened): "Tell us what kind of web trolling you have been targeted by and in what situations. We'll compile an article of peoples experiences"

The term "crowdsourcing" isn't really used in Finnish. Apparently there exists a translation for it ("joukouttaminen"), but I haven't ever heard anyone use it (not that I've looked too hard).

> The term "crowdsourcing" isn't really used in Finnish.

Thanks. Now it's clear. It was really "lost in translation" (in the "appearing" sense).

I don't speak finnish, but your interpretation doesn't make sense. "Crowdsourced" means "paid by multiple (ordinary) people". One could argue about the facts in the resulting articles (I have no clue about that), but a smear campaign shows that she probably touched something big...

As far as bias goes, it would be difficult to judge without knowing the real facts.

Not paid for - sourced from. She asked people who had experienced such trolling to come forward and interviewed them. The work was funded by her employer.

And my question is if these people (who had experienced such trolling) were anonymous, and how biased the "series" was. From the view of somebody who understands Finnish.

When we're at it, I also don't understand the story with the "Official of the Finnish Parliament Peter Saramo." Again, not enough details.

Thank you for clarification, I stand corrected.

Still, not "written by" but "getting input from".

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