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Comment by throwaway71958 | Hacker News Reader

throwaway71958

Well, there's no Russian first-language bias in that text for sure. Another argument in favor of the opinion that this was written by an American: the author seems to be well versed in the memes of the US political discourse. Someone from outside the US is unlikely to even know or care about Trump's "movement", or who "Bannon" is, or "drain the swamp", or "white privilege" etc. They're also unlikely to abbreviate "New York Times" as "NYT". The telltale signs are all over the text.

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That's a terrible analysis, I'm not from the US and know all of the above and would abbreviate NYT. I'm not hugely into US politics but I'm not ignorant of it either. Hell the BBC, Der Spiegel and Le Monde all covered Bannon losing his NSC seat.

> the author seems to be well versed in the memes of the US political discourse

that's not exactly hard for anyone that payed even a little attention during the very controversial US political season in 2016. Same with Brexit. The terminologies and crux issues have been widely debated on the social web. I would say it has actually been very difficult to escape

I've observed the whole Brexit thing with great interest, but I don't feel well versed in the vernacular. And for someone well versed, it'd be difficult to know what the person who's not well versed wouldn't know. Which is what we're observing here.

You won't be well versed in the vernacular of any political event unless you follow the news. But that's just as true for native speakers. You seem to imply that people who learn tens of thousands of words to communicate in a foreign language would be unlikely to learn the additional vocabulary of the current events. Especially the big events. Could anyone with a British friend in Twitter never hear of the NHS bus, for example? Unlikely.

Unfortunately, as with any form of communication, the only way to know where something really came from is to find the source, whether an individual or a collaboration. Facts are still being discovered about decisions, choices and actions relating to Benghazi, years ago. Obfuscation of the source is intended to delay. It works. Masking the source behind fingers pointing to cultures is a "cheat", and cheaters do not like to be discovered. Personally, we have been presented with evidence of tools and techniques of Alinsky in the 2016 U. S. election.

Right. However, things like "caucus" and "SCOTUS" are really unlikely to be written by a Russian, on any English knowledge level. We do make mistakes, but our mistakes are different. In this text, there are too few common mistakes, and too many strange things.

> things like "caucus" and "SCOTUS" are really unlikely to be written by a Russian, on any English knowledge level

What a weird thing to say. Even the most native of idioms can be learned, and there are plenty of fully bi-tri lingual people in the world.

Mining the text for cultural clues is a fool's errand.

> Even the most native of idioms can be learned

the parent's point though was that there's a mismatch between the level of idioms used and the broken grammar used (which is, imo, pretty obviously intentionally obfuscated; it's just… not how a non-native speaker would write it, esp russian)

Yes, exactly. While those are still somewhat plausible (I am Russian, and I might have occasionally used all of these ironically), it was "POTUS" and "SCOTUS" that made me 99% sure that this text was written by an American (or at least a US insider). You guys love your acronyms.

I honestly don't know why you guys are trying to divine identity based on textual clues like this. It's safe to assume every stylistic and linguistic choice is deliberate.

Sure. But if that's what you really think, then you don't get to assume that the DNC was hacked "by the Russians". Agreed?

Are you able to elaborate on how this case is related to the DNC hacks? ShadowBrokers was never accused of being the same as Guccifer2, as far as I understand.

I'm not saying he/she was. But do consider that in one case the most cursory circumstantial evidence is enough to convict, but in this case the same level of "evidence" is not enough to exonerate. Double standard, anyone?

> the same level of evidence

Whatever's written in that blog post, and how it's written, is neither enough to convict nor exonerate.

> if that's what you really think, then you don't get to assume that the DNC was hacked "by the Russians". Agreed?

Are you saying there's some letter written in broken english that's being used as proof of Russian involvement in the DNC hacks?

Now that we know the "tools used" "proof" is worthless because CIA uses those tools too, is there anything else?

What does that have to do with my point about inferring identity based on textual clues in this blog post?

'doktrin perhaps you have confused this subthread with a different one; it would be understandable since you've seen fit to post on this page sixteen times already. (Bonus points: you've used the phrase "paid shills" twice!) Unless you're willing to admit now that you are the DNC staffer who leaked all their dirty laundry to Wikileaks, you've got to admit that this tawdry hermeneutical argument no longer suffices to prove The Russians Did It.

> perhaps you have confused this subthread with a different one

No, but since you're obviously confused let me explain which thread we're in. The common topic, stretching back to the top comment, is armchair linguistic "analysis" :

>> (throwaway71958) Well, there's no Russian first-language bias in that text for sure. Another argument in favor of the opinion that this was written by an American: the author seems to be well versed in the memes of the US political discourse. Someone from outside the US is unlikely to even know or care about Trump's "movement", or who "Bannon" is, or "drain the swamp", or "white privilege" etc. They're also unlikely to abbreviate "New York Times" as "NYT". The telltale signs are all over the text.

>> (atemerev) Yes, exactly. While those are still somewhat plausible (I am Russian, and I might have occasionally used all of these ironically), it was "POTUS" and "SCOTUS" that made me 99% sure that this text was written by an American (or at least a US insider). You guys love your acronyms.

>> (doktrin) I honestly don't know why you guys are trying to divine identity based on textual clues like this. It's safe to assume every stylistic and linguistic choice is deliberate.

>> (throwaway71958) Sure. But if that's what you really think, then you don't get to assume that the DNC was hacked "by the Russians". Agreed?

>> (doktrin) Are you saying there's some letter written in broken english that's being used as proof of Russian involvement in the DNC hacks?

>> (jessaustin) Now that we know the "tools used" "proof" is worthless because CIA uses those tools too, is there anything else?

>> (doktrin) What does that have to do with my point about inferring identity based on textual clues in this blog post?

Which brings us back to the present - as you can see, it's you and throwaway who are trying to derail the thread at the last minute with red herrings about the DNC hacks. I'm not sure why you feel like it's super relevant here.

> Bonus points: you've used the phrase "paid shills" twice!

Again : you're confused. I used the phrase once (the other "use" you're thinking of was obviously a citation)

Don't feed the trolls, man

No, as a fellow Russian I am fine to admit that the DNC hacks were probably done by us. When the leak happened, there was a little too much enthusiasm in Russian hacking circles. Guccifer2.0's style was also consistent with Russian writing.

But when the Shadowbrokers leak appeared, the community response was more like "wat."

Yup, I've been living in England for over 20 years and my English language proficiency is well above that of most of the locals, but I still had to look up SCOTUS and POTUS a few years ago (probably when I started reading HN actually). Now that I know them I still would never consider using them in writing (the former is actually reminiscent of something offensive).

British native here. Do you not watch much TV or many movies?

I don't own a TV. :) I do watch some movies now and again though, especially when flying long haul but I never had one that mentioned those. Off the top of my head I can only think of 24 as a candidate but I never watched that.

Anyone who's spent any significant amount of time in political threads in reddit (just for example) would know those acronyms.

I think it's not a matter of knowing the acronyms but rather using them in your writing. Even though I'm aware of POTUS, I would simply write "The President" or "The US President" - it comes much more natural, from all the times its been used in local media to refer to our own/foreign presidents. Same reasoning for the US Supreme Court.

Maybe they're a non-American who's trying to look like an American who's trying to look like a Russian.

Possible. Certainly those are not genuine mistakes by native Russian speaker.

Yes, I think that we can agree on that.

That's far from true. Professional propagandists from Russia would definitely know about that stuff because they'd follow the campaign. Other trolls outside USA would see headlines that could give them useful information. I have no idea of nationality of the author but nothing in it precludes them from being Russian. Especially at this level in the game where people might put talent or time into faking things to generate a specific reaction.

While this is true, it doesn't mean that they don't work for Russia or even live outside of the US.

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