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Comment by diogenescynic | Hacker News Reader

They also pay shills to spread propaganda in the comments sections anywhere Monsanto is discussed. It’s particularly obvious since it’s the same users, with the same talking points, commenting within minutes. The same 5-10 pro-Monsanto accounts on Reddit show up in most discussions. I suspect this is going on for many other aspects of our life and it’s downright paranoia inducing.

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Please don't invoke the astroturfing/shillage meme here unless you have something specific (i.e. more substantive than someone happening to hold a divergent view) to point to. It isn't that what you said is wrong, it's that this topic leads to bottom-of-the-barrel discussion quality, like the below. It's always the same and it's tedious. That's why we added a bit about it to the HN guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Real astroturfing and shilling exist, but internet users also frequently imagine it. There's no way out of this hall of mirrors—discussions just die there—so we all need to have the discipline to avoid it by default.

If anyone thinks they're seeing real astroturfing on HN they should email us so we can investigate.

Yeah this one has been tricky. I haven't bothered to spend a ton of time on it, but I've done a deep dive or two on a user's history when it seems suspicious...and often had my suspicions amplified. Lots of pro- industry stuff and not a lot of discussion on other topics. Sometimes it's just people who work in the industry and have a huge portion of their identity influencing their view...which given that they have some expertise and lingo complicates things. But sometimes it's just a laughably one-dimensional HN account.

I suspect (hope) you're being downvoted for being off-topic because what you describe is a serious problem. There are multiple PR/Media orgs that specialize in this now and they're far more advanced than using the same accounts.

There should be NN trained on eathing accounts posting stories with near-similar content who have been proven wrong.

Checks diogenescynic's comment history for evidence of anti corporate shill shilling

Google astroturfing... it’s a huge industry. Not a made up conspiracy theory. It’s as benign as a filing thousands of individual orders with different book stores to get a new author listed on the NYTimes best seller list and as malicious as making up fake personalities to promote obvious lies. Public relations, public affairs, and marketing companies are heavily involved.

Here is an interesting study from a couple years back about astroturfing reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/netsec/comments/38wl43/we_used_sock...

I'm not disagreeing with you dude, just running with your "downright paranoia inducing" comment ... never mind ...

I think this is really tricky. On the one hand I like other viewpoints to discuss such a difficult topic. On the other hand I don't want to get corporate shills. Also the filter bubble point, which brings you to only wanting to hear your own opinion. The way hackernews handles this most of the time is way better by letting people make a disclaimer.

How is it tricky? If a company wants to defend itself, it shouldn't do so via paid individuals masquerading as private parties ("Let Nothing Go"), the only purpose of that is to misrepresent public opinion and appeal to bandwagon bias.

"Should" (in any moral sense) and "Monsanto" don't play nicely together.

Open discussion is welcome. But I cannot ever remember when paid shills are helpful, in my experience.

I like it in cases I just misunderstood something and they point out, why I'm wrong. Ofc with a disclaimer but even without they usually have good knowledge of the topic so they should also be heard.

Where is this place where there are paid shills who identify themselves who make helpful comments? I'm surprised it exists.

Hackernews, whenever there is someone with Disclaimer: I work for xy

I'm sure you are much joking ha ha! Monsanto does not need properganda as it is a wanderful company who's products make everyones life better. Monsanto feeds the world, don't you know?

Or maybe, juuuust maybe, people have different opinions about things.

Imagine that.

It looks too systematic for it to be real accounts, their comments are only on monsanto subjects or other pro-corporate PR, real users also show interests in other things.

That's exactly the kind of empty talking point BIG ORGANIC wants you to spew.

All carefully calculated to get you to buy their overpriced luxury product!

Look, people disagree about things. Get over it.

Don't kid yourself. People can and do disagree, but they doesn't preclude the fact that astroturfing absolutely does happen as well, and it's absolutely a problem.

>but they doesn't preclude the fact that astroturfing absolutely does happen as well, and it's absolutely a problem.

Occam's razor. What is more likely :

A. This normal person on the internet disagrees with me.

B. There is a multinational conspiracy to control the narrative on topic X and in reality everyone universally agrees with me that topic X is a bad thing.

You are hopeless.

This breaks the HN guidelines. Please post civilly and substantively or not at all, regardless of how wrong someone else is.

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

Your phrasing makes this quite unbalanced.

How about

B. Huge conglomerate with huge advertising budget uses some of that money on new innovative grass-roots advertising strategy (which is not illegal and can be very effective especially compared to online ads).

Lies, anyone who has opinions different than mine is a corporate shill or a Russian troll or more likely both.

There's a way to test for that: People with actual opinions will engage in conversation, whereas shills can't, because, one, their scripts aren't that long, two, they aren't paid for that kind of thing, and, most importantly, they can't risk the conversation spinning out of control.

Maybe, but we know astroturfing is real. Imagine that.

Astroturfing is real, but it is disingenuous to say that an entire side of a debate, particularly a scientific debate, is fake.

It has a chilling effect and silences the discussion.

An argument should be able to stand on its own regardless of whether an astroturf exists or not. Money doesn't change the facts, and astroturf is by definition finite. Facts, especially quantitative facts will win in the long term.

>Money doesn't change the facts

Money can make facts go unheard and/or unheeded.

>astroturf is by definition finite.

What definition says that? Astroturfing can be and is often automated

>Facts, especially quantitative facts will win in the long term

Many religions and mythologies seem to indicate otherwise

>Money can make facts go unheard and/or unheeded.

For a time. But people get bored, tired, and distracted. Facts are permanent.

>What definition says that? Astroturfing can be and is often automated

Servers cost money. Bandwidth costs money. Admins cost money. Businesses aren't going to fund astroturfing indefinitely. Even in the most extreme circumstances, like the climate change debate, the truth still dominates.

>Many religions and mythologies seem to indicate otherwise

You're right. Thats why modern science believes in creation, and the geocentric model. Clearly religion and mythology won out.

-Astroturfing can be done for free via botnet using other peoples machines

-If the truth dominates in the climate change debate, why is it still being debated while the problem continues to get worse?

-It remains that the majority of people on the planet have a religious faith, and those beliefs continue to affect government/state policy (i.e. bans on stem cell research, birth control etc) as it has for thousands of years

> Money can make facts go unheard and/or unheeded.

This is why it's important to respond with a factual debate only. You're actually helping them if you make more noise about other matters instead of sticking with facts.

I've been accused of being a Monsanto shill so many times online, its not even funny. I researched a lot of the claims against Monsanto or GM crops and I found many of them untrue, largely exaggerated, although I do agree most of the Dicamba debacle is mostly Monsanto's fault.

Ironically, there is a lot of propaganda pushed by the likes of USRTK and the OCA, calling anyone including university scientists that contradict them as Monsanto shills. These groups are also anti vaccine, against water fluoridation [1] etc...

I've largely stopped arguing online, because conversations become really super polarised and sometimes nasty. Its hard to have an intelligent discussion. A good place to find info on these issues is the Food and Farm Discussion Lab

https://facebook.com/groups/FAFDL/

[0] https://www.organicconsumers.org/essays/how-mainstream-media... [1] https://www.organicconsumers.org/news/water-fluoridation-che...

What slays me about the GMO debate is the misportrayal of my anti-GMO position, lumping me in with the anti-vaxxors, creationists, and defenders of Freedom Markets™.

I see your point, but if you have someone that attacks vaccines or denies climate change, its really a sign that they put ideology before evidence

True. Carrying the flame long after the war has been lost is kinda pathetic. Then its more about identity (virtue signal, tribal affiliation) than anything else.

I wish they'd just argue about sports teams.

> What slays me about the GMO debate is the misportrayal of my anti-GMO position, lumping me in with the anti-vaxxors

The scientific consensus on GMOs being safe is stronger than consensus on climate change. If you go against the scientific consensus, you are rightly labeled as being anti-science.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-entine/post_8915_b_657213...

https://allianceforscience.cornell.edu/blog/mark-lynas/gmo-s...

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/05/once-again-us-expert-...

Who said I have a problem with the science?

I'm meh about the genetics of GMO, its just accelerated selection. Transgenetic could be worrisome, so we should be hippocratic there.

But crops that allow us to expand into more arid, saline, or whatever areas are probably good to have. And developing perennial grains (eg kernza) sounds great.

But that's not why I oppose GMO.

I'm utterly opposed to "ReadyUp Ready" genetic engineering. Any effort to increase, permit the use of more pesticides (herbicides, insecticides) must be opposed. We need to reduce the use of pesticides, maybe even eventually ban all pesticides.

I'm utterly opposed to Monsanto's (and Big Ag's) business practices, especially patenting life, and secondarily turning all farmers (people who work the land) into serfs. Their GMO efforts, independent of the actual plants and biology, or just the wedge for those strategies.

I reject the pro-GMO arguments about increasing yield. We already toss 1/3 to 1/2 of the food produced. Trying to increase yields is passing over dollars to pick up pennies.

Lastly if Monsanto (and Big Ag) is for it, I'm against it. They've done so much harm, for so long, with zero contrition, I presume they're guilty. If there was some kind of truth and reconciliation tribunal, maybe, just maybe, I'd give them a second chance. And massive reparations followed by acts of goodwill.

But the burden of proof is on them, not me.

>We need to reduce the use of pesticides, maybe even eventually ban all pesticides.

You are fighting your own best interests.

Roundup ready has reduced harmful pesticide application by millions of tons.

Yes, zero pesticide is best, but you can't reach the moon in one step. It takes incremental change. Glyphosate replaces much more harmful pesticides like atrazine, and we are all the better for it.

>especially patenting life,

You can't patent natural genetic sequences.

>and secondarily turning all farmers (people who work the land) into serfs

Contracts are willingly signed, and those that don't sign are successful in other areas of agriculture (see organic farming).

>I reject the pro-GMO arguments about increasing yield.

No GMO plant has ever directly tried to increase yield. Rather they mitigate risk from weather or pests.

>Lastly if Monsanto (and Big Ag) is for it, I'm against it.

I'm glad you're willing to approach this topic reasonably, and with an open mind.

”You are fighting your own best interests. ... It takes incremental change. Glyphosate replaces much more harmful pesticides like atrazine, and we are all the better for it.”

Wise words. Big fan of incrementalism. Even though I’m currently freaked out about decline of pollinators, I’ll keep your viewpoint in mind.

If Big Ag owns this issue, and helps address it, I’ll ease up.

”...approach this topic reasonbly, and with an open mind.”

No such luck. I’m fresh out of goodwill. When Monsanto et al stop lying (being merchants of doubt), I’ll resume listening.

As my libertarian bestie teases me: the problem with you liberals is you can’t tolerate hypocracy. Guilty as charged. To my tribe, any good Monsanto does is completely negated by their (documented, proven) malfeasance.

More power to you. Hate the company all you want, but the technology and science is sound, and helpful to your (our) cause.

Which malfeasance are you talking about? Like I said earlier a lot of the claims against monsanto are either outright false, exaggerated and occasionaly warranted.

- Terminator seeds? myth, that technology was never commercialised [0] - Suing farmers for accidental contamination? Mostly false. For example in the case of the canadian farmer, he knowingly replanted GM seeds from plants that he sprayed with roundup and ending up with 95% GM canola, breaking patent law and hence getting sued - Indian Suicide caused by GM Cotton ? Myth. Indian farmers are committing suicide but not because of GM cotton. In fact, GM cotton got approved because Indian farmers where importing it on the black market. [2]

I'm not saying Monsanto is completely blameless in everything (as the dicamba story shows), but they do provide a very easy target to demonise and blame for a lot of issues. I used to be on the anti monsanto bandwagon as you, but after looking deeper, I realised a lot of it is BS. Those stories (especially the Indian suicide one), are very compelling so I understand why a lot of people believe them wholesale. Alas, the reality is a lot more complex.

[0]https://www.biofortified.org/2015/12/gmos-and-patents-part-1... [1]https://www.biofortified.org/2015/12/lawsuits-against-farmer... [2]http://issues.org/30-2/keith/

> I've been accused of being a Monsanto shill so many times online, its not even funny.

Not that I am saying your definitely are, but looking at your post history it is easy to see how people might believe that. You barely talk about anything other than Monsanto being a positive force.

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

— Upton Sinclair

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