I Was a Russian Facebook Troll Named Martha | Hacker News Reader

I Was a Russian Facebook Troll Named Martha

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34 pointsrbanffy15 comments

People criticize Facebook (and others) about doing too little about Russian and other propaganda. But if we want to think about why FB does that, we should study the image in the mirror.

The same people are highly active and effective on HN. Every discussion of Russia or China is dominated by the standard propaganda talking points: 'there's no evidence of X', for any X; and 'the U.S. does it too'.[0] As a result, on certain issues HN discussions are propaganda (expressed civilly, to stay within the rules) and no substantive discussion takes place on probably the most important issue in the history of the IT industry. The purpose of propaganda is exactly that - not to persuade but to paralyze.

HN's main response, AFAICT, is to ban users from saying that any comment fits the propaganda profile; this rule perversely protects the propagandists and it shuts down people who oppose them and want substantive discussion, all in the name of keeping things 'civil'. It's capitulation to the power of the propagandists - they won; just cede them the ground in order to avoid the unpleasantness of a fight. Again, the outcome is propaganda expressed civilly and no substantive discussion (and the discussion that exists is boring, meaningless, and endlessly repetitive). I'm not saying it's an easy problem; I'm saying we should look in the mirror in order to understand Facebook.

[0] For example, currently there are 4 top-level comments in this discussion, all of which fit that profile.

EDIT: Some minor edits

I mostly agree, but there is a better justification for HN's rule, offered by its mods: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20astroturfing&sort=by..., I think it's not as perverse as you think.

> there is a better justification for HN's rule

I'm aware of that. I wasn't talking about the justification but the outcome. I'm certain dang and sctb don't want the propaganda here either; my point regarding the HN rules is that the well-intentioned policy ends up protecting propaganda. They have a real problem; the propagandists are gaming their system of civility.

Seriously? Before accusing me of supporting propaganda, please take a step back and look at the post again.

Or is it sarcasm in the form of a post in the same vein of what you are criticizing?

It's pretty strange that the term used is 'Russian Troll', when there's next to no evidence that Russians were involved, as well as no evidence that the compromiser's goal was 'Trolling'. This article has basically no content and just seems like clickbait.

Except that this is a common behavior for "Russian Trolls". So common, that an old account getting compromised and starting to engage with people in Russian is very likely to start spreading Russian propaganda at some point.

This is kind of amusing, but in the grand scale of things, does anyone think that propaganda is a new thing? When I was a kid and Russia was the great red threat, propaganda was par for the course. Why should it be any different now?

The amount of news on foreigners hacking US based companies is not surprising, but based on the Snowden revelations, the US is doing it right back. Why does it seem like everyone is up in arms over just Russia?

Does it have to be new or unique to be troubling?

No, of course not, it's just that I've gone through the process of having "wake up" in other parts of my life, where I thought something was one way and it was another. And now, I wonder what people in other countries really see is real.

But for some reason, we tack on "technology" to something, and we think it's something different, when it's not.

>Why should it be any different now?

Right now propaganda is exploiting the edge between old media and new. Apparently a lot of people have trouble telling if a news source or comments from fellow citizens are real. They're used to a world where faking a news story or getting a shill close to you took a lot of time and effort so 'trust by default' made more sense.

>Why does it seem like everyone is up in arms over just Russia?

Because you're probably viewing western-based news sources? People tend to focus on things that affect them and this is affecting the west right now because that's who Russia is targeting. Nothing magical about it.

>Apparently a lot of people have trouble telling if a news source or comments from fellow citizens are real.

Wouldn't that even apply to this news story?

>Because you're probably viewing western-based news sources?

Years ago I started the habit of reading both CNN and Foxnews, and I try to do the same with global news as well. Which is why the Syria fighting, the immigration issues, Russia and elections all seem to be treated one sided no matter which source you look at.

But despite this, CNN and Fox will make some odd changes lock-step, but not international news in the same way. But you'd only notice this if you have a habit of looking at all sides.

"Russian" + "Facebook" in the title sounds like something about political content, while there's nothing in the article about that.

TL;DR A dormant FB account gets highjacked, but the amateur thief forgets to change the email associated with the account. This allows the owner to deactivate the account.

I doubt the authors conclusion about russian troll though: a FB account highjacked by somebody using Cyrillic can be utilised for various purposes.

Author gets her ancient Facebook account hacked.

Person in control then sets new name, profile picture and makes two friends ("one in the Ukraine, one in Tanzania").

That's all.

There is nothing to suggest this being related to what the media stupidly calls "Russian Trolls".

End of story.

In other words, total rubbish of a weak attempt of exploiting the TEH RUSSIANZ boogieman by making up a story.

^ Russian troll

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