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Comment by netsec_burn | Hacker News Reader

This comment is meta, i.e. not strictly related to the content.. but looking over the HN comments, I find a majority is pro-Russian with the exception of one downvoted comment noting accurately that the US equivalent of cheap spaceflight (Crew Dragon) is important for these missions to the ISS. This is just speculation, but I wonder if the issues that Reddit identified with the campaigns by Russian entities may be as far reaching as YC. The content of the comments is interesting too, attacking the reputation of journalist.

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The guidelines ask you to not do this because it doesn't do any good. Please just email us instead. We're looking at this kind of thing all the time and do find shillage, though it's most often not where users speculate (which has to do more with their own perception).

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

That's interesting. Not where we'd speculate? Thanks for the insight, and sorry I didn't see it was a part of the guidelines.

I think as another comment explained, you are conflating pro soyuz and pro russian. I couldn't care less about the russians, but the Soyuz is a beautiful feat of human engineering. This Rocket was designed more than 30 years ago and its simple and beautiful design passed the test of time.

I think what a lot of readers hate (and I'm part of those) is that a lot of simplified articles (like this one) seem to completely forget that this rocket is still the most reliable rocket upto this day, and uses sensationalism in order to clickbait.

Soyuz is exclusively manufactured by Russian entities, and whether or not we like to acknowledge it politics permeates spaceflight too. This is similar to how SpaceX is an American company. It's okay to conflate in context when we're talking about influencing national perception.

I’ve noticed similar patterns here and there on HN.

On the other hand, it could be more a reflection of the community’s general contrarian streak and bias for consciously impartial rationality (whether or not we succeed there is a different discussion).

Hard to say! I’ll defer to that classic aphorism: never attribute to state actors what can be attributed to antiestablishment geekery.

Well I took the time to read and you could also read them as Pro-Human Space Flight? There has always been competing views on HN on the value of human space flight vs unmanned space travel.

Personally I am pro-human space flights mainly due to how it captures the world. Space-X's stated goal of turning rocket launches into common events like a airplane taking off has pretty much happened. You have two humans also die and it is headline news around the world. I can't wait till we get someone back on the moon personally.

What? They're not pro-Russian, they're pro-Soyuz. You seem to be the one bringing the "us vs. them" mentality to the conversation.

It could just be an effect of when this was posted. It was 2am on the east coast when this went up. They’re just waking up now.

The majority of the time this article has been up is when people closer to Russia have been awake.

It will be interesting to see if the narrative shifts as we move through US time zones. Although with your comment currently at the top, that may skew the data. :)

I think you are being paranoid.

There is nobody on Putin's payroll writing wonderful words about Russia here. However, there are people that write rational rather than emotional comments that do not uphold the Russophobia we are all supposed to be going along with.

'Sinophobia' is sometimes present though (those Chinese are stealing our IP!!!) with this being a genuinely held belief, rarely backed up by tangible evidence.

> I find a majority is pro-Russian

Where are the pro-russian comments?

> but I wonder if the issues that Reddit identified with the campaigns by Russian entities may be as far reaching as YC.

You mean the nonsense they had to push to appease the media right? Glad you didn't bring up the $200,000 that some russian company supposedly spent on facebook to win trump the election. If the russians had been running a propaganda campaign on reddit, they did a piss poor job because 99% of the propaganda on reddit has been anti-russia since the very beginning.

> The content of the comments is interesting too, attacking the reputation of journalist.

So criticizing journalists ( an occupation that has lost an incredible amount of credibility recently ) means that you are a russian? I guess that makes 80% of the US population russian agents. But what about journalists who critize other journalists? Doesn't that make them russian agents too? Oh dear.

To me, the only suspect comment in this entire thread is yours. Or maybe that's because I'm a russian agent. /s

Seems like the whataboutism propaganda campaign has morphed into the "everyone's a russian agent" campaign. Wonder what it'll morph into next.

I haven't read the article and I have no idea who the journalist is, but what exactly is wrong with attacking a journalist's reputation if there are issues with it?

Ok, but if this was part of a campaign by a Russian entity, then you would probably find some proof of that in the comment histories of the people that posted these "pro-Russian" comments? Looking at those accounts, most of them are registered several years ago, and this is their first comment that is Russia-related.

Sure, this could be a very sophisticated campaign and these accounts could have been cultivated for multiple years for this purpose. But isn't it more likely these people are just normal Russians (or non-Russians tired of the anti-Russian angle in western media) that want to defend the reputation of the Soyuz?

Disclaimer: I am not particularly pro-Russian, but I have a Putin calendar on my office wall. Mostly because it ticks people off ;)

Some accounts are multiple years old and difficult to discern content-wise https://www.reddit.com/wiki/suspiciousaccounts

I'm also indifferent one way or the other, both the Falcon and Soyuz are impressive vehicles.

I'm not sure how much time you spend on HN, but US jingoism is quite popular here. Uh oh, I must be a Russian shill too.

I didn't say you were. It's just an observation based on recent current events. Reddit is taking active countermeasures to prevent that intervention, but as far as I know YC did not. I take time to read the opinions of this community far more than Reddit.

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