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Comment by hos234 | Hacker News Reader

I don't agree. All this activity whether its legitimate volunteers OR trolls has not generated any real sustainable outcomes.

Both are just mindlessly trying to hit metrics(like/views/clicks/upvotes etc). And everyone is very satisfied hitting them.

But nobody has yet proved in any country, in any part of the world all this mindless metric hitting activity (amplified robotically by the news media) is actually producing a sustainable outcome.

Doesn't matter what problem domain you pick where are the outcomes that justify all this activity? One guy gets the likes today, another gets the likes tomorrow.

It's a trap. You see the same dynamics play out in Poland, Brexit, Modi's India, Duterte etc.

That only goes away once the Like/View/Click based ecosystem is dismantled.

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And I view this as false equivalence. Americans clicking like for American content is fundamentally different than an influence campaign by military intelligence to engage in psyops against us.

It's sad and shocking that folks treat a massive attack on the US homeland as "equivalent to Hillary fans posting comments on Reddit".

It really goes to show you how America is failing here: if no one will defend the homeland against attack, there won't be a homeland to defend.

You're welcome to cry about "clicks" and "likes" but we were attacked and are continuing to be attacked by sophisticated, and trained intelligence officers whose goal is to increase tension, increase terrorism, increase violence: and guess what -- they are succeeding. Terrorism is up. Violence is up. Tension is up.

Feels like a huge "wake up" moment, but of course the fake "both sides" propaganda paralyzes folks into such cynicism that they watch one-sided terroristic violence roil our communities and they shrug and complain about "views"

The main point is likes/views/clicks don't have to be shown or displaying them can be delayed. It's that simple to reduce random group behavior.

If you don't understand what role they play, or even worse, misunderstand what role they play please read some Social Psychology specifically Conformism and how it is triggered.

The problem is most people who designed the platforms are only now learning about these things and are trying to undo the effects pretending they don't need to make changes to the original design.

It is sorta interesting though, your “it’s different, it’s ok if Americans do it” line is actually kinda anti-liberal. I mean, no borders, no one is illegal, Russian troll farmers get their vote too?

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