Who’s behind the “reopen” domain surge? | Hacker News Reader

Who’s behind the “reopen” domain surge?

krebsonsecurity.com

988 pointsfeross445 comments

It's fairly remarkable to see how weaponized misinformation is becoming.

Here's a snippet from Wikipedia[1] detailing the background behind the already-very-dubiously-named Local Government Information Services -- which is in no way a federally (or even regionally) accredited institution:

"Locality Labs published Hinsdale School News, a newspaper that masqueraded as the student publication of a high school in Hinsdale, Illinois by using the logo of Hinsdale Township High School District 86. In March 2019, the publication released a number of articles opposing a Hinsdale referendum that would increase the school district's budget by $140 million.[1] Officials from District 86 sent a cease and desist letter to Franklin Archer, LGIS, and other related companies, claiming that their publication of the Hinsdale School News was deceptive and violated trademark law.[5]"

This is a wake-up call for authenticity.

Regardless of whether foreign influence is involved -- and it can be very challenging to determine whether it is -- U.S. nationals are taking actions that imitate authority without possessing it.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_Government_Information_S...

I think far more concerning are the cases where the perpetrators are foreign entities.

The effect could be the same regardless of source, and the attribution could become fractally difficult depending on how many channels of influence are available to the perpetrator.

Personally, I'd recommend that people focus on the results of the actions that are taking place, and devise measures to lead or redirect those towards positive outcomes.

The time spent attempting to attribute nefarious outside actors -- even if you end up being correct -- could end up essentially wasted relative to the real-world impact that has occurred.

Edit: I'm not suggesting that attribution or recording provenance are not worthwhile. They are valuable, especially in future. But focus should remain on what is going to happen in the near-term as a result of real-world actions.

Foreign actors have different motivations— and most importantly, don’t have to live in a country if they destroy it with terrible policies.

This is also true of the very wealthy.

That’s pretty insightful, honestly.

There are plenty of non-foreigners who:

1. Have nefarious motivations.

2. Stand to benefit directly from the terrible policies they wish to enact.

You're making the mistake of thinking that just because they wear your colours, mean that they care about your team's success. They don't.

They do, however, appreciate the foreign/not-foreign red herring get used as a point of distraction.

Step 1: Deflect.

And maybe slightly more concerning still that those foreign entities may or may not be doing favors for domestic entities.

I find more concerning this (from the article):

'A number of other sites — such as reopennc.com — seem to exist merely to sell t-shirts, decals and yard signs with such slogans as “Know Your Rights,” “Live Free or Die,” and “Facts not Fear.'

I mean, that marketing tools would be used for political gain was to be expected, but, it seems that we have arrived to a point where politics is used for marketing. One thing is to sell t-shirts with slogans and another is to create (or amplify) a movement in order to sell t-shirts, regardless of the consequences. I suppose that, as so many things, once you are inside the vortex it's difficult to tell the difference.

> very-dubiously-named Local Government Information Services

Not trying to be arch here: Federal Express is an equally hinky name, isn't it? I've always thought it was confusingly, well, federal-sounding.

I'm not American and because of the name I've always assumed federal express was government-related.

And don't confuse UPS (United Parcel Service) and USPS (United States Postal Service).

For the longest time I thought these were the same companies

Or Uninteruptable Power Supply. When I got my first job, I always wondered why our company designated the UPS with their own room on the floor map...

Then there's the band "The Postal Service" that got a cease and desist from USPS to stop using their trademark.

However it had a happy ending: the United States Postal Service -- the real one, as in stamps and letters -- signed an agreement with Sub Pop granting a free license to use the name in exchange for working to promote using the mail. Future copies of the album and the group's follow-up work will have a notice about the trademark, while the federal Postal Service will sell the band's CD's on its Web site, potentially earning a profit. The band may do some television commercials for the post office.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/06/arts/music/postal-service...

This is fascinating; I had no idea that non-Americans thought this. Every American knows it's a private company and most know it's a classic rags-to-riches story started by a guy named Fred. It simply never occurred to me that anyone might assume it was a government entity, even though now I get why.

Oh, come on. It's plausible that most Americans know it's a private company, but most people do not know it was started by a guy named Fred. (or do you mean a guy named Fed?)

Frederal Express don't have the same ring to it.

I don’t know, Busby, I think you’re onto something ;

Maybe I should have said "Americans my age." Fred Smith got a lot of news coverage in the 80s. He used to be a case study in business schools.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_W._Smith

...and apparently I was wrong about the rags part.

He did get close to rags in the middle there

Well, then, clearly it should be called Frederal Expresss.

A long time ago when I lived in Pakistan, the local franchise holder for Federal Express processed and handled visa applications to United States. The final interview if needed was still conducted by Consulate employees but everything else was Federal Express. I want to be clear that nobody wa strying to imply that Fedex was a government agency but it acted almost like USPS does for US passports.

USPS has a contract with Fedex to carry its mail, by the way, so the US passports are also most likely handled by Fedex at some point.

Same goes for the Federal Reserve, which is why there's so many conspiracy theories around it:

>The stockholders in the 12 regional Federal Reserve Banks are the privately owned banks that fall under the Federal Reserve System. These include all national banks (chartered by the federal government) and those state-chartered banks that wish to join and meet certain requirements. About 38 percent of the nation’s more than 8,000 banks are members of the system, and thus own the Fed banks.

https://www.factcheck.org/2008/03/federal-reserve-bank-owner...

The Federal Reserve is not misleadingly named. It was created by an act of the US Congress. The board is appointed by the President and the Congress sets their salaries. It’s completely appropriate for it to bear the word “Federal” in it’s name.

The conspiracy theories are because people make up stories to fill in what they don’t understand.

The FRB is often described as "private", but it really isn't, certainly not in the way that FedEx is. It:

1. Has the website https://www.federalreserve.gov/ 2. Seems to be considered a federal agency, given that it is subject to FOIA request 3. Was created by the federal government 4. Is run by a Presidentially appointed chairman

...etc....etc...

It hasn’t been called federal express for decades.

Sort of a difference without distinction given it still has the Fed part, which is a pretty common shorthand for things that are, well, federal.

yeah, now we call it fedex, very clear what that means ;-)

Government Employees Insurance Company

Yup, GEICO.

Their products were originally only offered to/available to government employees. The name was purely - and accurately - descriptive. There was no intention to deceive, in this case.

There is already an ongoing and massive automated astroturfing campaign using hundreds of faked local news websites (news|times|standard|reporter|record|today.com) run by Metric Media, Locality Labs, Record Inc. and possibly others [1]. This reopen*.com wave is just more of the same, but I thank you for making the connection obvious to me.

There is also an ongoing crowdsourced investigation that is committed to exposing these misinformation campaigns that I'm sure would welcome your assistance [2].

[1] - https://github.com/MassMove/AttackVectors/blob/master/LocalJ...

[2] - https://www.reddit.com/r/MassMove/

Thanks for the links, this is good stuff!

Krebs links to a google doc in the article as well here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1k-GgWMNhg1se5302MCBh...

To note, Krebs has ~700 sites listed. Go ahead and ctrl+F for a city near you to see. The format of each of them is pretty cookie-cutter but the articles and pictures had a lot of work put into them.

For instance, here is one: https://metroeastsun.com/

Looking at this, I would never suspect that it was just a fraud. Looking at the headlines for the articles, it's pretty corruption heavy and seems to have a thing about government workers being paid, also a lot of white people smiling or pointing fingers while in suits. TinEye reports that the few photos that I bothered to check are all unique, whatever that may mean. Googling for lines in a few of the articles gets you back to that site and not others. Still, it's not even remotely out of line, just a bit odd when you look at it.

But we know it's not just odd, we know it's fake news. Even a bit of digging on the articles and photos points to it passing a sniff test. Without Krebs telling me that it stunk like a fish market, I'd never know.

I checked a few links listed in that MassMove github repository around the Bay Area in CA, including:

  https://sanjosestandard.com/

  https://sanmateosun.com/

  https://sanfransun.com/

I wouldn't characterize these as fake news, they just appear to be massively automated sites generated from public press releases from local government. In several of the articles they list the byline as "By Press Release submission". So it appears they aren't trying to be too deceptive, and if you search the text from the articles is does link back to the actual press release from a real .gov site in that locality.

Also looking at the bylines from metric media news service itself ( just append /author/metric-media-news-service to the main domain ), I would have expected a more discernible pattern of articles biased towards a particular viewpoint, but again, I didn't see anything too nefarious.

So at first glance, it looks like a reasonable local site albeit very cookie cutter, and primarily regurgitations of press releases from local official govs. And at second glance, it doesn't appear to be much worse than that.

NOW having said all of that, I can easily see how this can be turned sideways very easily and quickly by the site maintainers. If you're actually able to build up a good readership with some of this 'basic' content, then come election time or some other critical moment where influence is important, you can easily seed more biased content into the articles. And these don't necessarily need to be blatantly 'fake', they can just be slanted a certain way. They could certainly go full bore and insert some really fake content in there once in awhile.

The sheer magnitude of it all is impressive, taken in isolation these sites would seem legitimate but seeing them all side by side and seeing the content laid out it becomes painfully obvious there's an ulterior motive to it all.

Thanks to the parent comment for making me ( and hopefully more of us ) aware of this type of activity.

> I wouldn't characterize these as fake news, they just appear to be massively automated sites generated from public press releases from local government.

That's just filler: low-quality automated content so that the site appears genuine at first glance. These sites are not intended to attract regular readership. They're a context into which propaganda pieces can be inserted and be linked to on social media. Readers are expected to hit the site only for specific articles, and to not be motivated to explore much further. If these sites were a genuine attempt to make money by peddling local news, they would have more ads and at least some mention of weather or traffic.

How do you know that the motives of the site operators are what you think? For instance it could be that this is a network of ad-revenue generating sites and has nothing to do with civil protest movements...

https://www.dw.com/en/disinformation-sites-generate-over-200...

The sites I've looked at simply don't have enough advertisements for that to be at all plausible. Ads on these sites are so sparse that it's eerie compared to legitimate news sites. Only a small fraction of the content on these sites is going to get any real traffic, and without a regular audience base the handful of ads spots they do offer are not going to bring in much money. I counted just three ads on the "Metro East Sun" homepage and only two on their current top non-bot story—one of those ads was from the Trump campaign.

And even if they do expect to turn a profit off these sites, the clear patterns in their non-bot content need to be explained. Why do all of these sites seem to be focused on mingling Republican propaganda with their filler content? Why not have some sites featuring clickbait for a different audience?

Can we just take a moment to appreciate that a sites legitimacy is questioned because the site isn't crippled by ads to the point of being nearly unusable? That's a really unfortunate state of affairs. Especially since I don't think small sites trying to build an audience can afford to cripple themselves to the same degree with ads as bigger sites can.

One reason I can think of for increased Republican content is because of outrage economics. They tend to generate more clicks. It's also something that isn't catered to by the big news networks. Smaller sites I'm regularly visiting for over ten years have also shifted in this direction and those type of articles always generate more comments than other ones, so the tactic seemingly works.

If they are not going for ad revenue as you indicate above (sparse ads, at best) are they instead going for a huge number of "references"? I.e., do they feel (or have they A/B tested) that their miss-information campaign can be more convincing if their initial "contact" can cite a bunch of "references" that all seem to support the "issue" being pushed in that initial contact?

I.e., presume their real aim is some kind of initial email contact, possibly soliciting donations/support for some 'cause'. If that contact email can reference ten of these fake websites, all of which support the point made in the initial email, does it increase the rate of donation/support return from that initial contact email?

A lot of the non-bot content seems to be fairly local stuff: hit pieces against local Democrats or praise for local Republicans. The underlying issues are similar, but the articles themselves don't seem to lend themselves to being aggregated in that manner. Plus, it doesn't seem like a good idea to try to present a false consensus when all the sites you're linking to look like the same site.

And I highly doubt that they're focusing on email as the means of reaching new users. This clickbait is meant to spread via Facebook posts.

> hit pieces against local Democrats or praise for local Republicans.

This suggests another possible reason. Those behind them have found that if the 'fake' site appears to be 'local' enough, it will be seen as more reliable and/or it is more likely to get "liked" (given your "spread via Facebook posts"). Possibly their A/B testing has shown that fake 'local' stuff gets more spreading on FB?

I don't think that's "another" possible reason so much as you're closing in on the original accusation. The reddit group linked upthread refers users to this article explaining these sites: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/31/upshot/fake-local-news.ht...

All you're missing out on at this point is the obvious partisan motivation.

> I wouldn't characterize these as fake news, they just appear to be massively automated sites generated from public press releases from local government.

Correct. Some are completely automated using state/county filters of public APIs, while others are word for word scrapings of Facebook posts from relevant local groups.

> NOW having said all of that, I can easily see how this can be turned sideways very easily and quickly by the site maintainers. If you're actually able to build up a good readership with some of this 'basic' content, then come election time or some other critical moment where influence is important, you can easily seed more biased content into the articles.

Already happening. Besides the automated posts there is also what appears to be original content written by professional content writers. Some of the websites listed in the spreadsheet will only have automated posts as you've found, but look further and you'll see closer to a 50/50 split on the sites for some of the larger cities. What's more concerning here is that some of these authors are submitting their work to sites in completely disparate areas, and own accounts on all of the websites even if they don't write there.

> The sheer magnitude of it all is impressive, taken in isolation these sites would seem legitimate but seeing them all side by side and seeing the content laid out it becomes painfully obvious there's an ulterior motive to it all.

My understanding of this original content from some of the MassMove discussions is that it's trying to build public opinion where there is none to eventually get laws pushed and signed - so effectively astroturfing.

I imagine these sites need to look/be legitimate in order to be approved to buy advertising on FB. Automating them from press releases is a cheap way to do that. FB does some rigorous checks on ad-sets - I’ve had to honeypot their process to debug why on earth they kept rejecting a site (was an automated scraper flagging it? Or was a manual reviewer rejecting it after clicking around? Was the content, user experience, or something else in violation of FB ad policies?): https://facebook.com/policies/ads

Anyways, if these sites want to buy advertising on FB they need to pass this scrutiny. Would be curious to see which urls/content on these sites MassMove sees as nefarious. What landed these sites on the list?

Edit: Oh I see, there’s a short list of site operators.

This content was seen as nefarious:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MassMove/comments/fzunwk/caught_a_d...

They were running ads by LGIS on Facebook for that specific Corona story: https://www.facebook.com/ChicagoCityWire/posts/8442905359819...

Rush Limbaugh's quotes the article ChicagoCityWire.com:

https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2020/04/10/two-stories-in...

And the ads got people to post the article to reddit repeatedly: https://www.reddit.com/r/MassMove/comments/g0icy3/rmassmove_...

Looks like they used the bootstrap.js blog example as a template-- compare with https://getbootstrap.com/docs/4.4/examples/blog/

I see tracking via facebook, linkedin, quantcast, matomo, and locallabs.com, and user monitoring via newrelic js-agent.

> I wouldn't characterize these as fake news, they just appear to be massively automated sites generated from public press releases from local government.

In googling a few lines here and there in the articles, I couldn't find a way back to other content. I'm not saying they aren't using other documents as the seed for an article, but the writing appears to be unique upon a quick gut-check. Additionally, the photos appear to be unique as well. Again, super quick checks on my part.

To me, that means these things fit the bill of 'fake news' perfectly [0]. Maybe it was a very good bot that wrote the articles with a very good GAN image creator, maybe it was a mechanical turk that wrote them for ~$0.10. I don't really care. To me, it's fake news.

[0] Per Webster's: "False stories that appear to be news, spread on the internet or using other media, usually created to influence political views or as a joke"

Using automated tools to bring easily-scraped news to people is a good way to enure deniability and keep an audience around. Aggregators are wonderful homepages. Then, occasionally, you can (either by accidental scrape or design), push highly biased content that is provably false, and it will be a subtle signal in innocent-seeming noise.

Not saying that's what's happening here, just saying that an abundance of innocuous content does not make a site unbiased and trustworthy, just as it does not make it immediately suspicious.

When opening metroeastsun.com one is greeted with the following:

>Help us continue our fight against cronyism, corruption and profligate government borrowing & spending.

Well okay then.

2 things stood out for me which raised questions as a non-American.

1) The quality of the site - are the websites of local US papers usually this decently made? Even if it's just a random WP theme. I was under the impression that they were still perpetually 10 years behind the curve. See https://www.fredericknewspost.com/ for example.

2) The real estate section looks fishy as all hell. Why would they include something like that?

As to 1), yes, this is about par for the course. Most local news sites are of near this quality.

As to 2), I've no clue. Maybe they are scraping the MLS feeds or Redfin's site in order to appear more legitimate. Honestly, it does feel more legitimate to me as real estate is very serious business. Fake news of c. 2016 didn't have a real estate section per my remembering of them.

Twitter got sued back in the day by Tony LaRussa, former coach of the St. Louis Cardinals, for letting people impersonate his account—and thus the verified blue check was born.

So now impersonation is just getting more nuanced, on Twitter, FB, DNS, Skype, Zoom, robocalls, Tinder, you name it.

If someone impersonates someone in person in the US, it’s probably a fine or an arrest. If someone does it on the internet, well, more often than not we can’t tell and even if we do know who did it, we may try them in the US but if outside, not much of a chance.

Why do you think we haven’t demanded that tech companies and governments solve this problem?

It is generally not illegal to impersonate someone. You will only be fined or arrested if there is an actual crime involved, like fraud.

> Why do you think we haven’t demanded that tech companies and governments solve this problem?

Privacy is almost always the answer to that one. Either that, or "to protect people from totalitarian governments". Honestly, I understand that, but I'm disappointed that no one goes further and says "Hey, let's see if we can solve both problems at the same time whilst maintaining security and privacy."

Easy solution.

Verified works get signed by their content maker.

Tony LaRussa is verified. Twitter issues him a cert. All of Tony LaRussa's works are signed with that cert.

Revoke the cert if there's ever a problem. Not really Tony LaRussa. Someone hacks his accounts. He passes away. Etc.

Unsigned works still permitted. But everyone knows no one claims the work as their own.

I think it's disinformation at this point, not misinformation.

Thank you for pointing it out. I am here and I had no idea about it. And just before anyone jumps in saying it is nothing new, note the industrial scale at which it is happening and the impact it may be having. I know I trust local publications a little more.

How do you define "authenticity"?

Doesn't matter.

What matters is transparent process for issuing, revoking, adjudicating authentication.

Every authenticator can have their own process.

"This is a wake-up call for authenticity."

Emphatic agreement.

Signed work is journalism. Unsigned work is gossip, propaganda.

Much too much effort is being expended on determining truthiness. Pure futility.

Meanwhile, I haven't found any efforts by content providers to sign their works. So consumers can have some sense of provenance.

Use trusted certs. Any one caught impersonating someone else has their certs revoked.

> Both the Minnesota and Pennsylvania gun advocacy sites include the same Google Analytics tracker in their source code

I enjoy the irony of an analytics tool designed to track users instead being used to reveal something the site owner was trying to hide. There's just something poetic about it.

The irony only exists because of the tragic centralization of web tools. Hopefully, as more people open their own websites and domains, that centralization will lessen.

Would that have made all the sites not be opened by one actor?

Don’t get it, can one group of people not represent the same interest in two different states?

How is this scandal?

edit: tons of claims and downvotes, not one hard bit of evidence to show this is not an authentic organization. IDK, maybe it’s not, I don’t actually care, but I thought bullshit baseless claims weren’t supposed to be accepted here?

Have you looked at the sites? They go pretty far out of their way to seem like they are locals speaking independently. Astroturfing is generally scandal-worthy.

Ok, so your claim is that one org representing two states could not poll and get local comments from actual people in those two states?

Edit: can’t reply to claim below but have yet to see any evidence this isn’t an authentic org that represents two states. Why can leadership of this org not be people from these states?

> As a true grassroots movement we are comprised of farmers, doctors, mechanics, teachers, hunters, military personnel, and retirees. These are the people that we report to—not a boss 1,000 miles away who doesn’t understand Minnesota and what Minnesotans want.

That quote is a sample of what the entire page is like: Minnesota, by Minnesota, for Minnesota. It’s very clear that they’re trying to signal they are something other than what they really are. The article goes into detail on who actually owns the site.

The problem isn’t that it is one organization but it is going out of it’s way to hide that. That suggests that it’s motives are not quite what it professes. An honest organization can operate in multiple states but is open about that. What are they trying to hide?

> How is this scandal?

When political organizations with ulterior motives try to disguise their work as a grassroots movement, it's called astroturfing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

Also, it should go without saying that an organization actively organizing people to defy critical Coronavirus-related quarantine procedures is a scandal, regardless of the source. The fact that a political organization is trying to obfuscate the source of the dissent is even more scandalous.

Can you source this is not a grassroots organization? Because I see the claim, and the assumption, but again, I don’t know how it’s scandal that one org can’t represent their topic in two states.

edit: apparently not. Everyone wants to believe it’s true, so it is

This is like the Tea Party: there really is an authentic grassroots movement, AND it is being organized and promoted by a range of elite conservative institutions, including Fox News and the White House.

Citation? I believe you of course. I just would like to see the evidence for all of this.

Edit: no, apparently no citation is coming. Wild claims, no sources. Just blame Fox News the one mostly conservative outlet compared to the hundred counterparts like it’s still 2008

Don't be a sealion. http://wondermark.com/1k62/

The article gives examples of the President's tweets supporting the movement, and Fox News routinely airs positive coverage of the rallies.

This WaPo article gives many more examples of ties between Facebook organizing groups and national organizations: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/04/19/pro-gun...

The protestor opinions is clearly in the minority. That said, protestors aren't being bussed in. People are choosing to show up to these rallies. The movement is authentic, it will get people killed, and that's why it needs to be grappled with. Dismissing it as inauthentic will get even more people killed.

You have made a claim, without substantiating it.

It should not surprise anyone that political organizers would organize multiple events at once.

That's not a conspiracy. It is just standard political organization.

It's astroturf, though. No one disputes that this is a coordinated national organization. That's the point. These aren't local protestors genuinely moved by local conditions and asking for local policy changes. They're following national orders.

This is called political organization, in the same exact way that other protests across the country are political organization.

Were you not aware that this is the case for most protests? Things like the women's march, or whatever, are also organized in a similar manner.

No, those organisations do not try to give the impression that they several unrelated local small grassroots organisations, which are in fact one big organisation creating lots of small entities, but this is what is happening here.

Having a political organization run things in multiple places is normal, is what I am saying.

There is nothing abnormal about an organization running political stuff in more than 1 place at once.

In fact, I would question the competency of any political group or organization that isnt running their political organization in more than 1 place.

It's fairly well-known that the Tea Party was basically funded by the Koch brothers, right? I assume you've read things like [1] which go fairly deep into how they funded and organized pretty much all the "grass roots" activities of the Tea Party

Now, these "reopen" protests are basically the same. The sentiments of the people are real, but the funding and organizing are not "grass roots" by any normal definition of the word. For example, of the Michigan protests[2]:

> The Michigan Freedom Fund, which said it was a co-host of the rally, has received more than $500,000 from the DeVos family, regular donors to rightwing groups.

> The other host, the Michigan Conservative Coalition, was founded by Matt Maddock, now a Republican member of the state house of representatives. The MCC also operates under the name Michigan Trump Republicans, and in January held an event featuring several members of the Trump campaign.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/26/koch-brother... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/18/coronavirus-...

This. I am certain there are well meaning individuals out there, who responded to the message for one reason or another. But it seems more and more like there is concerted effort to move it in a specific direction. I base it on Trump, Fox News and Patriot radio coverage.

> but again, I don’t know how it’s scandal that one org can’t represent their topic in two states.

The ACLU doesn't try to hide their national organization, and their local affiliates make no secret of their connection to the national organization. These "Reopen" sites are obviously not behaving in a similar manner.

I don't see the scandal, not in this day and age of doxxing, shaming, and death threats.

So what-about-ism and apathy?

Scandals are such because social shaming, possibly accompanied by prosecution, are useful tools for society to push back against bad actors. Or are you endorsing fraud as a legitimate political strategy?

> Or are you endorsing fraud as a legitimate political strategy?

It isn't already? Pretty sure that's what campaign "promises" are.

Yes, one group of people can represent the same interest in two different states. The objection is to "sites that seemed to be engaged in astroturfing, which involves masking the sponsors of a message or organization to make it appear as though it originates from and is supported by grassroots participants"

Yeah, I see that, but I’m not sure there is an assumption that the demonstrations are “grassroots” and also ... define grassroots?

I'm not sure many people believe they are grassroots, but they certainly present themselves as grassroots. Each site claims to be an independent association of local businesses rather than a centralized organization from one bankroller.

Is it "grassroots?" Surely we can less authentic than if it was organized by genuine residents of that state's population, no?

I don't think the point being made is that they can't share the same interest or the same organization but accusing the creators of astroturfing (Dorr brothers, Freedom Works, In Pursuit of LLc), being opportunists, and even foreign bad actors / agitators (Russian "Valentine Sons").

> Don’t get it, can one group of people not represent the same interest in two different states?

No, one group of people cannot represent a grassroots, self-organized group in two different states. Once so represented, it is no longer grassroots.

If I have lunch with a bunch of coworkers and convince them that Ruby would be way better than Python and we should switch, and then three different teams in three different offices start advocating for it, and I wrote the team's wiki page on why they should switch, there may well be genuine interest in switching - but there is not grassroots interest. They can absolutely say "We were convinced by 'geofft and we agree with this page 'geofft wrote." They cannot legitimately say "We came to this conclusion on our own."

I have to disagree with this for several reasons. First, defining grass roots as independent events is not the typically used definition. It simply means trying to get support at the local level to most people. For instance the Bernie Sanders campaign was considered "grass roots," but those people were usually all convinced by a national voice, Bernie Sanders, potentially use advertisement dollars collected by different states. Secondly, there are many situations where any organizer tries to make changes in different states and thus creates multiple websites. Thirdly, in literally 10 minutes I could buy the domains and create both of those websites with about $50 and in less time if I knew an activist who had a template for it. Perhaps a friend who just created a website for another state? This doesn't take a massive organization or entity to push an agenda. Lastly, it seems extremely likely to me that this agenda, affecting the entire country, is very likely to be sought by any of the over 20 million people who recently claimed unemployment benefits, or the many millions more who also lost their job and simply have not filed for unemployment yet, or the business owners who are getting their livelihoods destroyed. I'm not seeing the great leap here where astroturfing would even be necessary given the current situation and feeling of the populace for a couple of cheap websites.

Right. Astroturfing is characterized by the deception and obfuscation, not by whether it’s coordinated or not. This is clearly astroturfing because the organizers are trying to hide the fact that it is coordinated and presumably led by a small number of interests.

The small interests being the families who no longer have a source of income because the government deemed their job non-essential. I know software engineers are still able to work but a lot of people are out of work and may be permanently as lockdowns increase

Come on. I know it's not allowed here to suggest that someone didn't read the article, but Krebs (and the Reddit "researcher") presents pretty compelling evidence that this is not, in fact, a bunch of rando people spontaneously deciding to protest all at once. If Facebook provided the same kind of transparency you can dig up from the DNS registration system, you'd likely find a similar pattern around who's behind all the "organization" that suddenly popped up seemingly out of nowhere.

It would make sense for a nation-wide phenomenon to be coordinated among people with the same problem. Also makes sense for it to pop up around the same it became apparent the virus was not nearly as deadly as initially reported.

> No, one group of people cannot represent a grassroots, self-organized group in two different states. Once so represented, it is no longer grassroots.

If the funding, support, and organization comes from the people directly effected - yes - that’s still grassroots.

Do you have a citation or source that this is not the case here?

Are you debating honestly? Because the article describes how these websites are linked to very few or a single entity. You can not be multiple local entities if you were created by a single central entity, that's a contradiction. Sure there could be the case that there a multiple local groups who the band together and form a federation or other central organisation. But we are talking about a timescale of a few days, bringing many independent groups together within that time is completely unrealistic.

> Do you have a citation or source that this is not the case here?

Yes. It's in the article.

A lot of reasons and context have been given. I’ll add one.

The common infrastructure indicates that someone centralized is directing this and paying for it. One naturally wonders, Who?

Part of the power of grassroots protest is that it indicates that citizens are moved to act on their own. But if it’s paid for, that’s very different.

Yeah, I know.

But seriously, we are talking about 50 domain names and cheap websites.

Like, I'm not involved, but if I decided that I thought it was important, I could personally create a protest website for each of the 50 states. $8/year per .com domain name, and $10/month for enough shared hosting for all 50 sites for now (or be fancy and spend $50/month for virtual private hosting and know you'll have room to grow). A few hundred bucks will buy you the stock images and other assets you need to have each site be real.

This doesn't require some big nefarious "elite evils" to fund. I mean, maybe some big right-wing group is sponsoring it, but at least so far we haven't seen more than literally a grand or so could buy you.

Plenty of folks could afford to donate that to make a cause they believe in be real.

Murphy says it cost him 4K, and he wants to recoup his costs.

"“I realized all these fringe guys are gonna get a hold of these websites, So I went out and bought ‘em up that night,” he told me. The financial burden of thwarting fringe-right groups? “It cost me about four grand,” Murphy said. “I don’t have the money quite frankly. I was just trying to do something good. I’m in massive credit debt to do this.”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/04/reopen-liberate...

That is an interesting development. I assume, despite his claims, that he saw an opportunity and took it with hopes of minor payoff down the line.

Incidentally, don't most registrars offer basic privacy protection? I know my phone doesn't show up in basic search.

This is also indicated at the bottom of the web page in clear text. I don’t think anything is being hidden.

And it’s probably just some big mega host. I doubt these sites are much more than a wordpress plugin.

> This is also indicated at the bottom of the web page in clear text

What is the "this" in this sentence? Looking at the pages that still resolve I don't see anything that implies they are not independent state-based organizations, but it looks like some of them no longer resolve so maybe you saw something I didn't.

I'm pretty sure the Russian trail in this article is a red herring.

I looked up "Валентина Сынах" Skype user and, as expected, their full phone number is +7904xxxxxxx (see full number in the article), with Russian prefix +7. Note, WHOIS records have US number +1904xxxxxxx. Not sure why the author only searched for the last 10 digits.

+7 904 code is a very busy area code in Russia shared by several major carriers, covering the majority of Russian regions, so the probability of someone having any particular 7 digits in that area is pretty high. For example there's someone else registered in Skype with number +7904xxxxxx4, just one digit apart. I haven't been able to find an English source, but you can look at the list of carriers and regions in Russian in [1].

Also, US area code +1 904 matches the address in WHOIS records (both Jacksonville, FL), so at least it doesn't look like someone just changed the first digit and used their own Russian number.

[1] https://www.kody.su/mobile/904

Very interesting. Friendly heads up: seeing full phone numbers posted here feels quite uncomfortable. If you’re sure there’s no potential for getting it wrong that’s cool but it’s risky if you’re not 100% sure it’s harm-free. Maybe redact them?

Updated, thanks!

Because including a potential link to Russia gets more views and outrage.

Can't believe nobody here mentioned that his translation is a funny blunder. When you type "валентина сынах" into Google Translate you in fact get "Valentine Sons" but it's a mistake. There's actually a helpful tip showing the correct translation from Ukrainian of the person's name "Valentina Synakh" (Synah, to be accurate). Making a Russian connection out of this is a bit far fetched... But I guess that was the point.

Russia also advocating anti-vaccination movement [0] for quite a long time already, basically any conspiracy freaks, who can make US existence as a state more complicated.

I'm Russian national myself is any. I do not support our regime of course, and left Russia a while ago. But US being so defenseless in the face of that threat surprising me.

[0] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45294192

Does it matter if it's the Russians or others?

Here is a case where you have completely unknown, faceless, nameless people going about astroturfing. One person, sitting anywhere in the world, with a few hours behind a screen can incite 1000s of people and generate tons of outrage.

That seems wrong to me...

>[. . .] the Dorr brothers simply seek “to stir the pot and make as much animosity as they can, and then raise money off that animosity.

I am fascinated by people like this. They have to understand they are doing awful things to the world around them. How do people like that sleep at night, or look themselves in the mirror?

Even if you believe in gun rights to the extreme, being purposefully combative, negative, divisive, and awful just to make money is not a great look. How? Why? Why do people do these things?

Some people have a nonexistent or weak conscience. We call them psychopaths and sociopaths. They are not all bloodthirsty ax murderers as portrayed by Hollywood.

That’s a very good trait to have success in business.

I linked to this in another thread today. Relevant even more here: https://www.psychology.org.au/news/media_releases/13Septembe...

"One study of 261 corporate professionals in the supply chain management industry showed extremely high prevalence rates of psychopathy, with 21% of participants found to have clinically significant levels of psychopathic traits - a figure comparable to prison populations."

So there is a 21% chance according to that study that Tim Cook is a psychopath :)

Are you sure that having significant psychopathic traits is the same as being a psychopath?

That is how the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) works. Psychologists identify people exhibiting similar disordered behavior, then they extrapolate underlying traits that are likely related to that disorder. The disorder and the traits get published in the DSM, with the guidelines of, "Subjects who exhibit N of these traits can be designated a psychopath."

The goal of business is to undermine competitors. It's hard to imagine a good person with such mindset.

The goal used to be too provide a good or service that people need and exchange them for a fair price so you can survive. Now, business has been turned into a way to fuck other people over so you can get more resources than you'll need for 1000 lifetimes.

The goal has ever been making as much as possible while giving as little as possible. That's how it's been since humans developed ego. You're describing business between post-ego humans also known as saints. We don't have many of those yet.

Yes, unfortunately. See "Assholes, a Theory", by Aaron James, a serious book on this topic.

A good businessperson only makes a sale if the person on the other end will come back for more.

Unless of course, you can drown it out by sheer volume of sales.

The traveling huckster model breaks down eventually too, there's only so many people you can scam.

Also, that life isn't a good one.

At internet scale though you can get pretty far and if a new huckster is born every minute then it’s a revolving door of trolling. State sponsored money can’t hurt either.

But only if repeat business is relatively frequent. This isn't particularly true for durable goods sellers or people who sell one-off things.

Is the car salesman ever going to see you again? Is the realtor ever going to see you again? Is the mattress store salesman ever going to see you again? Is the artist who sells you band merch or paintings going to see you again? Probably not.

Sometimes the buyer doesn't have much choice: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Opium-Wars .

It's not. Good businesses thrive with their customers/employees/other stakeholders.

You're thinking of slavers, or the mafia.

Read biographies of famous business people. You will find them full of stories where they act in a very cruel manner if it benefits them.

Sociopathy.

There have been jerks like that for a long time, back at least to the Roman Empire. The difference today is that the Internet's combination of scale and anonymity makes it possible for minor players to pretend to be a large movement. It used to require ownership of a newspaper or a radio station to pull this off.

And because social media platforms incentivize controversial opinions that get lots of engagement, even if most of it is disagreement. Twitter's particularly bad for this because of it's default-public-broadcast nature, but you'll see this in public Facebook posts as well. (eg, I have a friend who is a state-level politician, and I made the mistake of reading the comments in one of his posts, and they're all sub-human trolls. You know; you look at the profile and there's no content. Just 'evocative images' like stylized pictures of the constitution and the US flag, but no original content, no grandkids pictures, etc).

And because social media platforms incentivize controversial opinions that get lots of engagement, even if most of it is disagreement.

IMO this puts the carriage before the horse: the platforms incentivize engagement, sans enough social pressure to actually tackle it, the platform seems not to care much what that engagement looks like, and this is what we get.

I agree, and I used to make this same technology-neutral point, but I figure we might as well call a spade a spade at this point, since it's obvious what we get.

Re: Roman Empire, here’s a nice list of graffiti from Roman bathrooms: https://kashgar.com.au/blogs/history/the-bawdy-graffiti-of-p...

> anonymity

It's not anonymity per se, it's lack of consequences. Big platforms tried to make Real Names (tm) a thing, with the explicitly stated faith that that would make people behave better. It doesn't. It opens a whole other can of worms, where now people's egos and emotional investment only increases, yet the negative consequences don't necessarily. People still behave like assholes. Because they get away with it. And are even lionized for it!

Some people measure their worth and the worth of others based on their bank accounts.

They want to increase their self worth relative to others, which means making their bank account bigger.

> Even if you believe in gun rights to the extreme, being purposefully combative, negative, divisive, and awful just to make money is not a great look.

From what I've read on this page and others, they raise money not necessarily for personal wealth's sake but instead to further their cause. "Give us money because this latest news report says they are coming over to your house tomorrow morning to take your guns."

It seems in line with other cable entertainment ("news") sources who hold sessions to discuss the latest "sky is falling" policy proposals from lawmakers whose ideology they oppose.

Both create information glut. So much content so rapidly that you cannot properly process.

If it passes the sniff test (which is usually underpinned by personal experiences, preferences and biases) and falls in line with your intuition it's one more thing that you "know" withou understanding.

Similar to strange danger, the true disinformation is the subtle inaccurate "facts" we allow ourselves to believe.

> Give us money because this latest news report says they are coming over to your house tomorrow morning to take your guns."

Here is the thing about that. You can’t use that as “crazy” anymore.

This presidential cycle a candidate stood up and said “hell yes we’re coming to take your [most popular rifles in America]”, it was met with studio applause and not one single candidate interjected with a “hey now wait”. Biden was the “most critical” saying he wasn’t sure that would be constitutional but then also said the guy that made the statement would be his chosen “gun tzar”.

The New Jersey NICS (background check system) was off for weeks because of Covid19. Meaning it was ENTIRELY illegal to buy / sell / trade a firearm in the entire state. This is the system they want for the whole county.

The Gov and legislature in VA just publicly floated using the National Guard to carry out their gun ban proposal.

So... I don’t have a stated position on the topic, but that example of “look how crazy these people are! They think people are trying to do exactly what they say!” Isn’t a good one.

Absolutely correct, the goal is to disarm the population and increase state reliance. On the plus side, extreme viewpoints are not likely to win back the states Hillary lost in 2016

Because society rewards them for it.

They share the same mentality that every criminal has always held to justify their crimes, "it's a bad world and i'm just part of it".

Trump says the same thing often, too.

Troll level one million!

I have a couple of friends that are trolls(they call themselves that). They frequent Facebook and they make silly comments are try to rile people up, because....well i guess they're bored. They take pride in being banned from Facebook so shock humor. They are pretty funny.

Why is this relevant? What I have learned from them is that high-speed internet is conducive to trolling at all levels. Facebook users want comments and reactions, so their post do just that. Large sites want clicks and attention, so their content does just that.

A deep multifaceted conversation is boring and difficult to do. And above all else does not give you the same satisfaction as emotional content. The internet is an emotional medium, not a rational one. I treat it that way. To learn more on this check out neil portman, specifically his book "amusing ourselves to death".

I try to remind myself that things on the internet could very well have been produced by an angry techsavvy teenager, rather than to attribute any authority to it.

Something I've noticed, and fallen victim to in recent weeks, is that FB will often display in my feed a post by a news site (for me, they're usually NPR, CNBC or the local TV station), and underneath they'll display exactly _one_ comment. That one comment is almost always something insane (no more serious than the flu, they're counting all dead people not just dead from the virus, you get the picture). But when I open the story to view all comments, there are hundreds of not-insane ones. In fact it is often impossible to find the "featured" comment if I wanted to reply since there are so many others. I get the distinct impression that FB has an algorithm that promotes disinformation comments in order to....well I assume in order to make more money somehow. I've had to train myself to read the news stories (which are useful to me) but brain-skip over the featured comment.

That's probably my buddy, don't bite ;)

I would argue the case that facebook is not malicious and promote disinformation. If their algorithm promotes comments that get lots of emojis and responses you would see the same behavior. I see it in many forums, the top comments are usually controversial.

Now add to that fact that all sites rely on web traffic to make money and you get a systems of incentives that breeds discontent and divisiveness. On top of all that high speed visual medium, such as the internet, produce an emotional response with little time to rationally process information.

Dude, no offence to you, but your buddy sounds like a sociopathic asshole, and I say sociopathic because they surely have to know that their trolling is contributing to society-wide changes having really negative effects, yet they choose to do it anyway.

Being "just one of a multitude" cheering on and enabling the grifters, sociopaths and wannabe tyrants - whatever the motivation - doesn't lessen their culpability.

None taken, I get where you are coming from. They are pretty cool dudes with a messed up sense of humor for sure. They are in their 50s and they started small and it's snowballed into this.

Sample troll from many years: "Wisconsin is the worst city EVER"! Outrage comment thread ensues.

I guess my take away is that don't take everything seriously, especially when it's coming from people you don't know. I'll use the same buddy's quote: "Life is too important to take seriously".

I sense an undertone (in your friend's quote) of, "why should I care if people are too dumb to realise that someone is just trolling the?". Would that be a fair assessment? If so, that's pretty tragic. It means that people who aren't as smart/savvy/wise are fair-game. In a jungle that law holds true. So perhaps, this is humanity reverting to type.

Personally, my hopes have always been that we would continue to build on ideas of society that flourished post enlightenment (oh the irony when people rabbit on about protecting "western values" by offering to subvert them).

I guess, I can't see that it's possible to hope/work/strive for a better world, and be a troll. One is constructive, the other nihilistic at best and actively destructive at worst.

Sometimes he argues things he believes and tries to make a point from silliness. Other times he's just a dick saying messed up things that he finds a funny. Either way he's just a guy flesh and bones and he doesn't say things online he doesn't say in person. He's just a dude at the end of the day.

> Personally, my hopes have always been that we would continue to build on ideas of society that flourished post enlightenment

I shared this view for quite some time. But rationality can only get you so far. So weird stuff can out of the enlightenment, i.e. fascism and communism, and they were underpinned by rational thought but were totally messed up.

> One is constructive, the other nihilistic at best and actively destructive at worst.

I'm not defending a troll here. I'm just saying don't attribute to malice that which you can explain with trolling. In that case, just silly trolling has the potential to destabilize a system, then it's not very robust. Also, I would say that this is only possible on the internet. Anyone can tell when someone is just messing around vs. trying to subvert people. It's the difference between being an asshole and trying to start a cult. On the internet, you can accidentally start a cult. In real life you cant.

What does that say about the internet?

> I'm not defending a troll here.

That's not the impression I got, at all. That's exactly what it seems you are doing, repeatedly, on this page. On top of it, you seem to be saying that if a troll does damage, it's the system's fault, not the troll's.

> I'm just saying don't attribute to malice that which you can explain with trolling. In that case, just silly trolling has the potential to destabilize a system, then it's not very robust.

Trolls are just cool dudes people take too seriously, you say. (That's those peoples' fault.) And if you do something with bad effects, you are excused if you thought it was funny.

Why do you think trolling and acts of malice are two separate things?

Defense of trolls is neither here nor there. The trolls will be with us forever. They are simply a fact of life now, like gravity. Given that reality, how can we make our systems more robust against trolling?

Nonsense. Because they've been around for a decade or so (in numbers), they'll be with us forever? That's like saying, hey why police crime, criminals are a fact of life, they'll be with us forever. How do we make society more robust against crime? Answer: we do it by cracking down on criminals. Trolling is not victimless.

You must be new here. Usenet was already full of trolls in the 1990's. Trolling is shitty behavior and not to be condoned. But legally there is no victim unless they are specifically libelling or advocating violence against someone. I certainly wouldn't want law enforcement to chase trolls, because that would be a 1st Amendment violation and a waste of tax money.

Idk. If someone said something insane like vaccines cause autism in most kids who take it to troll and some parents believed that.

Who needs to change more here? Seriously, someone who is a parent who has probably gone through formal education or heck at least primary school will know that those statements are insane. I of course want troll to stop but I don't see how you can just ignore the people who fall for that stuff. It seems we as a society have done something wrong for people to take trolls seriously.

> That's exactly what it seems you are doing, repeatedly, on this page.

I don't think that's the case. My answers are not snarky.

My overall points is that the internet as a platform, as a means of communications, has a tendency to promote heated, emotional conversations. In contract to rational, logical debates that reach conclusions of a sort.

I think this is because the internet is primarily a visual medium. By that I mean it that information is portrayed and accompanied by pictures over text. In addition to that, it is a high speed medium. This has the consequence of leaving little time for processing information.

The comparison I hold in my mind is a video essay vs. an article or books. An article is just text, there is little to attract your attention other than that (maybe the typeset matters). But a video essay provides a series of shots, that constantly change to draw your attention, the persons appearance, or the images displayed all factor into how you feel, rather than just the information.

DISCLAIMER: Trolling is bad!

> I'm not defending a troll here.

But that's exactly what you're doing.

> In that case, just silly trolling has the potential to destabilize a system, then it's not very robust.

Just because we live in a non-robust system at the moment, doesn't mean it's wise to destroy it, or let it be destroyed. I've lived and worked in failed states, and I can assure you that the alternative is assuredly to a non-robust but at least functioning state is much, much worse.

> Also, I would say that this is only possible on the internet.

Yes, and for most of us, our political life is primarily lived on the Internet these days, for better or worse.

> What does that say about the internet?

Perhaps the only thing you've said so far I agree with. Yes, I've gone from an Internet utopian to an Internet dystopian in 10 short years.

I don't think that "non-robust" is the right way to look at it. Nor do I think that Facebook, Google, etc. have a large number of employees devoted to evil or that third party bad actors are fully responsible. I think what has happened is that the infrastructure is now based on algorithms that reward trolling and disinformation beyond the ability of anyone to stop. It's kind of like a gray goo scenario of the mental space of internet users that we're too anesthetized to really fight.

So how would that friend feel if someone forwards Screenshots of the trolling to his wife, children and possibly employer, that would be funny wouldn't it?

Trolling is malicious, just normalized and give a cutesy name.

There's a general social consensus that it's wrong to taunt or poke fun at the intellectually disabled. Yet many people see nothing wrong with deriding and disrespecting those in the (roughly) 75 - 99 IQ range. I've seen that all over HN comments, and some of the smartest and most educated posters are the worst offenders. Why is that?

> I've seen that all over HN comments

Can you point me to some examples? I've seen it on HN, but much, much less than on any other online platform.

How do you tell the difference between someone with a 99 IQ and a 100 IQ?

(I don't know the punchline)

Isn't that what the market economy is based on. Making money off of information asymmetry?

"It means that people who aren't as smart/savvy/wise are fair-game."

Worst thing is it completely disrupts some of the best people who are completely genuine and take things at face value. It wouldn't surprise me if normally decent people have been quite corrupted by their experiences online with trolls and fakes and scams.

> They are in their 50s and they started small and it's snowballed into this.

What's the force of nature that's pushing this snowball down the hill? Sounds like joy of hurting others, amplified by feedback and validation from like-minded people online.

There's a lot of bored 50yos apparently.

Most bored 50 year olds don't engage in trolling or other sociopathic pursuits. I suspect a considerable number are younger and older than 50.

It's not about age. It's more about reveling in others' confusion and suffering, which might stem from their own experience of that.

The frequency of that mindset and the networking of it through technology seems like our social disease.

Yes surely only sociopaths snark. Clearly getting a rise from people is a unique problem of this century.

If life didn’t turn out how you’d like, then it might feel good to see it not go well for another.

These folks are hurting.

I agree. But if that's the case, trolling really isn't a joke, and recommendations to ignore it or not take it too seriously are misguided or disingenuous.

The judgement and recommendations of people doing the trolling don't bear much weight. I'd rather hear from the people on the receiving end. If it's not welcome, then it should stop.

> I'd rather hear from the people on the receiving end. If it's not welcome, then it should stop.

It seems kind of obvious that harassment of any kind isn't welcome by the recipient. That's given by definition of the word "harassment". I've definitely been on the receiving end for what it's worth.

Honestly, it mainly sounds like you are pretty quick to judging others without actually knowing what they are doing.

So much for "doing things that damage society".

I'm not on facebook but it sounds entirely plausible. Facebook conducts psychological experiments[0] to optimise for user engagement so if that anger can make you stay a bit longer and see a few more ads then that's money for them.

Those precious hate dollars have deadly consequences though, especially for Muslims[1][2].

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jul/02/facebook-...

[1]: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-rohingya-facebook...

[2]: https://theintercept.com/2019/12/07/facebook-mark-zuckerberg...

Also not on fb. It sounds plausible to me as well.

But even in the best case scenario social media is not a robust system and will amplify controversy.

In addition there is money to be made by fanning the flames. I mean it pretty genius, people get angry they go on fb to rant about it.

Zuckerberg will be a name remembered like Carnegie, but not for making anything. Just for owning feelings and controversy. Second best to owning the color blue.

Why don't you skip Facebook and read a reputable news site?

What would you suggest as reputable news?

Hacker News

Maybe so, but it's already quite leaning in one political direction. I would love for the great, smart people that frequent here to discuss controversial/right-leaning topics with critique, nuance and fair points, but it just doesn't happen because "downvotes". We're all human, and we have greater-than-zero tendency to emotionally "dislike" contradicting opinions, valid or not.

Facebook does a weird thing where it prioritises "Top Fan" accounts on loads of pages in the comments, which very often wind up being some person with an agenda geared directly towards that page.

In my experience though the "featured comment" is always from someone against the page owner. E.g. a rabbid Fox News conspiracy theory quoting poster commenting on an NPR story.

yep, that's what I mean, they prioritise the people who are most engaged with the page, and that seems to usually wind up being someone with a huge grudge.

> I get the distinct impression that FB has an algorithm that promotes disinformation comments in order to....well I assume in order to make more money somehow.

Controversial comments drive engagement. FB's algorithm is designed to drive engagement. They've literally built an AI troll.

These are possibly "controversial" posts tagged as such because of it received a variety of positive and negative reactions.

And no mystery as to "why". They want you to click on that conversation. Perhaps you visit the news site generating a click. Now you're all wound so you scroll some more, see some more ads, and get stuck posting another comment, more ads, more clicks, etc.

So is the internet actually increasing the number of these borderline psychopaths/sociopaths or is it just giving each individual more power to do damage?

The internet is a tool.

Embedded in every tool is an ideological bias. Ex. To a person with a hammer everything is a nail. To a person with a pencil everything is a list. ...

The internet makes us differently think in a number of different ways. 1. I no longer need to remember things, or remember where or how to find things (remember encyclopedias and librarians) 2. I no longer have to rely on one source of stimulus (i can jump to the next video, finish this article later, )

There are more things but just from these two you are conditioned to not retain knowledge or understanding and react to the new shiny thing. I would say that to a person with internet everything is to immediately respond to.

What do you thing the end of the sentence should be "To a person with internet everything is _____"

I'd say with no actual data to back up my position, that it is increasing.

My reasoning would be because tech companies have designed social platforms to reward shallow hot takes. If you say something provocative in the fewest amount of characters you generate the largest response. You are rewarded with karma/likes/votes/retweets. This we all know fuels dopamine reaction so it creates a cycle.

Short hot takes need to maximize the provocation of the statement. These short comments are easy to share and digest which is easy to create a short response towards.

Doing this over and over you have to devolve into crazy ass statements that resemble something a sociopath would say.

In addition to the negative the positive is rewarded.

Positive status symbols are rewarded. Ex. pictures of a 5k, or the top of a hike or volunteering. All that feel good stuff has the same effect. You are curating your image for the audience and eventually you become that image.

It really encourages clique mentality one way or another and shoves people into echo chambers.

> The internet is an emotional medium, not a rational one.

utterly floored at how obvious this is but almost everyone has missed it. "the information superhighway", indeed.

im kind of speechless. this fits so well with everything: the degredation of media, the explosion of tracking and near-total destruction of privacy no one cares about, the most-used social media (twitter, fb, ig) having the smallest information exchange, the prevalence of easily disprovable conspiracy theories.

people have always been irrational, emotional animals. im not sure why we thought itd be different now.

> utterly floored at how obvious this is but almost everyone has missed it

It's a combination of the confirmation bias of addiction and not being skeptical upfront about technology.

It's sad, but empowering once you realize it.

> utterly floored at how obvious this is but almost everyone has missed it. "the information superhighway", indeed.

Interestingly, there was a class of people who never missed that from day one. "Don't believe everything you read on the internet," our teachers warned us. We scoffed: if we could be so stupid. No one believes anything you read on the internet.

Only looking back do I notice the slow change. We have become a people who believe everything they see on the internet.

> We have become a people who believe everything they see on the internet.

And the "traditional" media scrambled, falling all over themselves, desperately trying to become relevant as their business model disappeared, moving their content online, competing in the cacophonic nightmare of screaming known as the internet. Little did they know that adding more signal to the noise just tricked us into believe that noise was signal.

> We have become a people who believe everything they see on the internet.

Speak for yourself. I only believe things I see on the Internet if they fit my preconceived ideas.

How do I make people go back to the old days?

Bring back national TV broadcast as peoples primary source of information?

> Only looking back do I notice the slow change. We have become a people who believe everything they see on the internet.

These days, if something is NOT on the internet, it is suspect. Even if the evidence is in a well-researched book, if people can't find a URL for it, they immediately dismiss arguments out of hand. You see it all the time on this forum as well.

I once had a disagreement with a colleague about a claim in a lab manual for undergraduates. About 10 seconds into the discussion, his instinctive reaction was "Does the internet say that's right?"

After speaking with the professor that teaches the class, his instinct was also to check that the internet says it's right before updating the lab manual. I had a simple argument based on a well-known formula, but ultimately it's the internet that decides whether it's right or not.

Perhaps the internet is best understood as a reasonable shorthand for general consensus.

Well, most of the people who made it, and the early adopters tended towards being rational, eh?

Boiling frogs and Eternal September and all that.

> The internet is an emotional medium, not a rational one. I treat it that way.

What does it mean, to treat it that way?

It is a means of communication that can invoke a strong emotional response. Mainly cause it's visual. A movie might make a good point or make you feel sympathetic. But it is hard to build up a rational, logic argument. It's all feel.

The emotional response takes away from rational processing of the information. A great example is the 1960 kennedy v. nixon debate. Nixon was doing well. He showed up sick, with a dark suit. Kennedy was young and handsome in a blue suit. It's hard to really listen to someone that looks bad.

The internet is an extension of TV in that regard.

HN is one of the few forums that you can have some serious conversations. In part because of the audience, but also in part of the format. There are no emojis, or gifs or pictures, nothing shiny to distract. It's just text on a screen.

EDIT: Neil Postman is a great resource and describes it much better than I can

Yup, five or ten years ago they'd literally have said "for the lulz". It's just the same thing.

Faxing unlimited black pages to the church of Scientology is a little different from owning the libs by organizing protests and getting people killed.

"angry techsavvy teenager" but your "friends" "are in their 50s." Riiiighht. At least you're able to have a multifaceted conversation in this context.

"They are pretty cool dudes with a messed up sense of humor." I dunno but that sounds pretty sociopathic right there, like my friends are cool dudes with a penchant for stealing walkers from old ladies.

There's a certain character type that revels in the rule of the strongest. Bullying and screwing with people because they can. They feel it's the natural order of things. If they don't take advantage of someone or some opportunity, someone else will and be ahead--and they'd rather be ahead. Or they justify it as a way to "teach" others to not be weak and fall for things.

In many ways, I think it is a right-wing or conservative characteristic: rugged individualist winning by breaking social conventions. I also saw it prominently in the House TV series, not coincidentally on Fox. Every episode is a medical mystery, but also all about screwing over other people emotionally--it really seemed off to me.

In my mind, they are low-trust players trying to undermine and benefit from breaking a high-trust society.

How old are they? It seems they lack empathy depending on what they troll. It seems a childish.

People have been making billions for decades by wilfully destroying the planet, or exploiting third world populations. This is nothing new, it's just hitting closer to home than you're used to.

Rules of Acquisition

34: War is good for business.

35: Peace is good for business.

I would not use those rule numbers.

It's a Star Trek reference: https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Ferengi_Rules_of_Acquisi...

I guess I’ve been exposed to the wrong things…

For some people, I think it's away of dealing with feeling isolated and alone... hurting others makes them feel better, less alone, in their unhappiness.

Also probably scratches an itch for ignorant/powerless sociopaths.

There can be a wider sense to being destructive. Example mindset: if we as a society have too much inertia to steer away from tragedy, it's better to hasten its arrival, rather than slow it, because the later it comes, the more destructive it will be. Constructive destruction. In that vein, populism is good, identity politics is good, culture of greed is good, growing inequality is good, etc.

I don't share that viewpoint, but, I do think that many of these destructive trends are an unconscious civilization-level self-regulation, which has the purpose of dropping inertia by gradually destroying self.

So basically their answer to the trolley problem is to flip the switch and have it run over one person instead of five.

It only makes sense to act that way if you absolutely know a tragedy will occur. Of course, in the real world, the future is not so certain. You can't know for sure if the damage you do in the short term is any less than the damage that would have happened.

I think there's a fair amount of people who think that status quo is untenable. That, and a sense of overwhelming inertia is all it takes.

Sounds like self-serving, "ends justify the means" bullshit to me.

Like a villain in a movie, right? Where you're setup to despise him, but also sympathize with him just a bit. I think that people who are genuinely destructive might have rationalizations about why they're doing what they're doing, but the rationalization is just a distraction. Ultimately they don't really know, because it's bigger than them.

There's a sizable minority of the younger generation with a sense that the world as is offers them no purpose or worthwhile future, and no control over the institutions that have guided it to this point.

Increasingly large numbers of them seem determined to topple the Apple cart, if only for the opportunity to experience anything else.

Certainly, it's self-serving. But with enough momentum, it may end up working.

> it may end up working

Said every revolutionary ever, just before the new tyrants take over* from the old tyrants.

* with incredibly few exceptions (before you quote the American revolution at me; and please don't equate trolls with the American revolutionaries).

I was referring to their attempt to tip the apple cart. Not create a new world. Nowhere in this thread has anybody come close to proposing this as a net good, or even really what the world would look like after such an acceleration. My comment was strictly observational in nature.

I'll grant that I could have done better in clarifying that.

However, even in the event that I was attempting to advocate on behalf of an accelerationist mindset, there was no need for you to respond combatively, or condescendingly cut off some weak (albeit common) argument that you've wargamed out in your head.

Believe it or not, not everybody's as stupid or predictable as you seem to think they are, and you should ask someone for details before you decide what they think for them.

In compliment to your point, I think it's important to remember that the "toppling of the cart", doesn't aim, as an express purpose, to put the cart where you want it to be, but rather to destroy the cart. The phenomenon, I argue, is more base than revolution, and it doesn't have a focus on the future (or even a sense of it). It's exclusively about the now. So it's a mistake to evoke revolutions as examples. I called it constructive destruction in my original commnent, but a more accurate expression would be ultimately-maybe-inadvertently-constructive destruction.

I did notice a spike in comments on some fora along the lines of 'let it fall apart', where it refers to the current cart I suppose. There is a really strong dissatisfaction with current situation and it has to be addressed or at least channelled.

The same is true about the status quo. People who don't find that the prevailing system works for them have little motivation to uphold it, although different groups may oppose the status quo for very different reasons.

Marxists call this "accelerationism": making things worse to hasten the revolution.

Marxists call this "accelerationism"

No they don't; most Marxists (of whom I am not one) dislike the term and have little truck with accelerationist philosophy, such as it is - best summarized here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/11/accelerationis...

You may be thinking of Marx's phrase about 'sharpening the contradictions' between capital and labor to hasten what Marx believed to be an inevitable conflict between them, but accelerationism is rooted in an idea of amoral Darwinian fitness whereas Marx's anxiety was that industrialists would capture the productive capacity of society and extract economic rents from it much as feudal lords had captured agricultural land and done likewise.

Although it's true that Marxists and accelerationists aren't the same group of people, they have made strange bedfellows recently, especially with the birth of xenofeminism. The disagreements in accelerationist circles stretch far beyond "amoral Darwinian fitness".

Marx was in some ways ahead of his time in recognizing that the productive capacity of society had already been captured (and had been so at least two hundred years before Capital was published), and the novel demystification of rent, profit and interest into surplus value. Despite the hints that Marx thought "things should get worse before they get better", there is stronger textual evidence for his belief in engaging in parliamentary politics. Whether that advice can ring true in today's 'democracies' remains to be seen.

Xenofeminism is a new one on me. Just when I thought it was safe to forget about theory, too. I'll check it out!

'If nature is unjust, change nature.' That was by far one of the weirder things I have read over the past months.

It's just common sense in a system of capitalism. When you have people like Adam Neumann, Martin Shkreli, etc. getting filthy rich off of their non-existent consciences, then it's only natural that you'll have smaller fish like this trying to do the same. Most of them don't even end up in prison.

Well - this is basically the Twitter and Facebook business model. It's just that they're wilfully curating and disseminating the bullshit for profit instead of creating it.

And even that is just a reinvention of the old tabloid business model, but with better analytics and slightly more ass covering - especially on FB, which can't quite decide if it should remove this traffic for moral reasons, or optimise its algos for the user engagement it generates.

The troll business has always been toxic and poisonous, but now it's far more concentrated.

Without social media and the more insane elements in the MSM, trolls would be limited to mad little mail order operations and micro-niche lecture tours of mostly empty church halls.

> Being purposefully combative, negative, divisive, and awful just to make money is not a great look. How? Why? Why do people do these things?

I actually came across a BBC article[1] several weeks ago that examined the motivations behind one of the sources of fake news.

[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/the_godfather_of...

My theory: a certain percentage of people have a lower than average empathetic response, usually by birth, but sometimes also by repeated exposure to mistreatment/neglect at a young age. These indivduals probably played an evolutionary role in human tribes (perhaps something similar to those "soldier" ants in some ant colonies).

But the scale and connectedness of modern society allows such individuals to expand their influence in ways that were not possible in prehisotric societies. And so they go ahead and do it.

I don't believe they have any problems sleeping at night or looking at themselves in the mirror. Those circuits in their brains either don't function or are heavily attenuated.

They want money and aren't as socialized as you.

Americans are busy. The only reliable way to get attention is to be pithy and controversial.

This is how politics on both sides has been working for the last 30 years.

They do it because the other side is fighting the same dirty way, and if they don’t respond in kind, they will lose something they value.

Follow the money?

Alex Jones for example sets himself up to profit from the conspiracy theories he pushes.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2018/08/16/alex-jones-...

Sociopathy?

They're basically the kind of people who would be picked up in secret by the FBI/CIA and co in the Cold War for inciting unrest and instability, because who would benefit from a sweeping pandemic in the US and consequent instability?

Superficially, it'd be the gun sellers, because more individuality and chaos means more people will want to "protect" themselves.

But beyond that, internationally there's foreign nations that can benefit from the US being disorganized. It means they can buy in / loan out financial dependency (e.g. China building ports and infrastructure in Africa which they will gain full ownership of if they can't pay off the loans), which leads to control and an advantage in e.g. trade deals.

Plus if the US is finally forced to deal with its own problems, it won't stir as much shit abroad. Russia seems to have an interest in (re)claiming territory; who is going to stop them from claiming Afghanistan (again) if the US is too busy dealing with an epidemic and/or a revolution?

Disclaimers: Not an American, not a historian or politician, I'm just spewing random bullshit, citation needed etc.

This is a fascinating example of real world propaganda that, given the impact of the pandemic, has a high probability of being in history textbooks. Given that, I’m curious, how do does the HN population think we should respond?

Imagine looking back on this in hindsight. What type of picture would we want to paint for future generations to learn from?

Either we successfully manage to educate the majority of Americans on how to apply critical thinking skills to what they see on the Internet, or we balkanize the 'net and try to keep the bad actors out (or at least force them to attack from a location we have legal jurisdiction over). I feel like this is just one more nail in the coffin of the free worldwide Internet.

I really don't see any good solutions. It is super difficult to defend against entities acting in bad faith when their cost of their actions is essentially zero.

People will not be educated because they see right past “truth” and look for their “group” or “tribe”. Like a deeper truth. (Autocorrect suggested deeper trump.)

What makes you think the bad actors aren't already within "our" legal jurisdiction. The "Foreign" part of misinformation campaigns is a red herring. Case in point TFA is more likely the doing of domestic neoliberals than foreign actors.

This is just weaponized public relations. The public will become educated. It reminds me of the Flintstones brought to you by cigarette brand x.

Public relations was always weaponized.

The problem is that finding truth is so much more time consuming than lying. A couple friends and I looked at creating a Canadian fact-checking website as we don't really have a Politifact up north, especially not for the smaller provinces.

We gave up when we went on Twitter to see just how much nonsense was floating around and realizing that even basic lies took 30 minutes each to refute. Assuming that we had perfect access to people's information feeds and assuming they all believed us anyway (and many wouldn't), we would still need 6x as many people as popular trolls/liars existed to fight back.

You would basically need to have a legion of volunteers willing to spend 30 minutes undoing 5 minutes of damage.

Would there be any way to crowdsource this kind of application? Like wikipedia. 'Heres one source to back up this claim' 'Heres 8 sources that go against this claim'

Snopes

Snopes is already seen as a 'leftist' source by those folks who need it most.

I generally prefer politifact over snopes. Snopes seems to mix news with fact checking, and the search tool does not distinguish between fact checking and news. In addition, politifact ground their articles to political statements that can be sourced to a specific person, time and place. That create a framing for which a broader subject can be discussed, but also limits the scope to that specific statement.

Some experts argue that "fact checking" sites are a waste of resources. Those who believe the misinformation would not accept the "fact check" as plausible and those open to questioning the misinformation generally find the truth on their own.

Relevant lecture from US Army War College: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUpCiA0WZ5k

I think the value sometimes is in having relevant resources to point to when in localized arguments. (If someone is repeating a falsehood, I can direct them to resources that refute it rather than having to do all the searching repeatedly).

Such arguments are usually emotional and spouting off facts is unlikely to change the other person's stance and instead make them double down harder.

I've attempted to engage with people in ideological echo chambers not by citing any specific facts that contradict their beliefs, but by asking them to state their own beliefs using more specific and concrete language. "What exactly is your definition of communism?", "Has Bernie made any specific statements indicating that he supports that policy? If not, what leads you to infer that he does?", etc.

The results? No engagement at all.

People do not want to be challenged in an echo chamber. Either talk to them (without convincing them of anything) outside the chamber, or walk away.

Agreed, often it's less about the person you are interacting with but about those reading your conversation.

That assumes the truth is relatively easy to unpack.

As someone who seriously considered building a fact-checking website, I am sure that I fit reasonably well into the group of people who would question misinformation, but often I can't find the truth without going through reams of government documents or sifting through tweets.

There have been plenty of things I have questioned, investigated, given up on investigating as unpacking it was a burden, and thought that it was more likely than not that such a thing was true. I have been wrong in that way many times.

Who fact checks the fact checkers?

> spend 30 minutes undoing 5 minutes of damage

Cache.

If there are 100 trolls posting: "all birds are blue" you only need to refute it once and link "Are all birds blue? No" article. 5 minutes of damage * 100 vs 30 minutes of undoing

Yes, but there are infinitely more lies than there are truths. If 80% of lies result in a cache miss then you are in the same position. Especially when it is easy to create a lie that is very hard to disprove.

Here's a whole thread about a similar movement during the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic, in San Francisco:

https://twitter.com/timkmak/status/1251936242834563073

Government censorship!

No, I'm kidding. But I think something akin to mass surveillance will be needed (hopefully not in a way like China). The fundamental principle is that a bigger (more popular, more powerful, etc.) entity needs more scrutiny. The common strategy to do this is constant monitoring and quick response. So we would build a mechanism that keeps watching the popularity of all the information sources all the time, and allocate public eyeballs accordingly. And all the findings (including the surveillance system itself) must be published. I don't know how to do it exactly, but I can kinda imagine a world that implements such a system.

And you know what's the catch? I think we should probably lose our privacy by a large margin. Now the question is, are we ready to sacrifice some of our rights to fight a bigger enemy like this?

So basically by "mass surveillance," you mean some kind of decentralized system that does the kind of work that Google does (quickly indexing new or changed data)?

You might be on to something here.

Apparently Michael Murphy registered a bunch of domains to try to block people doing this BS, not to support it, and isn't related to the other registrations.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/04/reopen-liberate...

Title: “How an “Old Hippie” Got Accused of Astroturfing the Right-Wing Campaign to Reopen the Economy”

“Murphy snapped up domains for every still available iteration of reopenAL.com, reopenAK.com, reopenAR.com, and so forth, that hadn’t already been purchased, along with every domain he could for variations like liberateWV.com, liberateWY.com, and liberateWI.com.”

“I realized all these fringe guys are gonna get a hold of these websites, So I went out and bought ‘em up that night,” he told me. The financial burden of thwarting fringe-right groups? “It cost me about four grand,” Murphy said. “I don’t have the money quite frankly. I was just trying to do something good. I’m in massive credit debt to do this.”

“Murphy said that he recognized that his plan isn’t foolproof. While similar domains have already been obtained and still remain up for purchase, he thinks keeping fringe-right wingers from the one’s he purchased has made a difference.”

Great find Isiebert.

>Almost all of the hate was coming from liberals, many of them egged on by presuming posts from amateur Twitter sleuths [...] None of the hate was from conservatives angry at him for keeping them from using the domains themselves.

This is consistent with the GOP astroturfing the registrations. The Left's response is obviously organic, if vitriolic.

I find it interesting that many of the protestors, including one holding a sign saying "COVID-19 is a lie", are wearing face masks.

Well, if you're breaking the law and being photographed, maybe a face mask is a good idea. And maybe, given what they're protesting, the face mask has a certain ironic humor to it.

Or maybe they're hypocrites, or just not thinking very well.

Given what they’re trying to protest, probably the very last one.

I would like to think it's possible to protest lockdowns and their economic destruction while also taking the virus seriously and observing social distancing and wearing masks.

I don't think it's possible to take the virus seriously while also carrying a sign that says "COVID is a lie".

Is that the view of every protester?

That I cannot say.

The view of that particular protester was that he thought the virus was a lie. He was also wearing a face mask.

I am very concerned about the economic impact this will have and I am also taking this seriously and observing social distancing.

What would be a reason to protest lockdowns?

The fact that protesting is illegal is reason enough in the USA to protest. If the government can take away fundamental rights via executive fiat then we never had rights in the first place, we had permissions.

For many it's a matter of principle. For others who are literally having to stand in food lines for the first time ever and are unable to pay rent or write paychecks, it's a matter of survival.

If suspending certain rights in emergencies is a reason to protest we need to change the government.

If we can't take care of each other at a time of emergency shame on us. I mean us the people not the government.

Protesting isn't illegal if you follow social distancing guidelines. I can't imagine courts would have an issue with that under a time, manner and place restriction framework.

Infamous tweet from Raleigh PD indicates how police feel about it:

https://twitter.com/raleighpolice/status/1250111779574894594

(No qualifications about distancing)

And they got ratio'd to death, as they should have. Cops don't have law degrees (and well to be fair, neither do I).

One tweet from one police department isn't generalizable across the board.

"If the government can take away fundamental rights via executive fiat then we never had rights in the first place, we had permissions"

I mean, isn't that the definition of rights? If the government can take away fundamental rights via executive power, then it is called having a penal system. We all live in a state of exception, freedom is always conditioned, during a pandemic or otherwise. There is no principled libertarian stance that is violated now but not status quo ante.

People are really protesting the government with this, as they haven't provided a great solution to basically turning off capitalism for most businesses/employees. Most people I know who filed unemployment weeks ago, still haven't seen a single dime, and bills are due.

Human rights violations on free movement and association.

Home confinement must be voluntary, or it is a major fundamental infringement upon basic human rights.

I assume you wouldn’t tolerate the government shutting down or mass censoring the media/publishing during an emergency?

Everyone should be staying home. No one should be using force to ensure that.

> Human rights violations on free movement and association.

Can you be specific? No one is preventing you from visiting a friend or going to a private residence...

> Home confinement must be voluntary

Is it not?

> Everyone should be staying home. No one should be using force to ensure that.

Who is using force to ensure people stay home?

I'm really shocked at the difference in the way the lockdowns are perceived by some people. I mean, just read the text of your local order. Here's the one for California, for example: https://covid19.ca.gov/stay-home-except-for-essential-needs/

Now... read through that and tell me exactly which provisions constitute a "Human right violation" to you?

From the page you linked "public events and gatherings" are banned. That sounds like restricting freedom of assembly to me.

Clearly forcing many businesses to shut down is restricting the right to work, and forcing schools to shut down or go online restricts the right to education.

Outside of individual states, the travel bans being instituted around the world are definitely restrictions on freedom of movement.

Disclaimer: I don't live in the US and the lockdowns in my country were (and to some degree still are) far more draconian than this. However, I can still see why people in the US are upset about what their government has required of them.

The "shelter in place" orders in many California counties don't allow for visiting a friend or going to a private residence. This is absolutely a violation of the right to free assembly. Temporarily restricting that right might be appropriate to slow down the pandemic, but it is technically a human rights violation.

> The "shelter in place" orders in many California counties don't allow for visiting a friend or going to a private residence.

Which counties? Are there any people who have been prevented from visiting friends, or prosecuted for doing so?

I mean, I'm seeing a whole lot of screaming about Freedom here and very little evidence of any such abridgement.

All of the Bay Area counties have prohibited visiting friends. It is not listed as "essential travel" and the counties have threatened to fine or imprison violators.

https://www.sccgov.org/sites/covid19/Pages/order-health-offi...

So, because it's not in a list it's therefore prohibited and thus a human rights violation? Even though it says quite clearly you can meet your friends outdoors as long as you observe social distancing? (13. iii.)

And sorry, I missed the news I guess. What's the cite for people who have been threatened with fines or (!!) prison for visiting friends?

You really don't think you're making making a bit much of this?

Death is also a human rights violation. If you party it up and sneeze at me at s grocery store then you're infringing mine.

If we're both in public, we're both accepting a level of risk. Your decision to accept that level of risk is not an infringement by another person.

If we are both in public and you decide to use your fully licensed and 2A permissible gun to start shooting in random directions then you will be liable for the consequences. Declaring that just by going out in public everyone else has decided to assume the risk that you are a dangerous asshole is not going to be acceptable and you will face legal consequences for your negligent behavior. Just because the weapon is a virus you may carry rather than a gun will not change your negligence.

Is it okay if we go in public and I smoke on your face.

> Home confinement must be voluntary

No-one is "confined". Even in Washington state, which has some of the more strict rules in place, says "You are perfectly allowed to go outside, and do the things you need to do, but practice common sense and public health best practices when you do".

> No one should be using force to ensure that.

Where has force been applied to keep people in their homes?

http://abc3340.com/news/nation-world/police-alabama-woman-ar...

https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/490445-lou...

These are not isolated incidents. To be clear, I don’t agree with their actions. I also don’t agree that what they were doing should be illegal.

Being cited for coordinating and organizing specifically prohibited (sure, we can debate the merits of this) public gatherings in confined spaces is still several steps removed from "confined in home by force".

Your counter-example for people disputing your claim about confinement is a woman who organized a party. This doesn't help your argument at all.

In Washington state, there are threats of fines for using facilities like parks. Most of our outside activities either take place in a private destination (like work or some other business) or a public one (city parks, state park trails, national forest alnds). When the private businesses are ordered closed, public lands are closed by the government, then the citizen has nothing left to go to.

You can claim that isn't coercion because you don't have to stay in your home and could aimlessly walk outside, but to most people, it feels like coercion. After all, private businesses and individuals can make their own voluntary risk assessment about staying open, and public lands belong well, to the public who front the taxes to support them.

> After all, private businesses and individuals can make their own voluntary risk assessment about staying open

Absolutely hell no. They were given the chance and repeatedly made the wrong "risk assessment" resulting in deaths.

Freedom requires that people make individual risk assessments. The true mortality rate of COVID-19 is only around 0.37%, based on the results from the broad antibody test in Germany. The typical flu season is 0.1%. For healthy people under 50, the risk is very low and they should be permitted to go about their lives if they so choose.

Those that are too scared to go outside can self isolate per their own risk assessment. But curtailing others’ freedom due to their own fears is not OK.

Your statement, labeling others’ choices as the wrong risk assessment, feels very authoritarian to me. By that logic we should ban anything that carries a nonzero possibility of death, whether it is skiing or biking or alcohol.

In this case, I do not mean individuals. I mean businesses.

> For healthy people under 50

This is not their choice: in the US you have completely unnecessary businesses forcing people with conditions, elderly people, etc. that could be transacted entirely online forcing people to "go to work or get fired and we will refuse any unemployment claim because you decided to no-show", "you are not allowed to wear masks because you will scare customers, even if you buy masks yourself", -type of bullshit. It does not help that unemployment is also rather broken or overloaded and people are not getting paid that need it the most.

This is unacceptable. And yes, you can argue that the individuals for this can eventually win in court, but they are also generally from populations where knowing how to navigate the complexity of the legal system is rare.

This comparison would be a lot better if certain portions of the US were not under situations where they are stuck between a rock and a hard place with regard to work availability, workers' rights, etc.

> But curtailing others’ freedom due to their own fears is not OK.

It's not only fears of individuals, but also a rate limited healthcare system. The people making the risk assessment as an individual to go out and gather should also consider "you no longer have access to medical care" as part of the risk assessment.

Exactly. And now we have Trump "considering" whether to pass an executive order allowing companies to require a waiver for their employees that they won't be liable, even if you get sick on the job.

I was on the fence about attending a protest an hour away. Ended up not going. But I would absolutely be wearing a mask, at a distance from everybody else (look at what they did in Tel Aviv), and in the camp of "take this seriously, stay at home when you can (not ironic, I consider the protest important), take personal responsibility to save lives AND make room for people who have to work to maintain their livelihood, wear a mask and otherwise maximize safety when you do return to work". (Hard to fit that all on a sign, of course.)

Reasons would be: 1) Don't you dare tell me protests are "non-essential" activities (see Raleigh PD) 2) Let people decide if they want to work. People are already quite cautious at this point. (I say this with some hesitation, which is one part of why I didn't go)

There are important issues of health, economy, and government power grab. Most people on all sides of the issue seem to pick only one or two.

Is it safe to open up restaurants, bars, retails with social distancing and masks?

Also, I'm skeptical of whether the US has the appropriate culture to handle such a thing.

Restaurants could probably open with spread out tables, open windows, etc. Bars maybe not, fair enough. But in most states I think both already are somewhat open with take out.

Because the cure maybe worse using draconian lockdowns instead of just social distancing like Sweden:

COVID-19 Is Likely to Lead to an Increase in Suicides: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/covid-19-i...

The Untold Toll — The Pandemic’s Effects on Patients without Covid-19: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMms2009984

Even if we open back up, we should still keep the elderly/at-risk populations as quarantined as possible. Practice social distancing. Not hold large festivals/gatherings/etc until we get a vaccine or achieve herd immunity.

There are no draconian lockdowns, as yet, in the US, not are any currently planned.

Compared to Sweden they are certainly draconian.

Sweden argues that they have disciplined populace that does not socialize anyway. That they generally keep away from each other and follow rules without being forced to.

I dont know whether it is true statistically, nor whether it will end up being food from them, but that is what people from Sweden argue.

Sweden is on an exponential growth curve, has five-to-ten times the deaths of its neighbours, is severely under-testing, and is instituting more and more aspects of a lockdown.

It's not exponential any more. Just 40 new coronavirus deaths yesterday and the curve has been declining for two weeks (from a top of over 100).

> and is instituting more and more aspects of a lockdown

Like what? There haven't been any new restrictions for weeks.

We are headed for 30% unemployment. I'd hate to see what "draconian" lockdowns would do.

> COVID-19 Is Likely to Lead to an Increase in Suicides

They didn't quantify the increase, but said Trump's warnings of "suicides by the thousands" "may be exaggerated".

So that's a couple days of COVID-19 deaths in the US.

> The Untold Toll — The Pandemic’s Effects on Patients without Covid-19

This explicitly says that the pandemic should have no effect on emergency admissions.

The others (cancer sufferers who are avoiding hospitals etc) are the people most likely to die because of a reduction in social distancing.

> Because the cure maybe worse using draconian lockdowns instead of just social distancing like Sweden

Sweden's death rate is nearly 3 times that of Denmark, 4 times that of Norway, and nearly 10 times that of Finland. Since late April it has had to reverse its loose policies and start introducing bans similar to elsewhere[1].

[1] https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/swedish-coronav...

> Since late April it has had to reverse its loose policies and start introducing bans similar to elsewhere[1].

Citation does not support your claim. The reference you give was from April 17th (last friday), and references the barring of visits to nursing homes on April 1st, but no additional bans since that time.

Sorry - typo, meant late March (obviously, since it was only written mid-April!).

And the other restrictions were reducing the size of allowed gatherings (500 to 50) and importantly for this discussion introduced sanctions for non-compliance.

Lockdowns are very convenient for governments because they block protests. Now is the perfect time to pass all the inconvenient laws, because even if people march out on the streets, you can easily arrest them. And other, non-protesting part of the country will cheer you for it. At least until the other part wants to protest too and realizes it affects them as well.

> Now is the perfect time to pass all the inconvenient laws, because even if people march out on the streets, you can easily arrest them. And other, non-protesting part of the country will cheer you for it. At least until the other part wants to protest too and realizes it affects them as well.

The governor of VA did exactly that.

He got hit with a massive protest back in January(?) when it looked like he was gonna sign some gun related legislation. He signed a nearly identical bill recently while everyone was busy talking about Covid. Regardless of how you feel about the legislation I think it's a slimy move. I assume other state governors are doing the same things and just haven't heard about them yet.

If you think social distancing is important and are taking the virus seriously, what exactly would you be protesting? You wouldn't be going to restaurants, or theaters, or crowded parks, or shopping for non-essential things. You probably wouldn't be sending your kids to schools either.

I think a lot of the problem here is that people have been led to believe these "lockdowns" are hugely invasive, when they're really about as minimal as is possible. There are no police-enforced quarantines, as there have been in many nations. The definitions of "essential" businesses have been VERY liberally interpreted, to the extent that large numbers of routine office workers are still going to work every day.

What, exactly is the policy you think needs a protest to be enacted?

We spent 2+ trillion dollars so they could stay home.

> What, exactly is the policy you think needs a protest to be enacted?

A plan for re-opening. There should be reasonable targets of X transmission rate, Y available hospital beds, X masks, etc. that we can aim for and achieve.

The lockdown here in Canada feels 10x more uncomfortable and hopeless than it needs to be because without a concrete plan for re-opening my mind extrapolates into "this will last forever, or 18-24 months for a vaccine".

Nobody is willing to discuss an acceptable number of infections and deaths that we can aim for, they just say things like "health/lives at any cost" which is terrifying as it implies "lockdown until vaccine".

> There should be reasonable targets of X transmission rate, Y available hospital beds, X masks, etc. that we can aim for and achieve.

Is that what you think the protesters were agitating for? That doesn't sound like the complaint upthread, either.

I think that's a great idea, by the way. I just don't think that such a policy would satisfy the people in question.

> Nobody is willing to discuss an acceptable number of infections and deaths that we can aim for

Alright, that's just silly. People, very serious policy people, are arguing about that stuff as we speak.

> they just say things like "health/lives at any cost"

Who is "they"? Who says this? That sounds like a strawman to me.

> Alright, that's just silly. People, very serious policy people, are arguing about that stuff as we speak.

> Who is "they"? Who says this? That sounds like a strawman to me.

I can't find a single quote from Doug Ford or Justin Trudeau indicating what they think an acceptable infection/death rate is that would allow a partial re-open.

I can find plenty saying the opposite (although I understand, you can't necessarily take these quotes literally):

"I understand the actions we are taking are affecting the lives and livelihoods of people across the province, but these are extraordinary times and we need to do whatever we can to keep individuals and families safe and stop the spread of this terrible virus" - Premier of Ontario

(https://news.ontario.ca/opo/en/2020/04/ontario-takes-further...)

Respectfully, this seems like a you problem. Most people are more tolerant of the uncertainty and seem content to wait for a clear trend of decline that can be extrapolated toward a target date. Nobody knows for sure how this is going to play out, and a wait-and-see approach is broadly preferred to a premature leap towards what might be a false place of safety.

I don't expect a target date from them, I expect something like "we will re-open (partially, with such and such mitigations still in place) if and only if cases decline monotonically over a period of 7 days and we have 30,000 free hospital beds and 10 million N95 masks in stock".

Is the claim that folks aren’t actively working on these types of guidelines?

This is an information poor environment. I fail to see how any scientist would take such stringent targets as acceptable given that.

This is weird. Most people are just fine with this wait-and-see approach? Is this the uniquely Silicon Valley "I can work from home and my job is safe forever" viewpoint I've been hearing working class people complain about? Have you not noticed that we tech workers are getting axed left and right?

Look at Sweden. Social distancing is the official strategy but we can still go to restaurants and schools are open. It's not black or white and the US lockdown is definitely not minimal compared to Sweden.

https://time.com/5817412/sweden-coronavirus/

Yeah... about that.

From a western news outlet point of view, it seems like Sweden is doing it wrong.

That article is old by corona standards. The tone has changed a lot internationally now when Sweden actually seems to have it under control even though essentially minimal measures have been taken.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8235979/UKs-coronav...

https://www.welt.de/print/die_welt/finanzen/article207268361...

Sweden is slithering into a full blown catastrophy, killing over 1'300 mostly elderly people with their laissez-fair approach [1].

As of the latest WHO status report they count 1'540 dead as per yesterday[2].

Given, that they country only 14385 confirmed cases this indicates that there is a massive lack in testing.

Looking at experiences from other countries the numbers are bound to explode in the next few days.

I understand, given the current yearning for wishful thinking that people point to Sweden as a role model for managing the crisis.

The grim reality, however, looks very different and Sweden is on the best way to one of the greatest corona catastrophies in Europe.

So much for Sweden having it under control.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/19/anger-in-swede...

[2]https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situati...

You're assuming too much. We had just 40 new coronavirus deaths yesterday and the curve has been declining for two weeks (from a top of over 100). We still have a 20% ICU capacity in Stockholm (the hardest hit region).

Yes, we've only been testing people who require medical attention. No-one thinks we only have 15 000 cases. We probably have a hundreds of thousands of cases in Stockholm alone but the consensus in Sweden is that Stockholm will reach herd immunity in May.

Neighbouring countries are starting to ease up their restrictions so I think we will see an explosion of cases there compared to Sweden but let's talk again in a few days to see if it really exploded in Sweden like you claim it will.

I find I'm saying this more and more on HN these days - you're being downvoted but you're right. Living in Czech Republic, Sweden has been my benchmark since the population is nearly identical[0] and the responses have been markedly different - Sweden: open, Czech: closed.

Sweden has more than twice the number of confirmed cases Czech Republic has (~14700 vs ~6900). This is a hard thing to compare, this could be attributed to differences in testing, doesn't include asymptomatic cases and some suggest there's a bit of clever accounting going on so let's look at something else ...

Sweden currently has eight times the number of deaths the Czech Republic has (1580 vs 196). This is an absolutely incredible incredible difference! The Anglosphere has for a while had a really unhealthy obsession with the Nordic countries, Sweden in particular (I have my own theories on why). When it was apparent they were pursuing a more relaxed approach to Covid 19 many in the media and the public seemed desperate to latch on to them as How it Should Be Done. However it seems that in this case they should really have looked East for inspiration, rather than North.

[0] = https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+sweden+v... ... and in fact given how large it is and how distant it is from other early hotspots, the Sweden/Czech comparison should be an unfair comparison in Sweden's favour.

The question is what will happen once you ease your restrictions. Nothing is comparable right now.

Not sure why you say the media was praising Sweden's approach. I only saw international media completely bashing Sweden's strategy but that has changed the last week now when the death rate curve is declining in Sweden and we still have ICU capacity.

The UK media was flooded with articles fawning over Sweden’s approach - they loved the idea that you could be open for business but closed for viral transmissions. Which sadly doesn’t seem to be the case and accordingly they’ve reversed course, and observed the decline you have described.

Update: here is an example of the sort of article I mean. At that moment everyone was running with this idea, not just the BBC: https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200328-how-to-self-is...

I don’t quite understand the first part of your comment - when to relax restrictions is a problem everyone will have and is not unique to Czech Republic. Granted, the huge success of the measures here might make the decision a little harder ... but the fact that we have prevented thousands of deaths is a GOOD thing and shouldn’t be taken as a negative.

They are probably doing it ironically.

One of the biggest risks voicing any political viewpoint is that your opponents will demand you be fired from your job because of it. If you wear a mask, it becomes much more difficult for onlookers to identify you and contact your employer.

Seems it wasn't some fringe group. Just an old hippie trying to preempt such groups:

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/04/reopen-liberate...

Well, that certainly wasn't the dramatic irony I was expecting!

“I bought these names to try to stop the insanity, basically. And it just turned to insanity,” he said. He felt forced to unplug his phone, and his inbox exploded with messages attacking him—and potentially trying to hack him.

Almost all of the hate was coming from liberals, many of them egged on by presuming posts from amateur Twitter sleuths who mistakenly pegged Murphy as a conservative organizing protests in defiance of nationwide stay at home orders. None of the hate was from conservatives angry at him for keeping them from using the domains themselves."

edit: Tomorrow, I wonder if we'll be reading Brian's mea culpa. He did go overboard with the whole Azrael Abyss tone, and was clearly trolled. Poor Guy. On the interwebs, the stories just write themselves.

Link to the reddit thread explaining things here. Alright there is most likely more than one astroturfing actor right now.

https://www.reddit.com/r/maryland/comments/g3niq3/i_simply_c...

I'm not hunting to a false moral equivalence and there is no need for a bilateral symmetry here. I just observe as the comments in the Krebs article do: where are the Dems/BlueFlag equivalents? Their absence is interesting.

I actually do take heart from a lack of obscured PAC type industry funded backrooms behind the absent 'stay locked down' protest movement. Is throws the lack of goodwill into sharper focus perhaps.

Why would anyone want a “stay locked down” PAC? It’s not a political position that really benefits anyone, it’s a humanitarian one.

And also, arguably, an economic one. A population where everyone over 50 (middle class or not) is afraid to do anything in public because a deadly pandemic is rampant, will not be conductive to an economic recovery.

I've seen multiple economists make that argument in the last few weeks. The view that it's the economy vs. health & safety is very much contested.

It's because the equivalency doesn't exist. The "both sides" argument is a political argument used by the republican party and it's always in the context of "Look! They're just as bad as us." as an excuse to justify their behaviour.

Only one side spent months pretending that the cornavirus pandemic didn't exist when we should have been preparing for it. It was one side that pitted the states against each other and held back life-saving supplies based on personal favors to the president. It's one side that is fueling the dangerous protests right now.

That's also only just the last few months. So much has happened that I barely even remember all of the other crises that one side has caused. The Ukraine scandal, Russian interference, election fraud and the long trail of indictments that came from it. There's also hurricane Maria (which foreshadowed covid-19), spygate, the revolving door of the presidential cabinet, and the fact that it's such a problem that some seats are just unfilled because they cannot find enough people who are willing to put up with "the one side" for them. All of this is well documented by loads of reputed news sources and there is no equivalent "other side" to this behavior.

Edit: It really stinks, because I personally lean conservative on financial issues, but I cannot in good conscience support this administration.

Where are you getting this idea that only the Republicans "pretended that the pandemic didn't exist"?

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/as-vir...

Nancy Pelosi dismissing the threat and encouraging people to celebrate in large groups in Chinatown on Feb 24th:

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/03/30/nancy-pelosi-d...

Here's a tweet, still live, by NYC Mayor Bill Deblasio on March 2 urging people to get out and socialize:

https://twitter.com/BilldeBlasio/status/1234648718714036229

A piece by a reporter including a video that Trump made of media sources downplaying the Coronavirus threat:

https://dailycaller.com/2020/04/19/unfit-to-print-trump-coro...

All left-wing media outlets spent their time downplaying it. Here's a few pictures:

https://twitter.com/DanCrenshawTX/status/1247505671672795137

I don't recall any statements from any Democrats criticizing them for their delayed reactions. Their reactions are instead to deny or ignore that they said those things, and try to blame Trump instead. Meanwhile, when Trump instituted a fairly moderate ban on travel from China, they screamed at the top of their lungs that it was racist. Now they're screaming that he didn't do more sooner. What is it with these people?

This comment is a great example of bad faith pro-Trump arguments. It is a despicable bunch of disinformation. It’s cherry picking a few old comments while ignoring the overwhelming tide of know-nothing minimization of the pandemic that characterizes Trump’s comments right up to the present day.

It’s literally the “Both Sides” fallacious argument. Cherry pick a tiny handful of tweets from one side and compare it with the constant torrent of communication in multiple media forms over months... and claim that shows both sides are equally bad.

Yes. This argument style passed its sell-by date long ago and I have lost patience with those who practice it.

I get that idea because all of the sources you're citing are extremely far-right biased publications [1] or like one-off tweets that you've cherry picked from a background of more grounded discussion.

None of this compares to the clear message that has been coming from the highest offices of our government for the past three months.

What's ironic is that I think you're using the "both sides" argument right here for all of the wrong reasons I complained about in my original post. Even if the democratic party organized an effort to discredit health experts and denounce the virus (which they didn't), why does that matter? They would also deserve to be shamed just as the current administration does.

I care about having a competent federal response to this ongoing crisis, not for example holding up federal stimulus checks to make sure your signature gets printed on them for your reelection campaign [2]. Also, please note that I've sourced that fact from the BBC, a reputable news source.

[1] https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-ratings

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-52293910

I like to wait a while before responding to contentious political posts, in the possibly vain hope of keeping the temperature below boiling.

Since you seem to be implying that I'm using a poor argument style, let me provide my own example of a poor argument style I see a lot nowadays:

The Dems do something dirty. They find something similar that the Repubs did, and publish 10,000 articles about it and scream at the top of their lungs, even if it isn't as bad. Then, when anybody points out that the Dems did that too, or worse, or first, you can accuse them of making a "both sides" argument and shut down any display of how bad their own side is. Nice little trick they have there.

Works even better when their media allies refuse to publish anything negative on them. Then you can smear anybody that publishes articles on the dirty things they did as "extremely far-right based publications".

Am I completely crazy here, or did Trump institute a relatively loose restriction on travel from China when this thing was kicking off, the Democrats screamed that he was an evil racist bigot for doing that? Then later, they screamed that he was incompetent for not instituting a more severe ban earlier on.

I find it interesting that the most extreme stuff seems to be coming from the press, admittedly on both sides. The actual elected officials in charge of stuff seem to be getting along relatively well. Republicans and Democrats, moderate and extreme, left and right, don't seem to have all that much bad to say about each other. Is that so bad? I'm fine with it. Maybe we could all focus on getting along and getting through this rather than trying to dunk on the other side for some imperfect calls made when nobody had enough information yet. I'm not perfectly innocent, but I'm willing to stop if you are.

I'll also add that I looked at the allsides.com site you linked. I'll admit that I wasn't expecting much, but I actually find their ratings to be quite respectable. I suspect many on the extremes of both sides would quibble with the groupings, but it seems like a pretty good first-pass on ratings.

Same type of question: was there ever popular left-wing AM radio? Like a counterpart to Rush Limbaugh? Like highly emotive and monetized liberal (in the American sense) talk radio?

Yes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_America_(radio_network)

Interesting, I wasn't aware of that. But I don't think it qualifies as "popular". The Wikipedia page says it lost around $10mil a year and then folded after 6 years in a mess of debts.

At around the same time, Rush Limbaugh's salary was $30mil+.

Highly emotive and monetized liberal radio? Yes, it exists, and if you donate you get a tote bag.

It's not the dems, but pro-government fake accounts were used in the UK: https://twitter.com/jdpoc/status/1252266724449230848

This is what seems odd to me too. IMO, there should be a bunch of groups, both Red and Blue, complaining in all directions. We're all short on information here on how this virus really works, and all of the options kind of suck.

I don't see many grass-roots groups complaining that we should lock down harder and longer. I guess they wouldn't be taking much public action anyways though by definition? Maybe there should be some virtual protests or something.

Grass-roots groups complaining that the lockdowns are too long and strict are out there, but it seems only on the Right. Okay yeah there are some fake astro-turfed ones, but there are plenty of real ones too. But where are the Left/Blue team? Doesn't anyone on their side think this is too extreme?

Generally, my experience is that astroturfing tends to occur for topics that are:

1. Unpopular with the population (or at least heavily divisive)

2. That one or more parties seeks to profit/gain from

Neither is really the case with the lockdown, or extending it. A majority seem to support these social distancing measures, and it's not good for business to continue them.

If you want the equivalent from the Dems, then see the ShareBlue stuff on Reddit and their actions on Reddit/social media sites.

At this point, I see two problems with Kreb's article.

First, to me only the VA tweet was specific to 2nd Amendment. The others were not. I presume VA was specifically noted because of the recent gun law past there.

Second, this smells more like domain kiting or tasting where it worked. Most seem to jump on the "political" bandwagon on the intention of the domain owner. I disagree. Kreb points to "were created just hours after", "Web site design company", and "promoted nothing but spammy paid surveys for years". That reads to me more like an web marketing opportunist trying to get eyeballs for ad revenue.

I am much more worried about censorship under the guise of "fighting misinformation" than about any level of misinformation. A functioning democracy is robust against people saying random things in public. If you feel the need to use some central authority to stop people saying things --- even if you think those things are "astroturf" or whatever --- something is fundamentally broken.

So what if someone wants to launch a bunch of "reopen" websites in some coordinated way? These websites just say something. It's not some kind of attack. It's a bunch of words.

These are not "gun rights" groups. These are "gun rights" clickbait scams, targeting the grass-roots conservative types to get them to join various "rights" organizations. There are a bunch of these groups, and they do absolutely no lobbying. I suspect most of them are shell companies for a fewer number of individuals. They claim to be non-profits, but are not tax exempt. They have been around for many years, and they always use the latest hot-button issue to exploit their target audience. I'm amazed no one's gone after them yet.

The "reopen" campaigns are simple strategy for recruiting members. The states will reopen, eventually and inevitably, and your raw recruits will claim credit for forcing a change on 'the establishment'.

Making an assumptive sale that they are cohesive group by registering many domains seems like a valid tactic.

What am I missing?

I’d bet a lot of the members also end up on some PAC donation mailing lists supporting predominantly one political party.

So I read all of this and to me it sounds like much ado about nothing. Can anyone explain, without loaded language, what is wrong here?

"People I don't like (gun rights, republicans) are organizing in favor of a cause I don't support (reopening)". Is there any more to it than that?

The content of the article explores (and to a large extent answers) the question in its headline. It doesn't seem to make any value judgements.

It is interesting to see who is behind this cause and organizing to support it. The track record of the Dorr brothers suggests their involvement is not motivated by genuine interest in the cause.

I read the article but it's coming from a very different viewpoint than mine. And because of the format of the article it wasn't clear whether all the domains traced to Dorr Brothers or if only some of them did. It keeps going after that connection after all.

One thing I'm curious about, if Dorr brothers are ripping off Republicans - why are Republicans not upset? Why are Democrats upset on their behalf?

And it was completely wrong: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/04/reopen-liberate...

The political tunnel vision was strong with this one.

I don't think your article invalidates the discussion papeda and I had. He may have had "tunnel vision" and only focused on a small part of the story, but as far as I can tell the Dorr Brother involvement has not been discredited.

>Can anyone explain, without loaded language

>"People I don't like (gun rights, republicans) are organizing in favor of a cause I don't support (reopening)"

This is intensely hypocritical.

There is a fundraiser going on to outbid these gun groups for domains which are being sold by domain resellers: https://www.gofundme.com/f/stop-anticoronavirus-websites-buy...

Krebs updated the article. Basically all those domains were registered by someone snatching them up before someone else could for the purpose of preventing profiteering.

Minnesota Public Radio reaches similar conclusions https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/04/20/behind-calls-to-reo...

Why can't it be our regular domain squatters?

No need to see a super consisparency. People are upset for real. And the withdrawal of rights everywhere is indeed concerning.

The article shows exactly why they're not regular domain squatters.

Where?

> Many of the domains are still dormant, leading to parked pages and registration records obscured behind privacy protection services.

All of the mentioned domains I check as either parked or a redirection. It can be one guy deciding to surf the wave and waiting for the domains to be bought.

My thoughts exactly. This seems to me like a the same old domain mining tricks circa 1996. Resume Treadstone soundtrack.

One data point. I attended the local rally in my home town and I've never heard of any of the domains or organizations mentioned in this article.

Blanket condemnation of "astroturfing" and "misinformation" just reinforces the bubble.

You attended in support or to watch? Why would you want to me in a crowd of others right now?

Let's jump to the conclusion here that Russia is still meddling in American politics, society and culture.

What I cannot believe is how the USA still allows this after all the country has been through with the current administration, investigations, impeachments.

USA's most important characteristics: openness, freedom, independence are just tools and weapons used against us. And we never learn...

I don't know how you got from the article to your first paragraph. Maybe we shouldn't just to that conclusion. (It may in fact be true, but maybe, you know, evidence, rather than just assuming?)

I mean, to quote the article itself:

"A Twitter account tied to Murphy’s email address promoted nothing but spammy paid surveys for years. And a Skype lookup on his phone number curiously returns a Russian profile under the name валентина сынах (translated as “Valentine Sons”)."

Not saying it's a smoking gun, but it's hardly as baseless as you're claiming.

Ah. I read (I thought) the article, but I apparently got fooled by an ad break, and thought I had reached the end. Still, even if true, that's Murphy. That's not the Dorr brothers, or the Koch site, or the Orange County Republicans. So, even if Murphy is a Russian cutout, much of the rest of this isn't. That leaves anonu's point as somewhat valid - they're still meddling, at least to some degree (and in fact, I kind of presume that they would continue to try to do so) - but his comment still seems like a bit of a reach for a response to the article. One of those registering has a maybe-to-plausible Russian link, so let's veer off and talk about Russian meddling? Yes, we do in fact need to talk about it (and more, find ways to stop it), but this article doesn't seem like the place.

Even if there's only weak evidence tying this particular astroturfing campaign to Russia, there is no reason whatsoever to expect that Russia has backed off their efforts more generally. They've had great success so far with few meaningful repercussions. When you find organized political astroturfing online (especially with an apparent aim to sow discord), Russia now has to be on the list of suspects even before there's any specific evidence tying it to Russia. The prior probability of Russian involvement is high enough that almost any shred of specific evidence is enough to put them near the top of the suspect list.

You should read the followup to all of the “meddling” uncover by the special counsel in the last year. I think you may be surprised!

I’m still surprised that Bloomberg spent $1.2 billion on his campaign and barely scraped a delegate. But Russia spends a few thousand on facebook ads and boom!

> I think you may be surprised!

This kind of vague aspersion is inappropriate. If you have a point, make it.

While the current administration is turning a blind eye and I wish they wouldn't, the Russian connection here was only discovered after many layers of digging, and is still just conjecture.

After a few more iterations, they will learn how to close the gaps and be more and more untraceable. I don't know how it is possible to combat that.

Assuming this is all true, how do you even tackle something like this while preserving the concept of freedom? If the government goes after groups of people for "meddling in elections" - well, that's very vague, isn't it?

Maybe most people don't have a problem with the FBI looking into domain registrations, cross-checking credit card payments, obtaining warrants for Google Analytics / Namecheap / etc...but investigating random web developers for alleged "ties to Russia" sounds eerily similar to McCarthyism.

I’m beginning to think a free, international Internet isn’t compatible with democracy. The medium is the message and the message of the Internet might end up being autocracy and hyper-effective propaganda and disinformation. I’m not sure it practically can live up to what we hoped it would be—some kind of liberating, enlightening force. It may just not be that, and it may be that no amount of tinkering will fix it.

An uneducated populace isn't compatible with democracy. This is just yet another manifestation of that.

I don't think there will be a free, international internet much longer. Between the money that can be made by local internet companies and the dangers to the incumbent power structures, I'm sure we'll start seeing more and more china-like internet setups in the future.

The intelligence community knows the Russian actors are and where they are hitting from, for the most part. The issue is getting the political and business leadership to take it seriously and do something about it.

The current administration has not taken the problem as seriously as it is for a wide variety of internal and political reasons. Neither has Facebook done much about limiting or policing political ads.

The problem space is pretty clear, getting actors in the space to do something about it...

The domestic supply of disinformation has always outpaced the foreign supply. That doesn't mean they both don't exist and can and do have an affect.

That's simple: we're not "through" anything until those responsible are out of power. Until they are they'll continue to allow and support, publicly and privately, any and all meddling that benefits them. We'll see what "America's" response is this November.

> What I cannot believe is how the USA still allows this

Mueller's prosecutors dropped their prosecution when the Russian company charged sent lawyers to court because, among other things, they did not want to have to present their evidence in court.

I am be very cynical, but as long as there is power to consolidate there will be a struggle for it.

This is a constant game being played on the populace. Not from Russia to the US. From those seeking to control to the controlled.

> openness, freedom, independence are just tools

tools are only are good as the user. I had a friend in high school that lost 2 fingers to a tablesaw. I don't anyone thought it was used against him.

What I don't understand is what is the point blaming other forces/countries for exploiting something that is so easily exploitable. If you have a wide-open security holes in your system they will be exploited by everyone who can potentially benefit from this.

Other than Russia/China/<Villain of the week> there are many other actors who have incentives to meddle in the society, e.g.

- The US government

- Large Businesses

Example from the article:

"Reopenmississippi.com was registered on April 16 to In Pursuit of LLC, an Arlington, Va.-based conservative group with a number of former employees who currently work at the White House or in cabinet agencies (link: https://projects.propublica.org/trump-town/organizations/in-...). A 2016 story from USA Today says In Pursuit Of LLC is a for-profit communications agency launched by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch."

- T-shirt sellers?

"A number of other sites — such as reopennc.com — seem to exist merely to sell t-shirts, decals and yard signs with such slogans as “Know Your Rights,” “Live Free or Die,” and “Facts not Fear.” WHOIS records show the same Florida resident who registered this North Carolina site also registered one for New York — reopenny.com — just a few minutes later."

At this point it is so easy to anonymously set up these websites and protest groups that a bored high-school student can do it.

Instead of putting blame on this or that country, efforts should be focused on creating some kind of a online reputation system so that any content posted would contain a signature that ties it to the author. If the signature is missing then you know the source is likely untrustworthy. Pros: no need for censorship. anyone can still post anything online. Cons: users need to be educated about this feature. It has to be supported by major browsers as a first-party component.

Otherwise we see more ridiculous initiatives like this from GitLab where they ban hiring engineers from Russia on certain positions: "WIP: Support Engineer Job family country-of-residence block" (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/issues/5555).

EDIT: fixed typos

> WHOIS records show the same Florida resident who registered this North Carolina site also registered one for New York — reopenny.com — just a few minutes later."

At this point it is so easy to anonymously set up these websites and protest groups that a bored high-school student can do it.

The person selling shirts isn't doing it anonymously if whois records reflect that person's ownership of sites targeting different states.

I don't see how a reputation system helps much, if Florida man hits a chord with people, his site is going to have high reputation, regardless of any facts or not. Unless you're suggesting a centralized arbiter of truthiness, but that has myriad problems too.

Unfortunately, I don't think people are going to realize trusting random people until they experience the poor results for themselves. This is a slow process.

> efforts should be focused on creating some kind of a online reputation system

Do you want private companies to check the reputation or the govt or should it be crowd sourced?

There's some news about that.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/russian-media-...

I actually think that it wasn’t so much the fact of Russian interference, the us does similar things all over the world — it was that a domestic political party collaborated with them.

Will this post be flagged just like the others?

You can email dang (hn@ycombinator.com) if you're worried about it.

Thanks, just sent an email. Hopefully this post can remain unflagged.

If Americans or American companies want to register a bunch of domains to promote their policy agenda and political opinion, that's totally fine with me. Even if it may be somewhat disingenuously designed to look grass roots. It's freedom of speech and I'm in total support of it. (Regardless of how ignorant and stupid it might be).

If Russia is doing it to sow discord, that's an act of war in my opinion, and should be dealt with in the harshest, most severe way possible.

It won't be, of course, because the President is a Putin lackey (or close enough to one to make no difference), but hopefully come January 20th of next year, we will have a different president who will protect the U.S. like he should.

So what exactly would the “harshest, most severe possible” actions be?

Because when I hear someone say that in the context of war, my mind goes to some pretty severe actions.

Would you sanction them? Maybe, but that’s hardly the “most severe”. This is war, after all. Would you missile strike Russia?

Direct action action on one military superpower from another doesn't happen anymore, not since the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Any such action would have unthinkable consequences for humanity.

America's weapon of choice is economic devastation via sanctions, it can leverage its position in the world to convince its allies to follow suit for added effect. Russia, on the outside of NATO, is forced to play a more subtle game, sowing discord and long term instability.

Starting a conventional or nuclear war with Russia is in the "not possible" category. Sorry if it wasn't clear that I'm not totally insane.

I am angry, however, and permanently dissuading Russian leaders from screwing with U.S. politics should be possible by both our intelligence services as well as overt policy.

People will literally be dying in the U.S. because of this latest Russian misinformation campaign. If we had a capable leader in the White House, this would be acknowledged and dealt with appropriately.

I live five miles from the New Hampshire border. We've long chuckled that their state slogan should be "Live Free Then Die." It's possible this will come true for some victims of this disinformation campaign. And victims they will be.

In the meantime, Brian Krebs is just the guy to feed the trolls. His site is rigged for handling DDOS.

I wonder? Is it time for Twitter to reevaluate their account-closing policies, to make it easier for them to suspend accounts belonging to persons who spread disinformation about the epidemic?

I live a mile north of New Hampshire's southern border. We have no income tax, no sales tax, the median property tax is within $800 per year of the neighboring states, and the median income is only $3,000 per year less than Massachusetts (pretty sure after accounting for taxes, New Hampshire is higher). As far as death rates go, the life expectancy is 79.5 years, which is pretty close to the 80.5 in Massachusetts and 79.7 in Vermont. Contrary to popular belief, we've been practicing social distancing for many years, simply due to the our low population density (/kidding). It's a pretty great place to live.

Life's good here, especially if you're a software developer. Come join the dark side! We have cookies.

As someone who was more or less forced to move to southern New England for his career I love northern New England but I have less than high opinion for people who talk it up as though it's the greatest thing ever. People moving to Northern New England for the taxes (after counting government fees and other taxes it's not really that low when it's all said and done) or the low prices or other shallow benefits and don't understand that these are different places with different cultures (though if their only experience is the I95 or I93 corridor I can see how someone might miss that) will be the death of it. I have lived in ME, NH and VT, they all have distinct cultures that are different than the culture you get in MA and CT (haven't lived in RI). I'm not gonna say they're wholesale superior (obviously it comes down to personal values and preference) but I find the things their culture does right very important personally and the things it does wrong very unimportant so naturally I like them all a lot better than MA and CT. If you're gonna move to NH, ME or VT do it for the culture fit, not for the shallow crap like being able to buy beer at Walmart. Also, to anyone from NH, ME or VT reading this, sorry for lumping you all together but I think we can all agree you have more in common with each other than you do with any state to the south.

So yeah, it's a great place to live but please stop broadcasting that or it will stop being that way.

I completely agree with you that the culture isn't for everyone. Many towns lack basic government services like trash pickup and public utilities, likely due to the reduced taxes (I haven't done a comparison, so this is just a guess). I was mostly addressing the original poster. If he/she lives five miles from the border, I suspect that the culture doesn't differ much.

> I live a mile north of New Hampshire's southern border. We have no income tax

I'm pretty sure you still have federal income tax, which is the bulk of income tax.

That's primarily why I listed all of the typical state taxes. When you combine property tax, state income tax, and sales tax, it can come pretty close to the federal income tax.

Point taken, though. I probably should have qualified income tax by calling it "state income tax." Quite a few people who read this board live in countries other than the USA. Thanks for pointing it out.

Where is US counter-intel in this? Isn't this what the FBI is supposed to be handling and partially designed for? It seems crazy that possible foreign entities are causing chaos at home and we seem unable (unwilling?) to stop it.

I would bet this is not foreign entities. But who knows. Maybe the FBI are looking into this. They aren't going to tweet about it, so who knows what they are doing.

The protests are being cheered on by the President in his tweets and press conferences, and championed by more mainstream right-wing news (Fox) with constant coverage. I doubt Trump’s FBI is being given much room to investigate this sort of thing, assuming they want to.

Who's to say counter-intelligence isn't already all over it?

There's only so much they can do besides monitor, analyze, and attribute it, though. They publicly announce things when there's a lot of aggregated evidence collected over time, and high potential impact, like some of the past official announcements about the election interference.

Releasing a statement for every instance of confirmed or suspected disinformation/propaganda just isn't practical and also may just play right into the hands of the intelligence agency they're trying to counter.

It's possible the actors may, on some level, actually want their plausibly deniable actions to be recognized in some cases. It creates yet another wedge in American politics, just like all of the other stuff Russian intelligence has done in recent years. They or others may be trying to construct a double bind: one sort of victory if they remain undetected or at least unexposed; another sort of victory if they do get exposed.

Not to mention the primary practical purpose of keeping it secret so they can continue to monitor further activity. If they blow the lid on it, they'll change tactics and be harder to trace in the future. That's why spy rings are often tracked over years before being busted, like the case involving Anna Chapman. You can't effectively counter intelligence if you immediately announce that the intelligence has been countered. In infosec terms, it's like burning a zero-day.

Also, there isn't any solid evidence this is Russian state-sponsored activity. Certainly a real possibility, but also could just be a random dude trying to make a buck and/or have fun. Either way, there's surely a ton of stuff going on behind the scenes which we're not aware of and may never be aware of. Surely some intelligence or law enforcement people have seen this very thread, or at least the Krebs article.

Finally, there could already be some covert countering occurring, like when Cyber Command targeted Russia's IRA troll farm in 2018 and temporarily disabled their internet access.

I don't understand why it matters if the reopen domains or Facebook groups are being created/organized by some individuals or a group. There are dubious claims from Reddit labeling this as 'astroturfing', but astroturfing would require that these actors create fake accounts or pay for posts or hire actors for protesters. But everything seems to point at the protesters being real individuals who are simply aligned on the sentiment of reopening.

Even if someone is gaining in some way from the effort of registering domains, creating Facebook groups, and writing descriptions, I don't think it removes the legitimacy of the underlying sentiment or protesters. I don't think it makes it "less grassroots". After all, literally every other act of protest or campaigning or other activism involves organizing. Unless we're about to claim that anyone performing organizing is astroturfing, it is nonsensical to apply the label here.

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