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Comment by chroem- | Hacker News Reader

Russia was caught running ads during the 2016 election that were sympathetic to radical white and black nationalist groups, with the end goal of sowing racial tensions. [0] I'm of the firm belief that we're being played by a hostile state actor here. I have no way of proving this, but I strongly suspect that Russia and/or China are trying to spur on the unrest through digital disinformation like in the OP.

EDIT: by unrest I am (of course) referring to violence and looting, not peaceful protest

[0] https://slate.com/technology/2018/05/russian-trolls-are-obse...

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Blaming outside instigators is a common tactic for downplaying unrest.

I'm not saying you're wrong, and I agree Russia does run campaigns with the purpose of sowing tensions, but I'm very skeptical of any causality between Russia and the movement, protests, or riots.

#dcBlackout was trending on Twitter last night. How do you explain that? There were _tons_ of accounts I saw (many with Korean/Chinese avatars, which were probably fronts) that were spreading the same misinformation, often were a shrill tone of panic and conspiracy.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-dc-blackout-pro...

For the curious, this is called a Sybil attack.

Boi the replies.

https://twitter.com/DMVBlackLives/status/1267521033273323520...

https://twitter.com/VictoriaSanchez/status/12674378765198622...

I am wondering if all those are bots or propaganda accounts. A sufficiently trained GPT2 model could tweet the same.

was thinking maybe it was content targetted at a non-us audience. could see deploying bots in open disinfo op, tho.

Like I said, I'm not arguing that the foreign misinformation campaigns don't exist. I'm just skeptical that the protests and riots wouldn't be happening regardless.

If there is unrest it is easy to stoke from anywhere. You have Marx living in london, lenin hanging out in germany.

The point is. An under served population can be insighted with ideas from anywhere. But the root cause is still there in that community.

"Underserved"? The US President retweets anonymous fake account misinformation. Almost anyone can be incited by convenient disinformation.

China an Russia have been stirring up American discourse aggressively through the internet for years. They would most certainly seize on an opportunity like this. The incident is ultimately caused in the US, but it's for sure going to have its flamed stoked by foreign actors. They don't build there systems for one off attacks. They have weapons of war.

China, Russia, and also the US President.

The US is by far the most likely hostile state actor. They are the ones that benefit from the protesters being seen as more radical and destructive than they are, while Russia or China would be working towards hypothetical future benefits.

The media and the government are both very clear that there are fringe elements (both far-left and far-right) infiltrating the protests and trying to derail the efforts. So everyone is going out of their way to separate protesting from looting.

The only place I see where there is concentrated effort to equate protestors and rioting is on the twitter left.

Luckily it's only those "fringe elements" that are getting tear gassed, attacked with rubber bullets and batons, or being arrested. As both the media and the government have stated they are the problem.

The fringe elements are blending into the crowds. The poor protestors are getting gassed. Let's not create this narrative that the majority of protestors are out to loot and damage property. They're not. And most of the ones who are causing damage aren't black.

>Let's not create this narrative that the majority of protestors are out to loot and damage property.

It doesn't matter who is looting or causing damage to property if their actions are being used to justify retaliation against every protester.

Separating the "fringe elements is being done by the media and the government to allow more authoritarian responses. It is not being done out of goodwill for the law abiding protesters.

I think it does matter. This is an issue that is affecting black people. White people who are protesting should be doing it to support them, not to hijack their movement and running it how they see fit.

Why would it matter who hijacked a movement the moment before it is forcibly ended? These "fringe elements" don't matter, what's important is what started these protests and what is being done to silence them.

Who in the US wins? Not the people. Not the pols. Maybe nebulous people with agendas...

I mean it doesn’t help Trump. He’s kind taking a hands off approach so far.

But it also doesn’t help Biden. He hasn’t said peep. He’s holed up and keeping quiet.

It would help countries the US is nettling but I’m not sure China has much to gain (maybe tit for tat re Hong Kong) Russia? The whole story was they colluded with Trump... so now they want him to lose to Biden? Whaaaa...

The people in power win, they get more justification for ending this little resistance using more extreme methods.

If nothing else, Russia would benefit from the transition period slightly, and may prefer shorter presidential terms to longer ones generally for this reason. However, since Biden has been VP before, he would be able to get up to speed quicker than some.

Are the police deliberately attacking peaceful protests which causes the protestors to attack back? No, it's the Russians which are at fault.

Not to mention, how is this relevant at all to the linked post?

or you know there is genuine unrest. have you seen some of the videos of US policing in response these protests? no need to Stoke fires when the the US police are doing it for you

It is also a very human thing to find someone else to blame for your faults, especially when elections are around the corner.

Your claim has nothing to do with this alleged hack.

I think you're absolutely right. It's easy, too - fake a few Antifa tweets, white suburbia panics (literally happened today), pay someone to break a few windows and run away, cops hit anything that moves.

I don't think you even need a hostile state actor. Almost nobody I've discussed current affairs with that is supportive of the rioters is capable of understanding that the only correct way to compare racial/gender disparities in excessive use of police force is based on per 10,000 arrests per violent crime. You quickly discover that there really isn't much of a disparity and the disparity that exists doesn't even lean in the direction people believes it does.

Is there a problem with excessive use of police force? Definitely. Is it disproportionate with regards to race or gender relative to representation based on a per 10,000 arrests per violent crime basis? No.

So you look at arrests of violent crime and decide that is the only way to asses racial/gender disparities in excessive use of police force?? Why is that a correct way? What about stops by police, arrests of non-violent crime, murders by police?

One reason is because the burden to manufacture crimes is far higher. Every violent crime necessarily has a victim and if the victim survived the encounter they can identify affirmatively the characteristics of their assailant.

The problem with non-violent crimes is that they could be tainted by biases since there isn't always as concrete/reliable an eyewitness.

Someone attacks me and it's a lot easier to trust what I report. I see someone steal something at a distance, and my eyewitness account is less trustworthy.

Right but we have Obama officials saying they believe Russia has something to do with it. Why would they want to help Trump and not Biden?

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