Ask HN: China shill vs. legit user thought

Whenever there are posts critical of China, there emerges a string of accounts to counter the “China bad” conclusion. Huawei, covid, Hong Kong have all seen such accounts. The subtler ones don’t so much defend China as gently attack any comments veracity (e.g https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=xster).

The legit question I have is, how do you tell a paid shill from a true believer? I’m sure many forums and social media sites deal with this issue. Moderation becomes tricky.

Interestingly, there’s a similar effect for UBI, capitalism, San Fran housing code, etc... but those I’m less inclined to think those are paid. But who knows maybe Sam Altman is paying someone to shill UBI :)