Not saying anything in here is good/bad/other but you rarely see this level of flagged and down-voted comments in a HN thread.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Sinister insinuation about astroturfing is the internet's favorite pastime. The overwhelming majority of this, as far as we can tell from countless hours looking at the data, is pure imagination.
Is it possible that the manipulation is so sinister and so clever that it leaves no traces we can see in the data, and yet thousands of internet commenters see what we don't? Sure it's possible. But following that path means abandoning evidence. That way leads to the wilderness of mirrors. The only sane way to look at this is to require some evidence, some objective peg of some kind (we'll take anything!) to hang your suspicions on. The presence of opposing viewpoints, downvotes, and flags on divisive issues is no evidence at all. It just means that the community is divided.
As far as I can tell, the psychological phenomenon driving this phenomenon is that people are deeply reluctant to take in how wide the range of legitimately opposing views is. We're probably hard-wired to see the world as much smaller than it is. Bring us all, with that hard-wiring, into a community of millions of people on the internet, and the inevitable result is that people see spies, shills, astroturfers, and foreign agents everywhere. No—what you're seeing is that there are a lot of humans with very different backgrounds from yours. And on any issue with an international dimension, multiply that phenomenon by a hundred.
I've written about this a zillion times: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme.... See also https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... and https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... for how often I repeat myself.
There are some specifics to my use case, take this with a grain of sault. Hope this helps sorting genuine Putin-lovers from Kremlin bots.
Come on people, apply some common sense and stop the hysteria.
At my previous company I dealt with all the scraping bots for 15 years, in the end I even banned all of Tor and many of the commercial proxy network providers, with the justification that our site (CSE) didn't need anonymous posting because there was nothing sensitive and no private information on it. But I couldn't ban dynamic IP addresses for more than a few minutes since all the abusers originating from them happily obtained a new address within seconds and continued the scraping, rendering the IP address pool used by their provider completely banned from using our site.
IP addresses are blocked in a different context but land on the same list.
Still, to answer your question, dynamic IP addresses can be sticky. Where I operate, some ISPs lease the same IP address for each IP lease renewal. The only way to get an IP address is to wait until the lease expires by e.g. switching off the router.
Edit: I've now had a chance to examine this data. It turns out that the IP ranges in that list are so broad as to cover more than 50% of the posts on HN.
Will you provide that data for independent review?
Edit: it's not that you shouldn't be trusted. The issue is the old “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” For example, what if a large segment of the user base, that regularly contributed extraordinarily positive engagements, existed solely for the opportunities to frame certain conversations, even in the slightest, or even in preparation for something in the distant future.
And there's a third reason: sooner or later (maybe we're already there, maybe not yet) we have to assume a sufficiently smart manipulator (SSM) who's able to do whatever they want and be indistinguishable from a legit user. This is exactly what your phrase alludes to, I think: "regularly contributed extraordinarily positive engagements, existed solely for the opportunities to frame certain conversations". Once we're past that SSM threshold, all we can do is fall back on what the community ought to be doing anyway: answering false information with correct information, answering worse arguments with better ones, preserving community-ness without falling into war.
Since that's the only long term solution and it's what we want anyway, we might as well be practicing it now.
The theory behind SSM seems well thought out.
I think it would be helpful to enlighten people about the SSM when noting that a response is breaking the rules for an accusation of astroturfing.
For me, I think a brief explanation that well formed arguments are the only defense against an SSM would have removed a feeling of helplessness derived from reading your initial comment. And instead, lead me down a path which could really be helpful.
And it's fun to extend in the obvious ways. For instance, what if a SSM (an 'essessum', as they are often referred to in the technical literature) is orchestrating a campaign to write comments insinuating astroturfery into HN threads? After all, taken as a group such comments look very much like the kind of commentary a nefarious corporate or state actor might promote, as pointed out by the shillologists themselves! A curious and under-explored connection.
It's just that we need to have some evidence, something objective to go on, before we ban people. Absent that (<-- note that I said absent that), what one is encountering on the internet is a gigantic Rohrschach diagram, in which people routinely see the opposite of what they like or identify with. This internet experience is like being surrounded by demons of one's own creation: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
Sock puppet accounts and vote manipulation are not what I understood BrianOnHN to be talking about upthread. Maybe one could adapt the point to those cases though. Imagine someone who was coordinating inauthentic behavior so cleverly that we couldn't detect it at all. Fortunately I don't think we're there yet—but of course we wouldn't know it if we were. Either way, just imagine for a moment that this is the case. What are our options? The way I see it, we have two:
1. Go after each other based on subjective interpretations of whatever deviousness we imagine we see;
2. Have a functioning community with a healthy immune system based on clear thinking and responding to bad arguments with better arguments.
Surely we all choose #2, at least in our better moments. The key insight here is that #2 doesn't depend on what manipulators, even the cleverest manipulators, do. It depends on us. I'm not saying that it's the only defense we have against manipulation; I'm saying that if the day ever comes when it is the only defense we have, well, it's what we ought to be doing anyway, so we should work at getting good at it now.
I don’t think it’s possible. We have huge amount of evidences. This article alone has 150 references: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency They include analysis of internet activity of state-sponsored trolls, insider leaks, and even documents from US courts.
Are all companies selling such services charlatans?
Not sure I buy it. It's well established that you can buy followers, reviews, positive comments and even stories on all large public platforms, and they are quite public about it.
I can't speak about other forums but as far as I'm aware there's one outfit that sells HN votes and comments and stories. What their customers don't seem to realize is that using that service will get them banned here. At this point I figure the spammers know this too, but since people still buy from them, they probably don't care. I doubt they get much repeat business though.
I ran a small (1 mln pageviews/month) online Russian-speaking community since 2003 and since 2014, my main preoccupation are Kremlin bots.
The population in Russia is mostly anti-Putin, they just do not speak up, because the state made sure they feel isolated.
It was long believed, even in US, that Lukashenka had the majority. In reality, he faked all elections since 1994.
Once his deeds became hard to ignore even for pathetically peaceful Belarusians, all the population turned against him. Gosh, the exit poll in my voting station recorded only one vote for Lukashenka among 358. I was there watching the exit poll for a couple of hours. I fully trust the organizers, but one in 358... I could not even imagine it.
Same for Russia.
P.S. Yes, I have a Belarusian passeport. Yes, I run a Russian-speaking community site. Pass on.
I think he did rig elections but he might have had majority already, which makes his numbers look so unrealistic or he is just plain stupid to not even rig elections to make them look believable.
I do really sympathize with the Belarussian people though, every community should get a say on who represents them.
I am from Kazakhstan. If you've ever heard of it, would you consider it to be an autocratic state? Because according to the official results our beloved leader received 98% of votes in an election a few years back. Now that's an unrealistic number for sure.
https://www.alux.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/25-insane-cr...
You are assuming someone has an overview of the rigging being done. It's probably more chaotic than that. If 1000 different people are chucking opponents' votes into furnaces, how do you coordinate hitting that number?
He would if he wanted his quiet dissidents to feel isolated and his loud ones to be that much easier to find.
It's not that much different than other leaders declaring there are no gay people in their country.
That part is pretty well established by now.
Coincidentally, he established again a level of support a couple percentage points above Putin, who received "just" 78% last election.
Putin's approval rating is actually pretty high even when measured by NGOs sponsored by the "West". You'll be surprised, but it is quoted to be 60% in July 2020. [1]
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_image_of_Vladimir_Putin
1. The legacy of 8 decades under a government practicing public polling under a gunpoint.
2. Only the most well fed, and carefree Potemkin villages can be surveyed.
3. The lack of any other genuine option other than saying "I back a complete joke "alternative" candidates," which are set up by the regime itself to play Pope Gapon
4. Plainly faked polls
I am referring to polling agencies that are very west-leaning, and even they can't blatantly lie about it. His approval rating as of a month ago is 59-60% [1][2][3].
In fact his approval rating after the annexation of Crimea was at all time high of 85%. Check the sources. Again, these are not government-run polls.
Lots of good data on it (thanks to google):
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/putin-facing-growi...
https://www.statista.com/statistics/896181/putin-approval-ra...
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2020/05/06/putins-approval-ra...
And I am not saying Putin did or didn't order the poisoning of Navalny. I am just saying he is not the only one with motive/opportunity contrary to popular belief pushed in the mainstream media propaganda.
As to Crimea, plenty of Russians believe Crimea is Russian, including Navalny - the Russian opposition is neither monolithic nor does it always represent views that in lock-step with Western ones.
There’s a thing that you should understand about Russia.
Here it goes: Russia is a huge country and Moscow is only a part of it. A small and the richest part. Moscow is basically a country inside the country. It has almost nothing to do with Russia. And the overwhelming majority of the information you are getting is coming from Moscow only.
The polls, the internet blabbering, the protests happen in Moscow, mostly (do notice that I said “mostly” before calling me a liar. I’m well aware of the exceptions, believe me). All of the money is there as well - all the cash flow through the capital. All the money from regions flow through Moscow and only a small portion of it goes back.
People from Moscow mostly look down upon the people from the regions. Consciously or not. Some of them are outright aggressive towards the “country folks”. Many of them believe that Moscow is “feeding the regions”, and it should stop, because people there are lazy and not smart enough. I’ve had conversations like this with Muscovites during my life there, it was hilarious.
The rest of the country is concentrated on their own lives. The majority of them earn something around $300USD a month that barely allows them to live from pay check to pay check. Teachers, doctors, you name it. That’s the salary of low-skilled workers in Moscow.
These people realise that changing the president won’t help them, but in fact might make their lives miserable. And they are not wrong - I can only imagine what may start after the change of leadership and what consequences for the regions it might have.
This country has its roots in the USSR. The change in the headquarters won’t replace the people in charge in the regions - at least it won’t happen immediately. And if/when it does, the majority of the replacement would be just the same people from the same ruling party (or what’s left of it). That’s how things work in Russia, that’s how it’s always been, since 1917. That’s the system that we have. That’s us, Russians, who are the system, and the president is only a small part of the problem.
The majority of Russians either don’t use Internet or use it for social networking only.
The majority of Russians don’t have an international passport (the document that allows you to travel abroad). Why would they? They will never have the money to travel.
The majority of Russians that I know, people from outside Moscow, vote for Putin. Some of them do that because they support him and the ruling party, but the most of them (as per my personal experience) just believe that he’s a lesser evil. I can’t blame them for that.
There’s more to that. What I’m trying to say here is - Russia is far more complex and diverse than you guys might think. It’s not very obvious even for many Russians. So please, don’t downvote people who say things that are against your agenda simply because of that fact. Their reasoning might be more subtle than you think.
What you might want to do to better understand them is to ask them. They know better than you about the situation over there, the historical reasons and consequences. The only thing that you probably need to ask them first is where are they from. If they are from Moscow, chances are they are biased.
It seems that holding joint parades, signing secret pacts, sacrificing Comintern, etc, still did not help much.
Neither did appeasement. The correct response to Ribbentrop's suggestions was war on Germany, just like the correct choice at the Munich agreement was war on Germany. Beyond that, you're just choosing between bad options.
Why? Because they mostly watch Russian TV (those Russian WW2 serials are addicting). The propaganda in the Russian TV talk shows and news is very well done.
It is just like any other echo chamber. Just like watching Fox News,listening to Limbaugh in US, etc.
There are echo chambers for all political spectrums and all countries.
Avoiding some topics in fear of insulting/upsetting other party, or in context of social media in fear of downvotes/flags, is the main cause of these modern echo-chambers.
Why would it be surprising this might also be the case for many Russians, with an existing tradition of hostile international relations with the West, and more repressive and corrupt governments, especially when many Russians also felt a lot poorer before Putin arrived?
And your conclusion is to avoid politics with your in-laws, so you can stay in your own echo chamber. Well done...
A) Russian-sympathetic people post their own sincere views
B) Russians for hire in Russia are brought in on all forums/social media
C) Russians use bots or non-Russian farms for the B)'s purpose?
If you are worried about astroturfing, you might email hn@ycombinator.com. They're pretty good overall at taking care of this kind of stuff.
EDIT: I literally drink heavily due to the fucking russians. Russia and china should be nuked to the ground. Fucking basic tactics. Fuck these pieces of shits.
oh lol Dang is a russian operative. What could be better. My fucking post is flagged already. What could be worse. Fuck this network; ruled by russia and china, it seems. ADIOS. Good win fuckstar communist cockholes.
Did you somehow miss all the Apple vs Epic posts over the last few weeks?
They're not the most competent, either [1]. It's been two decades since Putin first came to power. That sort of cronyism corrodes any bureaucracy.
What really derails the conversation is needlessly tone-policing people. People have a tendency of only doing that to opinions they disagree with; so in practice it's just another way to start a flamewar.