Comment by mandmandam | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mandmandam | Hacker News Reader

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> If you think that people saying that glyphosate is safe are arguing in bad faith I can see why you'd think there's a lot of disingenuousness around here.

Some people can’t detect astroturf - that’s why it works. Consider that you may be one of them.

> I've defended glyphosate in plenty of threads

Can I see an example? Google couldn't find your name + glyphosate, or + roundup together anywhere.

> I've seen no compelling evidence of any significant danger from it in general

Respectfully, I don't have any idea who you are. I’ve seen compelling evidence. So have many judges, and respected scientists, and health groups.

> This isn't me deflecting or gaslighting.

The way you blow off the link between glyphosate and kidney disease is concerning, tbh, but let's say you’re on the level. That does nothing, absolutely nothing, to dispel the notion that a giant corporation with a long history of evil and greed might employ PR goons to spread FUD and manipulate votes to warp a narrative and protect profits.

I think we're talking past each other a bit. In this moment I'm not trying to persuade you of anything about glyphosate though I obviously disagree with you, just saying that there are plenty of us out here who do argue in good faith and asking you to consider that what may look like astroturfing is just honestly held opinions by people who disagree with you. In this case, I read the article, the paper, skimmed a couple of citations from the paper, the Wikipedia article, and a paper cited in Wikipedia on contaminants, especially fluorine, and kidney disease in Sri Lanka. I found it all quite interesting and didn't do it out of a desire to blow off a link (blowing off work on the other hand...).

Sure, if you find a comment section spammed by new accounts with thin histories that look synthetic, call that out. I'm not even trying to persuade you that it doesn't happen (though to me it would feel like a misallocation of resources to do it to HN if you were going to do it). Maybe I'm bad at detecting it as you say.

As for examples, I've mixed up message boards a bit as well as glyphosate/Monsanto, but here's me from 2017 implicitly arguing that controversy over Monsanto suing farmers is a bit overblown (no pun intended): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14794627

From around the same time here's me saying that Monsanto's editing of a paper related to roundup safety was dumb but didn't concern me as far as glyphosate safety: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14974180

In that second link in the wider comments Dang replied to a flagged comment: 'Someone holding a different view than you do is not evidence of bad faith, and the internet trope of you-must-be-a-shill is poison'. I agree with him and it's part of why I enjoy the HN community where this isn't the typical mode of reply.

Your linked comment is a good example of something I'd perceive as either written by a shill, or someone convinced by shilling. You say:

> All of the science still says glyphosate is safe in the concentrations we encounter it in.

What makes you qualified to say that? "Skimming a few papers"?

The kindest thing I could say about that is that it's a dangerous oversimplification, on a thread where Monsanto have been caught red handed doing something "stupid" and immoral.

The interactions between chemicals in Roundup can do much worse than glyphosate on its own - synergistic effects, increased bioavailability, etc. Then there's buildup from constant exposure. Then there's unexpected interactions with minerals in the environment, as suggested in the linked study, etc. And so on.

There's WAY too much smoke to declare a total lack of fire, speaking on behalf of "all of the science", even if you were the head of the IARC (who call out a link to cancer, btw).

> Someone holding a different view than you do is not evidence of bad faith

I don't go around here accusing people with different views of acting in bad faith. But every time - every single time - the topic of glyphosate comes up, I see evidence of shenanigans. Fucky voting, misrepresentations, toxicity, distraction, FUD, outright lies, smears, etc etc. Look for it, and you might start to see it.

How do we know you're not a shill for some competing company with a competing product?

It's all just pointless name calling.

If you'd read any of my comments you'd see that there are scientists and institutions with very little to gain coming out against cancer links and kdney disease connections. You could even have simply read the linked OP.

There are lives at stake, and you're dismissing all the research that's a mere Google search away as name-calling - it's abhorrent.

Thanks for the handy example of bad faith sea-lioning though - I had actually forgotten to add that to the list of astroturfing strategies.

I have heard rants about Monsanto’s shill army for over a decade now, not just on HN but on every mid-sized or larger internet community I have ever been on, and not once have I actually seen a single person produce a shred of hard evidence substantiating it. I also notice right, if shills are so common every company ought to be sending their shills to influence HN, but I only ever hear Monsanto, no other big company, and no other big ag company accused of this. It’s not exactly easy to keep a massive long-term shilling operation secret when journalists would be chomping at the bit for a “Monsanto shill army proven” story and be willing to pay for proof.

At this point I’m utterly convinced that Monsanto doesn’t hire any shills and instead just does straightforwards propaganda work where they just convince people with slanted studied that they push to the top of Google search that sway people with reasonable sounding arguments (roundup makes food cheap!) and just wait for them to parrot these arguments and then for them to be accused of shilling making Monsanto’s opponents look unhinged. As evidenced by the plenty of actual evidence that they promote pro-roundup research and the plenty of actual evidence that they advertise stores that make roundup sound more safe.

Do you realize how self-sustaining contrarianism is when people consistently feed the contrarians ego by consistently, and wrongly, accusing them of being shills? Irrespective of who is right or wrong on the broader issue, the people accused of being shills are right that they aren’t shills so it’s basically a dopamine slam dunk to just side with Monsanto and have people line up to give a blatantly wrong opinion (that you are a shill). Which only causes a feedback loop because as the number of people seeking this dopamine hit grows, so does the EVIDENCE of SHILLS EVERYWHERE! Monsanto is best off just sitting back and eating popcorn and not spending a dime on shills.

Buddy, Exxon were caught astroturfing with the entire planet at stake, and suffered no real consequence. Big tobacco did it for decades, and those same companies are still marketing and selling to children in developing countries.

So why do you think "Monsanto" (it's Bayer now, keep up) would be scared of getting caught? Do you think they can't use a VPN, or subcontracting, or any of a hundred well developed ways to maintain plausible deniability? Do you really think "no other big company" gets accused of astroturfing?

You don't seem to have given any of this much thought tbh. Even if it's as you say, lol, why would you be happy with them doing "straightfowards propaganda work"? Have you followed the logical conclusions of your "contrarianism" theory more than a single step? Good luck to ye

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