Hacker News Reader

Comment by dkjaudyeqooe | Hacker News Reader

Reading Twitter, or YouTube comments, or FT comments or any comments section, is pretty much the most pointless thing to do these days unless you want to marinate your brain in Russian/Chinese/Israeli/far right wing disinformation. There is far left disinformation too but that is usually the Russians or Chinese co-opting the political left, which seems to be really effective. For instance Jill Stein more or less parrots Russian propaganda.

To me it's fairly obvious but I know some people just look at whats the most prevalent view and put weight in it. The paid trolls are not very sophisticated, they're rigid and repetitive, make numerous cultural mistakes, even as they claim they are American/European/the victim/the perpetrator, but they are legion.

Comment sections should have a warning these days: "For entertainment purposes only, do not base anything important on what you read here".

View on HN

This comment of yours is weird to me because you’ve taken a very politically slanted perspective.

Seems more likely that you haven’t considered that you are less likely the notice the disinformation that you agree with.

I’m saying this as someone who cannot possibly be construed as “far right” at all. I just think you should consider your own perspective a bit more before you claim that “everyone is the problem, but of course when we do it it’s a Russian operation” should set of alarm bells.

Whats my political slant? This is just what I've experienced.

Those on the hard right very much have this problem, eg see the Trump campaign, and feel no need to even loosely reference logic or rationality, let alone the truth.

And your comment reflects the right's sensitivity to it.

I'm certainly not a tool of the left, they're probably the stupidest of the bunch because they've been so easily co-opted by the Russian and Chinese with anti-war nonsense, especially the notion that Ukraine or the US are responsible for, or in any control of, a war of someone else's conquest.

> Whats my political slant? This is just what I've experienced.

You haven't "experienced" disinformation. You've accused people of disinformation who disagree with you.

But I haven't identified anyone. I've said disinformation is widespread and has certain characteristics. Somehow you take from that I'm just taring people I'm disagreeing with.

Your knee-jerk dismissal of what I've written is exactly what you're accusing me of, so that doesn't help with your credibility.

I think you need to go look at the "You are not immune to propaganda" meme. Garfield would like a word with you.

Those talk that about "disinformation" do so to assume some moral high-ground. The reasonable ones assume all the information out there is hostile and seeks to influence them. Because that's precisely how human interaction works. It's for the individual to discern the quality of information.

The patronizing attitude towards philosophy of epistemology is truly baffling. As if one is able to make such vast statements.

Yeah, that's nonsense, the moralizing is entirley yours. Some information is obviously from a single source with an obvious agenda devoid of normal logic that ignores all evidence. I give the characteristics that identify it.

Of course some people will evaluate all information with critical thinking but they are not the majority, and most can be influenced merely by repetition or the illusion of consensus or something near it.

> Russian/Chinese/Israeli/far right wing

Did you omit "far left wing" out of cognitive bias? Or was that just an accidental omission?

It's in the brackets, which I'll remove for clarity.

The political left don't really seem to indulge in disinformation, they just don't seem to be that aggressive in that respect.

This is also true historically if you, for example, look at the 1920ies in Germany and the rise of the Nazi party.

That's literally all the Bolsheviks (political left) indulged in and it aided them in committing one of the worst atrocities ever, if not the worst.

And, yes, the political left is demonstrably still participating.

> demonstrably still participating

Care to show a demonstration then?

Although correct, totalitarian political movements all look much the same, left or right.

I was going to post something about communist uprisings but they seemed in a different category, ie openly violent and oppressive, rather than the insidiousness of disinformation.

> And, yes, the political left is demonstrably still participating.

Unless you're talking about China or something, that's a bit rich.

"Meh. It's not disinformation because they were totalitarians."

You sound incredibly silly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com