[flagged]
Yes. Paid astroturfers posted in Slashdot discussions back when Microsoft was bankrolling the SCO lawsuit. Much like Slashdot back in the day, HN is a popular gossip site. I'd relinquish several vital organs if it turned out there were never any paid posters (whether meat or machine [0]) who had posted on this site (and others like it).
> Can you point to any examples?
Proving that is a ton of legwork that no not-particularly-motivated user is going to do. Unless someone is especially motivated to investigate, the best you're ever going to get is an indication of how plausible it is.
[0] And no, you can't get cute and say that the bot posters can't get paid. Someone's getting paid to operate the bot, so (for the purposes of this bet) that counts as the bot being paid.
I agree with him, there is enough proof already of non-western countries spreading misinformation and propaganda online. And if you want to find about it there's Google and many other search engines.
I agree that there have been examples of non-western countries spreading misinformation online. I have not seen any evidence that they do so on HackerNews. What I do see frequently is posters upset/surprised that the crowd here disagrees with them and then concluding that everyone else must be paid to hold such opinions.