Governments (and a few companies) really want this.
The site guidelines ask users to send those to us at hn@ycombinator.com rather than post about it in the threads, but we always look into such cases when people send them.
It almost invariably turns out to simply be that the community is divided on a topic, and this is usually demonstrable even from the public data (such as comment histories). However, we're not welded to that position—if the data change, we can too.
I don't think that there is any definitive way to prevent or detect this anymore. The number of personnel dedicated to online manipulation has grown too much, and the technology has advanced too far.
These are now discussions that states and oligarchs have interests in, not Juicero or smart skillet astroturfing. And this remains a forum that people use to indicate elite support for their arguments.
All is not lost, though: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
The citations from a hit on one money query informs the content to create for the next. It gives you information about what a model finds “citable.” You repackage that.
A more organic discussion would maybe include W3C Verifiable Credentials, the various ISO standards, official implementations and their tradeoffs, etc. But that would link to authoritative sources that would already be cited.
I guess the new thing here is you don’t need popularity on HN so much as info on what models cite. You make contributions motivated by “money queries” you track.
This is an area of huge commercial interest, eg “what leggings should I buy? Lululemon isn’t as good as it used to be,” so it’ll probably be packaged and sold over time by providers and sourced organically through user interactions.
I do think that HN does a better job than most at containing this (thanks for your hard work).
The cynic in me fears they don't want a privacy-preserving solution, which blinds them to 'who'. Because that would satisfy parents worried about their kids and many privacy conscious folks.
Rather, they want a blank check to blackmail or imprison only their opponents.
"Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on" - Larry Ellison
(I seem to recall from the context of the quote, he isn't saying this is the future he wants, but it's a future he's not particularly opposed to)
But the real threat is "accidental" database leaks from private websites. Let's say you live in a state where abortion isn't legal, and you sign up for a web forum where people discuss getting out-of-state abortions. As soon as that website is required to collect real names (which it will be), it becomes unusable, because nobody can risk getting doxxed.
When I challenged him on his rhetoric, my comment INSTANTLY disappeared. I thought maybe it was a fluke, so I tried again, and the next comment insta-disappeared also.
Soon thereafter I was locked out of the account and asked to provide a "selfie" to confirm my identity. (I declined.)
This is true of basically any issue discussed on the internet. Saying it must be astroturfing is reductive
Is that really evidence of astroturfing? If we're in the middle of an ongoing political debate, it doesn't seem that far fetched for me that people reach similar conclusions. What you're hearing then isn't "astro-turfing" but one coalition, of potentially many.
I often hear people terrified that the government will have a say on what they view online, while being just fine with google doing the same. You can agree or disagree with my assesment, but the point is that hearing that point a bunch doesn't mean it's google astroturfing. It just means there's an ideology out there that thinks it's different (and more opressive seemingly) when governments do it. It means all those people have a similar opinion, probably from reading the same blogs.
But I don't think we need 99.99% confidence -- isn't even acknowledged that 30% of twitter is bots or something? I think it's safe to conclude there's astroturfing on any significant political issue.
Also as far as documented cases, there were documented cases of astroturfing around fracking [1], or pesticides [2]
1. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2057047320969435 2. https://www.corywatson.com/blog/monsanto-downplay-roundup-ri...
This was before the heyday of influencer culture, so I can only imagine how sophisticated things are nowadays. It’s not always bots.
I recommend the book Trust Me, I’m Lying for a deep but somewhat dated look at the online influence industry.
How do you suppose it is that millions of people, separated by vast geographic distances, somehow all reach similar conclusions all at once?
Related: How do you suppose it is that out of 350-700+ million people (depending on whose numbers you believe), there's always only two "choices" and both of them suck?
In the same way that patriarchy rose amongst them all.
In the same way that a shared currency was deemed necessary.
Escpecially in matters of governance, there is something to be said about how humans like to organise themselves. No country has truly escaped capitalism so far.
> In the same way that they came up with the idea of divine being(s) in the image of man that rule nature.
Thanks to the diligent efforts of the Priesthood, of course, who never cease in their 'education' of humanity as to the 'truth.'
Before the world came under centralized control of the Priesthood, there were many tribes of 'Nephelim'--or no-faith-God-people. (ne-phe-el-im.)
(Nope, it has nothing to do with aliens. Guess who is telling that lie also?)
> In the same way that patriarchy rose amongst them all.
Not among my ancestors the Cherokee. They were a matriarchy. They were wiped out (genocided) by foreigners who were controlled by a paternal Priesthood.
In our own history, we were once ruled by such a priesthood. They were called the Nicotani, or Ani-Kutani. They grew insolent and arrogant and eventually crossed the line when one of them raped a man's wife. They were subsequently exterminated, to the last man.
> In the same way that a shared currency was deemed necessary.
By whom? Who made that decision for you? Is it you who is deciding to get rid of cash and make everything digital too, so that you can be even more easily tracked, controlled, monitored...enslaved?
> Escpecially in matters of governance, there is something to be said about how humans like to organise themselves.
That's just the thing. It's not you organizing yourself.
Again, I did not come up with currency and it does not matter if I personally believed in it. Enough people did and now we have capitalism. The people organised themselves, and if it is not what they wanted, history has a recording of many many revolutions and uprisings.
Groups of people who wake up at the same time of the day often have a tendency to be from a similar place, hold similar values and consume similar media.
Just because a bunch of people came to the same conclusion and have had their opinions coalesce around some common ideas, doesn't mean it's astroturfing. There's a noticeable difference between the opinions of HN USA and HN EU as the timezones shift.
"Real" user verification is a wet dream to googlr, meta, etc. Its both a ad inflation and a competive roadblock.
The benefits are real: teens are being preyed upon and socially maligned. State actors and businesses alike are responsible.
The technology is not there nor are governments coordinating appropiate digital concerns. Unsurprising because no one trusts gov, but then implicitly trust business?
Yeah, so obviously, its implementation that will just move around harms.
Things that didn't seem likely to have broad support previously, now are seen as acceptable. In the 90's no one could envision rounding up immigrants. No one could envision uploading an ID card to use ICQ. No one could envision the concept of DE-naturalization or getting rid of birthright citizenship.
Today, in the US for instance, there are entire new generations of people alive. And many, many people who were alive in the 90's are gone. Well these new people very much can envision these things. And they seem to have stocked the Supreme Court to make all these kinds of things a reality.
All because the rest of us keep dismissing all of this as just harmless extreme positions that no one in society really supports. We have to start fighting things like this with more than, "It's not real."
Both Clinton and Obama deported way more people than Trump.
And Clinton only deported 2 million across his entire 8 years in office. With a laser focus on convicted criminals as part of a war on drugs. (Now the efficacy of the old "War on Drugs" can be argued, but the numbers can't. We have the records.)
I think you're conflating the number of "returns", defined in the 90's as people who were not allowed to enter at the border; and "deportations", defined in the 90's as people who were in the US, and then we put on a plane back out of the US. IE - "Returns" were people who showed up at the border, sea port, airport or border checkpoint; asked to get in, and we said no. Basically, the nice people.
What you mean is that Clinton simply didn't let anyone into the country. This is true. (Again, we have the records. Clinton refused entry to the US more than any president in US history.) He didn't, however, round up immigrants living in the US on this scale and deport them like we're seeing today. People would never have allowed for that.
To put numbers on it, Trump is on year 5, and has already processed more formal removal orders than Clinton did by year 8. Not only that, voluntary removals were near non-existent under Clinton in the 90's. Today, for just this year alone, they sit at around 1.5 million.
Things that have broad support now may have that support primarily because of longstanding influence campaigns.
Both the widespread growth in smoking, and its later drop in popularity, are often credited to determined influence campaigns. You are not immune to propaganda!
How do you know what is "shared talking points" vs "humans learning arguments from others" and simply echoing those? Unless you work at one of the social media platforms, isn't it short of impossible to know what exactly you're looking at?
Interesting. Are you saying all the concerns raised by the proponents of ID verification are invalid and meritless? For example,
1. Foreign influence campaigns
2. Domestic influence campaigns
3. Filtering age-appropriate content
I’m sure there are many other points with various degree of validity.
Instead it would be more appropriate to let sites pass headers, such as "we have adult content", thst you could filter on the network or client side. It's still voluntary, of course. Anyone will just visit sites that don't have the checks if necessary.
In the US, #1 and #2 are invalid and meritless. Wholly and without reservation. One of the huge reasons for the First Amendment is to ensure that people are able to counter lies uttered in the public sphere with truth.
#3 is handled by parental controls that have existed in mainstream OSs for quite some time now. [0][1][2] However, those preexisting parental controls don't justify additional expansion of the power and influence of authoritarians, so here we are.
[0] <https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/family-safety>
[1] <https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/set-up-content-and-...>
[2] <https://support.google.com/android/answer/16766047?hl=en-rw>
How does digital ID prevents you from speaking out? For example, 2nd amendment requires a lot of hoops in some jurisdictions, which were deemed constitutional, and not violating 2nd amendment. Same with the 1st amendment. You can argue that with digital IDs there will be less privacy and anonymity than before, but it’s a different story.
Moreover, influence campaigns are not about truth or lies, but about making the public loose face on the institutions. A good example of it today is Russia, where the public does not believe that democratic elections are possible at all, in principle.
> #3 is handled by parental controls that have existed in mainstream OSs for quite some time now.
It is not handled perfectly at all, and easily bypassed. To pretend that information access on the internet can be regulated through parental controls is ridiculous.
What? In the US, arguments #1 and #2 are entirely invalid and meritless. As I mentioned:
One of the huge reasons for the First Amendment is to ensure that people are able to counter lies uttered in the public sphere with truth.
> A good example of it today is Russia, where...
We're talking about the US. Many other governments (and governed people) do not agree that freedom of speech is important or even desirable.
> It is not handled perfectly at all, and easily bypassed.
For quite some time now it has been handled at least as well as these new schemes that authoritarians (and those that profit from their actions) are strong-arming companies into preemptively complying with.
> Moreover, influence campaigns are not about truth or lies, but about making the public loose face on the institutions.
If the institution that's being actually damaged by losing face [0] is (or is intimately associated with) one that has spent the last many decades normalizing the replacement of cogent political discussion with Twitter-grade zingers and ragebait, and is now finding it difficult to engage in cogent discussion then, well, they've made the bed they're now forced to lie in. The way out of that bed is sustained, good faith, cogent discussion, rather than building dossiers and the automated infrastructure for information restriction.
But, in truth, most of the folks pushing these systems aren't interested in cogent discussion and are arguing for them in some combination of ignorance and bad faith.
[0] As is often the case in matters like this, I expect the claimed damage is far, far greater than the actual damage.
How do you address lies with truth if the distribution of lies and truth is uncontrollable?
> We're talking about the US. Many other governments (and governed people) do not agree that freedom of speech is important or even desirable.
The example of Russia has nothing to do with freedom of speech. Read again.
Moreover, as I stated earlier, we already have documentation requirements for 2nd amendment, so why not for the 1st? Asking for ID to post on the internet does not preclude you from exercising your rights.
> The way out of that bed is sustained, good faith, cogent discussion, rather than building dossiers and the automated infrastructure for information restriction.
How can you make a good faith argument if the whole space is polluted by bots, trolls, and various influence groups? Perhaps your argument is in good faith, and factually correct, but for one of you there may be 10,000 bots. So, what value is in your voice?
> But, in truth, most of the folks pushing these systems aren't interested in cogent discussion and are arguing for them in some combination of ignorance and bad faith.
This quite a reach. I personally believe that people who have zero chance to get a real life backlash in their community will engage in bad faith arguments, etc.
In exactly the same way urban dwellers made cogent, good faith arguments back in the late 1800s when one could never hope to keep up with the pace of printed material available for sale, and there were far, far more people speaking in the area than one could have a conversation with in a day, let alone half a year.
Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it.
> How do you address lies with truth if the distribution of lies and truth is uncontrollable?
The same way you have for the last two-hundred and fifty years.
> The example of Russia has nothing to do with freedom of speech.
I'm aware. That's why I dragged the conversation back on topic.
> This quite a reach. [sic]
When put into its surrounding context, it is a plain statement of fact and reasonable assessment of the situation.
[0] and the essay that contains that sentiment
For some reason you still complained about astroturfing.
> I expect there have been variations on that sentiment
Yes. Before one human can create a thousand other fake humans indistinguishable from real ones.
Which you acknowledge yourself without realizing it.
Also, why do you ignore my question about 2nd amendment?
> I'm aware. That's why I dragged the conversation back on topic.
It was on topic, you simply chose to ignore the point you did not like.
> When put into its surrounding context, it is a plain statement of fact and reasonable assessment of the situation.
Sure bud, it is
No? I haven't written the word "astroturfing" in this forum in at least the past 90 days. You haven't bothered to keep track of who you're talking to. Given the quality of your argumentation, this is unsurprising.
Sure:)
I’m sorry you feel this way.