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Comment by TillE | Hacker News Reader

Has anyone noticed all the bizarrely pro-Putin comments on English language news sites over the past few weeks? I mean actually repeating Russian propaganda which is completely contrary to reality. The Guardian is flooded with this in every article on the subject.

It's weird, and I'm sure some of it is an actual orchestrated propaganda effort, but I worry that a lot of it is just another instance of people being knee-jerk contrarians.

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There was a well known pro-government astroturfing in Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_brigades#Nashi_involvement

But it can be real people commenting at The Guardian. Brainwashing is very strong.

I've noticed people having varying opinions based on varying pieces of information and misinformation.

But what I've also noticed is these blatantly populist comments like yours that attempt to preemptively discredit any pro-Russian opinion by blaming it all on Putin propaganda in a very handwavey fashion... Props to you for for stepping up the sophistication level by also including the possibility that it could also be attributed to "knee jerk contrarianism."

I don't think anyone is naive enough to believe that Russia doesn't have a propaganda machine at tries to protect its very pragmatic if unpopular interests. The difference between now and maybe 10-20 years ago is that more and more people aren't naive enough to think that they are only ones.

I expect those kind of comments popping up on The Guardian. I was surprised when I saw an entire thread of them on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7404280

(although maybe I shouldn't be surprised)

Are you sure what you've read is "completely contrary to reality"? I don't know how the situation is where you live, but the Belgian media has repeated some half-truths or even outright lies. I've been reading up on myself, with which I don't mean checking RT, and I've found that the situation is not as clear as it seems.

Sock-puppet accounts are hard to prevent. If you employ an entire army to influence social media and news comments, it can be a powerful force.

Unfortunately, the superpowers have been doing it for a while.

>Has anyone noticed all the bizarrely pro-Putin comments on English language news sites over the past few weeks

I've noticed the opposite all over reddit -- people calling Russia an undeveloped dictator-ruled 3rd world country, saying that they should just get bombed by NATO, so on, so forth. It all just reminds me of the anti-Iraq comments from back in the day, and I'm sure the Cold War dialogue was not much different. The fact that we were so quick to recognize an independent ethnic-Albanian Kosovo in Russian-aligned Serbia but not an independent ethnic-Russian Crimea in EU-aligned Ukraine is one small evidence of that. Quite frankly, I'd wish the people of the US would keep their out-of-place views about East-European politics to themselves.

There is an orchestrated propaganda effort, no doubt about that, and it's from both sides.

Astroturf everywhere.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=2903802...

Just don't forget that there is propaganda from both sides.

It has traditionally been illegal for the US to spread propaganda to US citizens: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-ope...

But in 2013: http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/07/12/us_backs_...

There should be a law that requires the US government to put a notice on anything that could be considered propaganda. Hopefully that would mean more transparency, which is a good thing.

Technically, it is not "US", it is "private companies" (media).

Just like with censorship. Plausible deniability, but getting their way anyway.

Pro-Kremlin astroturfers recently attacked Polish Newsweek [1]. If they care even about _Polish_ web, there are certainly plenty of them in English web.

[1] http://swiat.newsweek.pl/wynajeci-rosjanie-cyber-bombarduja-...

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