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Comment by fierycatnet | Hacker News Reader

Ukrainian situation is a complex one and brings out the worst in people, at least in post-Soviet countries. It's not uncommon for people to have different view on this issue. I know families who fight over it, people breaking up over it, it's pretty emotional subject. So with this in mind, I don't think there is some sort of conspiratorial force at work to post pro-Kremlin position on online. I don't doubt that there are paid people who spam forums but just because someone is voicing their opinion in favor of Russian official stance it doesn't mean automatic paid shill. I've been following this conflict since 2013 and I have to say that all involved sides are offenders of "their" version of events in mass media.

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I think the cause for skepticism in this circumstance was the heavy handed pro-Russian voice that seemed to dominate the conversation online over the situation in Ukraine.

That and the mountain of evidence which demonstrates how Russia makes a concerted effort to command the media narrative of a story through online comments.

Just the other day Russia announced additional cuts in their annual budget. Almost every expenditure was cut across the board, except for the military and propaganda (e.g. Russia Today received a 5 bln increase).

> I don't doubt that there are paid people who spam forums but just because someone is voicing their opinion in favor of Russian official stance it doesn't mean automatic paid shill.

This article is just about these paid people and doesn't question that there are people with pro-Russian government position. But in this case bandwagon effect[1] and propaganda take major role.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwagon_effect

What do you mean "you don't think" there is such a conspiratorial force? The article being discussed states explicitly that there is exactly such a force. You don't believe it? Then talk about the article. The situation being complex and your following it since the beginning are totally irrelevant.

(What I think is that the only thing these paid trolls cannot admit is that they are paid trolls. They can write anything, criticize Putin and such, but they cannot admit they exist.)

The fact that there are two sides debating the story doesn't invalidate the idea that Russian would hire pro trolls.

this reminds me C&C Red Alert game. But in the end hypnotizing Yuri fails in front of the good old American nuke. Russians may employ a thousand of pro-trolls. But they cannot filter (and possibly change) global traffic realtime like NSA does.

Russians have similar system to filter local traffic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SORM

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