hackuser

Again, that's not what happened, and not what I described several times even though you can see it for yourself. I'm not going to repeat myself to describe it again, but this is absurd. It represents what you suspect in your mind - motives and intent - not the words on the page, while it overlooks half the actual text (the second paragraph, which contains the evidence). What defense is there from mind-reading? The baseless allegations are not welcome, even from moderators.

EDIT: I don't even disagree with the alleged astroturfers; I've known about Aadhaar for a long time and think it probably is a good idea on balance. This really is a ridiculous situation.

I thought my tone was civil and matter-of-fact. Please let me know if it seemed otherwise.

> unsubstantiated claims

I substantiated my hypothesis and acknowledged its uncertainty. Of course there is no clear proof of astroturfing, unless it's very clumsily done. The whole point of it is to look like legitimate users.

To be clear, I agree that it's very often a cheap shot and I'm glad such things are not generally part of HN.

> I've posted about this countless times

Everyone needs to know policy, but I think few see your comments. You see all your posts and feel you are repeating yourself; users see a tiny fraction of them and may never read about any particular policy. I'm pretty active, but most days I see zero comments from mods - I see a few discussions and a minority of comments in each. Consider even your 'sticky' post at the top of this discussion - what tiny fraction of HN users will see it? Few will see this discussion, and even most/many commenters on this discussion will have moved on or will be reading their comment histories to see responses.

> unless you have more evidence than someone being wrong in your opinion on the internet, you bet it's inadmissible here.

To be clear, that's not at all what I did, as I described above. I'm still not sure if what I did say - pointing to a strong pattern of the same arguments repeated in angry posts, both hallmarks of astroturfing and propaganda - is admissible, since it seems to both meet your standards and yet was rejected. Moving on ...

Well, I agree the discussion is pretty awful. But this policy is a bit unclear to me (and otherwise unwritten, AFAICT):

> not making insinuations about astroturfing and shills, unless you have evidence

That's confusing: What evidence could users have? In my comment, one of the ones you objected to, I cited some strong patterns in the discussion. That's going to be the best evidence that users have access to unless it's very clumsily executed. The astroturfers aren't going to out themselves; looking like ordinary users is the fundamental requirement of 'astroturf'.

So if there's no possible sufficient evidence, do you really mean, 'don't bring it up at all?' I understand not accusing individuals without evidence, but nobody even should point out the general possibility, saying for example, "it seems like something odd is going on here; all these talking points look the same and are made provocatively ..."?

There is no doubt astroturf happens here, simply because there is overwhelming evidence that it is rampant on the Internet and HN isn't exempt. If users can't discuss the topic at all (probably not what you meant), that would shield the bad actors and be a recipe for it to happen unrestrained.

EDIT: some clarifying edits

dang: It's a bit shocking to read this, and it's disappointing too.

I hadn't heard of this policy until now. I've seen very many comments make similar claims in many discussions and I didn't see this response. I just checked the Guidelines and it's not discussed there. Please consider how a user would learn about it - I'm pretty active and I haven't seen it. One possible source of miscommunication: Users probably see only a tiny fraction of what you do, and you could make this comment 100 times and maybe only a fraction of users would come across it at all.

But it's especially disappointing to read the accusation, which has no basis as far as I know. I've always been respectful of the mods, other users, the forum, and its rules, even when I think they aren't great ideas (inevitably, nobody will agree with everything). If I had known about this policy, I would have respected it too. I don't know how I was cast into the role of an antagonist. Like anyone, I don't appreciate loose allegations about me.

...

> You can't make insinuations of astroturfing or shillage on HN without evidence

I don't quite understand the policy as stated. I understand not accusing individuals without evidence, but I certainly didn't do that even by implication. Half my comment was a question asking if there was evidence that it happens in other places, not HN. I also raised the possibility of it happening here, but clearly was unsure and 'insinuated' nothing; I meant simply what I said. If not even that is allowed ...

But to be clear, my concerns don't mean I won't respect your forum's rules. (However, uncertainties will make it more likely that it will happen unintentionally)

EDIT: Moved paragraph with questions of general interest to your post at the top of the discussion.

I'll add that in a few hours I got 6 (or maybe more) down-votes on otherwise uncontroversial comments that didn't agree with the seeming Indian nationalist party line - often the comments didn't directly disagree, they just didn't advocate or drink the Kool-Aid.

Not a complaint, but it looks like the symptoms of what I asked about.

I wish HN would ban comments like the parent. It's such an old tactic for spreading hate, I don't need to describe it. It adds nothing to HN - the pseudo-rational is just old propaganda - and is in fact a great detriment. I can speak only for myself, but please take your hate elsewhere.

Is the Indian government now also doing astroturfing? Does anyone know about any serious research or reporting on it? Chinese and Russian operations are well-known and reported, but I haven't heard of Indian ones.

Seeing the same, generally weak talking points, angrily defending the Indian government, advocating nationalistic points of view, and repeated over and over - it all reminds me of threads critical of China and Russia.

Generally I agree, but ...

> Social Security Number in the US pre-dates the internet and any concerns people had about privacy.

People in the US were concerned about privacy long before the Internet. The 4th Amendment to the US Constitution dates back to the 18th century, for example.

In fact, I'd say people are much less concerned about privacy in the Internet era; they put everything online and happily give private info to corporations and government.

> which centralised biometric DB doesn't have risks. Social Security Number in the US is pretty similar.

There are no biometrics associated with Social Security. It's just an ID number.

If you can identify someone, it's easy to link it to data that identifies their religion.

This article is sensationalizing a very inflammatory issue. For example, the article claims the arrests are "at the behest" of one group, but the citation used doesn't say that. The arrests seem to be at the behest of the law enforcement enforcing the laws as passed by the government.

There are serious issues of free speech and incitement involved, but this article is not the way to address them.

The Guardian recently published leaked training documents for Facebook moderators. The instructions quoted in the Guardian article depict very minimal moderation. For example:

- Remarks such as “Someone shoot Trump” should be deleted, because as a head of state he is in a protected category. But it can be permissible to say: “To snap a bitch’s neck, make sure to apply all your pressure to the middle of her throat”, or “fuck off and die” because they are not regarded as credible threats.

- Videos of violent deaths, while marked as disturbing, do not always have to be deleted because they can help create awareness of issues such as mental illness.

- Some photos of non-sexual physical abuse and bullying of children do not have to be deleted or “actioned” unless there is a sadistic or celebratory element.

- Photos of animal abuse can be shared, with only extremely upsetting imagery to be marked as “disturbing”.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/may/21/revealed-facebo...

> “We review over 100 million pieces of content every month,” Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg wrote on his page on Feb. 16. “Even if our reviewers get 99% of the calls right, that’s still millions of errors over time.”

On one hand, that's a good point. On the other, that's the response of many people to things they are pressured to do. If it's something they really care about - e.g., a big new market or a trend-setting tech - then the response is that they can 'innovate', 'disrupt', change the world, and they'll tell you to ignore the naysayers who talk like Zuckerberg did above.

Why? What is the benefit to Google?

Also, are they doing training for the local user or for Google's 'general' systems or for both?

My assumption has been that Google, Amazon, and Microsoft run the heavy-duty AI in the cloud when possible, benefiting from huge scale and easier updates. Maybe that assumption is wrong?

If it's right, is Apple adopting a more decentralized model, with AI (or more AI) running locally? Could that compete with cloud-based AI's advantages? Obviously it would be better for offline usage, for responsiveness when transmission to the cloud is a significant part the latency, and for confidentiality.

To be clear, I wasn't uncomfortable with the implied comparison because I have something against Jesus or the Gospels. I was uncomfortable because I don't want anyone to think for a moment that I am comparing myself to him. (I'm not.)

> I think the fact remains there's too much non-linearity in the means of production to get where Elon is trying to go without pushing his people to the limit.

What is the basis for that? It is an easy rationalization for an issue with serious consequences.

The Guardian reported on the same issue recently:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/18/tesla-wor...

People on HN, maybe not you, love Musk. He accomplishes a lot in tech but must he get credit for everything, even the things others do? Boeing has a long track record of major technological innovation and development. They also build the X-37, which seems much more similar to the XS=1 than SpaceX's systems.

> a parable

Ha, that's a great observation; I hadn't thought of it. On one hand, I'm very uncomfortable with any implied comparison to the most well known practitioner of parables. On the other, many others have used the form. Maybe I'll write all my HN posts in parable form - 'those who have ears to hear' will understand; the others I won't have to deal with. I could use it for business emails too.

Coming up with that many parables might be challenging.

> I wouldn't worry too much about the debts that they owe to the state.

Why not? The state can forgive the debt, but when those resources disappear from the economy then many people will lose out.

Agreed, to an extent (though not every 'expert' is equally reliable). Two ways I look at it:

1) Generally, the nature of a bubble is that nobody knows when it will pop. People knew about the U.S. asset bubble in the mid-2000s for years, but even those not caught up in the bubble mass psychology couldn't accurately predict when it would collapse. The same was true of the dot-com bubble around 2000. You can be right that there is a bubble, but be far wrong about when it ends.

2) There was a stock broker looking for new business. He cold called 512 people (he must have been a quant); half he told to sell X stock, half he told to buy. The next week he called the 256 for whom he'd made the right prediction and did the same again: Half he told to sell, half to buy ... several weeks later he was down to 16 people. He called all of them and said, 'look, I was right 5 times in a row ...'.

Generally I agree, but the West's double-standard does at least benefit some countries, such as Tunisia.

Also, even support for Syria is based to a great degree on the Western nations' own interests and not those of the Syrian people. Most of the West's involvement is to destroy ISIL and to contain Iran and Russia.

There was no credible possibility that the Saudi Arabian government, for example, would be overthrown; there was nobody for the Western nations to support. If there was a credible possibility, of course the Western nations might have decided supporting the Saudi rulers was more important, as they have many times in the past, and portrayed the rebels as terrorists.

Finally, it all begs the question: Revolutions are very risky; often the outcome is worse than the starting point, with many dead, a generation in ruin, and no improvement in government. When are they worthwhile? How can they be made more likely to obtain worthwhile outcomes?

> The habit of throwing in an accusation and suggesting that your opponents go and look for proof, became too widespread.

Generally I agree, but in this case it's very easily found.

> how do we (humanity) convey a full, factual picture to one another so that we may use those facts in conjunction with our values to agree or disagree with one another?

I think this is an essential question, and one that people often dismiss as having no solution. IMHO it's an excellent, highly valuable problem for someone to solve. In my very humble thinking, I've come up with or collected these ideas:

1) You are entitled to your own opinion but not to your own facts. Facts are can be common ground on which all good faith people can stand, and in which they all share an interest - whatever your opinion, you want it to be true and consistent with the facts. Of course, that's trickier in practice than in theory; see the note on propaganda.

2) Some fields have methods for separating fact from fiction, such as science and law. Some parts of those methods can be applied here, though of course people in Internet forums don't have the resources (especially time) to utilize those methods completely.

3) We must decide to trust some people and sources to a greater degree than others. As someone said, there is no art, no judgment, in trusting nobody. I trust the NY Times more than (some random conspiracy site), for example.

4) Propagandists try to disrupt all of the above; keep an eye out for their tactics. A/the fundamental tactic of professional propaganda (and seemingly adopted by amateurs, maybe unwittingly) is not to persuade but to create uncertainty: Portray all fact as equivalent opinions and discredit any trust in anything, from science to government to news media. Consider climate change, where false uncertainty has brought U.S. federal government action to a standstill; that is exactly the means and outcome of propaganda (as I understand it). Another tactic is to drown signal with noise using a barrage of baseless allegations.

5) As a way to both filter out propagandists and greatly improve the content of forums, focus on input that are based on sound factual foundations and which contributes value - which significantly adds to the reader's knowledge. The propagandists generally reduce knowledge or create uncertainty; they raise endless questions without basis. (Other people do this too; they aren't all intentional propagandists, but it has a similar effect.)

You can find plenty of articles in serious sources which contain serious research on Russian astroturfing operations. Based on those, any forum is a target and HN is more influential than most.

There are anonymized credit card services, including pre-paid and other solutions. The following is based on notes at least a year old, and I haven't tried them:

* Abine

* Final https://getfinal.com/

* Privacy Inc. https://privacy.com/

Also, many pre-paid cards require the user to identify themselves before the card is activated

@mods: Please fix the link, which is to the comments and not to the article (and the comments are currently abominable).

What character encoding do they use? ASCII is 7-bit, all those characters use 1 byte in ASCII, and of course email addresses were originally (and until recently?) restricted to ASCII.