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> unless you think that multiple HN users are acting on behalf of the government It would be naive not to think that multiple HN users are acting on behalf of
by 4ad 10y ago
> unless you think that multiple HN users are acting on behalf of the government
It would be naive not to think that multiple HN users are acting on behalf of the government, and I am not talking about the US government only; all governments do this on every popular site.
The question is whether there are enough users, or users with a significant impact so that any of this matters.
My personal opinion is that this is the case here, at least when it comes to stories about the NSA, surveillance, Turkey, Russia, etc. There are quite a few prominent members of the community which I personally consider government shills (and no, I won't name them, make up your own opinion).
I won't even say this is necessarily bad thing. It's inevitable, so don't take it as a criticism of the site and/or community (more than someone can criticise that water is wet).
- zzzcpan 10y agoAgree on that. And it kind of becomes too obvious once you start reading HN regularly.
- dang 10y agoI doubt that. This (apparent) phenomenon is more easily explained by people's difficulties tolerating strongly opposing views. That sounds odd, because we all think we're good at that, but really we're not. Having strongly opposing views in your face is unpleasant, even a sort of painful, and we react to this by constructing stories about how the opponent isn't just wrong but bad (disingenuous, dishonest, astroturfing, a shill). The alternative is to accept that honest, smart, committed people might hold an opposite view to yours, but because our own views are so strongly held, that feels much less likely than it should. In other words, claims that HN is rife with shills, etc., seem mostly to be un-self-reflective indications of how diverse the community is.