4 ms·

Disgusting neo-nazi propaganda in the comment thread, of course.

knodi123 10y ago
Disgusting, but sociologically fascinating, too. And very valuable to keep around, in case anyone falls under the mistaken impression that the nazis were simply born evil.
- frostburg 10y ago
  One gets the impression that there is a relatively small amount of people that spends a lot of time looking for related comment threads to pollute.
  - paulmd 10y ago
    It vastly exceeds even what you would expect from the 80-20 rule. I don't have a source for this, but I've read that about 0.7% of commenters are responsible for about 75% of the comments by volume, and they trend overwhelmingly negative.
    - pjc50 10y ago
      That suggests that banning a small number of people would greatly improve most comment areas.
      - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
        It's probably not that simple. They'd just get a new account, marked green of course, but still someone "completely different" as far as comment history is concerned. You banned the account, but not the person. You could go further, by tracking the IP addresses that people post from, and banning new accounts from those IP addresses. But that's not foolproof, in an age of DHCP. It's also turning the hosting site into something that tracks you, which is a bit frightening.
        pjc50 10y ago
        Sure, but this is banning 101 - if it's trivial to create accounts then banning is ineffective. Similarly, if you don't check IPs then running a mail server becomes impossible as you drown in spam. And this is why so many places ban Tor. (The extreme end is metafilter, who have maintained a sustained long-term stable friendly community by charging $5 to make an account. They don't ban many people - they don't have to. Difficult to replicate this!)
        AnimalMuppet 10y ago
        No, it's easy to replicate. Just build a community where it's worth $5 to people to be a part of. Oh, yeah, I guess that is hard...
  - knodi123 10y ago
    And there's no better proof of your claim than the two holocaust deniers in this very comment chain - both of them have very old accounts, with some very old comments, and then over a year of utter silence - and then today, they're both all "holocaust never happened".
    - knodi123 10y ago
      reply to self: Nevermind. The deniers are getting their comments flagged, which hides them... so either they had a year of utter silence, OR the last year's worth of comments were all bad enough to get removed. Fascinating, either way.
      - detaro 10y ago
        You can turn on "showdead" in your profile and check which one it is.
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      With some (but not all that many) comments, and not very much karma. They're old enough to not appear as green, but they're little-used accounts.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    My anecdotal observation is that in the last week or so, the extremist right-wing[0] trolls have returned to HN after being silent for a time, maybe since Trump's election and especially since the inauguration time. First there were brand new accounts that posted trolling questions to otherwise intelligent discussions. Things like, 'how can we really predict the climate years in the future?' or 'maybe Putin really is an ally' - i.e., the old technique of raising vacuous, speculative, provocative questions, without contributing anything substantive. Then I saw older accounts doing it. [0] To be clear, they have no more to do with the rest of people on the right than al Qaeda has to do with Islam. One is not a reflection on the other. EDIT: Also, others are voting for them. For example, I can only wonder how this relatively bizarre comment (judgmental, I know, but a pretty safe judgment in this case) get voted to the top of a front-page thread? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13703286 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13703286
- Retric 10y ago
  It's simply another form of trolling. If they could get people to debate about the moon landing then they will pull out the same crap.
  - neaden 10y ago
    I disagree, for some of these people maybe, but plenty of them are legitimately Nazis who would happily staff an extermination camp. Moon landing conspiracy is relatively harmless, Nazism killed millions.
    - Retric 10y ago
      Nazism includes people who feel no need to deny the Holocaust which IMO shifts things around somewhat. Further, you notice people that are vocal not just those who believe something. And yea, there are also Nazi trolls.
  - knodi123 10y ago
    I disagree. I've known some of these people. They are sincere and thoughtful, it's just that they've got a severe case of bias that causes them to hold contradictory evidence to an absurdly high standard, while blindly accepting anything that agrees with them. These people are used to being shouted down, banned, and publicly mocked, which just feeds into their persecution complex. They can be reasoned with, but it's laborious, unpleasant, and not really worth my time. That's not to say there aren't quite a few regular trolls - but anecdotally, I don't think trolls are the majority.
    - macintux 10y ago
      > They are sincere and thoughtful, it's just that they've got a severe case of bias that causes them to hold contradictory evidence to an absurdly high standard, while blindly accepting anything that agrees with them. This seems to be a recurring theme. http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/23/14703472/cpac-trump-travel-budget http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/23/14703472/cp...
barking 10y ago
"Once the war ended, Zeidel traveled overland before smuggling himself in the autumn of 1945 to what would become the State of Israel" Well there's the Holocaust deniers on the one hand. But then, it does no harm at all for the state of Israel to see a story like this appear just when it has decided to extend still further the settlements in the West bank.
dang 10y ago
If you're talking about the HN comment thread, then please don't make it worse by posting like this. Instead, the way to be a good community member is by flagging the comments you find egregious so that moderators have a chance to see them. To flag a comment (assuming your account has > 30 karma), click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click 'flag' at the top.
- frostburg 10y ago
  Sorry, I didn't notice this. I was talking about the comment thread in the external website. I didn't specify because at the time the sleeper nazi accounts hadn't yet activated here.

Disgusting, but sociologically fascinating, too. And very valuable to keep around, in case anyone falls under the mistaken impression that the nazis were simply born evil.

frostburg 10y ago
One gets the impression that there is a relatively small amount of people that spends a lot of time looking for related comment threads to pollute.
- paulmd 10y ago
  It vastly exceeds even what you would expect from the 80-20 rule. I don't have a source for this, but I've read that about 0.7% of commenters are responsible for about 75% of the comments by volume, and they trend overwhelmingly negative.
  - pjc50 10y ago
    That suggests that banning a small number of people would greatly improve most comment areas.
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      It's probably not that simple. They'd just get a new account, marked green of course, but still someone "completely different" as far as comment history is concerned. You banned the account, but not the person. You could go further, by tracking the IP addresses that people post from, and banning new accounts from those IP addresses. But that's not foolproof, in an age of DHCP. It's also turning the hosting site into something that tracks you, which is a bit frightening.
      - pjc50 10y ago
        Sure, but this is banning 101 - if it's trivial to create accounts then banning is ineffective. Similarly, if you don't check IPs then running a mail server becomes impossible as you drown in spam. And this is why so many places ban Tor. (The extreme end is metafilter, who have maintained a sustained long-term stable friendly community by charging $5 to make an account. They don't ban many people - they don't have to. Difficult to replicate this!)
        AnimalMuppet 10y ago
        No, it's easy to replicate. Just build a community where it's worth $5 to people to be a part of. Oh, yeah, I guess that is hard...
- knodi123 10y ago
  And there's no better proof of your claim than the two holocaust deniers in this very comment chain - both of them have very old accounts, with some very old comments, and then over a year of utter silence - and then today, they're both all "holocaust never happened".
  - knodi123 10y ago
    reply to self: Nevermind. The deniers are getting their comments flagged, which hides them... so either they had a year of utter silence, OR the last year's worth of comments were all bad enough to get removed. Fascinating, either way.
    - detaro 10y ago
      You can turn on "showdead" in your profile and check which one it is.
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    With some (but not all that many) comments, and not very much karma. They're old enough to not appear as green, but they're little-used accounts.
- hackuser 10y ago
  My anecdotal observation is that in the last week or so, the extremist right-wing[0] trolls have returned to HN after being silent for a time, maybe since Trump's election and especially since the inauguration time. First there were brand new accounts that posted trolling questions to otherwise intelligent discussions. Things like, 'how can we really predict the climate years in the future?' or 'maybe Putin really is an ally' - i.e., the old technique of raising vacuous, speculative, provocative questions, without contributing anything substantive. Then I saw older accounts doing it. [0] To be clear, they have no more to do with the rest of people on the right than al Qaeda has to do with Islam. One is not a reflection on the other. EDIT: Also, others are voting for them. For example, I can only wonder how this relatively bizarre comment (judgmental, I know, but a pretty safe judgment in this case) get voted to the top of a front-page thread? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13703286 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13703286
Retric 10y ago
It's simply another form of trolling. If they could get people to debate about the moon landing then they will pull out the same crap.
- neaden 10y ago
  I disagree, for some of these people maybe, but plenty of them are legitimately Nazis who would happily staff an extermination camp. Moon landing conspiracy is relatively harmless, Nazism killed millions.
  - Retric 10y ago
    Nazism includes people who feel no need to deny the Holocaust which IMO shifts things around somewhat. Further, you notice people that are vocal not just those who believe something. And yea, there are also Nazi trolls.
- knodi123 10y ago
  I disagree. I've known some of these people. They are sincere and thoughtful, it's just that they've got a severe case of bias that causes them to hold contradictory evidence to an absurdly high standard, while blindly accepting anything that agrees with them. These people are used to being shouted down, banned, and publicly mocked, which just feeds into their persecution complex. They can be reasoned with, but it's laborious, unpleasant, and not really worth my time. That's not to say there aren't quite a few regular trolls - but anecdotally, I don't think trolls are the majority.
  - macintux 10y ago
    > They are sincere and thoughtful, it's just that they've got a severe case of bias that causes them to hold contradictory evidence to an absurdly high standard, while blindly accepting anything that agrees with them. This seems to be a recurring theme. http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/23/14703472/cpac-trump-travel-budget http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/23/14703472/cp...

barking 10y ago

"Once the war ended, Zeidel traveled overland before smuggling himself in the autumn of 1945 to what would become the State of Israel" Well there's the Holocaust deniers on the one hand. But then, it does no harm at all for the state of Israel to see a story like this appear just when it has decided to extend still further the settlements in the West bank.

dang 10y ago

If you're talking about the HN comment thread, then please don't make it worse by posting like this. Instead, the way to be a good community member is by flagging the comments you find egregious so that moderators have a chance to see them. To flag a comment (assuming your account has > 30 karma), click on its timestamp to go to its page, then click 'flag' at the top.

frostburg 10y ago
Sorry, I didn't notice this. I was talking about the comment thread in the external website. I didn't specify because at the time the sleeper nazi accounts hadn't yet activated here.