4 ms·

If I am understanding his/her comment correctly, its point is that this does happen sometimes, not that it is occurring in any specific thread or being done by

If I am understanding his/her comment correctly, its point is that this does happen sometimes, not that it is occurring in any specific thread or being done by any specific users. To that end your response seems to confirm that but asks us not to talk about it, even in the general sense.

dang 8y ago
The problem is that the people who talk about this have no basis for the claim. It feels like it's happening, so they say it is. Other people also say it is, so there is social proof. Anyone who disagrees is reframed as a shill, puppet, useful idiot and the like, leaving no feeling of uncertainty internally. As far as I can tell this dynamic has nothing to do with reality. Reality is that the HN community has millions of people, is diverse in many ways including internationally, and is divided on divisive topics. That is already enough to explain the comments that show up. But none of us is wired for dealing with that. We're wired for loyalty to our tribe, needing to feel safe, and suspecting outsiders. It's painful to encounter a sharp opposing view, and people are angrily sharp on divisive topics. Reframing the other as a foreign spy or whatever insulates you from that. It relieves you from considering what truth there might be in that view, and reinforces loyalty to your own—at the cost of feeling surrounded by infiltrators and enemies. This is poisonous to thoughtful discussion, which depends on people being willing to open to differences and truths they may not yet see. Since the actual phenomenon is vanishingly rare compared to the insinuations people make about it, we have a rule that users not post such insinuations without evidence. A feeling is not evidence. Even the sense "there are a lot of green accounts saying things I disagree with" is usually just a feeling, because we notice things we dislike more vividly than we notice anything else [1]. People on the opposite side have the opposite perceptions, but the identical feelings. Notice how when people post claims about astroturfing, trolls, and spies on HN, they don't include links; just as when they make claims about "threads about $topic", they don't include links. Why is this? If the perception were of reality rather than a feeling, specific examples would always be available, yet in practice they almost never are. The discussion falls apart when specific cases are mentioned because (a) people never agree about those, and (b) such data as there is never supports the claim. The discussion always stays in a mist of generality, breeding bacteria of suspicion. [1] Does anybody know or have a name for this bias? It's a huge factor in these discussions and it needs a good name.
- cwkoss 8y ago
  How are you able to use data to determine whether someone is part of a coordinated disinformation campaign? I agree that these are probably exceedingly rare on HN, but it seems technically implausible that you'd be able to accurately identify them.
  - dang 8y ago
    That's in the class of things we can't explain without ruining them, but I can at least offer a couple things. First, we're careful not to say anything beyond what we see in the data we have. For sure a sufficiently smart campaign is going to exceed our ability to detect it. But what can one meaningfully say about that? We have to stick to what our flashlight can show, and trust that it is at least more reliable than no flashlight. I can tell you that when it does light on an accusation of astroturfing, it nearly always tends against the accusation. Second, some of the analysis can be done by anyone who wants to. When you encounter specific claims of astroturfing or shillage, look at the history of the commenter being accused. Most of the time their track record makes it implausible. If someone has been posting to HN for five years including about, say, garbage collection in Julia, what are the odds that they're secretly a foreign agent? Far lower than that the other user tossed off an accusation without pausing to look. It's usually not even a serious question. Now consider that these demonstrably low-probability cases are exactly like the rest of the accusations people post here, and one has evidence for a common mechanism underlying the entire class. I don't assert (how could I) that there are no cases of genuine manipulation that fall outside it. But after looking at thousands of such claims, I believe that this and similar tests account for nearly all of them. (Edit: it's different in cases of startups or projects trying to game HN to promote themselves; that's super common. And more sophisticated corporate astroturfing is something we've occasionally run into. But on these political, national, and ideological issues: zilch.)
    - cwkoss 8y ago
      Interesting, thanks for the response and the work you do. "Oh no, now all the coordinated disinformation campaigns will start posting five years of high-quality good-faith technical discussion on a variety of topics to evade your heuristic" /s

dang 8y ago

The problem is that the people who talk about this have no basis for the claim. It feels like it's happening, so they say it is. Other people also say it is, so there is social proof. Anyone who disagrees is reframed as a shill, puppet, useful idiot and the like, leaving no feeling of uncertainty internally. As far as I can tell this dynamic has nothing to do with reality. Reality is that the HN community has millions of people, is diverse in many ways including internationally, and is divided on divisive topics. That is already enough to explain the comments that show up. But none of us is wired for dealing with that. We're wired for loyalty to our tribe, needing to feel safe, and suspecting outsiders. It's painful to encounter a sharp opposing view, and people are angrily sharp on divisive topics. Reframing the other as a foreign spy or whatever insulates you from that. It relieves you from considering what truth there might be in that view, and reinforces loyalty to your own—at the cost of feeling surrounded by infiltrators and enemies. This is poisonous to thoughtful discussion, which depends on people being willing to open to differences and truths they may not yet see. Since the actual phenomenon is vanishingly rare compared to the insinuations people make about it, we have a rule that users not post such insinuations without evidence. A feeling is not evidence. Even the sense "there are a lot of green accounts saying things I disagree with" is usually just a feeling, because we notice things we dislike more vividly than we notice anything else [1]. People on the opposite side have the opposite perceptions, but the identical feelings. Notice how when people post claims about astroturfing, trolls, and spies on HN, they don't include links; just as when they make claims about "threads about $topic", they don't include links. Why is this? If the perception were of reality rather than a feeling, specific examples would always be available, yet in practice they almost never are. The discussion falls apart when specific cases are mentioned because (a) people never agree about those, and (b) such data as there is never supports the claim. The discussion always stays in a mist of generality, breeding bacteria of suspicion. [1] Does anybody know or have a name for this bias? It's a huge factor in these discussions and it needs a good name.

cwkoss 8y ago
How are you able to use data to determine whether someone is part of a coordinated disinformation campaign? I agree that these are probably exceedingly rare on HN, but it seems technically implausible that you'd be able to accurately identify them.
- dang 8y ago
  That's in the class of things we can't explain without ruining them, but I can at least offer a couple things. First, we're careful not to say anything beyond what we see in the data we have. For sure a sufficiently smart campaign is going to exceed our ability to detect it. But what can one meaningfully say about that? We have to stick to what our flashlight can show, and trust that it is at least more reliable than no flashlight. I can tell you that when it does light on an accusation of astroturfing, it nearly always tends against the accusation. Second, some of the analysis can be done by anyone who wants to. When you encounter specific claims of astroturfing or shillage, look at the history of the commenter being accused. Most of the time their track record makes it implausible. If someone has been posting to HN for five years including about, say, garbage collection in Julia, what are the odds that they're secretly a foreign agent? Far lower than that the other user tossed off an accusation without pausing to look. It's usually not even a serious question. Now consider that these demonstrably low-probability cases are exactly like the rest of the accusations people post here, and one has evidence for a common mechanism underlying the entire class. I don't assert (how could I) that there are no cases of genuine manipulation that fall outside it. But after looking at thousands of such claims, I believe that this and similar tests account for nearly all of them. (Edit: it's different in cases of startups or projects trying to game HN to promote themselves; that's super common. And more sophisticated corporate astroturfing is something we've occasionally run into. But on these political, national, and ideological issues: zilch.)
  - cwkoss 8y ago
    Interesting, thanks for the response and the work you do. "Oh no, now all the coordinated disinformation campaigns will start posting five years of high-quality good-faith technical discussion on a variety of topics to evade your heuristic" /s