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Oh wow, how would we know that some corporate lobbyists or worse some government agency is not monitoring HN right now and propagating their agenda here in comm

by acd10j 7y ago

Oh wow, how would we know that some corporate lobbyists or worse some government agency is not monitoring HN right now and propagating their agenda here in comment section. How can we detect that and how can we trust anyone else ?

jchw 7y ago
If done well, how would something like that ever be possible to detect? Unfortunately, well-resourced malicious actors can stack the decks :( I now question every time I saw fairly vehement defense of Monsanto in comments sections and wonder if that defense was at least inspired by paid internet commenters and posters, even if it wasn’t directly them. Who really controls the narrative?
- Consultant32452 7y ago
  What really boils the noggin is realizing that it's not just "other" people who fall for this. We all do. Some portion of all of our political, economic, and moral views were put into our heads by corporate or government propaganda.
mcintyre1994 7y ago
There’s a subreddit about this /r/hailcorporate. Some stuff there seems pretty benign but sometimes you get really blatant advertising by brand new accounts. It’d be silly if they weren’t also commenting.
pjc50 7y ago
This definitely does happen, and occasionally it's really blatent.
armitron 7y ago
It has been happening for years, on HN too. Astroturfing used to be extremely obvious and you could quickly verify by looking at someone's comment history. No longer the case I'm afraid, since accounts are either bought outright or pre-processed by intermediaries to have varied histories.
pimmen 7y ago
You don't have to look too hard to find the most obvious examples. Hop on over to an HN discussion about the ongoing Hong Kong extradition bill protests. You'll find plenty of accounts that use whataboutist arguments to change the topic to Western interference on the geopolitical landscape, or that the protests are more violent than how Western media portrays them. Then check out the accounts more closely and you'll see that they're only a few weeks old, the only comment sections they've been active in are about the US trade war with China, Chinese imprisonment of Uighurs and the Hong Kong protests, only spouting pro-China comments. But something this focused on one specific individual I haven't seen before, not on HN at least. I don't think it would be nearly as obvious as what China's doing, though.

by acd10j 7y ago

jchw 7y ago

If done well, how would something like that ever be possible to detect? Unfortunately, well-resourced malicious actors can stack the decks :( I now question every time I saw fairly vehement defense of Monsanto in comments sections and wonder if that defense was at least inspired by paid internet commenters and posters, even if it wasn’t directly them. Who really controls the narrative?

Consultant32452 7y ago
What really boils the noggin is realizing that it's not just "other" people who fall for this. We all do. Some portion of all of our political, economic, and moral views were put into our heads by corporate or government propaganda.

mcintyre1994 7y ago

There’s a subreddit about this /r/hailcorporate. Some stuff there seems pretty benign but sometimes you get really blatant advertising by brand new accounts. It’d be silly if they weren’t also commenting.

pjc50 7y ago

This definitely does happen, and occasionally it's really blatent.

armitron 7y ago

It has been happening for years, on HN too. Astroturfing used to be extremely obvious and you could quickly verify by looking at someone's comment history. No longer the case I'm afraid, since accounts are either bought outright or pre-processed by intermediaries to have varied histories.

pimmen 7y ago

You don't have to look too hard to find the most obvious examples. Hop on over to an HN discussion about the ongoing Hong Kong extradition bill protests. You'll find plenty of accounts that use whataboutist arguments to change the topic to Western interference on the geopolitical landscape, or that the protests are more violent than how Western media portrays them. Then check out the accounts more closely and you'll see that they're only a few weeks old, the only comment sections they've been active in are about the US trade war with China, Chinese imprisonment of Uighurs and the Hong Kong protests, only spouting pro-China comments. But something this focused on one specific individual I haven't seen before, not on HN at least. I don't think it would be nearly as obvious as what China's doing, though.