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Does it make anyone else uncomfortable to see a fairly high number of freshly created accounts that only comment on China related threads? Specifically (read th
by xur17 7y ago
Does it make anyone else uncomfortable to see a fairly high number of freshly created accounts that only comment on China related threads? Specifically (read the comment history for these accounts):
* https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=thewholeview https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=thewholeview
* https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=surajama https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=surajama
* https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=thrwy_01 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=thrwy_01
* https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=7u5432throw https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=7u5432throw
* https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=howhigh12323 https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=howhigh12323
* https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=throwaway13372 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=throwaway13372
- sekasi 7y agoThis, if accurate, is quite reflective of all online forums of discourse unfortunately. The game is rigged.
- dang 7y agoPlease see my reply at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21199884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21199884. It's really, really important not to jump to conclusions about other posters. When people do that they usually make serious mistakes and sometimes quite regrettable ones, such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195898 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195898 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358. In the latter case the user really was hounded off the site.
- indalo 7y agoBeen noticing it as well. Strange indeed
- 0xdead 7y agoAlso surprising to see pretty good English in these comments given the fact that most Chinese residents absolutely suck at it.
- dang 7y agoThere's no need to be mean about that. Also, please see my reply at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21199884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21199884. Most likely these are users of mixed background, meaning they've either grown up in China, Hong Kong or Taiwan and worked in the West, or vice versa.
- dang 7y agoI'll look into it tonight and report back here. If I forget for some reason, anyone is welcome to ping hn@ycombinator.com. Edit: see reply below.
- xur17 7y agoSent you an email. Apologies for posting this meta discussion here.
- dang 7y agoWe got your email and will reply, but as long as the question is here publicly, I suppose the answer should be too. I finally got to look at this. There's no single pattern with these accounts. For starters, their comments are not all on the same political side. Some are defending Chinese policy and some are criticizing it. I don't see much of a pattern in the provenance of the accounts, either. Some are throwaway accounts being used by established users; in one case it's because we warned them to stop engaging in nationalistic flamewar, in other cases who knows. Some are breaking the guidelines by making a new account for each comment or two that they post. One account has existed for 3 years and the rest are new. To judge by IPs, one is posting from Hong Kong, one from Taiwan, and the rest from North America. Based on the comments and other data I looked at, my best guess is that these accounts are all people who have spent time in both China and the West. Perhaps some are Westerners of Chinese background while others are from China, Hong Kong, and/or Taiwan and are either working in North America or did so in the past. Most likely they were motivated to create new accounts either because the active discussions going on provoked some reaction in them, or because they don't want their main account to get banned after we warned them, or because they're creating new accounts routinely. Some of their behavior definitely breaks the HN guidelines, but I didn't see anything that suggested more systematic abuse. Nor are they breaking the guidelines in ways that plenty of older users aren't already doing a lot of, unfortunately. It's always possible, of course, that I missed something important. We don't know what we don't know. But we've spent years working with this data and user behavior and, to judge by the occasions when some real-world verification has been possible, have learned to make reasonably informed guesses.
- hunta2097 7y agoI've noticed this on Reddit as well, after a mass-shooting you get dormant accounts sharing videos like "homeowner defends herself from home invasion". Maybe it would be possible to flag shill accounts?
- rrix2 7y agoPer guidelines, reach out to dang or so: > Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data.