3 ms·

I think most of the Chinese Communist Party support is Chinese gov directed, not native to most membership in HN, though there is definitely a subset of those w

by mrkstu 6y ago

I think most of the Chinese Communist Party support is Chinese gov directed, not native to most membership in HN, though there is definitely a subset of those with significant investment in China who would possibly let that influence their moderation.

dang 6y ago
I'm afraid that's deeply inaccurate. The truth is that the HN community is much larger than people assume or feel like it is, and much more varied in users' backgrounds. This means that many readers have views that are more than a standard deviation away from whatever you're assuming the norm should be—and unfortunately this creates suspicion, outrage, and accusations of astroturfing/shillage/manipulation/spying. It seems that, up to one standard deviation away from their own views (or sense of the norm), people's response to a different view is "huh, that's interesting". But when you get to two or more deviations away, the responses start to become "that's disingenuous", "who paid you to write this", "you're a communist party shill", and worse. (I'm using 'standard deviation' metaphorically—I haven't measured this. But I bet one could.) In reality, though, there isn't a norm, and there are many more deviations than expected. HN has the look and feel of a cozy forum, not a public square, let alone a network of public squares all over the world. This perception gap between what people expect and what's objectively happening is the source of nearly all the perceptions of astroturfing, shilling, manipulation, brigading, botting, and spying that I've personally investigated on political topics—especially when it comes to accusations of government manipulation. How do I know this? First because I've spent countless hours studying the data and countering abuse and manipulation on HN, and I've basically never found anything that looks state-directed. Of course it's possible that governments are clever enough to fool us whilst leaving no traces in our data (even while posting comments that some users consider obvious propaganda). But we can only go by what we can objectively look at. If we just toss out the need to have evidence or data, all that's left is imagination, which is what dominates internet discussions about these topics. Second, the users that other users make accusations against turn out to be real people, often with long histories on HN, who simply have opposing views. Often those views are because they grew up in a different country or their families come from there or they spent time working there, and so on. I've looked into many of these cases personally, and what I've found is that the accusations were deeply unjust and that the accusers, unintentionally, were behaving like a mob. This is distressing. I don't have to agree with the users being attacked, or support whatever side they may belong to, in order to feel like they don't deserve this. Indeed, I'm sure you and basically every other HN user would agree and feel the same way. Nevertheless, it happens anyway, because these things happen unintentionally and collectively. It's an ugly dynamic, and people have actually been hounded off of Hacker News because of it. This is how we turn ourselves into a community that none of us would want to be part of. The only prophylactic I can see against this is for us as individuals to become more conscious of how these dynamics work, and what the situation we find ourselves on HN objectively is, as opposed to what it feels like. I wrote about this extensively when this came up the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23495490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23495490. There are a lot of links there to past discussions of this topic. On the matter of "what the situation we find ourselves on HN objectively is, as opposed to what it feels like", see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.
- mrkstu 6y ago
  First of all, thank you for the detailed response. I will say that from my own experience (by definition anecdotal) on HN that there seems to be a quick, reflexive downvote for anything mildly critical of the Chinese Communist Party, that then sometimes then gets voted back up, sometimes not. Since, by the nature of the platform where anything downvoted becomes less visible, comments so downvoted quickly may never even get the chances to be upvoted back to visibility, unless readers go out of their way to look for and correct the issue. Speculating on why that is, is necessarily low-data in an anonymous setting, but I wish mine had been true, that it was state sponsored. The alternative that HNers are deliberately siding with the Chinese government in relatively large numbers is sad.

by mrkstu 6y ago

dang 6y ago

I'm afraid that's deeply inaccurate. The truth is that the HN community is much larger than people assume or feel like it is, and much more varied in users' backgrounds. This means that many readers have views that are more than a standard deviation away from whatever you're assuming the norm should be—and unfortunately this creates suspicion, outrage, and accusations of astroturfing/shillage/manipulation/spying. It seems that, up to one standard deviation away from their own views (or sense of the norm), people's response to a different view is "huh, that's interesting". But when you get to two or more deviations away, the responses start to become "that's disingenuous", "who paid you to write this", "you're a communist party shill", and worse. (I'm using 'standard deviation' metaphorically—I haven't measured this. But I bet one could.) In reality, though, there isn't a norm, and there are many more deviations than expected. HN has the look and feel of a cozy forum, not a public square, let alone a network of public squares all over the world. This perception gap between what people expect and what's objectively happening is the source of nearly all the perceptions of astroturfing, shilling, manipulation, brigading, botting, and spying that I've personally investigated on political topics—especially when it comes to accusations of government manipulation. How do I know this? First because I've spent countless hours studying the data and countering abuse and manipulation on HN, and I've basically never found anything that looks state-directed. Of course it's possible that governments are clever enough to fool us whilst leaving no traces in our data (even while posting comments that some users consider obvious propaganda). But we can only go by what we can objectively look at. If we just toss out the need to have evidence or data, all that's left is imagination, which is what dominates internet discussions about these topics. Second, the users that other users make accusations against turn out to be real people, often with long histories on HN, who simply have opposing views. Often those views are because they grew up in a different country or their families come from there or they spent time working there, and so on. I've looked into many of these cases personally, and what I've found is that the accusations were deeply unjust and that the accusers, unintentionally, were behaving like a mob. This is distressing. I don't have to agree with the users being attacked, or support whatever side they may belong to, in order to feel like they don't deserve this. Indeed, I'm sure you and basically every other HN user would agree and feel the same way. Nevertheless, it happens anyway, because these things happen unintentionally and collectively. It's an ugly dynamic, and people have actually been hounded off of Hacker News because of it. This is how we turn ourselves into a community that none of us would want to be part of. The only prophylactic I can see against this is for us as individuals to become more conscious of how these dynamics work, and what the situation we find ourselves on HN objectively is, as opposed to what it feels like. I wrote about this extensively when this came up the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23495490 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23495490. There are a lot of links there to past discussions of this topic. On the matter of "what the situation we find ourselves on HN objectively is, as opposed to what it feels like", see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23308098.

mrkstu 6y ago
First of all, thank you for the detailed response. I will say that from my own experience (by definition anecdotal) on HN that there seems to be a quick, reflexive downvote for anything mildly critical of the Chinese Communist Party, that then sometimes then gets voted back up, sometimes not. Since, by the nature of the platform where anything downvoted becomes less visible, comments so downvoted quickly may never even get the chances to be upvoted back to visibility, unless readers go out of their way to look for and correct the issue. Speculating on why that is, is necessarily low-data in an anonymous setting, but I wish mine had been true, that it was state sponsored. The alternative that HNers are deliberately siding with the Chinese government in relatively large numbers is sad.