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The YouTubers who blew the whistle on an anti-vax plot
- imjustsaying 5y agoThis story is blatantly being artificially pushed to the top of HN. https://ibb.co/4Ns8DWk https://ibb.co/4Ns8DWk
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- elliekelly 5y agoI think newer/more recent posts can hit the front page with fewer upvotes as a way for potentially interesting topics to get out of “new”. I wonder if it could also be a function of how many users are currently on the site? So late on a Saturday night perhaps it only requires a handful of upvotes for a new post to hit the front page while a post in the middle of the day during the week would need more. Either way, this definitely isn’t the first time I’ve seen something on the front page with only a few votes so I’m certain it’s nothing nefarious.
- E-Reverance 5y agoDon't mods boost certain links they think are interesting?
- gjsman-1000 5y agoIf so, they aren't transparent about it.
- dang 5y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308
- akomtu 5y agoI like how the top comment is flagged+dead. It points out an obvious, but inconvenient truth: enough to get widespread approval and enough to get burnt at stake for that. It's like saying the earth is round in medieval ages.
- adjkant 5y agoNo, it says that a someone or a few people tried to attack and flag a post to death, and all their comments from others were also downvoted. Nothing says that this got "widespread approval". The top comment could be +0 -12 and it just means all the others are worse. Only an admin can know if any comment got upvotes. From watching this thread out of curiosity of why it was attacked so viciously, I saw every post go immediately down, no positive time. All this successfully did was attract a bunch of anti-vaxers, people pushing it, and a few stragglers who saw it before it was flagged.
- dang 5y agoThat is the second-chance pool, described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308. We didn't touch this one.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- forcry 5y agoBut here is a story that deserves on frontpage, but didn't https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27941820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27941820
- dang 5y ago"Blatantly being artificially pushed" is an odd way to describe 100% normal behavior. I never stop being surprised at how people put whatever they label they like on whatever they imagine they're seeing, without even the slightest check. Would you please read the site guidelines and stick to them? You broke them egregiously here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- gjsman-1000 5y agoHow did this get to #4 on the homepage with only 6 upvotes at the time? That seems almost impossible without manipulation.
- seattle_spring 5y agoDo you ask the same questions when the same thing happens with pro-Ivermectin articles?
- gjsman-1000 5y agoI'm not talking about the content of the article at all. I'm just talking meta about how that seems impossible. #4 position with 6 upvotes seems impossible, but maybe I'm wrong and somehow it's was just the most disproportionate upvote-rank ratio I've seen yet.
- gjsman-1000 5y agoFor those downvoting, it's not the article. Can one not question the meta aspects about an article's ranking for clarification? I did not mean to imply any foul play.
- akomtu 5y agoI suspect HN has weights for popular words, e.g. "YouTube" gives +5, "anti-vax" gives -15 and so on.
- OJFord 5y agoIt's currently 14 votes and 31 minutes old (and fallen to spot 5). So 6 and call it what, 15±5? Neither is at all unusual. Being quickly voted on is worth more (in terms of the ranking) than the same handful of votes over hours or days.
- caramelcream 5y agoIt's not unusual, HN's front page ranking algorithm is heavily biased towards new submissions.
- rubatuga 5y ago> The story was genuine
- adjkant 5y ago> The story was genuine, but didn't include anything about vaccine deaths. But in this context it would give the false impression that the death rate statistics had come from the leak.
- DethNinja 5y agoWhy this needs to be about anti-vax, as a company it is common to hire influencers to bad-mouth your competitors, could it a be campaign from a vaccine manufacturer?
- mixmastamyk 5y agoAgreed, sounded like a tactic to make AZ look better in comparison. Maybe someone bought their stock on the cheap.
- akomtu 5y agoEven if the story is fake, it tells how the sausage is made: 2k usd and a twitter "influencer" with 1.5M subscribers will push almost any bs you want.
- briefcomment 5y agoI don't think you can call this anti-vax when when the ask was to favor one vaccine over another.
- villasv 5y agoIt can still be, specially if the favored one is less available. Having people become picky is one plausible method to slow immunization. It also propagates the notion that vaccines in general are more dangerous than they really are.
- briefcomment 5y agoOk, but the headline makes it seem like it definitely was, when there's clearly room for interpretation.
- Deneb58 5y agoRussian embassy says it's not Kremlin who pushes misinformation. Oh really? Putin wants to destroy EU. He bombed Syria for the refugees to overwhelm Europe. He wants to stop Ukraine of joining EU. And his goal is to make as much damage as possible in Europe. He's waging a war. And misinformation is his weapon.
- Applejinx 5y agoAbsolutely. There's nothing new or surprising about these reports… or about extensive attempts to flag and obscure the reports. If Putin has a bot army on HN, they're on high alert. This is just the territory these days. This is the internet as it exists and intersects real world politics.
- antioxidant 5y agoLet’s not forget about the ‘Vaccine Confidence’ project which is doing the opposite, paying influencers to say vaccines are safe and there are no risks The honest answer is vaccines are not risk-free, but also probably not as dangerous as some people think.
- adjkant 5y agoOff your link: "It would appear as though Resident Joe Biden and his team of treasonous usurpers may be responsible for at least one of the campaigns, and this through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)." Saying "there is a public health campaign to increase vaccinations" does not make the risk real. Please link to sources that actually show that instead of something that calls people "treasonous usurpers" and links to InfoWars.
- antioxidant 5y agoEDIT: removed
- adjkant 5y agoSeems like a good sign it wasn't a good source or story. In other words, we should not try to remember it...
- aaron695 5y agoHere's one plan, they were paid $400 to $1,000 a month. CDPHE Vaccine Campaign Communications Plan (Colorado) https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21014896-cdphe-vaccine-campaign-comms-plan https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21014896-cdphe-vacci... "For video testimonials, a video template will be provided and influencers will be walked through the process of recording themselves using the template." "Lastly, the training session will provide further guidance about how to manage potential dissenters. This will ensure influencers are prepared for COVID-19 vaccine naysayer comments. Each month influencers will receive a link to an updated Social Press Kit, which will have all pre-approved messages and social media content with their respective graphics and images." "While initial guidance is provided, influencers are encouraged to relay messages with their authentic voice. Monitoring will focus on safeguarding consistency with campaign messaging, while not flagging content for a small degree of deviation."
- aaron695 5y ago> death rate among people who had the Pfizer vaccine was almost three times that of the AstraZeneca jab. Why not someone shorting Pfizer, rather than Russia? It's very amature-ish, Russia would know it would get exposed, but did it anyway? Russia is good at this. Also why France and Germany? English speaking influencers will flow to Europe, but not so much the other way.
- adjkant 5y agoSo for those normal HN viewers still looking at this flagged post, isn't this Russian troll army wild?
- dang 5y agoPlease read the site guidelines and stick to them. You broke them egregiously here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Applejinx 5y agoSite guidelines imply a modicum of good faith. I am used to some political actors exploiting demands for good faith as a cloak. I am not saying you are a political actor, but I am saying you are using a known set of techniques real aggressively and it fits my mental model for a type of bad actor.
- dang 5y agoYes, in fact the HN guidelines explicitly ask you to assume good faith. If you don't want to follow the guidelines, that's fine, but then please don't post here.
- Applejinx 5y agoI have every intention of following the guidelines. It doesn't exempt me from being aware of reality, and there are times when the guidelines and events in reality clash. This makes your job as a moderator (I take it that's something you do?) unreasonably difficult. I'm very sorry about that. The fact that reality makes it unreasonably difficult doesn't mean reality stops happening, and your efforts are appreciated even when they can't be completely effective (because some participants will not honor your rules or operate in good faith). It's tough all over, and it's important to respect our intentions. The goal is to get back to good faith one day :)
- glkjlw345ym 5y agoI LOVE SUCKING DICK! I'm so happy that Hacker News is so open to faggots like us that can suck cock and talk about covid. I want to smoke Fauci's cock. You think if we get quad-vax'd we could have a big gay orgy? I'd like to pound you all in the ass! Man, there's so much cock-sucking in this thread - more than the Castro and the Folsom combined. Suck Cock! Study Covid! I love lockdown. I love fucking people in the ass.
- glkjlw345ym 5y agoF A G G O T S !