4 ms·

So - it's a conspiracy?!

by nickpp 4y ago

hnhg 4y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing [Personally, I am open-minded. I do struggle to see the immediate pay-off for the author of this blog, while I do see a pay-off in the context of an astroturfing campaign.]
- notahacker 4y ago
  I'm struggling to see an immediate payoff to anyone running an astroturfing campaign. Company directors that think remote work doesn't work for their company have more relevant anecdotes than random blogs (especially random blogs appearing months after mainstream media reported examples of the same phenomenon). And there are considerably less indirect ways for workplace-area caterers and commuter rail to try to hold on to what they have. The payoffs in satisfaction to people that (i) like bragging/confessing about what they actually do or (ii) like cosplaying the antiwork rebel seems more obvious
  - Nowado 4y ago
    One of other comments pointed out that there's another site, which to me seems to point towards a more straight forward explanation, but I'd like do address your doubts here anyway. There are various interest group associations, which can work towards a surprisingly generic goals. One interesting example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8416853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8416853 (with all the caveats mentioned in comments).
Nowado 4y ago
I am fully aware this is what my claim comes down to. Even basic future predictions like more general media interest or talking points leaking into everyday discourse could look the same if thing was legit (or a generic grift). It's really not hard to hide your tracks from general public - literally just setting up new accounts does the trick. The hard part is having the thing reach the surface, but 1) a lot of things here are also really easy to hide (reddit upvotes and posts from accounts with history are cheap) and 2) if you're doing your job right you don't need a lot of it. Near impossibility of avoiding both false positives and negatives is a pretty fundamental issue/feature of that kind of activity. I really don't know how I could do more meaningful digging. Blog posts are really bad tho.
- nickpp 4y ago
  I'm wondering if the desired outcome (return to the office) would be enough to justify the effort. But I think that pretty soon, with help of various tools, injecting fake info on the net will be so easy and cheap that the only way to know truth from fake will be with the help of AI agents. If it's not already...
  - TigeriusKirk 4y ago
    It would be worth the effort for even the smallest commercial real estate management company. There are huge, massive, titanic sums of money at stake here. Not taking a position on this particular site, but there's plenty of financial benefits here.
  - raydev 4y ago
    > I'm wondering if the desired outcome (return to the office) would be enough to justify the effort I wonder if you are overestimating the effort. Hire a contractor to throw together a few blog posts and then spend single-digit thousands to promote/boost it in various spots.

So - it's a conspiracy?!

by nickpp 4y ago

So - it's a conspiracy?!

hnhg 4y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing [Personally, I am open-minded. I do struggle to see the immediate pay-off for the author of this blog, while I do see a pay-off in the context of an astroturfing campaign.]

notahacker 4y ago
I'm struggling to see an immediate payoff to anyone running an astroturfing campaign. Company directors that think remote work doesn't work for their company have more relevant anecdotes than random blogs (especially random blogs appearing months after mainstream media reported examples of the same phenomenon). And there are considerably less indirect ways for workplace-area caterers and commuter rail to try to hold on to what they have. The payoffs in satisfaction to people that (i) like bragging/confessing about what they actually do or (ii) like cosplaying the antiwork rebel seems more obvious
- Nowado 4y ago
  One of other comments pointed out that there's another site, which to me seems to point towards a more straight forward explanation, but I'd like do address your doubts here anyway. There are various interest group associations, which can work towards a surprisingly generic goals. One interesting example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8416853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8416853 (with all the caveats mentioned in comments).

Nowado 4y ago

I am fully aware this is what my claim comes down to. Even basic future predictions like more general media interest or talking points leaking into everyday discourse could look the same if thing was legit (or a generic grift). It's really not hard to hide your tracks from general public - literally just setting up new accounts does the trick. The hard part is having the thing reach the surface, but 1) a lot of things here are also really easy to hide (reddit upvotes and posts from accounts with history are cheap) and 2) if you're doing your job right you don't need a lot of it. Near impossibility of avoiding both false positives and negatives is a pretty fundamental issue/feature of that kind of activity. I really don't know how I could do more meaningful digging. Blog posts are really bad tho.

nickpp 4y ago
I'm wondering if the desired outcome (return to the office) would be enough to justify the effort. But I think that pretty soon, with help of various tools, injecting fake info on the net will be so easy and cheap that the only way to know truth from fake will be with the help of AI agents. If it's not already...
- TigeriusKirk 4y ago
  It would be worth the effort for even the smallest commercial real estate management company. There are huge, massive, titanic sums of money at stake here. Not taking a position on this particular site, but there's plenty of financial benefits here.
- raydev 4y ago
  > I'm wondering if the desired outcome (return to the office) would be enough to justify the effort I wonder if you are overestimating the effort. Hire a contractor to throw together a few blog posts and then spend single-digit thousands to promote/boost it in various spots.