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It's not an insinuation it's an obvious fact of the world we live in. It's obvious to anyone who has used this site, or any other site, for any period of tim

It's not an insinuation it's an obvious fact of the world we live in. It's obvious to anyone who has used this site, or any other site, for any period of time. Of course I'm worried about abuse, as this site clearly has the ability to influence people, not just politically, but technically and socially as well. As I stated, just emailing you and hoping for the best is an entirely broken model which leaves users with no ability to detect this and quantify it for themselves or to share that information with the public who uses this site. HN itself offers no reports, no data, and no summaries about these actions or their outcomes. I'm genuinely surprised you thought this was a worthwhile response to the broader problem of user trust on public forums, or would waste a minute pretending that HN uniquely doesn't share in them.

tptacek 2y ago
Emailing me? I'm just some guy.
- akira2501 2y ago
  Would making that change in wording alter the point in any material way?
  - tptacek 2y ago
    I'm just saying, nobody should be emailing me about shills on HN, because I can't do anything about it.
    - loceng 2y ago
      Does that mean you don't think shills are a significant-serious problem, or because you don't believe you can do anything about it then it's not important to you? E.g. If you consider it to be a problem, and there were possible solutions to shills on HN (and elsewhere), would you be interested in seeing those solutions implemented and/or tested? I think you're downplaying-minimizing your importance as an individual, and I'm not sure why you'd do that. Does downplaying it enable or justify it to yourself for what could be considered abdicating responsibility, so you can quell stress that otherwise would be felt if you took it seriously as a problem you would take on to help solving? Because it is a very difficult problem to solve for, and to some degree you're right, you as an individual - "just a guy on HN" - can't do much about it; and such conversations are essentially ban-heavily frowned upon on HN, e.g. not talking about downvotes, etc; because that discussion rarely happens in any deep and serious way on - like perhaps an annual topic posted and pinned by dang to get a deep dive to offer a chance to present their deep dive essays and concerns and perhaps proposed solutions, to perhaps help others understand the severity and seriousness of shills gaming our communication systems-channels and their effects on the development of society? And where such a planned annual event may create a beautiful frenzy to help tech people and others refine their understanding and proposed solutions?
      - tptacek 2y ago
        I'm not interested in discussing this here, sorry.
        loceng 2y ago
        You'll have the conversation somewhere else then? Otherwise I'm confused why you'd qualify it with adding "here." And not sure why you're saying "sorry" either?
Levitz 2y ago
>It's not an insinuation it's an obvious fact of the world we live in. It's obvious to anyone who has used this site, or any other site, for any period of time. I think it's very easy to feel it as an obvious fact, it's not that easy to really know that it's going down. Allow me to externalize the subject to avoid involving HN on the matter: Reddit. Reddit has had astroturfing campaigns, of this I'm completely sure because I've seen it go down and get caught and everything. Here is an example about a year ago on r/programming: https://web.archive.org/web/20230611210834/https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/146wn9s/meta_who_is_astroturfing_rprogramming_and_why/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230611210834/https://old.reddi... My problem is: say I have opinion A that is opposite to opinion B. When seeing a lot of this second (totally terrible, incomprehensible) opinion, how do I properly infer what is actually happening rather than just accusing that side of being bots? It really doesn't seem like a simple thing.
loceng 2y ago
Shhhhhhh -- the first rule of the censorship-suppression-narrative control apparatus is you don't talk about the censorship-suppression-narrative control apparatus! The second rule is..

tptacek 2y ago

Emailing me? I'm just some guy.

akira2501 2y ago
Would making that change in wording alter the point in any material way?
- tptacek 2y ago
  I'm just saying, nobody should be emailing me about shills on HN, because I can't do anything about it.
  - loceng 2y ago
    Does that mean you don't think shills are a significant-serious problem, or because you don't believe you can do anything about it then it's not important to you? E.g. If you consider it to be a problem, and there were possible solutions to shills on HN (and elsewhere), would you be interested in seeing those solutions implemented and/or tested? I think you're downplaying-minimizing your importance as an individual, and I'm not sure why you'd do that. Does downplaying it enable or justify it to yourself for what could be considered abdicating responsibility, so you can quell stress that otherwise would be felt if you took it seriously as a problem you would take on to help solving? Because it is a very difficult problem to solve for, and to some degree you're right, you as an individual - "just a guy on HN" - can't do much about it; and such conversations are essentially ban-heavily frowned upon on HN, e.g. not talking about downvotes, etc; because that discussion rarely happens in any deep and serious way on - like perhaps an annual topic posted and pinned by dang to get a deep dive to offer a chance to present their deep dive essays and concerns and perhaps proposed solutions, to perhaps help others understand the severity and seriousness of shills gaming our communication systems-channels and their effects on the development of society? And where such a planned annual event may create a beautiful frenzy to help tech people and others refine their understanding and proposed solutions?
    - tptacek 2y ago
      I'm not interested in discussing this here, sorry.
      - loceng 2y ago
        You'll have the conversation somewhere else then? Otherwise I'm confused why you'd qualify it with adding "here." And not sure why you're saying "sorry" either?

Levitz 2y ago

>It's not an insinuation it's an obvious fact of the world we live in. It's obvious to anyone who has used this site, or any other site, for any period of time. I think it's very easy to feel it as an obvious fact, it's not that easy to really know that it's going down. Allow me to externalize the subject to avoid involving HN on the matter: Reddit. Reddit has had astroturfing campaigns, of this I'm completely sure because I've seen it go down and get caught and everything. Here is an example about a year ago on r/programming: https://web.archive.org/web/20230611210834/https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/146wn9s/meta_who_is_astroturfing_rprogramming_and_why/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230611210834/https://old.reddi... My problem is: say I have opinion A that is opposite to opinion B. When seeing a lot of this second (totally terrible, incomprehensible) opinion, how do I properly infer what is actually happening rather than just accusing that side of being bots? It really doesn't seem like a simple thing.

loceng 2y ago

Shhhhhhh -- the first rule of the censorship-suppression-narrative control apparatus is you don't talk about the censorship-suppression-narrative control apparatus! The second rule is..