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When I read wildly insane comments on a mildly contentious issue here on HN (e.g. as a very mild example, posts on electric cars always draw out someone who nee

When I read wildly insane comments on a mildly contentious issue here on HN (e.g. as a very mild example, posts on electric cars always draw out someone who needs to state they drive 1000 miles a day and so electric cars will never work for anyone) I wonder how many sock puppets accounts there are here. There must be some. The radicalization of, e.g., Marc Andreessen was very useful to some group, so there is no reason they wouldn't try more of the same in this venue.

rrr_oh_man 9mo ago
> radicalization of, e.g., Marc Andreessen Can you share more? I read his book years ago, but haven't heard/read anything since.
- noelwelsh 9mo ago
  Just search and you'll find a million articles about his "dark enlightenment" (or whatever stupid name is used) views. I think "Chatham House" was the name of a private group chat he was in that helped this process along, and there are several articles about this.
  - vintermann 9mo ago
    Chatham house are famous for the rule that if you're invited, you agree that if you talk about what they talked about in their meetings, you must not say who said it. Most political manipulation of influential people isn't sophisticated at all, it's 3rd grade bullying level. For instance, getting invited to an exclusive meaning as proof of your importance/"seriousness". Brazen flattery, but it works. And the secrecy grooms them into betraying outsiders in favor of insiders. It's not such a big betrayal to give cover to powerful people's ugly opinions, but it's a start. And once you've done one bad thing with the gang, you're easier to persuade to do worse things with the gang. Again, really banal stuff. Remember in Snowden's biography, he mentioned being involved in a plot to get some diplomatic person to drunk drive, so they could swoop in and "help" him. That wasn't just targeted at the diplomat. It was also targeted at rookie CIA agent Ed: first do iffy things with us, so that you have firmly rationalized and justified it to yourself once we ask you to do uglier stuff.
    - lanstin 9mo ago
      This post really reads like a C.S. Lewis novel - the whole fear of being an outsider and laughed at, and the gradual but slippery slope towards more substantial clearly bad stuff.
      - stn8188 9mo ago
        It does sound a lot like the antagonist organization in The Space Trilogy novels...
      - vintermann 9mo ago
        Chatham House is openly the sort of "inner ring" Lewis warned about. To get the topic back more on topic for HN, I think that the fear of AI manipulation of the public is misplaced. Not because it can't be a thing, but because private AI-fueled manipulation will be far more destructive. If you fake a video of some horrific crime and post it on the internet, a thousand people will be examining it for mistakes - and a thousand people will claim mistakes which aren't there, and it'll create a lot of noise and certainly that's not a small problem. But if you fake a video and show it to your super-exclusive private circle and explain to them that of course you must not talk about this for the sake of the victims etc. then it's far less likely the mistakes will be spotted. Our leaders can be radicalized by propaganda we're not even allowed to see - that scares me.
- svelle 9mo ago
  It's pretty much all laid out on Wikipedia. He initially supported the Democratic Party but because of crypto and AI he donated millions to super PACs for Trump, supported DOGE and said that children are now being readicalized to hate capitalism as well as directly messaging the Trump administration to put pressure on Universities like NSF, SU and MIT because of DEI or something like that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Andreessen#Political_views https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Andreessen#Political_view...
  - lotsofpulp 9mo ago
    One can support a party and then change to not supporting a party for a variety of reasons. Such as disagreeing with the direction the party is going, especially locally, or even as simple as eschewing the previously supported party because you are betting the other one will win and need to curry favor.
    - afavour 9mo ago
      Sure, but why argue the abstract when we have Andreessen’s views and actions on record?
      - lotsofpulp 9mo ago
        I haven't studied Andreessen's views and actions, so I was just positing a strategic reason for a change in political support for a high profile person. (as opposed to a drastic change in their thoughts which is what I take to mean as "radicalized") For example, I have always preferred most of Democrats' positions on the national level, but on the local/state level, especially in California/Oregon/Washington, I disagree with a lot of the Democrat leaders, more and more since 2010 (I would say my views have not changed much, but the party's priorities at the state and local level have). Of course, I'm nowhere near as influential as Andreessen nor do I have interests that would warrant a say in national politics, but I can see why if one is against local leadership, they would cozy up to someone who they think can help you fight against them, without being "radicalized", per the above definition.
  - 9mo ago
- smashah 9mo ago
  extremely anecdotal but whenever I see a racist on Twitter, there's a non-insignificant likelihood that I click on their profile and see Marc Andreesen following them.
- lucaspm98 9mo ago
  “Radicalization” to the OP likely means swinging from vaguely left-leaning to right-leaning.
  - p-e-w 9mo ago
    I remember a time when entire discussion threads were swiftly culled from HN based on the magnitude of their political content. These days, it’s pretty clear that the direction matters a lot more than the magnitude, and “flamebait” is only a problem when the flames blow a certain way.
    - DonHopkins 9mo ago
      [flagged]
      - lucaspm98 9mo ago
        The reason political discussion needs to be limited is exactly for comments like these. Low effort characterizations of mainstream politics as racist or fascist is purely inflammatory, and only going to further turn HN into Reddit but for tech.
- fsloth 9mo ago
  He explains their pivot with Ben to GOP in this podcast episode. The main argument was that democrats policies were detrimental to their business. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sNclEgQZQ&t=11s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sNclEgQZQ&t=11s Mr. Andreessen has been involved with high level politics for a long time. This is not "random radicalization". I will not comment on the quality of the politics but it feels fairly deliberate.
alex1138 9mo ago
I don't much like MA. I want more from our VCs than the glib one-liner-and-no-thought-beyond-that EdwardSnowdenIsATraitor. Especially if they're going to fund multiple companies
reedf1 9mo ago
There are likely very very many - to the point that I'm pretty sure >50% of posts I read are sock puppets or agents. Edit: At this time this is my most heavily downvoted post. I'll leave it up because I think that itself is interesting.
- spiderfarmer 9mo ago
  Try saying anything negative about Musk. Instant downvotes.
  - deleted 9mo ago
    [deleted]
- noelwelsh 9mo ago
  Indeed, this thread is very contentious. Although my top-level post has a lot of upvotes, one of my comments is bouncing up and down. Very strange to me. Do I agree with your post? No, I think >50% is too high. Do I think you should be downvoted? No, I don't think your comment is in bad faith or inflammatory.
  - reedf1 9mo ago
    When I refresh this post your thread is either at the very top or bottom, it is odd.
pjc50 9mo ago
> drive 1000 miles a day and so electric cars will never work for anyone Whenever I see one of those I like to post Yong-heum Lee, who really did 500 miles a day in an Ioniq 5: https://www.hyundaimotorgroup.com/en/story/CONT0000000000176112 https://www.hyundaimotorgroup.com/en/story/CONT0000000000176... But as you say, facts are of limited use in debates any more.
- magicalhippo 9mo ago
  > who really did 500 miles a day in an Ioniq 5 To be clear, that's an average of about 500 miles a day, for almost 3 years.
roenxi 9mo ago
If there are sock puppets around here they are probably native internet crazies or maybe lazy covert software salesman. Most of the posters just represent the wide variety of opinions on a planet with 8 billion people competing with each other. There isn't much evidence of it and political propagandizing of HN through bots is pointless anyway - most readers have practically no money or power, there aren't that many of them and they aren't trying to coordinate to achieve anything politically interesting. > The radicalization of, e.g., Marc Andreessen was very useful to some group, so there is no reason they wouldn't try more of the same in this venue. He's a billionaire. They come pre-radicalised and detached from reality by default. A body don't get to be a billionaire by just going with the flow and not having any particular interest in influencing the world around them.
- pjc50 9mo ago
  This place allows throwaway accounts, although it also greentexts them so they're easy to spot, and if they get controversial they tend to get downvoted/flagged. HN basically restricts politics to a narrow drip feed of one or two stories a day, a situation which has advantages and disadvantages.
  - roenxi 9mo ago
    Sock puppeting is different from a throwaway account.
everdrive 9mo ago
I'd like to think HN is generally better at this than most communities, but it's hard to imagine we're immune. It's also important to remember that (rightly or wrongly) a lot of these culture war issues are really touching a tribalism nerve rather than really touching on the issues themselves. To a lot of people, the EV debate amounts to "those _other_ people trying to force a change on _me_." Mind you, I'm not suggesting this is the right way to look at these sorts issues, but I think that's how it plays out for a lot of people. I had a real-life friend who was very anti-environmentalist, and his view was effectively that it was all made up, and was just an excuse for the left to push things on people.
- ajross 9mo ago
  > I'd like to think HN is generally better at this than most communities, but it's hard to imagine we're immune. We're much, much worse. "Most communities" are built around consensus. Show up at your Facebook group organized around your favorite hobby and you'll find that everyone has a bunch of similar opinions about most things, and that's the way most people like it. Walk off the reservation and try to pick fights over something controversial and you'll find the community walks away. That sounds bad, right? What if consensus is wrong? Don't we need free thinkers?! HN is an enclave of antisocial nerds[1] who think they're smarter than the rest of society. We live for disagreement. Discovering that we disagree with our peers isn't a mark of shame, it's evidence that we've discovered a Magical Great Truth, that our "peers" at HN are all sheep, and that we're therefore smarter than the herd. Sure, Facebook fishing groups or knitting sites or whatever breed senseless group think. But on the whole "group think" usually works out pretty well and keeps people from wandering off into the scarier weeds of the thoughtscape. HN? We breed radicals. And therefore we're more susceptible to deliberately radicalizing sockpuppetry, not less. [1] To wit: we're basically 4chan but with an older demographic and industry cred.
  - tuesdaynight 9mo ago
    About your last point, you hit the nail for me. HN is 4chan without the pure chaos, with people talking smartly. Here you can find all the political spectrum (including nazis), but people will try to not be as inflammatory as 4chan users (most of the time, at least). There's no limit to what people will defend here. I don't think that it's something necessarily bad for HN, but it opened my eyes about how tech billionaires are a bunch of HN users that got a lot of power.
Bender 9mo ago
Any site that becomes sufficiently popular will attract sock puppets, shills, paid agitators, paid astroturfers, spammers, scammers, people paid to warm up accounts and to vouch for their alternate accounts, accounts pretending to ask questions with alternate accounts that suggest a solution that they own and operate and many many other shenanigans. There are also no shortages of people that try to influence the thinking of others or trick them into buying something or voting a particular way. Some of them get nullified in /newest by some of us. Some make it through. Some even get massive responses and that is is a chance they are rolling the dice on.
okr 9mo ago
Are you? Reveal yourself!
- noelwelsh 9mo ago
  I've been outed! I am but the humble servant of my cat!
Amezarak 9mo ago
Whether or not this is true, it's also true that a very popular way to dismiss someone and their beliefs is to insist they're one of these accounts. Happens to me all the time.
exceptione 9mo ago
Unfortunately, yes there are. This is a interesting demography. But I think there are also cases of genuine stubborn blindness. For example, discussion topics that are critical of political state of things like ICE and the marriage of tech and fascism often get actively flagged. For some, reality can't fit in their belief systems, and they have to suppress any challenging information. "Everything is fine/Don't make me think". For others, it is highly inconvenient, because they have a stake in it. I think for something like the YCombinator audience in general it is a hard subject, as the business model seeks to pick out the winners to take it all. The monopolist playbook is so deeply ingrained and normalized, that it cannot face the higher order effects of this modus operandi. So bots and sockpuppets yes, but I think some of the stupid flagging, the obvious poor argumentation and general context blindness also can be explained as people being unable to adjust their belief systems.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
pndy 9mo ago
Looking at various discussions, I'd say there's enough to attempt to steer narrations. In some cases users bury comments from such accounts rightfully with downvotes. But it's not just discussions - there are accounts submitting nothing but single-themed content to spread particular themes. My account isn't that much old but I was lurking around for years and I can say that quality of content and comments has significantly dropped in last 5 years. I'd guess it's because people running away from reddit settled here, because HN serves more generic stuff - with help of notorious spammers who surely get paid for uploading content from big media outlets every few hours.
tomhow 9mo ago
When you do the job we do, and spend hours each day looking at the discussions and the data, it becomes fairly easy to spot inauthentic actors on HN. It stands out when newly registered accounts (which appear in green) or older accounts without much posting history, suddenly start posting comments in support of a particular position. This is another reason why HN's primary purpose – gratifying intellectual curiosity – is so important. Curious conversation is hard to fake. You can't really be inauthentically curious, at least not for long. So the more we can succeed at nudging the community's conduct towards curious conversation, the more it stands out when accounts are acting to promote a particular agenda, and the faster we can weed them out.

rrr_oh_man 9mo ago

> radicalization of, e.g., Marc Andreessen Can you share more? I read his book years ago, but haven't heard/read anything since.

noelwelsh 9mo ago
Just search and you'll find a million articles about his "dark enlightenment" (or whatever stupid name is used) views. I think "Chatham House" was the name of a private group chat he was in that helped this process along, and there are several articles about this.
- vintermann 9mo ago
  Chatham house are famous for the rule that if you're invited, you agree that if you talk about what they talked about in their meetings, you must not say who said it. Most political manipulation of influential people isn't sophisticated at all, it's 3rd grade bullying level. For instance, getting invited to an exclusive meaning as proof of your importance/"seriousness". Brazen flattery, but it works. And the secrecy grooms them into betraying outsiders in favor of insiders. It's not such a big betrayal to give cover to powerful people's ugly opinions, but it's a start. And once you've done one bad thing with the gang, you're easier to persuade to do worse things with the gang. Again, really banal stuff. Remember in Snowden's biography, he mentioned being involved in a plot to get some diplomatic person to drunk drive, so they could swoop in and "help" him. That wasn't just targeted at the diplomat. It was also targeted at rookie CIA agent Ed: first do iffy things with us, so that you have firmly rationalized and justified it to yourself once we ask you to do uglier stuff.
  - lanstin 9mo ago
    This post really reads like a C.S. Lewis novel - the whole fear of being an outsider and laughed at, and the gradual but slippery slope towards more substantial clearly bad stuff.
    - stn8188 9mo ago
      It does sound a lot like the antagonist organization in The Space Trilogy novels...
    - vintermann 9mo ago
      Chatham House is openly the sort of "inner ring" Lewis warned about. To get the topic back more on topic for HN, I think that the fear of AI manipulation of the public is misplaced. Not because it can't be a thing, but because private AI-fueled manipulation will be far more destructive. If you fake a video of some horrific crime and post it on the internet, a thousand people will be examining it for mistakes - and a thousand people will claim mistakes which aren't there, and it'll create a lot of noise and certainly that's not a small problem. But if you fake a video and show it to your super-exclusive private circle and explain to them that of course you must not talk about this for the sake of the victims etc. then it's far less likely the mistakes will be spotted. Our leaders can be radicalized by propaganda we're not even allowed to see - that scares me.
svelle 9mo ago
It's pretty much all laid out on Wikipedia. He initially supported the Democratic Party but because of crypto and AI he donated millions to super PACs for Trump, supported DOGE and said that children are now being readicalized to hate capitalism as well as directly messaging the Trump administration to put pressure on Universities like NSF, SU and MIT because of DEI or something like that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Andreessen#Political_views https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Andreessen#Political_view...
- lotsofpulp 9mo ago
  One can support a party and then change to not supporting a party for a variety of reasons. Such as disagreeing with the direction the party is going, especially locally, or even as simple as eschewing the previously supported party because you are betting the other one will win and need to curry favor.
  - afavour 9mo ago
    Sure, but why argue the abstract when we have Andreessen’s views and actions on record?
    - lotsofpulp 9mo ago
      I haven't studied Andreessen's views and actions, so I was just positing a strategic reason for a change in political support for a high profile person. (as opposed to a drastic change in their thoughts which is what I take to mean as "radicalized") For example, I have always preferred most of Democrats' positions on the national level, but on the local/state level, especially in California/Oregon/Washington, I disagree with a lot of the Democrat leaders, more and more since 2010 (I would say my views have not changed much, but the party's priorities at the state and local level have). Of course, I'm nowhere near as influential as Andreessen nor do I have interests that would warrant a say in national politics, but I can see why if one is against local leadership, they would cozy up to someone who they think can help you fight against them, without being "radicalized", per the above definition.
- 9mo ago
smashah 9mo ago
extremely anecdotal but whenever I see a racist on Twitter, there's a non-insignificant likelihood that I click on their profile and see Marc Andreesen following them.
lucaspm98 9mo ago
“Radicalization” to the OP likely means swinging from vaguely left-leaning to right-leaning.
- p-e-w 9mo ago
  I remember a time when entire discussion threads were swiftly culled from HN based on the magnitude of their political content. These days, it’s pretty clear that the direction matters a lot more than the magnitude, and “flamebait” is only a problem when the flames blow a certain way.
  - DonHopkins 9mo ago
    [flagged]
    - lucaspm98 9mo ago
      The reason political discussion needs to be limited is exactly for comments like these. Low effort characterizations of mainstream politics as racist or fascist is purely inflammatory, and only going to further turn HN into Reddit but for tech.
fsloth 9mo ago
He explains their pivot with Ben to GOP in this podcast episode. The main argument was that democrats policies were detrimental to their business. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sNclEgQZQ&t=11s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_sNclEgQZQ&t=11s Mr. Andreessen has been involved with high level politics for a long time. This is not "random radicalization". I will not comment on the quality of the politics but it feels fairly deliberate.

alex1138 9mo ago

I don't much like MA. I want more from our VCs than the glib one-liner-and-no-thought-beyond-that EdwardSnowdenIsATraitor. Especially if they're going to fund multiple companies

reedf1 9mo ago

There are likely very very many - to the point that I'm pretty sure >50% of posts I read are sock puppets or agents. Edit: At this time this is my most heavily downvoted post. I'll leave it up because I think that itself is interesting.

spiderfarmer 9mo ago
Try saying anything negative about Musk. Instant downvotes.
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
noelwelsh 9mo ago
Indeed, this thread is very contentious. Although my top-level post has a lot of upvotes, one of my comments is bouncing up and down. Very strange to me. Do I agree with your post? No, I think >50% is too high. Do I think you should be downvoted? No, I don't think your comment is in bad faith or inflammatory.
- reedf1 9mo ago
  When I refresh this post your thread is either at the very top or bottom, it is odd.

pjc50 9mo ago

> drive 1000 miles a day and so electric cars will never work for anyone Whenever I see one of those I like to post Yong-heum Lee, who really did 500 miles a day in an Ioniq 5: https://www.hyundaimotorgroup.com/en/story/CONT0000000000176112 https://www.hyundaimotorgroup.com/en/story/CONT0000000000176... But as you say, facts are of limited use in debates any more.

magicalhippo 9mo ago
> who really did 500 miles a day in an Ioniq 5 To be clear, that's an average of about 500 miles a day, for almost 3 years.

roenxi 9mo ago

If there are sock puppets around here they are probably native internet crazies or maybe lazy covert software salesman. Most of the posters just represent the wide variety of opinions on a planet with 8 billion people competing with each other. There isn't much evidence of it and political propagandizing of HN through bots is pointless anyway - most readers have practically no money or power, there aren't that many of them and they aren't trying to coordinate to achieve anything politically interesting. > The radicalization of, e.g., Marc Andreessen was very useful to some group, so there is no reason they wouldn't try more of the same in this venue. He's a billionaire. They come pre-radicalised and detached from reality by default. A body don't get to be a billionaire by just going with the flow and not having any particular interest in influencing the world around them.

pjc50 9mo ago
This place allows throwaway accounts, although it also greentexts them so they're easy to spot, and if they get controversial they tend to get downvoted/flagged. HN basically restricts politics to a narrow drip feed of one or two stories a day, a situation which has advantages and disadvantages.
- roenxi 9mo ago
  Sock puppeting is different from a throwaway account.

everdrive 9mo ago

I'd like to think HN is generally better at this than most communities, but it's hard to imagine we're immune. It's also important to remember that (rightly or wrongly) a lot of these culture war issues are really touching a tribalism nerve rather than really touching on the issues themselves. To a lot of people, the EV debate amounts to "those _other_ people trying to force a change on _me_." Mind you, I'm not suggesting this is the right way to look at these sorts issues, but I think that's how it plays out for a lot of people. I had a real-life friend who was very anti-environmentalist, and his view was effectively that it was all made up, and was just an excuse for the left to push things on people.

ajross 9mo ago
> I'd like to think HN is generally better at this than most communities, but it's hard to imagine we're immune. We're much, much worse. "Most communities" are built around consensus. Show up at your Facebook group organized around your favorite hobby and you'll find that everyone has a bunch of similar opinions about most things, and that's the way most people like it. Walk off the reservation and try to pick fights over something controversial and you'll find the community walks away. That sounds bad, right? What if consensus is wrong? Don't we need free thinkers?! HN is an enclave of antisocial nerds[1] who think they're smarter than the rest of society. We live for disagreement. Discovering that we disagree with our peers isn't a mark of shame, it's evidence that we've discovered a Magical Great Truth, that our "peers" at HN are all sheep, and that we're therefore smarter than the herd. Sure, Facebook fishing groups or knitting sites or whatever breed senseless group think. But on the whole "group think" usually works out pretty well and keeps people from wandering off into the scarier weeds of the thoughtscape. HN? We breed radicals. And therefore we're more susceptible to deliberately radicalizing sockpuppetry, not less. [1] To wit: we're basically 4chan but with an older demographic and industry cred.
- tuesdaynight 9mo ago
  About your last point, you hit the nail for me. HN is 4chan without the pure chaos, with people talking smartly. Here you can find all the political spectrum (including nazis), but people will try to not be as inflammatory as 4chan users (most of the time, at least). There's no limit to what people will defend here. I don't think that it's something necessarily bad for HN, but it opened my eyes about how tech billionaires are a bunch of HN users that got a lot of power.

Bender 9mo ago

Any site that becomes sufficiently popular will attract sock puppets, shills, paid agitators, paid astroturfers, spammers, scammers, people paid to warm up accounts and to vouch for their alternate accounts, accounts pretending to ask questions with alternate accounts that suggest a solution that they own and operate and many many other shenanigans. There are also no shortages of people that try to influence the thinking of others or trick them into buying something or voting a particular way. Some of them get nullified in /newest by some of us. Some make it through. Some even get massive responses and that is is a chance they are rolling the dice on.

okr 9mo ago

Are you? Reveal yourself!

noelwelsh 9mo ago
I've been outed! I am but the humble servant of my cat!

Amezarak 9mo ago

Whether or not this is true, it's also true that a very popular way to dismiss someone and their beliefs is to insist they're one of these accounts. Happens to me all the time.

exceptione 9mo ago

Unfortunately, yes there are. This is a interesting demography. But I think there are also cases of genuine stubborn blindness. For example, discussion topics that are critical of political state of things like ICE and the marriage of tech and fascism often get actively flagged. For some, reality can't fit in their belief systems, and they have to suppress any challenging information. "Everything is fine/Don't make me think". For others, it is highly inconvenient, because they have a stake in it. I think for something like the YCombinator audience in general it is a hard subject, as the business model seeks to pick out the winners to take it all. The monopolist playbook is so deeply ingrained and normalized, that it cannot face the higher order effects of this modus operandi. So bots and sockpuppets yes, but I think some of the stupid flagging, the obvious poor argumentation and general context blindness also can be explained as people being unable to adjust their belief systems.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

pndy 9mo ago

Looking at various discussions, I'd say there's enough to attempt to steer narrations. In some cases users bury comments from such accounts rightfully with downvotes. But it's not just discussions - there are accounts submitting nothing but single-themed content to spread particular themes. My account isn't that much old but I was lurking around for years and I can say that quality of content and comments has significantly dropped in last 5 years. I'd guess it's because people running away from reddit settled here, because HN serves more generic stuff - with help of notorious spammers who surely get paid for uploading content from big media outlets every few hours.

tomhow 9mo ago

When you do the job we do, and spend hours each day looking at the discussions and the data, it becomes fairly easy to spot inauthentic actors on HN. It stands out when newly registered accounts (which appear in green) or older accounts without much posting history, suddenly start posting comments in support of a particular position. This is another reason why HN's primary purpose – gratifying intellectual curiosity – is so important. Curious conversation is hard to fake. You can't really be inauthentically curious, at least not for long. So the more we can succeed at nudging the community's conduct towards curious conversation, the more it stands out when accounts are acting to promote a particular agenda, and the faster we can weed them out.