5 ms·

Why are you being downvoting for sharing this relevant truth, complete with sources?

culi 2mo ago
All threads that have... certain keywords... are like this. Talk about meta. Looks like I'm now in the positive (+5) after being in the negative just a moment ago. Anyways, I got really interested in this topic around mid 2010s because of some really interesting reporting by Codastory[0] covering Russian "troll factories" especially used to influence opinion in eastern Ukraine, but also in many other circumstances. In Houston in 2016, Russian troll accounts planned both an ANTI Muslim rally AND a counterprotest to that rally all on Facebook.[1] Hundreds of real human beings showed up! Russia got a ton of attention for their use of troll farms but the truth is that the US and certain allies have actually been using stuff like this for far longer and, imo, with much more success. In fact, Coda Story itself is funded by the NED which is a massive pillar of global US, uh, "soft power". [0] https://www.codastory.com/ https://www.codastory.com/ [1] https://www.npr.org/2017/11/01/561427876/how-russia-used-facebook-to-organize-two-sets-of-protesters https://www.npr.org/2017/11/01/561427876/how-russia-used-fac...
- Paradigma11 2mo ago
  For me the main difference is if the activity is clandestine and meant to deceive/hide the origin. Everybody tries to influence things their way. Doing it covertly is a hostile act. That does not mean that I would not condone hostile acts against my/our enemies but it is something take into account. And regarding your Russian examples, it showed for how long they have seen the west as enemies and conducted hostile acts.
  - smalllangmodel 2mo ago
    [flagged]
    - kakacik 2mo ago
      Thats rather simple to understand, for somebody coming from eastern Europe. russian mentality permeated entire region during their enslavement of what is now eastern EU bloc for +-40 years, to have a battleground for nuclear war with west that never came. It happens when all your politics is orchestrated in moscow and you have almost a million soldiers deployed in bases all over the place for decades, with nuclear weapons and all that. See, russians have massive inferiority complex. Against everybody, but mostly the more successful ones, meaning west in many aspects. Their approach to, well, everything is vastly ineffective, corruption, nepotism and similar stuff grinds any attempt at progress to almost halt. Just go there and see for yourself, they have money literally sticking out of ground left and right yet outside moscow and st petersburg you are in central Africa in terms of development. All this, propagated to 21st century where everybody seems to go ahead of them. A lot of frustration, envy and schadenfreude. A (correct) feeling russia is left behind and becoming insignificant local force at best, and laughing stock of whole world more realistically. Plus, human life is generally almost worthless there, its mafia state pyramid to the core. With all that, its vastly easier to keep reinventing enemies that are always guilty at damaging poor old russia, rather than cleaning up that clusterfuck and actually owning the shit they created for themselves. Its enough for general population. There is not much more actual stuff to the question 'why west', rest is just PR for simpler folks. A dictator never wants smart, strong and free population, double that for russia. Downtrodden, hopeless desperate folks are much easier to manage and manipulate.
      - smalllangmodel 2mo ago
        Well, you could also look at the history and cold war and NATO and so on, but sure, the Orcs are just having inferiority complexes!
        hlynurd 2mo ago
        Is there a specific point you want to make or are you just vagueposting?
        2mo ago
  - aa-jv 2mo ago
    They view certain components of "The West" as their enemy - indeed, the very organizations which conduct the same operations against the Russian people.
    - rbanffy 2mo ago
      There are no enemies - they are competing parts - competing for popularity, resources, power. This makes it possible to negotiate. Enemies don't, but competitors are a lot more pragmatic.
      - MomsAVoxell 2mo ago
        Anglo-/Western and Russian governments have been strategic rivals for more than two centuries. Britain repeatedly sought to limit Russian expansion that threatened its own interests, such as routes to India, access to Caspian oil resources, etc. See also, the Great Game and the Eastern Question. They’re enemies because they want each others stuff. Russia has a LOT of stuff that the British would be quite happy to ‘manage’.
        rbanffy 2mo ago
        > Russia has a LOT of stuff that the British would be quite happy to ‘manage’. And vice-versa, which results in the polite games being played, where everyone knows everyone else is doing shitty stuff to everyone, but nobody will ever admit it because that might cause the shitty stuff to descend into a shooting war, which is something we try to avoid as much as we can.
        MomsAVoxell 2mo ago
        Not any more we don’t. We’re actively attempting to start war with Russia and it is happening.
        Paradigma11 2mo ago
        From approx 2008 on Russia has conducted operations that are in no way ideological but have only the goal to destabilize western nations. Supporting extremist parties of all orientations, magnifying events in their propaganda to maximize discord without any ideological consistency. They also quite frequently kill people on western soil. Sometimes using radioactive and chemical weapons. Please elaborate when the west has done the same in Russia.
eli_gottlieb 2mo ago
You're not supposed to acknowledge that think-tanks are sort of endemically propaganda outlets. You're supposed to think it's special this time.
friendzis 2mo ago
Because cognitive biases are one of the hardest things to even acknowledge, let alone suppress. All the media out there has such a strong bubble effect, because people hate being challenged and love to stay in their comfy echo chambers. Remember labubu? Bao buns certainly do not. There have been so many bot armies exposed over the years that one would think every narrative being pushed should be considered to be backed by bots. Some state-level actors even operate their narrative-pushing campaigns openly, yet people still happily deny their entire existence. HN is very much not an exception to this rule. It's very hard to accept that maybe some thoughts you have were actually installed.
- derefr 2mo ago
  > people still Maybe a few are just “people” (i.e. the same people who normally post in the community.) But in most cases I’d suspect any such botting campaign brings along with it a few human agitprop agents embedded onto each target platform, well-positioned to deny and discredit anyone pushing back on the narrative the bot farm is spreading. (Sometimes this is pretty obvious — a lot of accounts coming out of the woodwork to deny Chinese bot farms have a conspicuous “English as learned as a second language in Beijing, to a competent but not fluent level” writing style that does not often otherwise crop up in other discussions in those same communities. But other times it can be far more subtle, making use of operatives hired from within the community’s own majority-culture rather than relying on foreign nationals playing the part of same.)
  - Beretta_Vexee 2mo ago
    A Chinese and Russian troll farm employs people from French-speaking Africa for their French-language operations. There are many Ivorians and Senegalese promoting the CCP’s ‘Community of common destiny’ on Reddit, for example. Edit: Community of common destiny for mankind/‘Community of Nations’
    - redsocksfan45 2mo ago
      [dead]
Beretta_Vexee 2mo ago
There’s bots that automatically downvotes certain topics on HN. I post at times that often coincide with the middle of the night in North America, and I get 3–5 downvotes within the next 5 minutes. Talking about a country that sets up fake think tanks is a good way of triggering them.
actionfromafar 2mo ago
These 2 sources say nothing about Heard using bots, only Depp.
Forgeties79 2mo ago
> Why are you being downvoting for sharing this relevant truth, complete with sources? Agreeing with something doesn’t make it 100% unambiguously true/correct. There are also many reasons people downvote, you don’t know the nature of the objections. It’s not worth getting upset over.
red-iron-pine 2mo ago
this is what online discussion will look like in the future thanks to AI, and a handful of hyperwealthy oligarchs controlling said AI

culi 2mo ago

All threads that have... certain keywords... are like this. Talk about meta. Looks like I'm now in the positive (+5) after being in the negative just a moment ago. Anyways, I got really interested in this topic around mid 2010s because of some really interesting reporting by Codastory[0] covering Russian "troll factories" especially used to influence opinion in eastern Ukraine, but also in many other circumstances. In Houston in 2016, Russian troll accounts planned both an ANTI Muslim rally AND a counterprotest to that rally all on Facebook.[1] Hundreds of real human beings showed up! Russia got a ton of attention for their use of troll farms but the truth is that the US and certain allies have actually been using stuff like this for far longer and, imo, with much more success. In fact, Coda Story itself is funded by the NED which is a massive pillar of global US, uh, "soft power". [0] https://www.codastory.com/ https://www.codastory.com/ [1] https://www.npr.org/2017/11/01/561427876/how-russia-used-facebook-to-organize-two-sets-of-protesters https://www.npr.org/2017/11/01/561427876/how-russia-used-fac...

Paradigma11 2mo ago
For me the main difference is if the activity is clandestine and meant to deceive/hide the origin. Everybody tries to influence things their way. Doing it covertly is a hostile act. That does not mean that I would not condone hostile acts against my/our enemies but it is something take into account. And regarding your Russian examples, it showed for how long they have seen the west as enemies and conducted hostile acts.
- smalllangmodel 2mo ago
  [flagged]
  - kakacik 2mo ago
    Thats rather simple to understand, for somebody coming from eastern Europe. russian mentality permeated entire region during their enslavement of what is now eastern EU bloc for +-40 years, to have a battleground for nuclear war with west that never came. It happens when all your politics is orchestrated in moscow and you have almost a million soldiers deployed in bases all over the place for decades, with nuclear weapons and all that. See, russians have massive inferiority complex. Against everybody, but mostly the more successful ones, meaning west in many aspects. Their approach to, well, everything is vastly ineffective, corruption, nepotism and similar stuff grinds any attempt at progress to almost halt. Just go there and see for yourself, they have money literally sticking out of ground left and right yet outside moscow and st petersburg you are in central Africa in terms of development. All this, propagated to 21st century where everybody seems to go ahead of them. A lot of frustration, envy and schadenfreude. A (correct) feeling russia is left behind and becoming insignificant local force at best, and laughing stock of whole world more realistically. Plus, human life is generally almost worthless there, its mafia state pyramid to the core. With all that, its vastly easier to keep reinventing enemies that are always guilty at damaging poor old russia, rather than cleaning up that clusterfuck and actually owning the shit they created for themselves. Its enough for general population. There is not much more actual stuff to the question 'why west', rest is just PR for simpler folks. A dictator never wants smart, strong and free population, double that for russia. Downtrodden, hopeless desperate folks are much easier to manage and manipulate.
    - smalllangmodel 2mo ago
      Well, you could also look at the history and cold war and NATO and so on, but sure, the Orcs are just having inferiority complexes!
      - hlynurd 2mo ago
        Is there a specific point you want to make or are you just vagueposting?
        2mo ago
- aa-jv 2mo ago
  They view certain components of "The West" as their enemy - indeed, the very organizations which conduct the same operations against the Russian people.
  - rbanffy 2mo ago
    There are no enemies - they are competing parts - competing for popularity, resources, power. This makes it possible to negotiate. Enemies don't, but competitors are a lot more pragmatic.
    - MomsAVoxell 2mo ago
      Anglo-/Western and Russian governments have been strategic rivals for more than two centuries. Britain repeatedly sought to limit Russian expansion that threatened its own interests, such as routes to India, access to Caspian oil resources, etc. See also, the Great Game and the Eastern Question. They’re enemies because they want each others stuff. Russia has a LOT of stuff that the British would be quite happy to ‘manage’.
      - rbanffy 2mo ago
        > Russia has a LOT of stuff that the British would be quite happy to ‘manage’. And vice-versa, which results in the polite games being played, where everyone knows everyone else is doing shitty stuff to everyone, but nobody will ever admit it because that might cause the shitty stuff to descend into a shooting war, which is something we try to avoid as much as we can.
        MomsAVoxell 2mo ago
        Not any more we don’t. We’re actively attempting to start war with Russia and it is happening.
        Paradigma11 2mo ago
        From approx 2008 on Russia has conducted operations that are in no way ideological but have only the goal to destabilize western nations. Supporting extremist parties of all orientations, magnifying events in their propaganda to maximize discord without any ideological consistency. They also quite frequently kill people on western soil. Sometimes using radioactive and chemical weapons. Please elaborate when the west has done the same in Russia.

eli_gottlieb 2mo ago

You're not supposed to acknowledge that think-tanks are sort of endemically propaganda outlets. You're supposed to think it's special this time.

friendzis 2mo ago

Because cognitive biases are one of the hardest things to even acknowledge, let alone suppress. All the media out there has such a strong bubble effect, because people hate being challenged and love to stay in their comfy echo chambers. Remember labubu? Bao buns certainly do not. There have been so many bot armies exposed over the years that one would think every narrative being pushed should be considered to be backed by bots. Some state-level actors even operate their narrative-pushing campaigns openly, yet people still happily deny their entire existence. HN is very much not an exception to this rule. It's very hard to accept that maybe some thoughts you have were actually installed.

derefr 2mo ago
> people still Maybe a few are just “people” (i.e. the same people who normally post in the community.) But in most cases I’d suspect any such botting campaign brings along with it a few human agitprop agents embedded onto each target platform, well-positioned to deny and discredit anyone pushing back on the narrative the bot farm is spreading. (Sometimes this is pretty obvious — a lot of accounts coming out of the woodwork to deny Chinese bot farms have a conspicuous “English as learned as a second language in Beijing, to a competent but not fluent level” writing style that does not often otherwise crop up in other discussions in those same communities. But other times it can be far more subtle, making use of operatives hired from within the community’s own majority-culture rather than relying on foreign nationals playing the part of same.)
- Beretta_Vexee 2mo ago
  A Chinese and Russian troll farm employs people from French-speaking Africa for their French-language operations. There are many Ivorians and Senegalese promoting the CCP’s ‘Community of common destiny’ on Reddit, for example. Edit: Community of common destiny for mankind/‘Community of Nations’
  - redsocksfan45 2mo ago
    [dead]

Beretta_Vexee 2mo ago

There’s bots that automatically downvotes certain topics on HN. I post at times that often coincide with the middle of the night in North America, and I get 3–5 downvotes within the next 5 minutes. Talking about a country that sets up fake think tanks is a good way of triggering them.

actionfromafar 2mo ago

These 2 sources say nothing about Heard using bots, only Depp.

Forgeties79 2mo ago

> Why are you being downvoting for sharing this relevant truth, complete with sources? Agreeing with something doesn’t make it 100% unambiguously true/correct. There are also many reasons people downvote, you don’t know the nature of the objections. It’s not worth getting upset over.

red-iron-pine 2mo ago

this is what online discussion will look like in the future thanks to AI, and a handful of hyperwealthy oligarchs controlling said AI