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On the Washington Post comments section, I feel that users "still here" and ".Morti" are shills from the NSA. One of Snowden's leaks confirmed that they do try
by sixQuarks 12y ago
On the Washington Post comments section, I feel that users "still here" and ".Morti" are shills from the NSA. One of Snowden's leaks confirmed that they do try to change viewpoints on online discussions.
- ChrisAntaki 12y agoWho are the shills on HN? ;)
- EC1 12y agopg
- sitkack 12y agoI have watched some accounts on HN gain over 1000 karma in less than 80 days. They appear to be using machine learning techniques to pump links into the site. They made no comments for days until their karma was high enough.
- rthomas6 12y agoWell, why not name names?
- sitkack 12y agoBecause w/o damning evidence of any wrongdoing at this point I don't want to turn it into a witch hunt. Watching.
- sixQuarks 12y agoYou're like the Paul Revere of HN.
- sitkack 12y agoMore like that other guy no one can remember. ;) It is interesting to watch the ebb and flow of political opinion on discussion forums. And it would be extremely interesting to have logs of HN or Reddit to do shill and multiple account detection.
- sixQuarks 12y agoSomeone could do their PhD thesis on this. All you grad students out there - pay attention!
- krapp 12y agoMaybe. Maybe they just hold the opinions they profess. I know people who would agree with them and i'm certain they don't all work for the NSA (I live in Texas, and believe me, there are a lot of "still heres" and ".Mortis" who'd see him strung up from a lamppost as soon as look at him.) How does one tell the difference, and does it even matter?
- tedks 12y ago>How does one tell the difference, and does it even matter? It matters very, very, very much. The more those opinions are presented as if they were the opinions of the majority, the more people who disagree silence themselves to protect themselves from the majority. See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence
- Bluestrike2 12y agoGiven some of their arguments, part of me wonders whether such people really even understand what it is that Snowden leaked. The same could be said for a number of the loudest voices in government.