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It's not about whether there is any astroturfing going on, it's preemptively calling it out, implying that everyone who disagrees is astroturfing. It's similar
by arkem 12y ago
It's not about whether there is any astroturfing going on, it's preemptively calling it out, implying that everyone who disagrees is astroturfing.
It's similar to people who say things like "I know I'm going to get downvoted, but". Instead of making assumptions about the nature of a discussion in a comment people should wait for the discussion to develop before judging.
If you know someone is astroturfing call it out. If a post isn't appropriate or isn't contributing to the discussion call that out. Just don't assume that people are participating in bad faith, especially before that participation has even occurred.
- cryoshon 12y agoFair enough, but I really do think there are some (admittedly non-NSA) situations where the astroturfing campaign can be easily predicted beforehand. In these easily predictable situations, it's better to warn people... Specifically, conversations regarding Israel's involvement with Palestine or Russians involvement in Ukraine tend to become very quickly polluted by vast swathes of low-quality comments which effectively shut down discussion.
- krapp 12y agoMany of those low-quality sub-threads stem from accusations that other posters are shills and propagandists. Anyone sufficiently invested in a particular point of view can "easily" spot the enemy from a mile away, and Hacker News is packed with ideologues and zealots. Maybe the quality of discussion on HN would be better if there were fewer such 'warnings', and not more?