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Fair enough, but I really do think there are some (admittedly non-NSA) situations where the astroturfing campaign can be easily predicted beforehand. In these e

Fair 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 ago
Many 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?