4 ms·

As a Russian, yep, I saw these people online, they're easy identifiable, though... Also, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus are the motherlands for hackers of all sor

As a Russian, yep, I saw these people online, they're easy identifiable, though... Also, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus are the motherlands for hackers of all sorts, we have bots who post pro-Kremlin comments on social networks too. My favorite example is this one: http://apikabu.ru/img_n/2012-02_4/5c7.jpg http://apikabu.ru/img_n/2012-02_4/5c7.jpg The description says "DO NOT POST COMMENTS, who post a comment will be banned", and underneath it different bot accounts post messages about how bad it is to join protests and American government controls the opposition, nonsense like that. Don't worry about hacker news or other sites like this one — the government thinks people don't know English to be on these sites. Partially it's true, though, most people still are unaware of real situation because they don't have internet connection (they get news from television, as here it's called "ZomboTV" ("Зомбоящик"), you guys have it too, imagine if all the channels were like CNN) and most of their time they spend on trying to survive in this economic situation (google "dollar to ruble"), they have no time to protest or find true information about their government and "president" (a mafioso Putin, google "dacha consumer cooperative Ozero")

sbt 12y ago
I can tell you that the comment section on FT.com is positively trolled by at least a few accounts. They seem to have allocated some of the smarter ones to the site, but they are easily identified because.. * They sometimes drop determiners in English. (A pattern I've noticed). * They post a lot of comments. * They fill up the comment section early in the morning (Europe) and then nothing. * Rampant quoting (especially zero hedge), like someone spent their whole day researching the issue. * Assumptions in arguments are official Russian talking points. Now, how do I distinguish these guys from just gold buying Max Keyser followers? Mainly the time that seems to have gone into it. If I were to post as prolifically I would need to dedicate at least several hours to this every day.
- Procedural 12y ago
  Huh. So the situation is worse than I expected. The sites like the one you mentioned should close their comment section when it's morning in Europe and open it at night when their work day is over. I hope people won't judge other Russians just because of these trolls...
  - sbt 12y ago
    Yes, I have counted at least five accounts on FT.com that I am confident are professional trolls. The upshot of all this trolling is that all legitimate support for Russia is effectively ignored. The Kremlin troll phenomenon is now so widespread that it is working against whatever intentions they could have had. Basically, anyone who holds a pro-Russian opinion is now either dismissed as a troll or a victim of propaganda. Unfortunately, this is just as it has to be. They have destroyed any sensible debate and have rendered themselves and their followers labelled.
- Polunocnica 12y ago
  This comment is actually quite interesting. For a while, I've stuck to the Wikileaks suggested formula of "Scientific Journalism" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_journalism] and I've seen the progression of State Actors (both automated and manned) across the www. What's telling that I did a CTRL+F for the term - and it's not mentioned. Added to that, even mature news sources (such as the Guardian or Telegraph in the UK) have only ever dabbled at it - for instance, the Guardian provides links within its own articles, but the links are entirely self referential. i.e. recursive back into their own site. Even with actual science articles, actually getting a link to the paper [pay-walled or otherwise] is rare. I will say that certain writers for the Guardian (Monbiot recently on soil), however much their bias, actually source links to multiple first / second tier sources, which is a good thing. The upshot of this is: there [b]is[/b] a solution, and you can often spot the genuine comments by virtue of first and second tier links (wikipedia being second tier). The actual real issue (again, not mentioned in the comments here) is to break the media consumption mold whereby people read comments as personal anecdotes / opinions. It's a form of conditioning around since forever [the TV turn to the camera, eye contact, personal little look]. What might be a fun project for HN viewers would be an independent (eff?) project that pattern matched text and caught similarities. Probably using a modified code base from a commercial plagiarism detectors. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism_detection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism_detection] Note: the US at least has spent a lot of money on their own versions. As probably have the Russians / Chinese: you can be fairly sure comments are chucked through an automated detector to see the (likely) source: yours, theirs, randoms, bots or the 'Other'. [Let's see if this comment gets flagged by evul bots!]
  - Polunocnica 12y ago
    Edit is apparently not working: Data, Text, and Image Mining—Analysis of data stream in real time as well as cluster analysis and their applications to data, text, and image mining are important tools for anomaly detections in the global war against terrorism. New and unifying methodologies are needed in order to provide efficient search for patterns or meaning from the analysis of usually huge data sets that consist of multivariate measurements. Developments of mathematical theory for data, text, and image mining techniques are also highly desirable. http://www.arl.army.mil/www/default.cfm?page=185 http://www.arl.army.mil/www/default.cfm?page=185
usaphp 12y ago
Zombotv "Зомбоящик"?? You are obviously not from Russia, nobody is using such words here, I bet you are from Ukraine
- ak1394 12y ago
  Is that a sarcasm?
  - whyaduck 12y ago
    At this point I don't think there's any way to determine that. Given the nature of the article, all comments are suspect. I like it - I think it's time for me to re-read Pale Fire.
- Procedural 12y ago
  I am from Russia, Moscow to be precise. And if your friends or people around you doesn't use that word it doesn't mean nobody uses it.
  - mpclark 12y ago
    Surprised this post didn't come with a link to a picture.
- Grue3 12y ago
  I am from Russia and we do indeed use the word "Зомбоящик".
zzzcpan 12y ago
> Don't worry about hacker news or other sites like this one There are russian trolls here as well. Just search for topics on Ukraine.
- dntrkv 12y ago
  I think there are putinbots on reddit and maybe even HackerNews. I've had situations where I would see a ridiculously revisionist pro-Russian comment with 10+ points on reddit, then I would reply with a totally reasonable comment asking for sources, and I would get downvoted 10+ times within a very short period of time (~5 minutes). Then I would come back to it a couple hours later and the initial comment that I replied to would be -10 points and my comment would be +10. What I am guessing is happening is the initial post is made by a putinbot and upvoted by other putinbots. When I make my comment asking for sources, they all downvote me. Then after sometime the reddit community gets a chance to vote on the comments and they adjust them to the actual score they should be. Obviously this doesn't confirm the existence of these bots, but it is very suspect.

sbt 12y ago

I can tell you that the comment section on FT.com is positively trolled by at least a few accounts. They seem to have allocated some of the smarter ones to the site, but they are easily identified because.. * They sometimes drop determiners in English. (A pattern I've noticed). * They post a lot of comments. * They fill up the comment section early in the morning (Europe) and then nothing. * Rampant quoting (especially zero hedge), like someone spent their whole day researching the issue. * Assumptions in arguments are official Russian talking points. Now, how do I distinguish these guys from just gold buying Max Keyser followers? Mainly the time that seems to have gone into it. If I were to post as prolifically I would need to dedicate at least several hours to this every day.

Procedural 12y ago
Huh. So the situation is worse than I expected. The sites like the one you mentioned should close their comment section when it's morning in Europe and open it at night when their work day is over. I hope people won't judge other Russians just because of these trolls...
- sbt 12y ago
  Yes, I have counted at least five accounts on FT.com that I am confident are professional trolls. The upshot of all this trolling is that all legitimate support for Russia is effectively ignored. The Kremlin troll phenomenon is now so widespread that it is working against whatever intentions they could have had. Basically, anyone who holds a pro-Russian opinion is now either dismissed as a troll or a victim of propaganda. Unfortunately, this is just as it has to be. They have destroyed any sensible debate and have rendered themselves and their followers labelled.
Polunocnica 12y ago
This comment is actually quite interesting. For a while, I've stuck to the Wikileaks suggested formula of "Scientific Journalism" [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_journalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_journalism] and I've seen the progression of State Actors (both automated and manned) across the www. What's telling that I did a CTRL+F for the term - and it's not mentioned. Added to that, even mature news sources (such as the Guardian or Telegraph in the UK) have only ever dabbled at it - for instance, the Guardian provides links within its own articles, but the links are entirely self referential. i.e. recursive back into their own site. Even with actual science articles, actually getting a link to the paper [pay-walled or otherwise] is rare. I will say that certain writers for the Guardian (Monbiot recently on soil), however much their bias, actually source links to multiple first / second tier sources, which is a good thing. The upshot of this is: there [b]is[/b] a solution, and you can often spot the genuine comments by virtue of first and second tier links (wikipedia being second tier). The actual real issue (again, not mentioned in the comments here) is to break the media consumption mold whereby people read comments as personal anecdotes / opinions. It's a form of conditioning around since forever [the TV turn to the camera, eye contact, personal little look]. What might be a fun project for HN viewers would be an independent (eff?) project that pattern matched text and caught similarities. Probably using a modified code base from a commercial plagiarism detectors. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism_detection https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism_detection] Note: the US at least has spent a lot of money on their own versions. As probably have the Russians / Chinese: you can be fairly sure comments are chucked through an automated detector to see the (likely) source: yours, theirs, randoms, bots or the 'Other'. [Let's see if this comment gets flagged by evul bots!]
- Polunocnica 12y ago
  Edit is apparently not working: Data, Text, and Image Mining—Analysis of data stream in real time as well as cluster analysis and their applications to data, text, and image mining are important tools for anomaly detections in the global war against terrorism. New and unifying methodologies are needed in order to provide efficient search for patterns or meaning from the analysis of usually huge data sets that consist of multivariate measurements. Developments of mathematical theory for data, text, and image mining techniques are also highly desirable. http://www.arl.army.mil/www/default.cfm?page=185 http://www.arl.army.mil/www/default.cfm?page=185

usaphp 12y ago

Zombotv "Зомбоящик"?? You are obviously not from Russia, nobody is using such words here, I bet you are from Ukraine

ak1394 12y ago
Is that a sarcasm?
- whyaduck 12y ago
  At this point I don't think there's any way to determine that. Given the nature of the article, all comments are suspect. I like it - I think it's time for me to re-read Pale Fire.
Procedural 12y ago
I am from Russia, Moscow to be precise. And if your friends or people around you doesn't use that word it doesn't mean nobody uses it.
- mpclark 12y ago
  Surprised this post didn't come with a link to a picture.
Grue3 12y ago
I am from Russia and we do indeed use the word "Зомбоящик".

zzzcpan 12y ago

> Don't worry about hacker news or other sites like this one There are russian trolls here as well. Just search for topics on Ukraine.

dntrkv 12y ago
I think there are putinbots on reddit and maybe even HackerNews. I've had situations where I would see a ridiculously revisionist pro-Russian comment with 10+ points on reddit, then I would reply with a totally reasonable comment asking for sources, and I would get downvoted 10+ times within a very short period of time (~5 minutes). Then I would come back to it a couple hours later and the initial comment that I replied to would be -10 points and my comment would be +10. What I am guessing is happening is the initial post is made by a putinbot and upvoted by other putinbots. When I make my comment asking for sources, they all downvote me. Then after sometime the reddit community gets a chance to vote on the comments and they adjust them to the actual score they should be. Obviously this doesn't confirm the existence of these bots, but it is very suspect.