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Ask HN: Did Reddit Just Get Astroturfed? How Could Technology Tell Us?

5 points by justsee ↗ HN
In a surprisingly fortuitous turn of events, a profile of Julian Assange on OKCupid has been 'revealed' on Reddit, and breathlessly reported as true by Gawker, Business Week and others in very quick fashion. See: http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/ekgvz/behold_julian_assanges_profile_on_okcupid_last/

Each story frames the discovery as a grassroots effort at Reddit, reported in one story as an 'extensive team of quirky internet experts'.

The discussion for this particular story is surprisingly incredulity-light: a major upvoted post unpacks an 'investigative' backgrounder of Harry Harrison, with only a few downvoted posts exclaiming 'fake'. The usual 'investigative energy' of Reddit seems focused only on confirming what many in that community would be highly skeptical of.

A quick glance at the public profile purported to be of Assange contains such odd statements as an interest in 'white collar crime' and 'trickery', which seems to indicate some cheeky character assasination more than anything else.

I'm left with a sense the community there has been astro-turfed. Not an uncommon occurrence, but it has left me wondering how you could determine any irregularities in a community discussion like this?

9 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 46.9 ms ] thread
jey
People think it's real because the "last login" date on the account is Dec 31, 2006.
justsee
In a world where Stuxnet exists and Gawker might not, a date field in a dating site database should probably be taken with a shovel of salt though right?
hugh3
Perhaps, but it's many orders of magnitude more effort than you'd expect from a fake joke profile.
justsee
I'd disagree, and state that it's exactly the sort of effort you'd expect if you were to assume sophisticated character assasination is the order of the day.

The alternative is to assume that Assange did create a public profile (when many are private), completed numerous dating site 'tests' (backed by what many HN people would consider are very unsophisticated algorithms), and left it on display for 5 years, undetected until now.

I'm inclined to eliminate the alternative as impossible.

hugh3
You can tell it's real because he lists his interests as "Rape, white collar crime, trickery and rape"
ziadbc
Things like Wikileaks need to be kept in check as much as the governments they are exposing. However, I don't think it is constructive to joke around about the three things you mentioned as being something to be put on a dating profile.

If you want to argue against his credibility make an objective statement about his acts.

Figs
I'm pretty sure hugh3 was being sarcastic.
cfinke
You said rape twice.