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Ask HN: How do we know Russians aren't influencing HN?

22 points by dmarchand90 ↗ HN
With all the recent talk of a massive cyberattacks from Russia, and in particular, the recent story of Russian bots reporting viewers of Ukrainian livestreams, how do we know HN is not under external threat or influence?

24 comments

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yuppie_scum
It’s pretty obvious there are some Russian trolls on here.
dmarchand90
Absolutely, I'm also wondering if maybe more sophisticated things are happening behind the scenes and if the more security-experienced members had some thoughts.

This could also be an interesting thread to pool some of the observations of the Russian trolls here

wanderer_
Or are you the Russian troll?!
overtonwhy
Yeah a relatively new account asking how much is know about Russia sock puppeting? Sus
Day1
And Chinese ones too. I think it’s fair to assume all sides have supporters. It seems odd to me that people would think there are not russian supporters here. We do not live in a totalitarian society where 100% of people are anti-Russia.
mkr-hn
It probably springs off the faulty assumption that HN is only people who live in Silicon Valley and work in well-remunerated tech jobs and hot startups.
myth_drannon
1) You need to assume that all sides employ sophisticated propaganda tools everywhere. Acknowledge it's hard to be unbiased especially on topics that you have little understanding and no first hand experience.

2) Read "Manufacturing consent"/Noam Chomsky

krapp
I mean, there's no need to invoke the specter of conspiracy... we have Russian and Ukrainian posters here. I'm sure they're quite legitimately passionate about their particular points of view, and they have every right to try to influence the community as long as they follow the rules.
dmarchand90
Right, I mean Russian state actors not private citizens
krapp
Maybe, but probably more of the latter than the former.

Problem is, how could you tell the difference? A Russian plant and a Russian patriot are likely to make the same arguments, even use the same bad faith tactics common to internet argument.

dmarchand90
A good example would be are we seeing articles getting flagged or dropped organically by the community or artificially by bots.

But yes for sure there is a big grey area between the two

Day1
Probably about the same amount as Ukranian or Chinese state actors
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d0mine
Try as an experiment, lsay something factual (easily verified even by google) but pro-Russian, and see how many downvotes you get.
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codeptualize
I think with all information, especially on places like hackernews where people are generally anonymous, you need to be careful what you believe and not. There is a lot of opinion, subjectivity, marketing, double agendas, false information and people commenting on and writing about topics they might not have expertise in (like me commenting on this!).

As long as there is debate, multiple viewpoints, and you don't believe everything you read automatically, it doesn't really matter imo. Unless they can somehow apply heavy censorship, or overwhelm the system I don't think you can really influence things much.

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muzani
HN has plenty of safeguards against fake news and cyberattacks in general, though they're not all perfect. It would be interesting if it happened and someone would write a report on it.

I fully expect HN to be on an attack list if any. It's not "static" like CNN, and is an important news source to the West.

But if anything, I hope the political news tones down after a few days. It becomes highly polarizing and panic inducing (e.g. "don't use jetbrains because russian"). Hopefully everything with political undertones just gets filtered out entirely.

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dragonwriter
> How do we know Russians aren't influencing HN?

They probably are.

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marginalia_nu
You can pretty much assume that all social platforms are being manipulated by both sides to some extent.

The first casualty of war is the truth. This is at least as old as De Bellum Gallicum.

spacemanmatt
The site already leans toward jingoist-capitalism so probably pretty likely. Russians love influencing some rowdy investor classes.