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0 pointsdang8y ago0 comments

If we haven't discussed this before, I must have confused you with someone else and apologize.

I've posted about this countless times: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&prefix=true&page=0&dateR....

There are several ways you might have actual evidence that someone was astroturfing, but they're rare, and overwhelmingly less likely than people just making such accusations up because another user's comment pisses them off. The "you must be a shill" trope is pretty much the most popular internet cheap shot out there, and based on everything we know, it's a far greater threat to this site because it's so common and degrades discussion so quickly. Indeed it's a bit like antivirus software in causing the very problem it claims to combat.

So, unless you have more evidence than someone being wrong in your opinion on the internet, you bet it's inadmissible here.

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hackuser8y ago

To be clear, I agree that it's very often a cheap shot and I'm glad such things are not generally part of HN.

> I've posted about this countless times

Everyone needs to know policy, but I think few see your comments. You see all your posts and feel you are repeating yourself; users see a tiny fraction of them and may never read about any particular policy. I'm pretty active, but most days I see zero comments from mods - I see a few discussions and a minority of comments in each. Consider even your 'sticky' post at the top of this discussion - what tiny fraction of HN users will see it? Few will see this discussion, and even most/many commenters on this discussion will have moved on or will be reading their comment histories to see responses.

> unless you have more evidence than someone being wrong in your opinion on the internet, you bet it's inadmissible here.

To be clear, that's not at all what I did, as I described above. I'm still not sure if what I did say - pointing to a strong pattern of the same arguments repeated in angry posts, both hallmarks of astroturfing and propaganda - is admissible, since it seems to both meet your standards and yet was rejected. Moving on ...

dangOP8y ago

No, it's not admissible to see arguments you disagree with and make posts "wondering" if state actors are astroturfing HN. That's just another variation of the same insinuation, so please don't do it here.

hackuser8y ago

Again, that's not what happened, and not what I described several times even though you can see it for yourself. I'm not going to repeat myself to describe it again, but this is absurd. It represents what you suspect in your mind - motives and intent - not the words on the page, while it overlooks half the actual text (the second paragraph, which contains the evidence). What defense is there from mind-reading? The baseless allegations are not welcome, even from moderators.

EDIT: I don't even disagree with the alleged astroturfers; I've known about Aadhaar for a long time and think it probably is a good idea on balance. This really is a ridiculous situation.

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hackuser8y ago

To be clear, I agree that it's very often a cheap shot and I'm glad such things are not generally part of HN.

> I've posted about this countless times

> unless you have more evidence than someone being wrong in your opinion on the internet, you bet it's inadmissible here.

dangOP8y ago

hackuser8y ago

EDIT: I don't even disagree with the alleged astroturfers; I've known about Aadhaar for a long time and think it probably is a good idea on balance. This really is a ridiculous situation.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse