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0 pointssubmeta8mo ago0 comments

Dang, how can you say for sure they are organic? Just because the downvoters appear to be human and seem not to be bots? Even if the dovnvotes came from human beings: Israel apologists are very organised. Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett publicly emphasized the importance of Wikipedia as an information source and stated that Israelis should learn how to edit Wikipedia. Israeli Hasbara, also known as public diplomacy or pro-Israel advocacy, uses various strategies to promote Israel’s perspective on campuses and online.

On university campuses, examples include Hasbara Fellowships (training students to advocate for Israel), pro-Israel student clubs (organizing events and campaigns), social media trainings, resource support from Jewish organizations, and counter-actions against pro-Palestinian movements.

Online, Israeli ministries and affiliated organizations operate official social media teams, develop advocacy platforms and tools (like the Act.IL app), and use influencer campaigns, bots, and coordinated digital actions to shape public opinion. After October 7, 2023, civilian Hasbara initiatives on social media expanded rapidly, ranging from individual efforts to coordinated campaigns with governmental support.

So how can you say that this is a controversial topic and the dovnvotes are organic?

How is it controversial when 2mil. peope are being starved? When thousands of children have been killed by a country whose prime minister is a wanted war criminal?

Edit: Corrected "not organic" => organic

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dang8mo ago

I can't say for sure. What I said is that they seem that way to me, and are within the range of what one expects from divisive and emotional topics. That isn't proof (which is elusive if not impossible in any case), but is at least based on many years and god knows how many lost hours poring over this sort of data.

Incidentally, I was talking about downvotes and flags from every side of the conflict, not just the side you're talking about. I don't see a lot of difference there either.

woooooo8mo ago

For what it's worth, I think the current cadence of allowing one flamewar every 3-4 weeks on this topic is bang on, you're not censoring it and also not letting it take over the site. Nice job.

dang8mo ago

Thanks for demonstrating that at least one user feels this way. I wasn't sure.

Even if literally no one agreed, I still feel that not this topic is not an option, and I still think that could be derived from the first principle of the site (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...), although I admit that the exact proof escapes me.

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fsckboy8mo ago

it isn't a flamewar, it's one side flaming and flaming. allowing them to do that once a month while stopping them from injecting it everywhere all the time might be a good policy, but I don't get a sense I'm hearing both sides

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submetaOP8mo ago

Are you familiar with Tal Hanan, an Israeli businessman and former special forces operative alleged to have run disinformation campaigns to manipulate elections in several countries? That activity was pre‑LLM. What concrete safeguards, audits, and transparency measures does this platform use to detect and prevent similarly professional manipulation?

tomhow8mo ago

We're a relatively small site. Though this thread is at the bigger end of what HN hosts, it's still manageable enough that when the two of us spend all day watching the thread and looking at the commenting, flagging and upvoting/downvoting, we can pick up evidence of manipulation and abuse quite easily. For example, we both independently noticed the user who was commenting/voting/flagging under multiple different usernames. It just looked weird. And it's easy to detect users who are driven by an ideological agenda from observing the patterns of their activity.

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runarberg8mo ago

I think it is a mistake of moderation to treat this as any divisive topic. The division line here is support for genocide. Users which are in favor of genocide—no matter how they justify it—are clearly in the wrong, both morally, and probably legally, and should not be given any ways to influence the discussion here.

dang8mo ago

I think that argument is making an is/ought error. I'm simply describing how it is. Whether it ought to be that way or not, I leave to you and other commenters.

cm20128mo ago

I think one could very easily argue there is no genocide in Gaza, so this doesnt work.

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mupuff12348mo ago

And how can you say it's not the opposite?

China, Russia, Iran, etc would definitely benefit from pouring fuel on this topic.

Not sure why you think only one side does it.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointssubmeta8mo ago0 comments

So how can you say that this is a controversial topic and the dovnvotes are organic?

How is it controversial when 2mil. peope are being starved? When thousands of children have been killed by a country whose prime minister is a wanted war criminal?

Edit: Corrected "not organic" => organic

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dang8mo ago

Incidentally, I was talking about downvotes and flags from every side of the conflict, not just the side you're talking about. I don't see a lot of difference there either.

woooooo8mo ago

For what it's worth, I think the current cadence of allowing one flamewar every 3-4 weeks on this topic is bang on, you're not censoring it and also not letting it take over the site. Nice job.

dang8mo ago

Thanks for demonstrating that at least one user feels this way. I wasn't sure.

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fsckboy8mo ago

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submetaOP8mo ago

tomhow8mo ago

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runarberg8mo ago

dang8mo ago

I think that argument is making an is/ought error. I'm simply describing how it is. Whether it ought to be that way or not, I leave to you and other commenters.

cm20128mo ago

I think one could very easily argue there is no genocide in Gaza, so this doesnt work.

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mupuff12348mo ago

And how can you say it's not the opposite?

China, Russia, Iran, etc would definitely benefit from pouring fuel on this topic.

Not sure why you think only one side does it.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse