I just want to say before you read any of these comments, they are being monitored, they are being manipulated. Don't take anything on the Internet at face value. There are no "concerned citizens" on the Internet only bored people and trolls trying to force action out of inquiry.
To put it another way that's a little less accusatory but still encourages the right mindset - assume any comment on a service from a user without verified ID was written by a troll trying to provoke a reaction.
Anonymity is a poor heuristic. I rate people as trolls or not dependin gon whether they employ fallacious reasoning, and how they respond to being challenged. Not all fallacious arguments are trolling, as people can simply be wrong. But if a person is supplied with accurate information, or the form of an error explained and acknowledged, only to see them return the next day with the same schtick, then I regard that as posting in bad faith.
There are plenty of anonymous truth-tellers and plenty overt hypocrites and liars. It's important to remember that not all lies are meant to be believed; some are merely intended to upset, to bait, or to signal.
The problem isn't anonymity as such. I don't think there would be much problem with anonymous posts, provided we could be confident the anonymous poster actually was just one guy who spoke for himself, at a reasonable rate.
But you have anonymous posters who speak under hundreds of names to give their opinions the illusion of popularity; argue with their own accounts to set up straw men and steer discussion away from things that threaten them, and post hundreds of times more than the average users.
I think there must be solutions to this, I'm sad so few people seem to be working on it. Shouldn't there be a way for instance, using good old fashioned cryptography (I.e. NOT some tradeable token junk), to leverage a strong ID service to prevent sockpuppeting in a forum without revealing much to either the forum owner or the ID service?
Once we had that - a basic safety that everyone you engaged with on a certain forum was a real person, and this person (whoever he was) didn't operate under other names on that forum (or if he had earlier names, that they were irreversibly retired) - a lot of sensible things would become possible which are largely pointless today, such as speaking limits and distributed/allotted moderation.
> Not all fallacious arguments are trolling, as people can simply be wrong.
There's factually wrong, there's logically fallacious argument, and there's "I don't agree with you, so I will say you're wrong, and be condescending to impute your reasoning, but actually, I'm not the teacher, or the font of wisdom" wrong.
Yes, people can simply be wrong. Lincoln didn't write internet jokes online. But, oftentimes, "wrong" is actually "I don't agree with you, but saying you're wrong is more win"
I tend to all three (factually, logical reasoning error, and opinion) wrongs. So I'm used to seeing all three flung back at me. There. Flung. thats emotive. Probably casts (ha) things in to a specific mode of reasoning...
There are concerned citizens. I'm one of them. But there are also trolls and organized, paid government & industry shills.
I think having verified IDs is an interesting idea on HN and other niche forums and would help parse out the intention.
Could probably do it without doxing the public facing comments. Would put all the trust in YC though.
Maybe that's an interesting product idea, a way to establish real identity trust without any chance of exposing personal data to any parties, even the verifier.
I think it would help discussions.
I have my opinion there are shills here, specifically China related content and I think it would be interesting to know comments are minimally form a single human. Coordination is still possible though.
Any state actor and many corporates can generate fake ID on an industrial scale with trivial ease.
The real problem is more that FB and Twitter refuse to moderate known bad actors. It's not difficult to analyse posting patterns, but the FB/Twitter-plex often refuses to act on that information, and (...Cambridge Analytica) has often been complicit in its weaponisation.
I don't think it's a solvable problem. Or rather, it's solvable with good government and legislation against any form of organised public deception. Unfortunately getting the former relies on the latter being in place, which makes it a chicken and egg problem.
And it's harder than it looks because the worst kind of organised troll posts are weaponised for emotional triggering, not facts or logic. They're based on known psychological techniques and they cannot be out-argued directly. Critical thinking is no help, because the techniques are designed to bypass it.
So it would be hugely useful if there was some kind of online emotional literacy training which would explain and dramatise the techniques so people could be inoculated against them.
That aside - HN definitely has shills. I expect all comments about one particular corporation to attract downvotes if they're even remotely critical.
This is a pointless and unnecessary waste of everyone's time, but it's at least possible a PR firm somewhere is trying to justify its existence.
Other operators are less predictable, so it's harder to tell.
This is often a problem. I came across an old acquaintance on FB this week making some very troll-ish points on a topic. If I didn't know her I would have assumed the account was fake. But so far as I can tell it's genuine, and - unfortunately - she really believes what she posted.
Oh yeah FB & Twitter just shows the way that targeted crazyness (oftentimes from otherwise smart people with an agenda trying to manipulate) spread and create true believers. Is it trolling if that's what you truly believe and have passion for?
And I agree. The education in this country is sad. Critical thinking just doesn't exist, i've experienced it with otherwise intelligent people too. A huge % don't think to google something or learn themselves. They need specific guidance hand holding.
In the US it's hard because one person's organized deception is another's political campaigning.
Though personally I think there is a line of malicious intent, kind of like libel if a person knowingly spreads BS to achieve some goal. Maybe we have to look at the damage of those words. Like the modern day version of yelling fire.
Maybe HN could do something like a verified badge, still without revealing true identity unless someone chooses too. Sign your github repo or linked in or something.
I don't think it's likely that most/any HN commenters are paid trolls, there are lots of Chinese and Americans in this industry that will naturally have different perspectives.
But every single thread on CCP in particular gets overloaded with pro-china comments which use classic troll tactics. Often taking stances like for instance on privacy that are 180 from almost every other non CCP thread.
False comparisons, whataboutism, etc. I just have a hard time believing some of the more extreme stuff; like if someone really does have such a crazy opposite worldview where they think oppression and interment of millions is acceptable for whatever <excuse> among other stuff. Maybe my hard time believing is just a naive misunderstanding of the world but it rubs me wrong.
And lots of downvotes - which seems to go against HN spirit it's not reddit to downvote what you disagree with.
There's an anti-china thread on HNs front page like 3x a week. Imagine if you were an immigrant and you see that shit. Would it be infuriating?
If a comment comes from outside your frame of reference, it might sound like bad faith to you while you sound bad faith to them. The country that spent the last 20 years killing millions of Muslims really cares about Xinjiang now? Really? And if they point that out, you cry whataboutism?
the problem i have is the frame of reference is so crazy extreme, in such abundance. but yeah i'm sure there are real people who really believe that. after all even if there is a good amount of organized shills, it supports a government/leader who probably buys into their own stuff.
It's very different from your frame, it's normal to them.
You and I grew up with American history and civics classes teaching an American view of things. There's context and complexities to American misdeeds. China's are presented in a vacuum, with undue focus and a touch of exaggeration.
Yeah maybe. I definitely have a strong opinion on CCP & authoritarianism specifically.
But I don't think interning millions of your citizens & committing genocide needs much context or has much complexity. Even considering the attacks that are used as an excuse to perpetrate the crimes. Even disregarding reports of 3rd reich behavior like forced sterilizations.
I just can't buy into there being hundreds of millions of informed people who think 'yeah that's acceptable' or even good AND that they are so widespread on english language western sites actively pushing back with troll behavior and downvoting etc.
Maybe there are and I just don't want to live in that world..
Also informed is interesting in that context.
I agree in some of our biases. Like we view China as pretty locked down and indoctrinated 24/7, but it does seem lots of commenters on HN talk about having more freedom & individualism than we assume.
FYI there is as of now no evidence for genocide in Xinjiang. No mass casualties. Sterilization is a universal policy for exceeding child allotments, which were actually higher for minorities until they raised it to 3 universally.
That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about.
Concerning oneself with poster's identity (honestly, feels like a form of ad hominem) can't be exactly the solution.
It could be that relationship to the source matters - rather than author's identity. I mean, there is a subtle difference between "who wrote this?" and "do I trust this?". But the only implementation I can think of is some sort of web-of-trust and all attempts at implementing WoT I know about had utterly failed.
Either way, I believe some form of memetic immunity - not getting provoked - rather than attempts to identify and shut down "troll farms" and "fake news" - is an ultimate solution.
This is how I approach the Internet as a whole. Treat unverified anything as if they are the enemy trying to hurt you. Be skeptical. It's a real shame too because the Internet is one of mankind's crowning achievements but it has this taint.
