Since the start of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, there have been a significant number of commenters here who have, for whatever reasons, advanced opinions that align very closely with Russian propaganda.
Some of these seem very reasonable—things like "shouldn't we try to push for peace?" "Should we really be arming the people of another country?"—and others might seem reasonable if you don't know a lot about the recent history and politics of the region—like "the main reason Russia invaded was because they were scared of Ukraine joining NATO".
I would not seek to impute specific intent to any particular commenters here; while it's entirely possible that a forum like this has some genuine Russian propagandists on it, I would say it's just as possible that they either don't know or don't care about HackerNews. Either way, it's clear that a lot of this propaganda has made it into the general conversation, and some people believe it and spread it for various reasons of their own.
> and others might seem reasonable if you don't know a lot about the recent history and politics of the region—like "the main reason Russia invaded was because they were scared of Ukraine joining NATO".
Eh, I live in the region and feel like this is a (somewhat) fair point, though somewhat misquoted and misrepresented (not in the least that there is no really ever a single specific reason for war, but rather a cascade of them). Not implying that war isn't a disaster or whatever.
Anyhoo...
> there have been a significant number of commenters here who have, for whatever reasons, advanced opinions that align very closely with Russian propaganda.
"Russian propaganda" is merely aligned to the perspective of a huge-enough chunk of the it & engineering world, just as well as "Western propaganda" is.
I think a lot of people are just very bad at articulating their points so that they don't sound like shallow slogans or whatever, but I don't suppose it's fair to label them as propagandists. Most are just sharing their perspectives, however they may be. Pity that forums like that aren't really suitable for people sharing different and opposing views, which should be pretty natural state of things in times like these.
Indeed, it's a thin line and I as the OP am surprised it generated so much (also productive) discussion. I saw this post was hidden from the front page at some point and I guess it's for the better. It's a "so-so".
