
Russian disinformation distorts American and European democracy - mlb_hn
https://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21737297-mueller-indictment-reveals-some-kremlins-tactics-russian-disinformation-distorts
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heyitsguay
And as always with posts on Russian interference, an immediate comment a few
minutes later denying and whatabouting any activity. HN is within the sights
of the disinformation machine.

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dang
This comment breaks the site guidelines by making insinuations about
astroturfing or shillage. People are orders of magnitude too quick to leap to
that conclusion, merely because other users happen to hold opposing views.

It's easy to feel like no one could possibly hold those views in good faith,
so if you see something you dislike enough, it must be shills, bots, or
spies—but that's not correct. The HN community is large, divided on divisive
issues, and has many users on both sides. If we're to survive for civil
discourse, community members need to build up enough tolerance to handle it
when others disagree, instead of jumping to accusations of manipulation and
bad faith.

All: if you're sincerely concerned about abuse, you're always welcome to send
links to hn@ycombinator.com so we can take a look at the data. But please
don't shoot from the hip into the threads; you damage the container when you
do that.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

p.s. I've written a great deal about this issue, if anyone wants to read more
on how we approach it:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20astroturfing&sort=by...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=by:dang%20astroturfing&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0)

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peterwwillis
The good news is, we know about the disinformation.

The bad news is, the public is either too stupid or too far in partisan denial
to care.

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puppetmaster400
Accused of spending 100k, mostly after nov 7th. Compared to h spending 1.2 b.
Or the rest of media. Never mind that Asante posted on American bots trying to
create consensus.

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tdb7893
Where are you getting the 100k number from? That wouldn't even cover a small
misinformation campaign and they are also accused of executing multiple hacks.
100k wouldn't even cover the total cost of 1 hacker for 1 year. Would that
100k just be advertisement spending?

