
Ask HN: How do you keep track of astroturfers on HN? - mr_spothawk
I&#x27;ve noticed a lot of astroturfing in the past couple years. It&#x27;s led me to visit HN less and less often, which probably isn&#x27;t such a bad deal. The problem is that i sometimes feel like <i>I</i> am the problem, but i&#x27;m a peace-loving hippy... so maybe that&#x27;s not a reasonable assumption.<p>I wonder if anybody would identify the same in this thread: 
https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=19251589<p>There&#x27;s a style of commenting which (to me) sounds like it&#x27;s written by a Mandarin speaker with great, non-native English skills. And it seems to me like astroturfing...<p>Is anybody keeping track these folks? Does YC care? Is YC in on the gig?<p>Any thoughts would be appreciated... even if you want to just say i&#x27;m crazy, it&#x27;d be interesting to have some discussion in the community about this.
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ocdtrekkie
If you think you have identified some sort of astroturfing effort, the best
solution is to contact the moderators using the link at the bottom of the
page.

HN mods do regularly act against users who post solely in support or
opposition to a single company (or for example, always promote one company and
simultaneously attack it's competitors), or people who use HN to "wage
ideological battle" by arguing for one position to the detriment of any other
discussion on the matter.

There's not a lot of discussion in the community on it because HN would much
rather not be bogged down by people complaining about other users, and would
rather deal with it privately.

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mr_spothawk
I'll try that, thanks.

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AnimalMuppet
I've seen... I don't know that I'd call it astroturfing, but at least people
pushing an ideology. I mean, we all have our view of the world, and we all
think ours is right. But some people will argue every post opposing their
view. And they Just. Won't. Stop. I mean, they may talk about other things on
other threads, but when a thread talks about _their_ position, they will never
stop arguing. They will never give any acknowledgement that people on the
other side had any valid points. It's like talking to a brick wall.

I'm tempted, when I see this behavior, to just say "With those who will not
listen, it is useless to have a conversation", and walk away. But I'm pretty
sure they'd reply something like "I will listen, but everything you say is
wrong".

Other than flagging it or otherwise contacting the moderators, I don't have a
good solution. It sure doesn't help the atmosphere of the board to have that
kind of "conversation", though.

~~~
rchaud
That's what makes it hard to discuss politics on the Internet. Not saying that
in-person conversations can't be difficult too, but in person people start off
with a level of basic human respect that can move a conversation along.

Plus there isn't the possbility of cutting your conversation short so you can
correct all the other people who commented in a similarly wrong manner.

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NeedMoreTea
There's some topics that _rapidly_ attract a certain pattern of posting. Where
the first comments are something blatantly wrong, or just wildly provocative.
Often only tenuously, if at all, related to TFA. They then proceed to answer
every. single. comment. with more provocation.

See it enough times and it looks like these low karma and activity, often
recently created accounts, show a real pattern. Call it astro turfing, call it
gaming the algo to trigger a spam flag for burying the thread on HN, or call
it an incredibly unlikely coincidence, I do wish it were not so.

Oftentimes it's not even a great article or study they're attacking, just that
the topic exists at all. If it were left alone to sink or swim with real
comments, half the time they'd sink intellectually due to it being poor
reporting, or reporting a flawed study etc.

I find it one of the more frustrating things about current HN, but I know of
nowhere else free of it.

~~~
luckylion
If nobody is downvoting their comments, I suppose they are good comments?
Otherwise, HN blocks low karma accounts for hours after writing two or more
comments within XX minutes and receiving a downvote on any of them (I know
because it regularly happens to me and I can't reply to anything).

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Dahoon
There's a style of commenting which (to me) sounds like it's written by
American speakers with great, native English skills. And it seems to me like
astroturfing...

~~~
ocdtrekkie
I can spot Googlers (and relatively recent Xooglers) by their commenting style
usually, with no other obvious disclosure. The funny thing about this, is they
can be from wholly unrelated divisions from what they're commenting on, and
not marketing people. Which is to say this isn't an accusation of wrongdoing
here. They just have... a certain style that's distinctly Google, and it's
kind of audible when reading.

I think it'd be really interesting to do some sort of data analysis on HN
comment text, sorted by employer or country of origin, maybe known CEOs versus
marketers versus engineers who comment, or whatever else, and see what
patterns could be found. Are there certain sentence styles that correlate to
different groups, or a noticeable difference in vocabulary?

~~~
rchaud
I feel like most sites have a kind of commenting monocolture that's specific
to the community on that site. For example, Reddit comments on popular threads
can be indistinguishable from each other due to the use of "inside jokes"
based around quoting a meme or something from pop culture. Everybody seems to
comment in the same way in order to get upvotes from other users who "get it".

Twitter and Tumblr are similar in that users are often trying to write witty
one-liners, which too end up leaning on pop culture references.

That said, what you are proposing could absolutely be used to suss out not
astroturfers exactly, but fanboys of certain things. Jordan Peterson, Elon
Musk, etc., they all comment in the same way when a critical article about
them is posted on a message board.

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krapp
At the risk of winding up on someone's enemies list here, let me make a
suggestion: "keeping track of astroturfers" is the last thing you want to do.

Trolls, shills, false flaggers, etc. are a problem in just about any online
forum. But they don't win by posting. They win by convincing you to look at a
thread with suspicion and assume malice, by encouraging an atmosphere of
paranoia that has a chilling effect on discourse, and by leading you away from
honest discussion with fruitless tangential arguments that poison the well and
get threads flagged.

The site guidelines already provide what I think is a decent strategy. Assume
good faith on the part of a commenter, and respond to the strongest possible
interpretation of their argument (steelman, don't strawman.) If after a
response or two, it seems like someone isn't arguing in good faith... then
just ignore them. Fold the thread and move on with life. If they're being
uncivil or outright malicious, flag them.

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danbolt
Is there a litmus test for testing if someone is a "Mandarin speaker with
great, non-native English skills"?

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jf22
I've been accused of being an astroturfing shill on multiple platforms...

I wonder if the reason is simply my poor grammar.

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mr_spothawk
My personal solution is to keep a spreadsheet of names, occurrences, and then
review the comments over time. It's a pretty new effort though.

~~~
luckylion
Wait, you're manually datamining comments with a spreadsheet? That sounds
really dedicated.

~~~
mr_spothawk
it's not really datamining, it's more like subjective opinion recording.

