What would your stance be on having HN discussions of such topics as the comments that were submitted to the FCC about net neutrality, which were later found to be fraudulent?
I’m trying to make a distinction here between insinuating that sinister manipulation is happening here, and discussing, here, the actual sinister manipulation that, let’s not beat around the bush with insinuations, I’ll just state it directly and factually, does in fact, happen in the world? Is that also off limits? I’m not trying to question your authority here, just wondering about your thoughts on how the internet community can navigate this.
You could also take this question as rhetorical… I don’t want to drill into this in the sense of putting you on the spot to reply. It’s just an interesting topic I think that cannot be swept under the rug. And I don’t know that you’re doing that, but I would hate to see this topic be a third rail.
> What would your stance be on having HN discussions of such topics as the comments that were submitted to the FCC about net neutrality, which were later found to be fraudulent?
That's fine of course, not off limits at all. Indeed there were such discussions recently:
- and I seem to recall many more back when this was happening.
In a story like that, there's real evidence, and something objective to discuss. That's totally different from internet comments randomly accusing others of manipulation, nearly all of which are just fantasy. I say that based on having spent countless hours studying the HN data on this, but even the public data alone (e.g. the commenting history of the accounts involved) is enough to see that 99% of such accusations are nothing but hot gas. Unfortunately it's hot poisonous gas, which is why the guidelines say not to do it.
As I've tried to explain many times (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...), there are two problems: (1) real abuse is happening on the internet; and (2) internet users frequently imagine that they're seeing such abuse when in reality they are merely seeing something they dislike. Both problems are serious, but for entirely different reasons, and we need to be careful not to confuse them, since (2) is extremely common, indeed is the laziest internet production that exists. Allowing people to do #2 everywhere (so to speak) could easily destroy the community.
Fortunately, a simple rule turns out to suffice: don't post accusations of abuse unless you have some bit of evidence to go on. Someone else having a different view than you does not count as evidence. You need at least a shred of something objective, and if you don't have that, then you can't post accusations. Since the overwhelming majority of #2 posts have no evidence, that rules them out. Getting people to actually follow this rule is a different issue of course.
To get back to your question, if someone posted an article that was insinuating astroturfing (or shilling, spying, manipulation, etc.) in some real-world context outside HN, and that article didn't contain any actual evidence, then I suppose it would be off topic for the same reason such comments are off topic. But if it's a serious article that contains significant new information, that's obviously ok.
Thank you for the long reply! I feel bad to have prompted you to spend so much time but I hope it's worth it somehow. I know I spend time on comments that sometimes are read by (I guess) only a handful of people, and it helps me figure out both my thinking on things, and how to articulate that thinking, and what works and what doesn't, for communication. Anyway, what you say makes sense.
>based on having spent countless hours studying the HN data on this
I assume you mean including looking at data like account creation times, IP addresses, etc. which might help bring that kind of stuff to light, and I am glad to hear that someone does that from time to time at least.
Not to contradict anything you are saying, and I'm sure you are already well aware of this, but the fact that the arms race between perpetration and detection of astroturfing type behaviors is escalating over time means that sites may be called on to up their game for detection. I mean we all know this is one fascinating front in the spam wars as well, and a key maleficent use case for machine learning. I hope HN will keep evolving to be able keep up! Seems like quite a challenge. Or, even better, with luck and your work on moderation perhaps it can be somehow shielded from that stuff!… no pressure ;-).
I’m trying to make a distinction here between insinuating that sinister manipulation is happening here, and discussing, here, the actual sinister manipulation that, let’s not beat around the bush with insinuations, I’ll just state it directly and factually, does in fact, happen in the world? Is that also off limits? I’m not trying to question your authority here, just wondering about your thoughts on how the internet community can navigate this.
You could also take this question as rhetorical… I don’t want to drill into this in the sense of putting you on the spot to reply. It’s just an interesting topic I think that cannot be swept under the rug. And I don’t know that you’re doing that, but I would hate to see this topic be a third rail.