I... I just don't know what exactly I was expecting coming into this comments section. This is some absurdist parody. Seems HN has gotten big enough to be noticed now.
My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet
111–120 of 156 posts
Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
>But here is what I find amazing: we have already seen this movie and we know what forces are at play and what the likely outcome is. Namely, it is very difficult to maintain legitimacy as a government through a propaganda campaign. It is a highly unstable equilibrium. America and North Korea have both been doing it successfully for years. You either need very sophisticated propaganda (America) or a very strict contr…
Leaders are replaced all the time in the U.S. In fact, we have a system of government specifically designed to faciliate the regular replacement of leaders.
Our secret sauce over other nations is specifically how we select the new, very carefully hand picked leaders. Which Bush or Clinton family member will it be next time? with some help from the revolving door of actual leaders (.com) vs figurehead leaders (.gov)
Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
Limiting free speech, banning political opposition, arresting dissidents, persecuting people for their sexuality, invading neighbour sovereign states etc, etc. I don't know about you, but I think "totalitarian" draw a more correct picture, than "corruption level is high".
> Limiting free speech, banning political opposition, arresting dissidents, persecuting people for their sexuality, invading neighbour sovereign states etc, etc. I'm no fan of Russia, but many of these things you mentioned could be applied to the US and UK too.
Sure, neither totalitarianism nor democracy are binary things, and there are no razor-sharp definitions. I'm sure you can find examples of those things in many countries that are generally considered "democratic". However, in Putin's Russia this is common practice and happens on a regular basis (with the exceptions of invading other sovereign states I guess, which has only happened a couple of times), which is why I don't think it's controversial to call Russia "totalitarian".
Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks. But what's "crowdsourced" with it? That article looks like a real investigation. Maybe the term was actually a loss in translation? That's why I hoped to get all the info from somebody who understands Finnish (and maybe even followed these news). Edit: kaitai linked to an article that has a lot of opinions of other people. It is a better example of what she would maybe call the "crowdsourced" article (it has…
Basically the crowdsourcing here means that YLE published a article saying (shortened): "Tell us what kind of web trolling you have been targeted by and in what situations. We'll compile an article of peoples experiences" The term "crowdsourcing" isn't really used in Finnish. Apparently there exists a translation for it ("joukouttaminen"), but I haven't ever heard anyone use it (not that I've looked too hard).
> The term "crowdsourcing" isn't really used in Finnish.
Thanks. Now it's clear. It was really "lost in translation" (in the "appearing" sense).
Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> What you may consider trolling, may be the other idiot's actual views. It seems to me this statement is quite unfair. Does it mean that if I think you're trolling it also means I can label you as an idiot? It's not just that you disagree with them, you get to label them with whatever derogatory term you want as well? >> such trolls (and people who actually believe what they say) are really really threatening to th…
Does it mean that if I think you're trolling it also means I can label you as an idiot? I think what was meant is that people saying idiotic things are not always trolls (who are just trying to stir up an argument), they may actually be idiots. And yes, of course one may label others as idiots; it might be uncouth when said or written publicly, but that's each person's call.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I agree that one can label another as an idiot. It's just that I require a greater deal of proof than "that person disagrees with me" to believe someone's label of another person they don't know.
Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet
#116The whole idea of the state-sponsored troll army is to destroy the Internet as a reliable means of discussion and to devalue it as a venue for journalism, especially independent journalism. Russia would much prefer that there were only liars and cheerleaders, that anyone disagreeing with the Kremlin sinks to their level or picks a 'side'. I think that it shows that their bosses don't really understand real Internet d…
You overestimate people's ability not to be offended, and underestimate the diversity in people's actual beliefs. For example: When someone on HN said over the weekend "I don't see anything inherently wrong with colonialism. Remember that scene from Monty Python -- What have the Romans done for us? A lot of good has come out of colonialism", I was almost certain (almost) it was trolling. Once I saw others agreeing, I…
> I absolutely believe Obviously there are numerous examples of groups of that sort of size which, whilst unpaid, have been extremely zealous in their attempts to "bring down" Reddit. It's questionable how successful they've been. There's been a singular failure to convert the masses into believing that "ethics in game journalism" is a pressing issue. There are still plenty of women, feminists and black people on Reddit, and most of the rest of the internet remains blissfully unaware of "debates" that have taken place there.
Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Leaders are replaced all the time in the U.S. In fact, we have a system of government specifically designed to faciliate the regular replacement of leaders.
Our secret sauce over other nations is specifically how we select the new, very carefully hand picked leaders. Which Bush or Clinton family member will it be next time? with some help from the revolving door of actual leaders (.com) vs figurehead leaders (.gov)
I once looked into the personal backgrounds of U.S. presidents. It's about 50% carefully groomed elites like FDR, Kennedy, and Bush (both), and about 50% "rose from nothing" people like Eisenhower, Reagan, Clinton, and Obama.
Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ...our system has become increasingly hostile to "real" investigative journalism... The burden of proof that there has been a degradation of information quality remains on your side of the court. This "lost paradise" argument may very well be right but it's far from evident to me. I would broadly characterize media quality as always having been low on average throughout history. We had a brief period of oligopoly a…
I'm not talking about media quality like it's something that has just recently gotten bad. I don't think it's gotten worse; but the mass media is also no less important now than in the past. I realize it's always been an issue; I'm just saying we can't act high and mighty relative to Russia because it's a problem here too.
I think you're smart to try to test the validity of the converse of my claims. However, it's also important to acknowledge that there is enormous variation in the freedom of the media to operate across countries. There are highly repressive media domains where a single actor represses others and achieves a near monopoly. Could the US improve freedom of expression domestically? Yes. Do we systematically repress dissenters as is common Russia, Bangladesh, etc? No
Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And as a member of that Society elected to the Parliament? No, not elected. A civil servant working at the Parliament.
Then the place where he works isn't even worth discussing. Even the gatekeeper there works "at the Parliament" but it's not relevant to the opinions he posts on the Facebook.
He's a senior official who handles e.g. all matters regarding Finnish relations to EU when they go to the parliamentary committee. This is about as senior as it gets in our modest House of Parliament. So this is a bit like a Brit saying "it's not worth discussing where Kim Philby is working" because even the SIS has janitors.
I'm not saying he's Kim Philby, I'm just saying his position is not irrelevant.
Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet
#120Back to the USSR. East-West relations are reverting to the Cold War days. From saber-rattling, proxy wars to propaganda campaigns, few will dispute that there has been a back-slide in recent years. But here is what I find amazing: we have already seen this movie and we know what forces are at play and what the likely outcome is. Namely, it is very difficult to maintain legitimacy as a government through a propaganda…
>But here is what I find amazing: we have already seen this movie and we know what forces are at play and what the likely outcome is. Namely, it is very difficult to maintain legitimacy as a government through a propaganda campaign. It is a highly unstable equilibrium. At any time, information can get out of the hands of the propagandists and the system will find a more stable equilibrium -- ie. leaders will be repla…
> I hate to sound like a Pro-Russia troll, but the leaders weren't replaced in the West;
Right. That was my point. When we get bad leaders that make bad decisions that lose them support, they get cycled out and the legitimacy of the institutions is restored.
> America's government systematically destroyed the careers of every person...
This is a great example of how our western institutions often lead to big mistakes but then eject the responsible people. Institutions left more or less intact. It would be foolhardy to claim that the US has a track record of consistently smart domestic policies and foreign interventions (don't get me started...). I'm just making the point that it is much easier to achieve stability with a system where information flows freely.
> This just sounds like so much Russia is bad and inherently weak...
"Weak" is the wrong word. In many ways, the Russian government is demonstrating extraordinary strength in maintaining the "unstable equilibrium" that results from relying on controlling a society's interpretation of events.