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My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet

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Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet

#121

Post by jkot »

benten10 wrote: post #19
dimitar wrote: post #3

The 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 was going to write long reply, but will keep it short.

I stopped contributing to HN because of posts similar to yours. We do not need foreign army of trolls, to bring down discussion sites such as HN.

Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet

#122

Post by Sharlin »

dimitar wrote: post #3

The 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…

> I think that it shows that their bosses don't really understand real Internet discussion and don't know that people can identify trolls, regardless if they are state-sponsored or not.

There is a Finnish-language web publication called "MV-lehti" (short for "Mitä vittua?! -lehti" meaning "What the Fuck Magazine"). It is an anti-West, anti-immigrant, anti-establishment disinformation site whose content is rumors at best and knowingly fabricated at worst. And a sizeable portion of the Finnish anti-immigration population take it as gospel.

Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet

#123

Post by dang »

sharetea wrote: post #40

Russian trolls are fascinating. The trolls' messages are low class, hateful, incoherent and always grammatically incorrect, yet they seem to be able to infiltrate discussions on cnn, bloomberg, reddit, zerohedge (which is an anti-western site anyways), and sometimes hacker news, and seem to have some influences amongst uninformed and angry netizens. Case in point, a random stock broker at my brokerage mentions to me…

Users have complained to us about your account. After looking at the history, I think they're right.

Single-purpose accounts aren't good on HN, single-purpose political accounts are worse, and what you're doing is an abuse of the site. Threads here are supposed to be good-faith conversations, not ideological channels. HN is fine with anonymity, but that doesn't mean people get to twist it to push agendas—we're a community, there's an implicit social contract, and doing that undermines it. Please stop.

Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet

#124

Post by kaitai »

acqq wrote: post #89
kaitai wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can look at Saramo's Twitter mentions of Aro: they're pretty negative, mostly implications that she didn't do any research/is biased/is herself a liar and that her work is a threat to Finland. The specific quote ("Jessi[kk]a Aro is a shame to YLE and her profession. If the state's broadcaster is spreading things like this, Finland is not a Nordic country" -- my translation) is in response to this article: http://…

"You can look at Saramo's Twitter mentions of Aro" As I said, I don't know Finnish. Still, thanks for the link to her article. The quote I like from that article is "Torsti Sirén, an Adjunct Professor in the National Defence University of Finland:" says "it seems name-calling and slandering usually backfires on the name callers themselves. Finns are conscious and educated people and understand what is propaganda and…

Many of the tweets are in English and they're not hard to find. See https://twitter.com/PSaramo/status/613739897552281600 In addition, each tweet does have a "view translation" button; useful since many of the tweets are also in Swedish or Russian.

I have to say I don't understand your comment. I was quite careful in my original comment to simply answer the grandparent factually, saying Saramo is too smart to say things that are easily debunked -- Finland has a different political discourse than the US. Instead, like you are doing in this comment, he casts doubt on the original reporting (as in the linked English-language tweet above). I provided some background and several articles that illustrate the conflict as it's being played out in the mainstream and social media, without taking either side, and you have implied a number of things about what you are sure I was trying to say.

Interesting.

Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet

#125

Post by Kristine1975 »

chiph wrote: post #87

If you know of someone in the US doing this, you should advise them to consider registering with the Justice Department. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Ac... The law was amended in the 1960's so that people would get a warning before being prosecuted under it.

>so that people would get a warning before being prosecuted under it

What about free speech? This law strikes me as fundamentally "unamerican."

Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet

#126

Post by Kristine1975 »

dimitar wrote: post #20
joonoro wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think that it shows that their bosses don't really understand real Internet discussion and don't know that people can identify trolls, regardless if they are state-sponsored or not. Yeah but the idea isn't to sponsor enough trolls to trick everyone, but more like turn all internet discussions into one big version of 4chan. Sure you might be able to pick out a few trolls, but it doesn't matter anymore because nobo…

Well, I think they are indeed trying to turn into 4chan, but they don't understand that 4chan users understand trolls and know how to filter them.

From my experience 4chan users are the trolls. Of course they have to recognize them so they don't get trolled by their fellow "anons."

Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet

#127

Post by exelius »

Kristine1975 wrote: post #56
alendit wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right now the Kremlin is likely undergoing an intense debate on how to spin the downing of the recent Russian flight as something other than a reaction to the Russian air war in Syria. They can always claim that ISIS hates Russia's freedom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PKRHgmHzK0 .

Sorry, but "they hate our freedom" has been patented by the US government for their propaganda. Also isn't Syria one of the bad guys right now, so waging war against them is a-ok? I'm getting a bit confused sometimes whether we're at war with Eurasia or Eastasia.

Syria (and specifically the Assad regime) is friendly with Moscow, and provides a friendly port on the Mediterranean. The US hasn't taken out Assad for human rights violations because they don't want a war with Russia. But ISIS is also clearly a threat to the US, so we can't support them either. So we basically tried to invent a third group of non-religious radicals, but without the fervor that a radical ideology provides, many of the individuals that make up this faction give up and flee to Europe after a few months of fighting.

Basically the US would like to see Assad deposed like Gadaffi or Saddam, but Russia is propping him up, and we dislike the other option more than we dislike Assad. The only other realistic option is the Kurds, but an independent Kurdistan would throw the region into chaos (and likely drive Turkey towards Russia, because the Turkish government views the Kurds as being terrorists worse than ISIS).

Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet

#128

Post by [deleted] »

jamespo wrote: post #82
FilterSweep wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're equating professional harassment regarding an external subject to sexual harassment within an internal workplace. I don't think this is appropriate here, in the least bit. Not only is it distasteful, but it also was a poorly posited example that failed to even make the same connection to "bear poking"

So as long as harrassment isn't sexual or "internal" it's OK. Right.

[deleted]

Re: My Year as a Pro-Russia Troll Magnet

#129

Post by chiph »

Kristine1975 wrote: post #125
chiph wrote: post #87

If you know of someone in the US doing this, you should advise them to consider registering with the Justice Department. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Agents_Registration_Ac... The law was amended in the 1960's so that people would get a warning before being prosecuted under it.

>so that people would get a warning before being prosecuted under it What about free speech? This law strikes me as fundamentally "unamerican."

It seems to me to be one of the many laws we have which favor safety & security over the principles on which the country was founded. It doesn't help that it also seems to be one of the many laws we have which are enforced "sometimes".
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