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Russian trolls hit Reddit, too

arstechnica.com

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Re: Russian trolls hit Reddit, too

#21

Post by EpicEng »

frockington wrote: post #16
scarmig wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One is a foreign power attempting to destabilize the US government, and the other is an admin changing a comment as a joke?

One could also be defined as someone in Russia (or another boogeyman de jour) finding funny memes and posting them on the internet to troll Americans. As an America I posted Brexit memes that I found funny, does that mean I am also destabilizing a country?

>One could also be defined as someone in Russia (or another boogeyman de jour) finding funny memes and posting them on the internet to troll Americans

Sure, in another universe where we didn't already know this stuff is a coordinated effort to destabilize our political system...

Re: Russian trolls hit Reddit, too

#22

Post by SiempreViernes »

rainieri wrote: post #11
scarmig wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One is a foreign power attempting to destabilize the US government, and the other is an admin changing a comment as a joke?

Sorry destabilize the US government? Destabilize over the 2 options they ALWAYS have? Oh sorry you have a Republican government now. What a destabilization. So in conclusion the only dangerous thing in that election is the fact that Trump could be blackmailed. And Hillary can't be blackmailed? Hilarious. -- thanks for the downvotes.

There are actually more than two options you know, at one point there were 17 nominees on the republican side.

Out of all those 17, the biggest idiot won, and now you want to take away the best excuse for this fracas that the elites have come up with?

I think the fact that the orange one is an idiot is pretty dangerous in and of itself, completely independent of however easy he is to be manipulated.

Re: Russian trolls hit Reddit, too

#23

Post by scarmig »

frockington wrote: post #16
scarmig wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One is a foreign power attempting to destabilize the US government, and the other is an admin changing a comment as a joke?

One could also be defined as someone in Russia (or another boogeyman de jour) finding funny memes and posting them on the internet to troll Americans. As an America I posted Brexit memes that I found funny, does that mean I am also destabilizing a country?

I guess one could be defined as such.

It's certainly interesting that the number of Russians discovering r/funny increased by an order of magnitude in the run up to the election. And that Putin found r/gifs so entertaining that he hired thousands of Russians to post on it and similar places. Don't you think?

Re: Russian trolls hit Reddit, too

#24

Post by Algent »

tehwebguy wrote: post #6
tomp wrote: post #4

How is this any worse than Reddit admins "trolling" Reddit, e.g. undetectably changing users' comments?!

What a disingenuous comment. Comparing this to a single instance of an admin prank done in good fun that was changed back immediately.

It also probably left traces in the mysql(postgres?) logs. It shouldn't surprise anyone on HN that you can freely edit your own data.

More generally it's very common for forums to have a post edited by mods/admin, usually the edit will show up but if you mess with them they may be tempted to hit back and forget to set the "changed by xxxx" flag.

Re: Russian trolls hit Reddit, too

#25

Post by Karunamon »

tehwebguy wrote: post #6
tomp wrote: post #4

How is this any worse than Reddit admins "trolling" Reddit, e.g. undetectably changing users' comments?!

What a disingenuous comment. Comparing this to a single instance of an admin prank done in good fun that was changed back immediately.

First, "single instance" isn't fair since it was multiple comments that were edited.

Second, silently misattributing words to people (he went behind the site's back, into the database, so the "comment edited" star never appeared) is not a "prank", it's a serious breach of trust, unprecedented in the history of the site, and calls into question anything anyone has ever written. If I remember right, this was only ever proven because archive snapshots of the comments pre-edit existed.

If someone familiar with Reddit history now is ever called to legally account for their comments, Reddit Inc. now gets to be called and has to prove they didn't screw with the posts. Can you say liability exposure? Sheesh.

There are some lines you just don't cross. If Huffman would edit people's comments on the sly for funsies, it shows he has no professional ethics that would prevent him from doing the same thing in a more important situation. What's to say he hasn't already in the matter of some other litigation we're not aware of?

Re: Russian trolls hit Reddit, too

#29

Post by Arubis »

galieos_ghost wrote: post #13

Why does nobody talk about the fact that Clinton and Democrats spent 10s of millions astroturfing various online communities? You could see r/politics go from fairly balanced to rabid pro-clinton when CTR got fresh funding infusions. You can check Alexa rankings and see the massive traffic surges at the same time. You could see sentiment shift on weekends when the shills were off. Hell, the CIA had an entire "Meme wa…

[flagged]

Re: Russian trolls hit Reddit, too

#30

Post by chatmasta »

realusername wrote: post #17
SiempreViernes wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would guess OP doubts that Reddit cares at all...

Reddit generally never acts on anything (whatever the subject) unless it appears in the news and they are in the spotlight. There's very rarely any proactive action from Reddit.

That’s because every time they make a change, no matter how small, they get a very loud reaction from pissed off users, many of whom generate the bulk of Reddit’s content.
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