111–120 of 333 posts
I thought this was the worst part.
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What do nuclear power trolls look like? I support nuclear power (instead of fossil fuels and in addition to renewables) and, sadly, I haven't got a cent from the nuclear industry yet.
You will see "we need nuclear power because it's the greenest/most renewable/etc... energy" type posts dispersed all through social media almost anywhere there's a discussion about climate change, renewable energy, etc... Even if the original topic was only tangentially related it will get changed. A post with puppy photos can turn into a climate change discussion because "nuclear power is so green". It's so common n…
Even here on HN, there's occasionally jokes like "cool, how long before they shut it down" on Google's products as an example. There's nothing wrong with this comment but it has the patterns you also ascribed to trolls.
Reminds me 18th century Paris where professional applauders and influencers were paid to influence the crowd. Or the retro seo trick where you ask a question on yahoo questions so you can answer it with another account to backlink "relevant" website. Literally nothing new, internet has of course changed the scale and took away the monopoly from newspapers and tv.
What this article fails to mention: there was recently a case discovered where one of the clients of these troll farms was... Ministry of Justice. They used to slander judges who were not in the political line of thought of the previous / current leading party. The knowledge of this was as high up as Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the man who appears to be driving the whole country from the back seat. One of many, many articles…
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I disagree that all sides do this. Some sides simply have no money or resources to hire professional trolls. For example home owners that do not want a nuclear reactor in their backyard are not likely candidates for troll farms, but huge energy companies (or whomever) are.
Based on my personal experience, being one of the few pro-nuclear voices in the ostensibly anti-nuclear social media [filter bubble], I'm half-inclined to accuse you of being an anti-nuclear shill. But I think you're not, we just live in different filter bubbles. As for nuclear NIMBYs, sure, individually they don't have the money (I'm a nuclear YIMBY, and I don't have it either). But there's plenty of organizations w…
It's the vastness of comments that I find as evidence of something wrong, not specific posts.
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You will see "we need nuclear power because it's the greenest/most renewable/etc... energy" type posts dispersed all through social media almost anywhere there's a discussion about climate change, renewable energy, etc... Even if the original topic was only tangentially related it will get changed. A post with puppy photos can turn into a climate change discussion because "nuclear power is so green". It's so common n…
It's also possible that the self selected bunch of people who discuss energy on HN happen to like nuclear more than the general public. It doesn't have to be trolls.
It is not just foreign governments using paid trolls. Apparently Hilary Clinton used paid trolls against Bernie Sanders in 2016. https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-troll... >Hillary Clinton's well-heeled backers have opened a new frontier in digital campaigning, one that seems to have been inspired by some of the Internet's worst instincts. Correct the Record, a super PAC coordinating with Clinton…
This is a classic example of whataboutism. 1. Governments using trolls is different than campaigns hiring people to discuss politics. Campaigns get volunteers all the time to affect public discourse by going door to door, sending mailers, and doing all kinds of things. 2. Trolls specifically have an antisocial goal. The trolls employed by Russian military intelligence engaged in a psy-ops campaign against America to…
This really is a critical juncture for the internet; the moment wherein the democratization of information has empowered those with the resources to overwhelm the signal with noise. I wish I saw a way out.
Reminds me 18th century Paris where professional applauders and influencers were paid to influence the crowd. Or the retro seo trick where you ask a question on yahoo questions so you can answer it with another account to backlink "relevant" website. Literally nothing new, internet has of course changed the scale and took away the monopoly from newspapers and tv.
Sure, it is not a new problem, but we have to solve it again, and perhaps with a different solution given the new medium.
I think that culture just sort of "evolves" out of the problem?
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They object to being called a troll farm, but essentially admit to all the activities, including making fake accounts, that makes them a troll farm. Other than getting picky about terminology it appears to be an admission of guilt.
I once went to a meeting of an actual full-blown cult. It was a very curious evening. The first thing they did was reassure everyone - slightly nervously - that they weren't a cult. "You'll see us called a cult online, but we're not a cult. Ha ha. Definitely not a cult. Certainly not. Oh no." This denial sounds rather similar.