Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm • Hacker News Board

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#121

Post by saagarjha » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 8:04 PM UTC

growlist wrote: post #36

9HZZRfNlpR wrote: post #24

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.

Pre-YouTube, fashion companies would employ companies to identify the cool kids in a group and give them free stuff to wear, in order to promote the brand.

Is this not still a thing for Instagram “influencers”?

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#122

Post by sebow » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 8:04 PM UTC

It's rather kind of funny when chinese,russian,polish,eastern european,etc. are being called "troll farms" but when they're american they're either not mentioned or called something very insignificant.

I guess the "troll farms" of US are homegrown and rather natural,since the bullshit goes deep enough that the population sings the propaganda on it's own.

As much as I still prefer the US to be still the leader of the "free" world, you can't be seriously this biased. Every country has it's own mechanisms(more ethical or not, it's besides the point,you could argue they're not ethical since they're pushed by the gov.) that will make certain people resonate some point of views.Since Europeans/Asians are rather poor on average by comparison,I'd imagine they don't have to do it "for free".

There's rather very little difference between a person who has been de facto brainwashed to push a certain agenda (that he truly believes, nonetheless) online and a person who ruins his hands by doing it for money.

Not to mention you can easily spot "trolls" or "shills" online.They're rather repetitive and obvious, since money is the incentive and not their own belief/"passion".

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#123

Post by philwelch » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 8:06 PM UTC

RobertRoberts wrote: post #116

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't tend to find comments on HN the same as other social media because discussion is often brought up because of comments. Drive-by comment bombing doesn't work here the same as other places.

I could characterize this entire argument of yours as "drive-by comment bombing", thus backing my (facetious, rhetorical) claim that you are a shill for the photovoltaic industry.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#124

Post by rexpop » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 8:06 PM UTC

RobertRoberts wrote: post #58

Shivetya wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

anyone with a vested interest on any side of an argument is a candidate for these types of services. we can all go pick the groups we don't like, paint with that broad brush, but in the end we need to realize that all sides do this and we need to be aware. with the internet comes a lot of freedom and this is part of the price of having it because you can bet there is a politician waiting in the wings who will ask you…

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.

> Some sides simply have no money or resources to hire professional trolls.

This is crucial. I think it makes sense to recognize how, since the invention of speech, there have been those who accrue power by hiring professional trolls.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#125

Post by president » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 8:07 PM UTC

volkk wrote: post #60

exogeny wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is 100% correct. FB and TWTR are publicly traded companies; their executives and their board have convinced themselves in an extremely cowardly fashion that their only duty is to the shareholders. They absolutely know that the second they take this stuff seriously, they have to report both how bad it was/is, and how much traffic/revenue to their product was fraudulent at best. It’s so gross.

it's ridiculous how blatant it all is, to the point that even in modern media (e.g tv show Succession) pokes at all the cancer this stuff produces and its one of those things most people are like "yep its happening" but there is nothing being done to stop any of it. ive stopped using facebook/twitter ages ago. that stuff is the downfall of modern society

I think you're absolutely right. It's frightening that there are so many wrongs happening in society today yet nobody seems to be able to stop them from happening. I'm not sure what has gone wrong here but I suspect it all stems from deep-rooted corruption in our leaders and institutions.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#126

Post by rexpop » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 8:07 PM UTC

emptybits wrote: post #88

> “For them it was just work and that’s it.” Is it? If someone's job is spewing cleverly provocative, disruptive, toxic, and intentionally negative messages all day ... does that edgy skill and behaviour not leak into their home or personal life? I understand, these workers need jobs and I'm sure some get quite proficient at trolling. But my gut says there will be personal side effects from reinforcing and working yo…

Yeah, it's easy to profess that it's "just a job," but one carries one's work into one's private life, and ideological discourse.

It's well-understood by Marxists how the mode of production determines the cultural superstructure[1] (and vice-versa).

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_and_superstructure

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#127

Post by seppin » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 8:11 PM UTC

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #20

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #18

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…

I can't say it surprises me. But I think by now every government is using such farms. I find it difficult to believe otherwise based on recent FCC issues ( https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jsvine/net-neutrality-f... ). Yes, sadly, I am invoking everyone is doin' it.

At this point, it would be malpractice to not use them given their effectiveness. That doesn't mean we can't point out the origins and continued presence from bad actors.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#128

Post by irascible » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 8:12 PM UTC

RobertRoberts wrote: post #42

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't say it surprises me. But I think by now every government is using such farms. I find it difficult to believe otherwise based on recent FCC issues ( https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jsvine/net-neutrality-f... ). Yes, sadly, I am invoking everyone is doin' it.

I don't think it's just government, but also likely industries as well. I've seen what could only be trolling for support of nuclear power and the medical industry.

There is a very straightforward argument that nuclear energy is literally the ONLY thing that will save us from global environmental catastrophe.

There is also a straightforward argument to be made that while the medical industry isn't perfect.. antidepressants save lives.

So if those were some of your primary troll-beefs.. take it from this white male tech male worker in his mid 40s.. I'm not getting paid for those opinions.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#129

Post by RandallBrown » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 8:13 PM UTC

nkozyra wrote: post #43

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.

Neal Stephenson's latest book sorta deals with this.

One way the characters in the book got around the huge signal to noise problem was by using editors who were paid to filter it out. Different people could afford different qualities of editors and that had effects on society.

It's a pretty small part of the book, but it's very interesting.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#130

Post by ivanhoe » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 8:16 PM UTC

RobertRoberts wrote: post #42

A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't say it surprises me. But I think by now every government is using such farms. I find it difficult to believe otherwise based on recent FCC issues ( https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jsvine/net-neutrality-f... ). Yes, sadly, I am invoking everyone is doin' it.

I don't think it's just government, but also likely industries as well. I've seen what could only be trolling for support of nuclear power and the medical industry.

It's possible that there're trolling attempts too, but there's a lot of real (and smart) people who're truly passionate about nuclear power as the best option - to the point that it looks like trolling. Solar vs nuclear is kinda new tabs vs spaces type of thing, very high emotional stakes on the both sides.