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

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#161

Post by mistermann » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 9:03 PM UTC

ezzzzz wrote: post #86

dpc_pw wrote: post #31

The solution is not regulate it. The solution is to stop pretending like social media have anything to do with reality.

Try explaining this to the types of people who rely on heavily politicized news outlets for their news...in addition to Facebook. It seems you either have critical thinking skills or you don't. These types are addicted to becoming outraged whenever their pundit tells them to. Everything is taken at face value, as long as it's coming from their ascribed source of truth. This behavior carries over into their social med…

> It seems you either have critical thinking skills or you don't.

I strongly disagree. Substantial amounts of similar (if to a lesser degree) behavior can be observed in any identity-related thread on HN. We may be better than the average mouth breather, but we're far from immune from delusional beliefs.

I wonder, downvoter, why do you disagree? Surely you can acknowledge that technical folks on HN are capable of critical thinking....do you truly believe this ability extends to all other domains, completely free of error? Or, might it be something else? :)

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#162

Post by phjesusthatguy3 » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 9:03 PM UTC

wpietri wrote: post #98

dpc_pw wrote: post #31

The solution is not regulate it. The solution is to stop pretending like social media have anything to do with reality.

The notion that the online world is deeply disconnected from the offline one strikes me as hopelessly ancient. It was certainly true for me when I was a kid calling BBSes from my basement. It's manifestly untrue for me now that I conduct most of my business and much of my recreation via video call, email, and social media tools. It has been a gradual change, of course. But if I were to pick a date where your notion b…

>The notion that the online world is deeply disconnected from the offline one strikes me as hopelessly ancient.

Communication has always been between real people in the real world. The method by which they communicate is what has changed.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#163

Post by 12xo » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 9:11 PM UTC

president wrote: post #125

volkk wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Its not corruption per se its perversion. Honor and integrity have been usurped by greed, money and power. As long as money = speech and corporations are considered constituents, the issue will prevail. The real solution is to outlaw campaign contributions and lobbying... But that's not going to happen as long as the foxes are guarding the hen house.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#164

Post by jakub_g » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 9:13 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…

Well, you left out an important sentence just before which says:

> A majority of Cat@Net’s employees are understood to be disabled, allowing the company to derive substantial public subsidies from Poland’s National Disabled Rehabilitation Fund.

> "their disabilities mean that their employment opportunities are limited"

When you have nothing to put into the pot, the perspective changes. Some of those people might be desperate for work, and in such situation one swallows their pride.

Still, not all people would do such things. But I also imagine some of them might be underestimating the power of the work they're doing and thinking "it can't possibly lead to anything serious".

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#165

Post by 12xo » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 9:17 PM UTC

ezzzzz wrote: post #86

dpc_pw wrote: post #31

The solution is not regulate it. The solution is to stop pretending like social media have anything to do with reality.

Try explaining this to the types of people who rely on heavily politicized news outlets for their news...in addition to Facebook. It seems you either have critical thinking skills or you don't. These types are addicted to becoming outraged whenever their pundit tells them to. Everything is taken at face value, as long as it's coming from their ascribed source of truth. This behavior carries over into their social med…

Its a generational thing. Throughout the Boomer's entire lives the man on the evening news was worthy of your attention. He was a journalist, he was honorable and therefore worthy of paying mind...

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#166

Post by iron0013 » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 9:24 PM UTC

kop316 wrote: post #143

bduerst wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure when you're referencing, but Russian troll farms used Sanders to divide the left on social media websites.

He was referring to just how pro-Sanders/Anti-Hillary Reddit was up until the electron primaries. Right after Hillary got the nomination in 2016, it turned to Pro-Hillary. /r/politics was particularly bad on all of that. The first day after the election was the first time any news about the private email server was even allowed on /r/politics.

"Right after Hillary got the nomination in 2016, it turned to Pro-Hillary."

Isn't that exactly what you'd expect to happen if a lot of the commenters where Democratic voters acting as rational agents in good faith? If I were a Bernie supporter in 2016 who wanted the Democratic candidate (whoever that might end up being) to win, why would I shit on Clinton after she won the nomination? It'd make more sense to support her, and I think that's what a lot of people did. That's certainly exactly what I did.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#167

Post by marcinmozejko » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 9:27 PM UTC

In my opinion this is actual problem in Poland nowadays, however: a. This article was published by a newspaper which has proven track of publishing fake polarizing news, b. Unfortunately - the so called democratic oposition has also proven track of similar behavior. One may check #SilniRazem (together we are strong) which is kind of meme on Polish Twitter. 3. It is likely that the intent of the original article was to polarize using one-sided reporting of the issue.

To sum up - yet another polarizing click-bait with aim is to cause outrage.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#168

Post by whamlastxmas » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 9:32 PM UTC

iron0013 wrote: post #166

kop316 wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was referring to just how pro-Sanders/Anti-Hillary Reddit was up until the electron primaries. Right after Hillary got the nomination in 2016, it turned to Pro-Hillary. /r/politics was particularly bad on all of that. The first day after the election was the first time any news about the private email server was even allowed on /r/politics.

"Right after Hillary got the nomination in 2016, it turned to Pro-Hillary." Isn't that exactly what you'd expect to happen if a lot of the commenters where Democratic voters acting as rational agents in good faith? If I were a Bernie supporter in 2016 who wanted the Democratic candidate (whoever that might end up being) to win, why would I shit on Clinton after she won the nomination? It'd make more sense to support…

Because they maliciously sabotaged Sanders in an extremely undemocratic way and Sanders supporters would want accountability and change so that doesn't happen again?

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#169

Post by RobertRoberts » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 9:34 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #99

RobertRoberts wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Climate change is an issue that people talk about a lot, and nuclear power is a carbon-neutral form of energy, so it might just be a relevant and popular argument around the circles you frequent. If I had to guess at any motivation other than a lot of people actually liking nuclear power, it would probably be that nuclear power is one of the few controversies where a reasonably intelligent person can easily grasp a s…

If a discussion is about halloween costumes and then another person asks a pointed question about [material/structure/use/etc...] and then devolves into nearly perfect corporate speak supporting [sponsored industry]. No big deal.

But if this happens frequently on a wide range of topics, on a regular basis it gets to a point where a rational person has to question the validity of the information source.

Edit: clarity

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#170

Post by whamlastxmas » Mon, Nov 04, 2019, 9:35 PM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #157

bduerst wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure when you're referencing, but Russian troll farms used Sanders to divide the left on social media websites.

This is news to me, are you able to cite any specific evidence ? (Not vague allegations or assertions of fact, but rather actual, specific, somewhat confirmable evidence.)

I mean if you want to make a startup that analyzes language and maps it to a political bias and then run an analysis on the millions of reddit comments, you'd probably make a decent amount of money. Otherwise no, you'd have to go spend dozens of hours reading reddit comments over various historical timeframes