Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

krebsonsecurity.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 270 posts

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#191

Post by kodah »

motohagiography wrote: post #31

It's an interesting find. The difference between these sites and spam sites is that they are mostly self-contained comment boards. You have to actually go do them to interact with them, where spammers were breaking the internet. What clicked for me in this article is asking why I ever thought the internet was about ideas, what it might have meant pre-internet for people to be free of a "mainstream" in the old music a…

> The conspiracy-sphere of alternative internet platforms isn't the problem

This phrasing doesn't really make sense to me. I've never seen anything conspiracy-esque said about platforms and centralization, generally it's just that people have found legitimate problems with them and their effects.

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#192

Post by reducesuffering »

theplague42 wrote: post #121
fallingfrog wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Downvoted! Look: we here on hacker news are used to thinking about the world in a logical way. We test our ideas against reality and reject what doesn’t fit. We have rational enlightenment ideals about democracy and reason. Well some people don’t! They really don’t. They have a prescientific, premodern understanding of the world. I know this is hard to accept but it’s clearly true. And every time they turn on the tv…

HackerNews is just as vulnerable to confirmation bias and reactionary behavior as any other group of people. Being an engineer does not make one magically immune to cognitive bias.

Vulnerable, but resoundingly not "just as vulnerable." Just this year, this community is where I learned that COVID-19 was going to be huge and devastating to the world as early as mid February, with lockdowns, financial devastation, masks and social distancing are required, etc. Meanwhile people like us had to argue with relatives and friends for a whole 'nother month as they thought we're overreacting, masks are useless, "just wash your hands, nothing to be too concerned about." For all its faults, HN is better informed on reality than most groups of people.

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#194

Post by mistermann »

klmadfejno wrote: post #123
mistermann wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The ACTUAL TRUTH is that... No, the actual truth of what Qanon -is-, is what Qanon is . There is that which exists in reality, and then there is mankind's best efforts to measure and describe it (what you read in Wikipedia, history books, scientific textbooks and papers , etc). These things are related, but they are not the same thing. > If you want to claim that there's isn't a firm consensus around Qanon supporte…

> If you were to attempt to compile a substantial list of their beliefs and their correctness that is consistent with measurable reality, I propose that you would immediately notice a problem - a severe lack of specific content. Why don't you list them for us then and give us your opinion on whether something is Provably True, Not provable but probably true, not provable but probably false, and provably false. Let's…

> Why don't you list them for us then and give us your opinion on whether something is Provably True, Not provable but probably true, not provable but probably false, and provably false.

Here's why:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burden_of_proof_(philosophy)

When two parties are in a discussion and one [makes a claim] [that the other disputes], [the one who makes the claim typically has a burden of proof to justify or substantiate that claim] especially when it challenges a perceived status quo.

This is also stated in Hitchens's razor, which declares that "what may be asserted without evidence, may be dismissed without evidence."

The claim in question:

"...most conspiracy theorists are genuinely suffering from a degree of paranoia and extreme distrust. They believe that others are lying to them, and affirmation of that belief is appealing. But they're still terribly incorrect."

The context:

>> If you want to claim that there's isn't a firm consensus around Qanon supporters about the exact definitions of this conspiracy theory, I'm still going to go ahead and say anyone in this vague ballpark is missing a few marbles. Qualifying that Conspiracy Theory != False is not a valid argument to deny that this theory, and many others, are obviously false. Debating the semantics of what a theory is or isn't to each subjective viewer is tiring and false and not a real debate.

>> I say missing a few marbles, and that's rude, because most conspiracy theorists are genuinely suffering from a degree of paranoia and extreme distrust. They believe that others are lying to them, and affirmation of that belief is appealing. But they're still terribly incorrect.

So my questions to you are:

1. How is it that you know(!) the mental state and epistemic quality of the beliefs held by not only one person, but most conspiracy theorists? (Note: you are the one who made the claim, my inability to disprove it does not constitute a proof of your assertion.)

2. Are you averse to touching upon the abstract idea I have mentioned many times: What is actually true?

These conversations are always rather ironic: right-thinking critical thinkers can regularly be observed opining at length about the intellectual inferiority of their out-groups, how they believe things without the need for evidence, how they refuse to listen to logic, how their beliefs do not stand up to scrutiny, and so forth and so on.

All of this is very often true, and perfectly reasonable criticism. But what people seem to not realize is that this behavior is not derived from , but rather from a more universal place: the human mind. Challenge any individual's axioms (a self-evident truth that requires no proof), and they will exhibit the very same behavior, if perhaps with more sophistication and a better vocabulary.

If anyone was actually curious why believes what they do, or was truly concerned about the alleged "danger" they and their ideas impose upon society, you'd think they might perhaps have a little genuine curiosity about what is actually going on. However, as can be seen in this thread, there is not only no interest, but extreme aversion to touching the topic in a serious, non-rhetorical way.

Something to maybe keep in mind for the next time you find yourself criticizing those who you do not actually know much about.

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#195

Post by jolmg »

holidayacct wrote: post #171

Pay close attention to social media companies and privately run social networks and forums. I used to work for a major social media network that was growing and eventually stalled. If you run a social network and it gets popular you're going to run into major problems that no one talks about. 1.) Multiple governments, private organization and luddites send people to your company to compromise the source code. 2.) Peo…

I didn't understand the 4th. Besides competitor networks, what would anyone have against another social network being started?

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#196

Post by holidayacct »

jolmg wrote: post #195
holidayacct wrote: post #171

Pay close attention to social media companies and privately run social networks and forums. I used to work for a major social media network that was growing and eventually stalled. If you run a social network and it gets popular you're going to run into major problems that no one talks about. 1.) Multiple governments, private organization and luddites send people to your company to compromise the source code. 2.) Peo…

I didn't understand the 4th. Besides competitor networks, what would anyone have against another social network being started?

Keeping track of communication channels. It is what governments and private security firms do all the time. No one wants to have to keep track of the activities of another social networking platform and figure out how to compromise it. They also have to keep track of anyone else who has compromised the platform.

Just a further note, the entire internet is comrpomised in one way or another. The worst offenders are linkedin, amazon and facebook. The US govt and various organizations have the complete ability to monitor any account, control what shows up on the user interfaces and replace the content however they please. A ton of people arent even aware their accounts are being used to control their behavior via reinforcement learning. Its just advertising but when people use it effectively it is a destructive tool.

See for how these kinda of techniques are used. https://www.amazon.com/Psychological-Operations-Principles-C...

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#197

Post by Minor49er »

arminiusreturns wrote: post #95
ibejoeb wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I don't understand about qanon, which I assume is because what I know of qanon is only this surface-level premise. Where does it go off the rails? Because--if we're being real with ourselves--we have to contend with the fact there is a pedophile island, and heads of state, royals, and other elite are credibly implicated the sex trafficking that sustains it.

I can explain. Its psyops techniques at play, one of the most blatant displays in a long time. There are a myriad, but the primary one at play is called "limited hangout". The example I usually use to illustrate this in conversation is flat earth conspiracy. Its so laughable, but what one will notice, with more analysis, is that many of the same people or sites that purport this genuinely ridiculous notion will also…

This is the premise behind entertainment outlets like Info Wars

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#198

Post by tptacek »

stonogo wrote: post #181
tptacek wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really think the right way to do it is just to write a natural paragraph that refers to what the parent was saying. But what you did, with a single italicized reference at the top, is an HN idiom as well. A long back-and-forth of quote and rebuttal though is definitely not the style here. That style makes sense in Email and Usenet, because you're often using readers that don't show the parent comment at the same ti…

People can edit comments here. It makes no sense to permit the commenter to whom you are responding to recontextualize your words by editing their post after a response is received. Anyway, there is nothing in the site guidelines defining "the style here," as you call it. Are you the sole repository of the style here, or are there others?

It's mostly just me.

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#199

Post by mistermann »

tptacek wrote: post #131
nitrogen wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Second, it is very much out of the norms of HN to do email-style alternating quote/response the way you are. I've seen such used before (though with italics to help the eye find the breaks), when a comment makes too many points or is too complex to reply to without making it clear which part of the comment is relevant to which part of a reply. Is there a better way to format conversations on HN when comments reach th…

I really think the right way to do it is just to write a natural paragraph that refers to what the parent was saying. But what you did, with a single italicized reference at the top, is an HN idiom as well. A long back-and-forth of quote and rebuttal though is definitely not the style here. That style makes sense in Email and Usenet, because you're often using readers that don't show the parent comment at the same ti…

> It makes very little sense here, where we're essentially reading the same comment twice.

For standard/default conversations, I agree that it doesn't make sense (as is the case with many standard situations). But for non-standard situations, sometimes non-standard approaches are more suited.

Re: The Now-Defunct Firms Behind 8chan, QAnon

#200

Post by matheusmoreira »

strathmeyer wrote: post #32
swebs wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you go into more detail?

8chan was created when 4chan disallowed child pornography and their owner bought it when all this QAnon stuff started.

Not really. Chans will turn a blind eye to all kinds of things but not this. It was never allowed on any chan. Posting that stuff would get you permanently banned, maybe even IP range banned. I've read examples of chan administrators complying with the authorities too. There's even a completely separate illegal content reporting option which is no doubt dedicated to this. 8chan's only rule was "don't post anything illegal in the US".
Post reply on HN