Everything we like is a psyop? • Hacker News Board

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#221

Post by Bayart » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 2:19 PM UTC

jottinger wrote: post #54

Dang, that hurt to read. I'm starting up a new news-ish site like the old TheServerSide.com, at https://bytecode.news , and I'm faced with the question of "how do I generate traffic in the face of AI and all the people willing to market, market, astroturf, market, market?" I'm not that kind of personality, I don't want to do tiktok or whatever the kids do, I'd far rather accept organic and slow growth over meteoric a…

I like your work but I'll echo others : the title font is too narrow and hurts readability. I've advise for a regular Garamond.

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#222

Post by Quarrelsome » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 2:30 PM UTC

bevr1337 wrote: post #218

baxtr wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn’t it be wiser to ignore the messages of adversaries and marketers rather than suggesting people kill themselves? Who hasn’t fallen prey to marketing and propaganda on social media?

Bill Hicks was a comedian. It's not advice.

to be fair he does say in the bit that its not a joke.

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#223

Post by jottinger » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 3:10 PM UTC

gib444 wrote: post #220

jottinger wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also: one of the features of the underlying tech stack is that the UI is actually a completely separate module than the backend API. Different github repo, everything: the site is akshually https://api.bytecode.news and the UI at the "base url" is just one layer for that API. The goal was always to have multiple interfaces, all tuned for whatever the technology supported best: see https://enigmastation.com/2014/07/09…

Ah that explains why it was so slow to load. Not sure your reply was meant for me but: just make as much as static as possible

What's your load chain? I've seen some other people (who use Tor through Brave) say that it's slow to load, and I'm curious to fix that - the front end has a cached version that should be rendering pretty aggressively without datafeed updates.

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#224

Post by jmcqk6 » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 3:13 PM UTC

nathan_compton wrote: post #214

thinkingemote wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manipulation is emotional more than it is logical, about feelings than ideas, more in women than in men, and therefore for the majority of the audience of tiktok etc

"more in women than in men" This is not true, in my experience. Men are just as, if not more, emotional and impulsive. Most women I know think way further ahead than the men I know, and improvise much less often. The idea that men are the rational ones is just a silly fantasy to make men feel better, I would argue. Rationality is much more correlated with socio-economic status than gender, I would bet.

I think many men don't even understand what emotional regulation looks like. They tend to spend much of their time disassociated and thinking that it's normal. I tried speaking to my father about emotional health and he thinks it's about being happy, while simultaneously being unable to consider the possibility that he got it wrong, thus demonstrating the point.

There is a lack of emotional health across genders, but on average, I think women are further along than men, simply because they're able to recognize that they are emotional beings much more often than men are.

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#225

Post by hendo3000 » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 3:24 PM UTC

I think all the comments like "I'm immune to psyops, I listen to what I like!" are interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#226

Post by waffletower » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 3:41 PM UTC

Taqueria style chile de arbol salsa roja is not a psyop. So I don't like the title. But I enjoy the examples in the article -- I am only Geese adjacent, and much closer to actual Canadian Geese on a daily basis, but my daughter has been critical of Geese hype.

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#227

Post by fasterik » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 3:56 PM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #146

plastic041 wrote: post #70

> “Unfortunately, a lot of the internet is manipulation … Everything on the internet is fake. One thing that we always say is all opinions are formed in the TikTok comments,” Chaotic Good co-founder Jesse Coren noted. Why is this guy talking like this? YOU are literally co-making internet full of fake! It's worse if you read the context[0]: Interviewer: What would you say to someone who’s freaked out by these ideas t…

Makes me think of a 20-something old running a popular YouTube channel interviewing people for business advice, and in one episode, stressing the important message of their interviewee, that was literally "don't trust advice from people who have never actually done the thing you're trying to do". That's multiple levels of "you're not the traffic, you are the traffic" right there.

> don't trust advice from people who have never actually done the thing you're trying to do

Probably one of the most important heuristics to have in the age of self-help gurus and influencers. 99.999% of them haven't accomplished anything other than profiting off of desperate and gullible people.

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#228

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 3:59 PM UTC

vermilingua wrote: post #27

I had a very odd experience the other day; while waiting for a doctor’s appointment, I had a book I’d read pop into my head (Mercy of Gods, very good) and looked up when the sequel was going to release. It had come out that morning. I can’t remember seeing any marketing about the sequel, I don’t use any app or service that would have told me it was upcoming or released, and I block ads; but it feels too enormous a co…

[deleted]

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#229

Post by almostdeadguy » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 4:14 PM UTC

plastic041 wrote: post #70

> “Unfortunately, a lot of the internet is manipulation … Everything on the internet is fake. One thing that we always say is all opinions are formed in the TikTok comments,” Chaotic Good co-founder Jesse Coren noted. Why is this guy talking like this? YOU are literally co-making internet full of fake! It's worse if you read the context[0]: Interviewer: What would you say to someone who’s freaked out by these ideas t…

The implicit rationalization here is "this is a problem that pre-dates our involvement, everyone is already doing this". Classic dodge for bad actors.

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#230

Post by garethsprice » Fri, Apr 17, 2026, 4:21 PM UTC

simplyluke wrote: post #5

I think most users of websites like reddit, x, and yes even HN don't realize how much traffic is inorganic. Marketing firms, government agencies, and many other interested parties with money to burn are absolutely aware that you search "best {product} reddit" I've commented on this before, but I strongly suspect much of the narrative around AI is being formed with strong inputs from these patterns. What's your basis…

The data around media literacy is terrifying.

"Fewer than 2 in 10 teens can correctly distinguish between news, advertisement, opinion and entertainment" https://newslit.org/news-and-research/news-literacy-in-ameri...

"82 percent of middle school students couldn't tell the difference between sponsored articles and real news stories.

Out of the Stanford college students that were tested, more than 80 percent couldn't identify biased content from independent news sources supported by groups like lobbying firms as being less reliable than a mainstream news source." https://universe.byu.edu/2018/02/09/studies-show-lack-media-...