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Online astroturfing: A problem beyond disinformation (2022)

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Re: Online astroturfing: A problem beyond disinformation (2022)

#21

Post by gruez »

kubb wrote: post #6
dluan wrote: post #2

We have a massive poisoning of the commons catastrophe coming, driven by further authoritarian government overreach and control. I've seen no one working on this, and in fact most people on HN seem to be working on ways to further exacerbate this problem. I don't just mean half solutions like tor or social protocols that let you in and out of walled gardens. There's still a tiny window of opportunity for engineers to…

It feels like "Autonomous Coding Agents" are being astroturfed on the daily on HN. The same arguments and tropes are echoing through every thread. It's hard to distinguish who's a bot, who's a narrative pusher and who's an enthusiast. Which is exactly what you'd want from an astroturfing campaign. There's a clear benefit: people in the industry are reading this, and in doing so they're granting mindshare. There's one…

>It feels like "Autonomous Coding Agents" are being astroturfed on the daily on HN. The same arguments and tropes are echoing through every thread.

Isn't this what exactly you'd expect in a connected world? The best arguments from both sides proliferate, thereby causing "The same arguments and tropes are echoing through every thread".

Re: Online astroturfing: A problem beyond disinformation (2022)

#22

Post by mhitza »

dluan wrote: post #2

We have a massive poisoning of the commons catastrophe coming, driven by further authoritarian government overreach and control. I've seen no one working on this, and in fact most people on HN seem to be working on ways to further exacerbate this problem. I don't just mean half solutions like tor or social protocols that let you in and out of walled gardens. There's still a tiny window of opportunity for engineers to…

If you can point me at someone that would fund such projects (not VCs), would be happy to apply. Projects like NLNet aren't keen on funding larger scope projects. At least if you do not have the thought leader influencer clout.

Re: Online astroturfing: A problem beyond disinformation (2022)

#23

Post by Bridged7756 »

This is notorious in platforms like reddit, with people jumping in to suggest no name products in response to questions. It doesn't help that reddit allows private profiles, thus allowing astroturfers to get away with it. Also, another case is LLM astroturfing, we're bombarded with doomerism and obituaries about programming, some of said opinions are subtler, short comments, the most dangerous ones, because little by little they jab you, though the most conspicuous ones are easy to identify. And then there's the political astroturfing. In my country smokescreens are the defacto tool, but it is suspicious of the amount of high quality edits and memes that came out about the Epstein files, essentially cementing him as a "meme" and not a monster that abused minors.

Re: Online astroturfing: A problem beyond disinformation (2022)

#24

Post by kubb »

gruez wrote: post #21
kubb wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like "Autonomous Coding Agents" are being astroturfed on the daily on HN. The same arguments and tropes are echoing through every thread. It's hard to distinguish who's a bot, who's a narrative pusher and who's an enthusiast. Which is exactly what you'd want from an astroturfing campaign. There's a clear benefit: people in the industry are reading this, and in doing so they're granting mindshare. There's one…

>It feels like "Autonomous Coding Agents" are being astroturfed on the daily on HN. The same arguments and tropes are echoing through every thread. Isn't this what exactly you'd expect in a connected world? The best arguments from both sides proliferate, thereby causing "The same arguments and tropes are echoing through every thread".

> Isn't this what exactly you'd expect in a connected world?

I would expect a figurative war for human attention. With so much information being available, everyone would try to make people focus on what they want to communicate.

> The best arguments

Some of these tropes and arguments aren't really the best. There's a lot of rhetorical gotchas, e.g. "that's exactly what I'd expect from a human" when an automated solution isn't up to par.

> from both sides

The only real "side" is the one actively pushing for something. Everyone else isn't a camp - they're just random people.

Re: Online astroturfing: A problem beyond disinformation (2022)

#25

Post by slopinthebag »

mhitza wrote: post #22
dluan wrote: post #2

We have a massive poisoning of the commons catastrophe coming, driven by further authoritarian government overreach and control. I've seen no one working on this, and in fact most people on HN seem to be working on ways to further exacerbate this problem. I don't just mean half solutions like tor or social protocols that let you in and out of walled gardens. There's still a tiny window of opportunity for engineers to…

If you can point me at someone that would fund such projects (not VCs), would be happy to apply. Projects like NLNet aren't keen on funding larger scope projects. At least if you do not have the thought leader influencer clout.

What are your ideas for this?

Re: Online astroturfing: A problem beyond disinformation (2022)

#27

Post by bpavuk »

related: https://doublespeed.ai/ - basically astroturfing as a service.

their landing page stops short of saying that Doublespeed would be "a good fit for your political campaign." I'd prefer fighting an AI-powered drone over becoming a victim of "Dead Internet-aaS" startup. at least, flying lawnmowers are honest

Re: Online astroturfing: A problem beyond disinformation (2022)

#28

Post by mentalgear »

arikrahman wrote: post #19
kubb wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like "Autonomous Coding Agents" are being astroturfed on the daily on HN. The same arguments and tropes are echoing through every thread. It's hard to distinguish who's a bot, who's a narrative pusher and who's an enthusiast. Which is exactly what you'd want from an astroturfing campaign. There's a clear benefit: people in the industry are reading this, and in doing so they're granting mindshare. There's one…

It feels the same way on GitHub trending. I used to check it frequently to see what the hottest newest tech was and stay up to date. Now it's oversaturated by whatever the newest AI bubble is. It also doesn't help that MCP enabled products like OpenClaw star their own repo and artificially inflate their perceived value.

Interesting - claw faking the benchmarks .. they match well with openA ideologically .

Re: Online astroturfing: A problem beyond disinformation (2022)

#29

Post by alwa »

dluan wrote: post #2

We have a massive poisoning of the commons catastrophe coming, driven by further authoritarian government overreach and control. I've seen no one working on this, and in fact most people on HN seem to be working on ways to further exacerbate this problem. I don't just mean half solutions like tor or social protocols that let you in and out of walled gardens. There's still a tiny window of opportunity for engineers to…

I agree that it feels like the tiny window of opportunity hasn't quite shut yet, and it's a problem space I know I should take more interest in. What do you see as the viable technical directions? Something along the lines of what Altman was trying to do with his Orb? Something along the lines of the C2PA's Content Credentials?

[0] e.g. https://www.businessinsider.com/sam-altman-tools-for-humanit... and the feature piece at https://time.com/7288387/sam-altman-orb-tools-for-humanity/

[1] https://contentcredentials.org and https://c2pa.org

Re: Online astroturfing: A problem beyond disinformation (2022)

#30

Post by cwillu »

calibas wrote: post #16
dluan wrote: post #2

We have a massive poisoning of the commons catastrophe coming, driven by further authoritarian government overreach and control. I've seen no one working on this, and in fact most people on HN seem to be working on ways to further exacerbate this problem. I don't just mean half solutions like tor or social protocols that let you in and out of walled gardens. There's still a tiny window of opportunity for engineers to…

> I've seen no one working on this, and in fact most people on HN seem to be working on ways to further exacerbate this problem. It's against the HN guidelines to insinuate that astroturfing happens on HN.

Discussion of astroturfing on a post that is specifically about astroturfing is such an obvious exception that I'm having a hard time taking your reply in good faith, but this is me trying to do so anyway instead of just downvoting and flagging like the guidelines suggest I do in such cases.
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