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Russian trolls hit Reddit, too

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Re: Russian trolls hit Reddit, too

#61

Post by rainieri »

frockington wrote: post #32
SiempreViernes wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are actually more than two options you know, at one point there were 17 nominees on the republican side. Out of all those 17, the biggest idiot won, and now you want to take away the best excuse for this fracas that the elites have come up with? I think the fact that the orange one is an idiot is pretty dangerous in and of itself, completely independent of however easy he is to be manipulated.

This is the logical step I've never been to follow and I am open to understanding. If Trump, the GOP. and all of his supporters are idiots, how did they win? If the liberals and liberal candidates were so smart, why did they lose so badly? It seems it would be easy to control a mass of idiots. I'm not trying to flame, I've never been able to follow this logic and am interested in how others view it

They aren't idiots. That's a big generalization to make. There are idiots on both sides as well as very smart people. Bad guys and good guys.

Re: Russian trolls hit Reddit, too

#62

Post by Quequau »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #15
yanslookup wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which claims? That Russian trolls used reddit to influence US voters?

I would guess OP doubts that Reddit cares at all...

Yes. It's clear to me that the priorities and incentives that Reddit operates with are not those they talk about. So surely "Reddit cares" but it's ridiculous on its face to pretend that what they care about is what they're saying in public.

Re: Russian trolls hit Reddit, too

#63

Post by Quequau »

criddell wrote: post #5
Quequau wrote: post #2

I've been a moderator over at Reddit for over a decade. Personally I found Steve Huffman's claims to be disingenuous, deceptive, and self serving. I have no idea if there will ever be any consequences for that but I feel like Reddit would be a better place if there were.

Consequences for what? Everybody is lying about something on Reddit, why should Russian trolls be singled out?

I'm not singling out "Russian trolls" for lying on Reddit. I'm singling out Steve Huffman for lying on Reddit. Presumably there's a distinction.

Re: Russian trolls hit Reddit, too

#64

Post by frockington »

rainieri wrote: post #61
frockington wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the logical step I've never been to follow and I am open to understanding. If Trump, the GOP. and all of his supporters are idiots, how did they win? If the liberals and liberal candidates were so smart, why did they lose so badly? It seems it would be easy to control a mass of idiots. I'm not trying to flame, I've never been able to follow this logic and am interested in how others view it

They aren't idiots. That's a big generalization to make. There are idiots on both sides as well as very smart people. Bad guys and good guys.

I completely agree. I think the outcome of event proves that. I am interested on how this generalization can be so pervasive in the media and among internet communities despite the democrats getting blown away in the presidential, congressional, and state elections

Re: Russian trolls hit Reddit, too

#65

Post by SippinLean »

txsh wrote: post #42

> In comments, Huffman also noted that these troubling accounts were most active in /r/funny, /r/uncen, /r/Bad_Cop_No_Donut, /r/gifs, /r/PoliticalHumor, and /r/The_Donald, a notorious pro-Donald Trump subreddit. Russian trolls are active in many other subreddits such as /r/politics. But Huffman only lists the rightwing subreddits he personally disagrees with. He's using Russian propaganda to create his own propaganda…

>Huffman only lists the rightwing subreddits he personally disagrees with

8/10 of the top 10 subreddits he mentioned were left-wing or neutral:

* funny

* uncen

* Bad_Cop_No_Donut

* gifs

* PoliticalHumor

* The_Donald

* news

* aww

* POLITIC

* racism

Re: Russian trolls hit Reddit, too

#66

Post by mistermann »

lesss365 wrote: post #52
justherefortart wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardly, butthurt sanders fans (and lots of shills) everywhere. Hell, they're still all over reddit.

/r/politics flipped right after the DNC convention. Filled quickly with rabid pro-Hillary accounts, and any voice critical of her candidacy was quickly silenced with a flood of down votes and horribly formulated arguments and claims

I was there and my experience was also exactly like this, and not subtly either, it was unmistakable.

Is it difficult to find threads from a specific date?

Re: Russian trolls hit Reddit, too

#67

Post by Bartweiss »

jjjsz wrote: post #47
galieos_ghost wrote: post #13

Why does nobody talk about the fact that Clinton and Democrats spent 10s of millions astroturfing various online communities? You could see r/politics go from fairly balanced to rabid pro-clinton when CTR got fresh funding infusions. You can check Alexa rankings and see the massive traffic surges at the same time. You could see sentiment shift on weekends when the shills were off. Hell, the CIA had an entire "Meme wa…

> Why does nobody talk about the fact that Clinton and Democrats spent 10s of millions astroturfing various online communities? Because that's a conspiracy theory, based on one pet interpretation of one press release and ignoring all the times Correct the Record denied it (such as the instance in this article you posted: "Barrier Breakers accounts are always identified as Correct the Record"). The article you posted…

> I have little doubt that the CTR conspiracy theory was largely spread by the very real Russian astroturfers.

Could you source/clarify this?

I agree that the narrative around CTR as an astroturf source is either massively overstated and outright wrong, but that's a basically negative claim - there's no real evidence for it. The Russian astroturf part is a very specific positive claim, and across the identified Russian accounts (e.g. Reddit, Tumblr) I haven't seen any indication that they meaningfully drove the CTR rumors.

It's not like Americans have any trouble starting political conspiracy theories without outside help; why are we laughing at claims of "this idea came from an astroturf campaign" and then making comparable claims without strong evidence?

Re: Russian trolls hit Reddit, too

#68

Post by dang »

Arubis wrote: post #29
galieos_ghost wrote: post #13

Why does nobody talk about the fact that Clinton and Democrats spent 10s of millions astroturfing various online communities? You could see r/politics go from fairly balanced to rabid pro-clinton when CTR got fresh funding infusions. You can check Alexa rankings and see the massive traffic surges at the same time. You could see sentiment shift on weekends when the shills were off. Hell, the CIA had an entire "Meme wa…

[flagged]

Please don't copy-paste. HN threads are for conversation, and that makes bad conversation.

Re: Russian trolls hit Reddit, too

#69

Post by dang »

rainieri wrote: post #11
scarmig wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One is a foreign power attempting to destabilize the US government, and the other is an admin changing a comment as a joke?

Sorry destabilize the US government? Destabilize over the 2 options they ALWAYS have? Oh sorry you have a Republican government now. What a destabilization. So in conclusion the only dangerous thing in that election is the fact that Trump could be blackmailed. And Hillary can't be blackmailed? Hilarious. -- thanks for the downvotes.

Please don't use HN for partisan flamewar, it's seriously destructive of the site. Regardless of which side you're supporting or opposing.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Russian trolls hit Reddit, too

#70

Post by dang »

All: could you please keep political talking points and the shallow-angry comment style out of threads like this? I know it's hard, but it's possible if you try.

Low-information internet attack mode is the biggest threat to Hacker News these days, and when you add that acid to one thread it seeps into others.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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