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Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

theguardian.com

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Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#71

Post by lucideer »

ineedasername wrote: post #65
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #56

It is not just foreign governments using paid trolls. Apparently Hilary Clinton used paid trolls against Bernie Sanders in 2016. https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-troll... >Hillary Clinton's well-heeled backers have opened a new frontier in digital campaigning, one that seems to have been inspired by some of the Internet's worst instincts. Correct the Record, a super PAC coordinating with Clinton…

US campaigns doing it is, while still bad, is vastly different. One is an issue of sleazy election campaigns. The other is a matter of foreign interference with a country's fundamental sovereignty.

Not sure I see the effective difference between bad faith domestic interference in democratic process and foreign interference in democratic process. Both have the same end result.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#72

Post by [deleted] »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #56

It is not just foreign governments using paid trolls. Apparently Hilary Clinton used paid trolls against Bernie Sanders in 2016. https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-troll... >Hillary Clinton's well-heeled backers have opened a new frontier in digital campaigning, one that seems to have been inspired by some of the Internet's worst instincts. Correct the Record, a super PAC coordinating with Clinton…

[deleted]

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#73

Post by inetknght »

ineedasername wrote: post #65
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #56

It is not just foreign governments using paid trolls. Apparently Hilary Clinton used paid trolls against Bernie Sanders in 2016. https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-troll... >Hillary Clinton's well-heeled backers have opened a new frontier in digital campaigning, one that seems to have been inspired by some of the Internet's worst instincts. Correct the Record, a super PAC coordinating with Clinton…

US campaigns doing it is, while still bad, is vastly different. One is an issue of sleazy election campaigns. The other is a matter of foreign interference with a country's fundamental sovereignty.

> US campaigns doing it is, while still bad, is vastly different. One is an issue of sleazy election campaigns. The other is a matter of foreign interference with a country's fundamental sovereignty.

Foreigners getting paid by US citizens to the US citizens' dirty work is still a matter of foreign interference with a country's fundamental sovereignty.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#74

Post by int_19h »

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.

It's only a solution if it actually solves the issue. You can drop all social media entirely, but other people who do not will still get influenced by it, and then vote. And you then have to deal with what they vote for, because it applies to everybody.

This is what makes political ads so different from the rest of them - they're not ads for products that everybody decides for themselves to buy or not. Everybody's decisions here affect everybody else.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#75

Post by inetknght »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #54
nkozyra wrote: post #43

This really is a critical juncture for the internet; the moment wherein the democratization of information has empowered those with the resources to overwhelm the signal with noise. I wish I saw a way out.

Google has largely solved the spam problem for end users. What I can't figure out is why platforms like Facebook and Twitter couldn't mark these sort of posts as, essentially, spam, by the same sort of rules and heuristics as email spam. Why can't they look at the metadata of verified troll-farm-generated clickbait/junk/spam/fake news, and make their own filters, and demote that content? Simple. Because they're makin…

> Google has largely solved the spam problem for end users.

Google hasn't solved the spam problem for end users at all. Google has solved its liability to spam.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#76

Post by criley2 »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #56

It is not just foreign governments using paid trolls. Apparently Hilary Clinton used paid trolls against Bernie Sanders in 2016. https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-troll... >Hillary Clinton's well-heeled backers have opened a new frontier in digital campaigning, one that seems to have been inspired by some of the Internet's worst instincts. Correct the Record, a super PAC coordinating with Clinton…

This is a classic example of whataboutism.

1. Governments using trolls is different than campaigns hiring people to discuss politics. Campaigns get volunteers all the time to affect public discourse by going door to door, sending mailers, and doing all kinds of things.

2. Trolls specifically have an antisocial goal. The trolls employed by Russian military intelligence engaged in a psy-ops campaign against America to raise domestic tensions along racial and social lines. They specifically targeted races and ideologies and used aggressive, violence-promoting tactics. By contrast, Hillary hired Americans to talk about politics online.

3. It's not illegal for campaigns to hire citizens to promote their politics online. It is illegal for foreign governments to engage in military intelligence psy-ops campaigns against our citizens, and for campaigns to coordinate with those campaigns and request them.

I think the worst part about seeing you bring up "Correct the Record" is that they spent $9 million dollars in a $1.6 billion dollar campaign. https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00578997...

The conspiracy theories and propaganda that were created about this program are some of the most ridiculous lies of the 2016 cycle, and I think really go to show how little research people are willing to do before they repeat propaganda. "Correct the Record" exposes a classic propaganda pipeline for the right, because it was a tiny program that did very little, but the right managed to turn it into a massive huge conspiracy where every pro-Hillary comment must be a troll. Which was a response, of course, to the validated and legitimate left criticism that pro-Trump actors were actually foreign psy-op campaigns. There needed to be a "Both-sides-ism" to excuse the fact that a foreign government conducted a military intelligence operation against our elections.

Even today this conspiracy boogeyman gets play all over the internet, a remnant of disinformation used to justify an attack on our elections.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#77

Post by lawn »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #42
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't say it surprises me. But I think by now every government is using such farms. I find it difficult to believe otherwise based on recent FCC issues ( https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jsvine/net-neutrality-f... ). Yes, sadly, I am invoking everyone is doin' it.

I don't think it's just government, but also likely industries as well. I've seen what could only be trolling for support of nuclear power and the medical industry.

The cryptocurrency space is overrun by trolls on social media as well. Some even target HN, although it's far from how bad it is on Reddit or Twitter.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#78

Post by dsfyu404ed »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #69
Twixes wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do nuclear power trolls look like? I support nuclear power (instead of fossil fuels and in addition to renewables) and, sadly, I haven't got a cent from the nuclear industry yet.

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…

It's also possible that the self selected bunch of people who discuss energy on HN happen to like nuclear more than the general public. It doesn't have to be trolls.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#79

Post by darth_skywalker »

lucideer wrote: post #71
ineedasername wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

US campaigns doing it is, while still bad, is vastly different. One is an issue of sleazy election campaigns. The other is a matter of foreign interference with a country's fundamental sovereignty.

Not sure I see the effective difference between bad faith domestic interference in democratic process and foreign interference in democratic process. Both have the same end result.

On the other hand, politicians have been trying to manipulate voters for centuries - it seems like a new danger that foreign governments are now trying to manipulate voters.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#80

Post by lawn »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #54
nkozyra wrote: post #43

This really is a critical juncture for the internet; the moment wherein the democratization of information has empowered those with the resources to overwhelm the signal with noise. I wish I saw a way out.

Google has largely solved the spam problem for end users. What I can't figure out is why platforms like Facebook and Twitter couldn't mark these sort of posts as, essentially, spam, by the same sort of rules and heuristics as email spam. Why can't they look at the metadata of verified troll-farm-generated clickbait/junk/spam/fake news, and make their own filters, and demote that content? Simple. Because they're makin…

Google has not solved the spam issue. Search results have become worse and often alternatives such as Bing or duckduckgo give better result. The same can be said about Gmail which very often misses spam or marks non-spam as spam.
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