How do we know Russians aren't influencing HN?

Question

With all the recent talk of a massive cyberattacks from Russia, and in particular, the recent story of Russian bots reporting viewers of Ukrainian livestreams, how do we know HN is not under external threat or influence?

myth_drannon · Accepted Answer

1) You need to assume that all sides employ sophisticated propaganda tools everywhere. Acknowledge it's hard to be unbiased especially on topics that you have little understanding and no first hand experience.2) Read "Manufacturing consent"/Noam Chomsky

muzani · Answer

HN has plenty of safeguards against fake news and cyberattacks in general, though they're not all perfect. It would be interesting if it happened and someone would write a report on it.
I fully expect HN to be on an attack list if any. It's not "static" like CNN, and is an important news source to the West.
But if anything, I hope the political news tones down after a few days. It becomes highly polarizing and panic inducing (e.g. "don't use jetbrains because russian"). Hopefully everything with political undertones just gets filtered out entirely.

krapp · Answer

I mean, there's no need to invoke the specter of conspiracy... we have Russian and Ukrainian posters here. I'm sure they're quite legitimately passionate about their particular points of view, and they have every right to try to influence the community as long as they follow the rules.

codeptualize · Answer

I think with all information, especially on places like hackernews where people are generally anonymous, you need to be careful what you believe and not. There is a lot of opinion, subjectivity, marketing, double agendas, false information and people commenting on and writing about topics they might not have expertise in (like me commenting on this!).As long as there is debate, multiple viewpoints, and you don't believe everything you read automatically, it doesn't really matter imo. Unless they can somehow apply heavy censorship, or overwhelm the system I don't think you can really influence things much.

marginalia_nu · Answer

You can pretty much assume that all social platforms are being manipulated by both sides to some extent.The first casualty of war is the truth. This is at least as old as De Bellum Gallicum.

yuppie_scum · Answer

It&rsquo;s pretty obvious there are some Russian trolls on here.

dragonwriter · Answer

> How do we know Russians aren't influencing HN?They probably are.

spacemanmatt · Answer

The site already leans toward jingoist-capitalism so probably pretty likely. Russians love influencing some rowdy investor classes.

d0mine · Answer

Try as an experiment, lsay something factual (easily verified even by google) but pro-Russian, and see how many downvotes you get.

How do we know Russians aren't influencing HN?

With all the recent talk of a massive cyberattacks from Russia, and in particular, the recent story of Russian bots reporting viewers of Ukrainian livestreams, how do we know HN is not under external threat or influence?

1) You need to assume that all sides employ sophisticated propaganda tools everywhere. Acknowledge it's hard to be unbiased especially on topics that you have little understanding and no first hand experience.
2) Read "Manufacturing consent"/Noam Chomsky

I mean, there's no need to invoke the specter of conspiracy... we have Russian and Ukrainian posters here. I'm sure they're quite legitimately passionate about their particular points of view, and they have every right to try to influence the community as long as they follow the rules.

You can pretty much assume that all social platforms are being manipulated by both sides to some extent.
The first casualty of war is the truth. This is at least as old as De Bellum Gallicum.

It’s pretty obvious there are some Russian trolls on here.

> How do we know Russians aren't influencing HN?
They probably are.

The site already leans toward jingoist-capitalism so probably pretty likely. Russians love influencing some rowdy investor classes.

Try as an experiment, lsay something factual (easily verified even by google) but pro-Russian, and see how many downvotes you get.