Not really. The GP is implying that they are Russian with this
>since they can't just say "I work for Russia and we're reminding America that they're not invulnerable."
But the person who replied is saying how the grammatical obfuscation doesn't look like something that's done by a Russian but by an English speaker who is trying to sound like a Russian with bad English. Because a Russian with bad English wouldn't make those mistakes.
To my ear, this obfuscation sounds Middle Eastern, due to the frequent use of "-ing" in verbs whether it belongs there or not. I know an Iranian guy who does this a lot.
The whole point is to feed it through translation services dozens of times until the meaning remains but the actual word selection is super poor and completely unidentifiable.
It's weird to me that you're trying to push this to blame another group so quickly, especially with an 8 day old account.
Well, there's no Russian first-language bias in that text for sure. Another argument in favor of the opinion that this was written by an American: the author seems to be well versed in the memes of the US political discourse. Someone from outside the US is unlikely to even know or care about Trump's "movement", or who "Bannon" is, or "drain the swamp", or "white privilege" etc. They're also unlikely to abbreviate "New York Times" as "NYT". The telltale signs are all over the text.
That's a terrible analysis, I'm not from the US and know all of the above and would abbreviate NYT. I'm not hugely into US politics but I'm not ignorant of it either. Hell the BBC, Der Spiegel and Le Monde all covered Bannon losing his NSC seat.
> the author seems to be well versed in the memes of the US political discourse
that's not exactly hard for anyone that payed even a little attention during the very controversial US political season in 2016. Same with Brexit. The terminologies and crux issues have been widely debated on the social web. I would say it has actually been very difficult to escape
Right. However, things like "caucus" and "SCOTUS" are really unlikely to be written by a Russian, on any English knowledge level. We do make mistakes, but our mistakes are different. In this text, there are too few common mistakes, and too many strange things.
the parent's point though was that there's a mismatch between the level of idioms used and the broken grammar used (which is, imo, pretty obviously intentionally obfuscated; it's just… not how a non-native speaker would write it, esp russian)
I've observed the whole Brexit thing with great interest, but I don't feel well versed in the vernacular. And for someone well versed, it'd be difficult to know what the person who's not well versed wouldn't know. Which is what we're observing here.
You won't be well versed in the vernacular of any political event unless you follow the news. But that's just as true for native speakers. You seem to imply that people who learn tens of thousands of words to communicate in a foreign language would be unlikely to learn the additional vocabulary of the current events. Especially the big events. Could anyone with a British friend in Twitter never hear of the NHS bus, for example? Unlikely.
Unfortunately, as with any form of communication, the only way to know where something really came from is to find the source, whether an individual or a collaboration. Facts are still being discovered about decisions, choices and actions relating to Benghazi, years ago. Obfuscation of the source is intended to delay. It works. Masking the source behind fingers pointing to cultures is a "cheat", and cheaters do not like to be discovered. Personally, we have been presented with evidence of tools and techniques of Alinsky in the 2016 U. S. election.
Yes, exactly. While those are still somewhat plausible (I am Russian, and I might have occasionally used all of these ironically), it was "POTUS" and "SCOTUS" that made me 99% sure that this text was written by an American (or at least a US insider). You guys love your acronyms.
Yup, I've been living in England for over 20 years and my English language proficiency is well above that of most of the locals, but I still had to look up SCOTUS and POTUS a few years ago (probably when I started reading HN actually). Now that I know them I still would never consider using them in writing (the former is actually reminiscent of something offensive).
I don't own a TV. :) I do watch some movies now and again though, especially when flying long haul but I never had one that mentioned those. Off the top of my head I can only think of 24 as a candidate but I never watched that.
I honestly don't know why you guys are trying to divine identity based on textual clues like this. It's safe to assume every stylistic and linguistic choice is deliberate.
Are you able to elaborate on how this case is related to the DNC hacks? ShadowBrokers was never accused of being the same as Guccifer2, as far as I understand.
I'm not saying he/she was. But do consider that in one case the most cursory circumstantial evidence is enough to convict, but in this case the same level of "evidence" is not enough to exonerate. Double standard, anyone?
No, as a fellow Russian I am fine to admit that the DNC hacks were probably done by us. When the leak happened, there was a little too much enthusiasm in Russian hacking circles. Guccifer2.0's style was also consistent with Russian writing.
But when the Shadowbrokers leak appeared, the community response was more like "wat."
That's far from true. Professional propagandists from Russia would definitely know about that stuff because they'd follow the campaign. Other trolls outside USA would see headlines that could give them useful information. I have no idea of nationality of the author but nothing in it precludes them from being Russian. Especially at this level in the game where people might put talent or time into faking things to generate a specific reaction.
>since they can't just say "I work for Russia and we're reminding America that they're not invulnerable."
But the person who replied is saying how the grammatical obfuscation doesn't look like something that's done by a Russian but by an English speaker who is trying to sound like a Russian with bad English. Because a Russian with bad English wouldn't make those mistakes.