remember that 1000s of paid russians were used to interrupt our election on sites like reddit. wouldn't be surprised if a few leaked to this site. especially with green accounts.
If you suspect organized behavior like this on Hacker News, please email us at hn@ycombinator.com and flag such comments that violate the guidelines. We take this seriously and we're happy to investigate. But do that instead of comment about it here, because the kinds of discussions we're trying to have always come more easily when we assume good faith.
HN is by now a well known forum, and exerting influence over its participants would be valuable for many parties; including but not necessarily limited to state actors. Hence, it's fair to assume that there are comments made in bad faith - particularly in highly visible political threads like this one.
Identifying specific malicious actors (and their origin) is tricky from a reader's POV, so the best I can personally do is not let ridiculous statements go unanswered. Ignorance is more common than malice, but I'm sure there's a bit of both in here today.
>remember that 1000s of paid russians were used to interrupt our election on sites like reddit.
Or so a 2017 version of the "red scare" goes, so that the military industrial complex can sell more weapons and more "safety", and the fingers can keep being pointed at some enemy or another. That way their budgets get approved, some poor countries pay the toll (who cares anyway), and they might even be able to plunder them afterwards. Worked wonders the last 30+ years.
Not to mention that the US sponsors tons of NGOs, magazines, organizations, events, political parties, etc, with favorable views to its interest all over the world, and has done that none stop since at least WWII, meddling with elections, paying journalists, etc -- and when nothing else works.
Confirmation bias: classical lalala-hands-in-the-ears-denial tactic. Also, not a Russian. Tinfoil much? Besides I'm not the one who opened an account here a mere few months ago. I'm a regular on HN for 5+ years.
Now, regarding the accusation of "whataboutism", I found that it's the stupidest of knee-jerk responses. It makes looking at all sides look like some kind of error.
"Yeah, my side can kill, invade, meddle with others, bully, strong-arm, etc as it sees fit. But if your side does 1/10th of those things even when its justified, or even if I just accuse you falsely of doing them and you dare to point out that it's actually my side doing those things and worse, then I call out your whataboutism".
Instead of putting things into perspective, examining their history, the causes, the role of different players, people point the finger to a single direction (seldom to their own side's and rarely to the biggest offender), and when called out on it and get reminded of the greater state of affairs they go "oh, that's whataboutism".
We've detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14069328 and marked it off-topic.