[interesthrow2]

It does not surprise me. They've been extremely active on reddit and HN for years. You cannot say anything bad about Monsanto without at least a dozen of people coming at you with bullshit studies defending Monsanto products/ techs. This is a confirmation that indeed, Monsanto paid shills to systematically answer comments on internet forums to counter any criticism of that company.

This is obviously not the only company engaged in this, but the scale is insane, each time I left a comment regarding the latest Monsanto VS a farmer that got cancer due to Monsanto's product case, at least 30/50 comments were left as an answer. It happened only on Monsanto threads.

[dang]

> and HN

If you have specific evidence of abuse on HN, please tell us at [e-mail] so we can investigate. If you don't, the site guidelines ask you not to make such insinuations: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

Overwhelmingly, people decide they're seeing astroturfing as a reflex response to any view they sufficiently dislike. That is an internet sauce that we all need to get off of.

More explanation here: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme.... The point isn't that astroturfing doesn't exist, it's that on HN, users need to comment about it factually and not simply do fantasy projection. The latter is the most common case and therefore the null hypothesis when this comes up.

[tptacek]

This is what people have tended to say any time I defended Monsanto here --- not because I particularly like Monsanto, but because people seem to make a bunch of stuff up about them, and as a card-carrying nerd, I have a problem watching people be proudly wrong on HN. It should probably be obvious that I've never taken a dime from Monsanto (though: people in Mountain View used to think our office was a Monsanto office, due to the related spelling).

There's a reason that there's a rule in the HN guidelines about not implying shillage here. It's an easy rhetorical out, and people take it far too often. If you think a comment here is paid for or otherwise abusive, tell [e-mail]; don't post about it here.

[wnevets]

> but because people seem to make a bunch of stuff up about them, and as a card-carrying nerd, I have a problem watching people be proudly wrong on HN.

Precisely my position, "frankenfood" just grinds my gears.

[randomdata]

On the flip side, Monsanto gets some incredibly ridiculous comments directed towards it. Things that even those who have the most hatred for Monsanto would realize doesn't add up.

People on Reddit in particular love to point out when someone is wrong. For free. Discussions about Monsanto are low hanging fruit and easily searched out. The fact that you received 30-50 comments suggests to me that most were just regular Reddit users doing what Reddit users do.

What if the paid trolls were the ones who posted the ridiculous comments so that the 'right fighters' come out of the woodwork in droves to defend the company? Once they get used to defending the company for things that are clearly false, they become skeptical of the real grievances. That's kind of brilliant when you think about it.

[deogeo]

What you're describing is a simple false flag attack. They wouldn't be the first to use it.

[tokai]

A Shill Defence Force® that lures them into never ending flamewars, so the rest of us can post in peace. I like it. Someone needs to start a fundraiser and get the mechanical turk going.

[acct1771]

Don't underestimate the danger of falsehoods going unopposed in forums.

[tptacek]

That's an interesting dynamic I hadn't thought of before and is for sure the reason I have any opinion at all about Monsanto (for the sport of spotting the bad countervailing opinions). It's a funny thought, but there's no way Monsanto is paying people to post dumb anti-Monsanto arguments; the anti-Monsanto position is much more popular on message boards.

[lawrenceyan]

Using the "shill argument" basically shuts down any possibility for an actual discussion or discourse. If you truly believe that a commentator is doing something like that, you should honestly just flag the comment and move on.

The entire point of HN, or at least in its attempt, is to be able to have meaningful conversations, and it will be to great detriment for the community if we allow rhetorical criticism like this to become more prevalent.

[marktangotango]

I had an example two weeks ago to a comment r/cscareerquestions. I made a derogatory comment about Monsanto in a thread with 7 comments and a couple of up votes, no way it would garner the number of downvotes my comment received. The only explanation the one presented here.

[gus_massa]

> It happened only on Monsanto threads.

Go to any thread about China and you will read similar accusations. Sometimes people disagree with you.