[tyingq]

"negative seo doesn't work"

That position is utterly silly to me.

How can Google defend the idea that "blackhat SEO" you do yourself will tank your site, while saying others doing the same exact thing to you won't work?

Are they claiming some magical ability to discern ownership and intent?

[PeterisP]

They're claiming that their tools allow you see the 'blackhat' links and disown them, and if you do that then there's no effect, so in the end (as long as you're putting in that work) the negative SEO campaign would be worthless.

I have no strong opinion whether that claim is true or not in practice, but that's what's being implied.

[Jack000]

Actually in most of these threads (I've read through a lot of them trying to diagnose my own issues) the google product experts say not to use the disavow tool, lest you accidentally disavow links that may have been helping you. (ie. presumably google is smart enough to ignore those links)

This runs counter to my anecdotal experience, which is that disavowing spam links has an almost immediate effect, if the rank fluctuation is caused by those links.

[tyingq]

The "disown" bit is interesting. I do wonder about their ability to discern "oops" versus "someone is targeting me". And the idea that negative SEO is even happening in the first place.