| Any state actor and many corporates can generate fake ID on an industrial scale with trivial ease. The real problem is more that FB and Twitter refuse to moderate known bad actors. It's not difficult to analyse posting patterns, but the FB/Twitter-plex often refuses to act on that information, and (...Cambridge Analytica) has often been complicit in its weaponisation. I don't think it's a solvable problem. Or rather, it's solvable with good government and legislation against any form of organised public deception. Unfortunately getting the former relies on the latter being in place, which makes it a chicken and egg problem. And it's harder than it looks because the worst kind of organised troll posts are weaponised for emotional triggering, not facts or logic. They're based on known psychological techniques and they cannot be out-argued directly. Critical thinking is no help, because the techniques are designed to bypass it. So it would be hugely useful if there was some kind of online emotional literacy training which would explain and dramatise the techniques so people could be inoculated against them. That aside - HN definitely has shills. I expect all comments about one particular corporation to attract downvotes if they're even remotely critical. This is a pointless and unnecessary waste of everyone's time, but it's at least possible a PR firm somewhere is trying to justify its existence. Other operators are less predictable, so it's harder to tell. This is often a problem. I came across an old acquaintance on FB this week making some very troll-ish points on a topic. If I didn't know her I would have assumed the account was fake. But so far as I can tell it's genuine, and - unfortunately - she really believes what she posted. |
And I agree. The education in this country is sad. Critical thinking just doesn't exist, i've experienced it with otherwise intelligent people too. A huge % don't think to google something or learn themselves. They need specific guidance hand holding.
In the US it's hard because one person's organized deception is another's political campaigning.
Though personally I think there is a line of malicious intent, kind of like libel if a person knowingly spreads BS to achieve some goal. Maybe we have to look at the damage of those words. Like the modern day version of yelling fire.
Maybe HN could do something like a verified badge, still without revealing true identity unless someone chooses too. Sign your github repo or linked in or something.