[mapotofu]

> Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents, and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email [e-mail] and we'll look at the data.

@dang and team

I think the community would be interested to know the activity around this post, including moderation efforts. I’ve been doing cursory refreshes and seeing what I would consider “brigading”, but I could just be paranoid.

Anyone else have the same questions? I’ll be emailing later and encourage others to do the same.

[icw_nru]

I emailed the moderator and asked them why this post was constantly getting flagged and locked.

Here is their reply (quote): "Looks like user vouches outweighed user flags, at least for now."

I am not familiar with how hackernews works, but this is what ChatGPT returned on this:

""" On Hacker News, not all users have the ability to vouch for others. Typically, vouching is restricted to users who have achieved a certain level of trust or reputation within the community. This means that only established users, often those with a higher karma score or a longer history of positive contributions, can vouch for others.

If you find that you cannot vouch for someone, it may be because you haven't met the necessary criteria set by Hacker News. The platform aims to maintain the quality of endorsements, ensuring that only credible users can influence the reputation of others. If you're looking to vouch in the future, focusing on contributing positively to discussions and building your karma can help you reach that level. """

[mapotofu]

That is accurate though I can’t quote the source or threshold offhand. I have faith in this community to keep vouching for it.

Hopefully more users see your quote.

[alangibson]

Massive respect to dang et al, but a blind man can see that posts about Gaza get brigaded.

We would all love to see a report on unusual activity in regards to posts on Gaza.

[pbiggar]

Yes, they know: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39435024

[torium]

Yes. The longest comment on this thread starts out by saying there's so many typos.

These might not be state actors, but like you said, a blind man can see that when someone's comment on genocide is "the article has so many typos", that person already started out with the conclusion.

[wk_end]

Oh, hey, that's my comment.

As mentioned in my reply to you downthread, the issue with all of the spelling and grammar mistakes - as is clear from the comment itself - is that it belies the authors' claims of being actual "journalists". If they had been upfront and described themselves as Russian hackers or whatever it wouldn't really have been of note. But, in terms of credibility, this becomes something of a double-sin: to claim that you're a journalist implies that you adhere to a certain set of journalistic ethics; to lie about being a journalist means that not only do you not adhere to those ethics, it also means that you're a liar, which makes all of your claims suspect. I think calling this out on an HN post is worthwhile.

Second of all, it may be the longest comment on the thread, but it's never been a particularly popular one, so I wouldn't draw too many inferences about foreign influence on HN from it. The post's karma, which I care way too much about, has wavered between -1 and I think 2, which doesn't exactly suggest there's a whole lot of brigading going on for my benefit.

That doesn't imply that there's no brigading going on on HN - dang knows more about that than I do. Clearly Israel engages in attempting to control the narrative online, and there's clearly spaces on Reddit for example where they succeed quite well. HN is quite a bit smaller and more carefully moderated, though. That said, I've been on HN for a while, so I guess I'll say that I've noticed it's not hard for a post to get flagged; it wouldn't surprise me at all if something as contentious as the textbook example for contentious topics could organically end up getting flagged/vouched back to life a lot.

> a blind man can see that when someone's comment on genocide is "the article has so many typos", that person already started out with the conclusion.

Of course, it goes without saying, but that's not my "comment on genocide", nor is it more than a fraction of a fraction of my comment on the article itself. I don't really appreciate the strawman, and I'll point out that in your comments to me you explicitly vouch for starting from the conclusion, so I think you might be projecting.

[csomar]

Have you considered that the author might not be a native English speaker?

[wk_end]

I very strongly do suspect that the author(s?) isn't a native English speaker; based on the particular grammatical errors, like slip-ups around the definite article, "Russian hacker" was an educated guess and not pulled out of an RNG. The issues with the writing go beyond spelling and grammar, though - things like maintaining a consistent voice (i.e. not switching between "I" and "we") are fumbled.

I think that's somewhat beside the point, or perhaps reinforces my point: as someone who's known many journalists in my time, professional journalists understand the importance of good writing, and thus inevitably come to understand the importance of good editing. I can go onto foreign news sites based in just about any country in the world - Al Jazeera, YNet, RFI, NHK, RT, Reuters, The Pyongyang Times - and find English articles written by non-native English speakers that aren't sloppy in the way this is, because they're professional outfits that ensure through rigorous editing that the quality of their writing matches the seriousness with which they pursue journalism. Any journalist worth their salt with a big scoop would want to ensure the way it was communicated in words came across as legitimate.

Hell, this isn't even just a journalism thing. I can log onto JSTOR and read papers in English written by scholars all over the world who aren't native English speakers and who aren't even supposed to be professional writers, and the quality of the writing will still be better 95 times out of 100. It's about professionalism, and like I said in my other comment, they're just obviously not professionals in any sense of the word. It's amateur.

[f38zf5vdt]

dang knows, it's his handlers who don't care.

[msgodel]

As someone who's paid a lot of careful attention to this for the past four years or so, frankely, I think dang and ycombinator (it's almost crazy they're still running a forum these days) is making the absolute best of an impossible situation. I'd challenge you to find anyone doing better.