To any "outsider" unfamiliar with Hacker News, it's heavily populated with Google employees, contractors, and developers that build on to Google products and services.
Keep that in mind when you read the comments here.
It's also heavily populated with people who work at or with Google's competitors, of which there are many more. Bias and differing opinions are everywhere.
It is unfortunate that so much effort in this thread is being put into suggesting that anyone who disagrees with Assange must be a tool of the government or Google. We must not allow ourselves to fall prey to the military intelligence complex and actually think critically.
But I suppose when you agree with the premise then it's not actually propaganda...
The suggestion that the thread must be full of Google shills and that critics can be dismissed out of hand as part of the conspiracy is also an emotional argument unsupported by evidence.
How do you tell the difference between a shill and someone who actually holds an opposing point of view?
It might be true, but Hacker News has a diverse userbase and it might as well be false. Using the term seems to me to be just a way to dismiss the credibility of critics - it's a thought terminating cliche.
Shills are easy to detect, as they out of character with the typical tone and style of messages on a particular forum. They also tend to have egregious flaws in reasoning and use emotional and heated personal attacks against the person or topic in question. The posts often get pushed to the top more quickly than usual.
It has already been revealed that government agencies use sock puppets and other techniques to manipulate popular and influential message boards, such as Reddit and Hacker News:
Also, as many of you here on Hacker News should know, marginally ethical marketing techniques are commonly used by tech and other companies, including bought articles and opinion pieces, astro turfing, sock puppets, guerrilla marketing, software to assist in targeting specific forums and message boards, vote brigading etc. See:
> How do you tell the difference between a shill and someone who actually holds an opposing point of view?
Shills make ad hominem attacks they can't back up. Such as the (at the time) top rated comment calling Assange a "nut" and backing it up with "I just don't have the patience to sit and list out why his other points are equally silly for anyone versed in the space".
Shills don't want to have a discussion. They want to call names and end the discussion. I think HN could do without.
it's also heavily populated with government contractors and our friends at various alphabet groups, and Google employees, and Google competitors and people that don't care either way.