[krapp]

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.

[colordrops]

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:

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/14/manipulating-o...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-ope...

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:

http://www.blackhatworld.com/

[mpyne]

> 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.

So in other words, you're claiming that non-accordance with the groupthink of that particular forum implies that the poster is a shill.

Furthermore, you claim that using "proper" reasoning and unemotional informational content is evidence that the poster is likely not a shill, as if it's that hard to actually shill for something without resorting to crackpottery or emotional appeals.

I don't accept either premise, and nor should you.

> 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:

The fact that "Commonly-used" techniques exist implies absolutely nothing by itself about whether a given comment is from a shill, unless you're willing to believe that the base rate for shill/non-shill is significantly biased towards shills and sockpuppets on a normal basis.

For instance, Ebola is "common" in Liberia, but someone coming in with the symptoms of fever and headache are still at least as likely to have flu (or even Lassa fever) as they are to have Ebola.

[xnull2guest]

I disagree about how hard it is to find a shill. I'm never certain and I don't think you can be. You should register everything you read online as at least slightly suspect.

Thanks for the information and the arguments supported by links. Here are some other links for you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing#Business_and_adop...

http://swampland.time.com/2012/11/07/inside-the-secret-world...

http://mprcenter.org/blog/2013/01/how-obama-won-the-social-m...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HBGary#Astroturfing

"Maraya helps you, through its proprietary tools and templates, dialogue with and retain your online audience effectively for high social media ROI. Maraya Media’s intelligent dialogue platform offers brands, agencies, community managers, publishers and individuals alike a range of social media management solutions that enables them to intelligently manage, engage, recruit and retain fans, followers and customers online.

The offering ranges from social network management and campaign publishing, through strategic audience dialogue, message and campaign planning, brand partnership and collaboration, social conversation innovation, analysis and optimization."

http://www.marayamedia.com/company.php

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140224/17054826340/new-s...

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/16/945768/-UPDATED-The...

I would only add that the US uses these techniques with other countries all the time - and in fact that's what this article is ultimately about. Google's role.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/usaid-effort-t...

http://minerva.dtic.mil/

[xnull]

"Planned Research

There are three components of our proposed research focusing on persuasive messaging, norms-based influence, and social media effects respectively.

1. Persuasive messaging-based influence

2. Norms-based influence

3. Neural predictors of Twitter impact in Cairo"

http://minerva.dtic.mil/doc/samplewp-Lieberman.pdf

"Here we report results from a randomized controlled trial of political mobilization messages delivered to 61 million Facebook users during the 2010 US congressional elections. The results show that the messages directly influenced self-expression, information seeking, and real world voting behavior of millions of people. Furthermore the messages not only influenced the users who received them but also the users' friends, and friends of friends."

http://jhfowler.ucsd.edu/massive_turnout.pdf

[smokeyj]

> 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.

[PeterisP]

Those two points apply also to quite many "normal" non-shill commenters on the internet, and realistically you should expect "misinformed ranter vulgaris" to outnumber actual shills 100-to-1 in most discussions.