[krapp]

>You seem to be advocating that we do nothing at all, and that is what I disagree with.

Not at all. I'm only suggesting that what you're doing is counterproductive.

> Now, in a conversation where the sentiment is so anti-NSA, why do you think this has so many upvotes? That's evidence of rigged voting.

It might be. But we don't actually know how HN's voting algorithm works (secret sauce), and we do know for a fact that the HN staff will manipulate vote gravity in order to make the content of a thread more accurately reflect 'quality'. So it's not exactly ironclad evidence of government vote rigging, when Hacker News is a black box which is rigged by design.

It's also not out of the realm of possibility that more people who agree with yeahyeah's point of view have upvoted him than people have upvoted other threads. And this is a long thread, so the effect of commenting and upvoting throughout may be cumulative. And some comments in other threads have been downvoted into near oblivion.

>If government agents actively manipulate public opinion in favor of them, and the public opinion is different from what it otherwise would be, then there is no democracy. That is wrong.

Actually, I would argue that is democracy working as intended. The government has the right to present its point of view and try to convince people to agree with it - that is literally how democracy is supposed to work. The government may be trying to 'actively manipulate public opinion in their favor,' but on a discussion forum, so is everyone else. That's the point of a forum, and it's especially true on HN, where die-hard capitalists and anarchists and everyone in between all fight for the intellectual high ground. The government doesn't actually have some kind of magic that makes people believe them, theirs is just one more voice in the herd.

>What can we do, when there's no proof? We can use our brains and examine the evidence. We can call out obvious shills to try and stem the tide.

I think a more effective countermeasure would be to examine the evidence of the arguments presented and call out lies when you encounter them. Attack the comment, not the commenter, particularly since you're never going to have more than suspicion and confirmation bias as evidence.

[FeeTinesAMady]

> It might be. But we don't actually know how HN's voting algorithm works (secret sauce), and we do know for a fact that the HN staff will manipulate vote gravity in order to make the content of a thread more accurately reflect 'quality'. So it's not exactly ironclad evidence of government vote rigging, when Hacker News is a black box which is rigged by design.

> It's also not out of the realm of possibility that more people who agree with yeahyeah's point of view have upvoted him than people have upvoted other threads. And this is a long thread, so the effect of commenting and upvoting throughout may be cumulative. And some comments in other threads have been downvoted into near oblivion.

So because there's no absolute proof, he's not a shill. How about deciding what's more likely? What is more likely: that this post was voted to the top despite lack of support in the thread, or that a circle of upvoters voted it up? Remember, it is a LOT easier to hit that upvote button than to make an actual contribution to the discussion, so you would expect to find that a ring of shills would operate in that fashion. One posts, as that takes actual thought and effort, and the rest upvote.

> Actually, I would argue that is democracy working as intended. The government has the right to present its point of view and try to convince people to agree with it - that is literally how democracy is supposed to work

If they want to convince people of their point of view, then why can't they do it legitimately?

Do you somehow think that this sort of behavior isn't subversive? That it doesn't work? And that makes it okay for the government to manipulate public opinion in this way?

It's okay. I can't believe you think that. There is one hell of a difference between presenting your own point of view and having thousands of fake people presenting the views that they are paid to.

> I think a more effective countermeasure would be to examine the evidence of the arguments presented and call out lies when you encounter them. Attack the comment, not the commenter, particularly since you're never going to have more than suspicion and confirmation bias as evidence.

No. Doing both is much more effective. Otherwise they control the first posts, they make a sense of a false consensus in their favour, and these things really can influence how people think. Don't believe me? Research it yourself.

I would much rather people make up their own minds instead of being tricked into thinking what the government wants them to. I still find it hard to believe that I live in a world where the latter is what actually happens.

[krapp]

>What is more likely: that this post was voted to the top despite lack of support in the thread, or that a circle of upvoters voted it up?

You're assuming those are the only two credible possibilities. This thread could also be at the top because of the cumulative lack of upvotes, or the weight of downvotes (which have been biased to count more compared to upvotes), in other threads. Or because of the effect of upvotes on individual posts, or its relative length compared to the others. I think it's too complex and opaque a system to read so definitively, particularly given the effort put into it by the staff to prevent exactly the sort of gaming you're talking about.

Although, yes, given those two scenarios specifically, the 'circle of upvoters' is the more plausible.

>If they want to convince people of their point of view, then why can't they do it legitimately?

That's the problem - what you're calling out as evidence of illegitimate actions could just as well be legitimate. Your evidence is that people apparently agree with and voted up yeahyeah, and that yeahyeah's account seemed insufficiently 'real'. Have you taken into account the possibility that people might actually agree with the post?

>Doing both is much more effective. Otherwise they control the first posts, they make a sense of a false consensus in their favour, and these things really can influence how people think. Don't believe me? Research it yourself.

But I have a hard time believing that people are that malleable, or that such a simple tactic could be so effective. Although there is perhaps a good argument to be made against karma-based systems being in any way meritocratic, 'consensus' on Hacker News doesn't really count for much.