| ▲ | mannanj 7 hours ago |
| 2nd post here. When I share posts matching particular phrases and labels, on HN, I've noticed them get downvoted as though by an algorithm. Would anyone be surprised if the agencies are themselves running bots, algorithms and accounts to affect visibility of discourse on threads like these? |
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| ▲ | wildzzz 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| No, it's because you sound like a crazy person and what you talk about is not really constructive to threads about real things. |
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| ▲ | beedeebeedee 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| That could be, but you should also be aware that many people will have the knee jerk reaction to reject statements like yours as being paranoid and delusional. Assuredly sometimes that is an appropriate response, but the drive to immediately reject narratives like yours is to protect ourselves from the doubt that validating your story would elicit. We do not want to believe those things are happening to those around us (even if we accept that they might be in general), and that is a fact that these organizations take advantage of. I wish you luck either way. Stay calm and suspend belief. We are human, and not only do we not know most things, the most important things we cannot know. You can build a composure that allows for many things to be true and not fully know which and still proceed. Otherwise you might be racked with doubt about who and how things appear and have trouble moving forward from this. |
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| ▲ | mannanj 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Hi thank you, yes. This was my own explanation and reasoning that I eventually arrived to after seeing and experiencing what I did. I thank you for providing one of few non-gaslight responses, and being willing to engage me where I asked. (and treating me with dignity, thank you) I'll sit with several of your bits of statement. |
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| ▲ | rkomorn 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > as though by an algorithm How can you tell the difference between an algorithm and topics genuinely being consistently unpopular, though? > Would anyone be surprised if the agencies are themselves running bots, algorithms and accounts to affect visibility of discourse on threads like these? On HN specifically? Yeah. On actually popular platforms? No. |
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| ▲ | direwolf20 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | I run a HN voting algorithm and opinion manipulation system across a few hundred accounts - only a few on any individual post. I use residential proxies to prevent correlation. The account I'm using right now to confess this to you is one that's already been burned. Downvoting this comment is funny, because it's a burned account anyway, so not hurting me, and you want less people to know this fact about HN? | | |
| ▲ | alwa 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Do you represent an agency? | | |
| ▲ | Karrot_Kream 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Try it, it's really not that hard. I feel bad saying this and I don't do anything like this anymore but I did make a few accounts behind residential IPs that posted HN popular sentiments on topics that were actually factually incorrect and got a lot of upvotes pretty quickly. I stopped because I felt icky with how corrosive the whole thing could end up being. This was a while ago so not sure if new user sign up has become more difficult. It turns out that open web forums are mostly emotional places and often the most inflammatory or in group opinions rise to the top. With that knowledge, manipulation isn't that tough. | | |
| ▲ | alwa 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Your experience makes sense to me, and it feels like just the sort of hacker-ethos tinkering that brings a smile to a lot of faces around here, mine included. Complete with the thrill of discovering that kind of power, then the “ick” factor catching up with you, and you deciding to stop. Reminds me of rougher-and-readier days, when everything about online discourse felt more self-evidently… what’s the word… contingent? Provisional? Local? Playful, game-like, made-up? Afforded the seriousness of pub banter, rather than any kind of indicator of some broader Truth. I think my point—which I apologize for putting a little snidely—echoed @rkomorn’s: I completely accept that you or “agencies” can manipulate HN’s proudly old-school mechanics. I just feel like our hangout here is less important in the scheme of things than we’d like to imagine it to be. At least to the sort of agencies who do that kind of work. They could, but why? | | |
| ▲ | Karrot_Kream 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Oh yes I agree. I doubt the big agencies are doing much here just because I don't think this forum is that "useful", it's not really an input into any big state or corporate actor's decision making that's worth paying attention to. I just think it's fairly easy to game this forum and I suspect it is absolutely being gamed by interest groups of individuals who want certain opinions to be more prominent. I've been on Discords that have told their users to go and brigade HN threads to express their opinions. But these have been petty things like politics and programming language flamewars (two examples I've witnessed.) | | |
| ▲ | direwolf20 an hour ago | parent [-] | | How do you think the agencies and corporate suits got everyone to prefer MIT over GPL? It was all astroturfed. |
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| ▲ | rkomorn 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not sure what your point is? |
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