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Comment by dandare | Hacker News Reader

Without pointing a finger, I will say I would be really surprised if this discussion - and HN in general - was not subject to a discourse control by paid state agents (sophisticated trolls) from China and elsewhere. Assuming that it is, what can we learn or do to miting such influences? Asking for independent source to all claims is obviously the first step.

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I don't know about HN - I'm not sure its users are good targets for manipulation, but I'm starting to see lots of what I suspect is political activity in Reddit and BBC (the comments are trash, but the user activity comes across as very organised)

So I've been in trouble on HN (probably rightly so) once before for pointing the finger. With that in mind...

The problem is that 'their' only objective is to undermine 'our' goal of having a balanced, honest discussion that arrives at some kind of valid, valuable truth. If a troll or discourse control agent can undermine that process, then they've 'won'.

And it's pretty easy to do. Actually, demanding sources is a great tool for undermining absolutely any discussion you like.

Someone claims something you don't like? Demand evidence/sources. If they can't produce them, you've won. If they can produce them, call into question the bias or veracity of the sources. You win again.

The basic tools of the troll trade are well known - derail, distract, discuss to death. Question motives and bias, use whataboutism, sling mud, lead a discussion into the long grass, debate every single point to death, ad hominem attacks, play the victim...

I think communities perhaps need to become more aware of those discussion patterns and vote according to whether something is using troll tools, rather than whether you agree/disagree.

I myself am not aware of all such patterns. Where can I learn more?

Now that I think of it, an anonymous discussion is probably not protectable from well sponsored discourse control attempts.

I believe that the only way to counter concerted trolling/discourse control is by heavy human moderation in combination with IP banning and eventually even shadow-banning. As Slashdot is in my opinion illustrating, merely having a decent moderation and meta-moderation system might not be enough. You need to permban IPs of identified trolls, and in the end it doesn't matter whether these are part of a concerted effort or just individuals who post toxic content.

Hobby researchers on Reddit have found out that they were able to push a story to the frontpage by spending a very low amount of money (about 200 USD if I remember correctly) for some puppet accounts and making sure that the very early moderation upvotes their story and downvotes critique. That gives us an idea how hard it is to counter concerted efforts of influencing discussions.

I wish we had troll armies going around demanding sources everywhere. That would greatly elevate the level of discussion on most forums. If you don't have unbiased scientific sources to backup your claim, I don't see how you will convince me your ideas have merit.

In an ideal world, sources are great, but there’s a bunch of practical problems with the idea that everything, anyone says online should have some sort of attribution:

* How do I attach sources for my opinions or logical/moral arguments?

* I could spend an hour collating sources and writing a solid, reference based comment. A troll could destroy me in seconds with zero effort by claiming my sources are CIA funded or inherently biased.

* The internet has sources for anything you want to believe. I could easily google a bunch of authoritative looking sources confirming Flat Earth Theory, and then how will you refute them? Spend another hour discrediting those sources? And then what? I write a quick comment about how you’re obviously biased because of your media bubble.

Remember a troll doesn’t need to win the argument - he just needs to (a) cast enough shade so that an observer feels like maybe it’s subjective and neither viewpoint is correct, and (b) make you feel like it’s not worth the effort and hassle to argue with these morons.

If I (a troll) can write two x 1 minute comments that cause you to waste 2 hours of your time proving nothing, I’ve won.

You are missing the fact that science in general is vulnerable to the same pattern of disruption. Discourse quickly grows bigger than can be handled by any single human. Distrust is no basis for communication. Of course a healthy skepticism is part of the scientific method, but you can't do basic research on the internet, except in terms of mass communication, which is a young field so arguably an area of experts. So states do have a positive incentive for discourse control, too. It starts with distribution of knowledge. The same hand that feeds, might beat, if it is bitten. Divide and conquer is the basic mechanism of control. And control is a basic human need. But science in general is, as said, too big for any single individual. So you have a few exceptionally knowledgeable individuals who bare a huge load of responsibility.[1] That's just what it is, how society could grow so large in the first place. And as it keeps growing while the space is limited, the pressure increases. And the result can seem rather arbitrary, so there can't be a single closed form solution to source your truth from. Rather, you need to and need to be allowed to make up your own mind.

[1] Edit: But they can't respond to everyone and thus accountability is forsaken in the name of progress ...? OK, that doesn't sound right. There is more to the lack of accountability. Which is perhaps just a lack of proper organisation, which, given the size of the world, might be understandable

That is the real problem with the liberty now. And I think liberty is dead under the pile of fake news generated by various parties interested in any issue. From war on terror to democracy and nuclear weapons the "agents" as you called, generates such a perception that we cannot escape, let alone our psychological biases and national, political and religious affiliations -- Welcome to the age of disinformation

Whoa, that was a depressing stance. Whereas you point to several serious problems I would hope the absolutism is there for rhetoric reasons! Personally I think it may still be argued that the information age holds the potential for greater knowledge than ever before, and factual liberty (as opposed to seeming) is very much a part of that. It just may not come quite as easy and automatically as perhaps once perceived.

Yes its depressing to see lot of dead people under the rug of so-called liberal journalism and we are siting on that rug and talking about democracy and how to remove a dictator because we dont like him etc etc. I do like the "literary" ideas (don't know if that right word) which does not work practically. I am more concerned about the livelihood of people (alive), democracy is not for dead people.

I don't deny the benefits of information age, that is huge blessings for everyone. Probably it will take some time to reap the real benefits but I am afraid the cost is getting higher, as too much information/disinformation to filter out facts from fictions. And in most of the cases states and media agencies are part of that fiction and friction created in the society, take it China or US.

This problem is greatly compounded by Democracy - trolls don't have to confuse YOU - the educated rational thinking programmer - if they can confuse the lower 50% of the electorate.

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