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I've noticed a few very pro-fossil comments in threads. I don't know if there are shills or if there are simply propagandist fossil fuel lovers? Is there any way to empirically study HN commenters? Data scrape + analyze?

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I've been using "pro fossil / anti EV / global warming denial" as a pretty useful heuristic to filter the Great Comments Section of Real Life for a while now. Usually goes hand-in-hand with being a Leaver and general contrarian.

To your point, I've found that petrolheads are pretty common even in tech.

Pretty sure digging past comments goes against the guidelines. It's also a primitive an absolutist way of judging a comment (rather than on, say, its substance).

What if the substance of the comment is just erroneous or poorly intention-ed? How am I supposed to tell if it's a paid corporate shill or a genuine fossil fuel lover?

The idea is to assume good faith. If it can't be done, I think not answering is the best course of action.

need to get people to use petrol head to mean someone whose brain has been screwed up by pollution

anyone got a contact at Marvel?

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