Hacker News Reader

Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

meta: why is there an influx of green users in this thread, and why does it look like they're pushing a specific narrative?

View on HN

I flagged this post and many others related to India since it seems to attract the level of discourse which doesn't really belong in HN. There's a camps of extremely pro and anti government views that both twist facts to suit their agenda.

Attracting polarized views doesn't mean the topic isn't appropriate. The discourse doesn't set the value of the topic.

Almost all India threads that mention the Indian government and the ruling BJP have supporters jumping in to support their party. I assume this happens a little more when the parties are extreme right/left wing.

They arrive via whatsapp groups asking members for support and a link. Soon enough the targeted sites end up being downvote/upvote bot parties unless there is strong moderation.

The media in India is muzzled similarly unless you do propaganda. Individuals online are equally bullied, muzzled, and in some cases killed. The country has currently imprisoned a stand up comedian for jokes "he might" make because he is not of the right religion.

You're saying that people are creating brand new HN accounts to support the Indian government? I don't see that. I looked at all the comments by green accounts in this thread:

Pro Indian government: 1 comment, 1 account

Anti Indian government: 8 comments, 4 accounts

Unknown: 2 comments, 1 account

You won't get a reply. For presenting any evidence like that on /r/india you would be promptly get banned. These guys ruined /r/india it's now full of anti modi bhajan 24/7. The only reason I still stick with reddit is because of some technical subs like /r/programming. Now these people aren't leaving even hacker news.

r/India is an anti-Modi partisan sub. The last I checked they were expecting Biden administration to interfere in India's internal matters. Not a surprise since we still have a good number of Mir jaffers and Jai chands in the country. The unfortunate thing is that's the first place where foreign redditors will go whenever they want to see something India related.

All that aside, it's still a good place to see some meltdowns.

I am saying that this is the trend on all threads that are critical of the Indian government and calls out its propaganda. It's either that or down votes.

It is difficult to call out bad behavior by government.

True. It's quite telling that as soon as it was morning in India this post fell off the top page.

Downvotes require 500 karma. One cannot create a account and do it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com