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Comment by koheripbal | Hacker News Reader

Please don't post this sort of evidence-free insinuation to HN. They're against the site guidelines, and have been for years, because they almost never amount to anything, but do have a poisonous effect on the ecosystem as users get each other riled up about them.

"Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29867733.

> Frankly, I would not be surprised if millions of Russian bot accounts are behind this sub.

Probably not. I'm not familiar with this subbreddit, but based on the headline, there is a similar movement in China (that IIRC is now being suppressed by the authorities): https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/03/world/asia/china-slackers.... I highly doubt Russian bots have any influence in China at all.

My bet it all this is just people coming to the realization that the capitalist rat race is actually a stupid game for most workers to play.

> Frankly, I would not be surprised if millions of Russian bot accounts are behind this sub.

Do you honestly believe that it's impossible to find a few thousand persons from the US who have bad experiences with recruiting and/or bosses, or experience any sort of abuse at the workplace?

I mean, given how widespread is at-will employment in the US, and how that ensures employers have all the leverage they can possibly have on an employee, specially in high-unemployment regions, isn't abuse a natural occurrence?

More importantly, a hefty share of posts in /r/antiwork are about workers quitting abusive jobs or reporting bad interview experiences. Who in their right mind denies this sort of stuff ever happens?

You can say that about any popular sub, what would their motivation be? And is anything inauthentic about popular posts in that sub?

In theory, probably something like: (1) recruitment and growth of the sub either organically or inorganically (2) selective upvoting of particular perspectives if not direct posts (3) propagation and cross pollination of content across platforms e.g. Twitter + Reddit, etc.

But there's really no way to know, and the natural trend towards extreme opinions is inherent as is. The game would be to push perspectives towards more extreme views over a longer period of time.

> You can say that about any popular sub, what would their motivation be?

Social media has pretty much destroyed the fabric of western society, so theres that. I don't know that we need state actors to get involved in order for that to happen, it seems to work on it's own, but I can imagine if some actor was looking to create more tension and unrest, targeting and subtlety trolling large discussions would be pretty effective.

> it seems to work on it's own

I think some FB employees might have an issue with that.

You mean they deserve credit ?

It doesn’t run itself.

>You can say that about any popular sub

Not really. There aren't too many opportunities to insert propaganda into cat pictures.

>what would their motivation be

1. russian/chinese troll farms trying to sow discord

2. account farmers trying to rack up comment karm

Capital powers said the same thing about the Soviet Union during early days of the American labor movement. American workers are getting fucked over, it's an abomination and a disgrace, and people are rightly angry about it.

What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.

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