It's the popular thing to assume these days. It's also very insulting to Russian people in my opinion. But I guess it's ok to be prejudice towards some group of people but not others.
"It's the popular thing to assume these days. It's also very insulting to Russian people in my opinion. But I guess it's ok to be prejudice towards some group of people but not others."
Is that not the comment you were calling correct?
That's what "the person [you] replied to" was talking about, that use of the word prejudice.
This is a discussion about the Russian government, it doesn't really have much to do with Russian people in general.
That is what the person I replied to actually said, and the comment I was clearly referring to; the point being of course, that a discussion of the Russian government has no more to do with the Russian people than the Russian government does.
1. When you made https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14069152 you may have thought it "clearly" referred to the sentence by burkaman, but multiple people thought you were refuting burkaman and referring to snowpanda's comment.
2. Even though you were referring to burkaman's comment, he was directly talking about the sentence that used the word prejudice, and arguing that it was not prejudice. Your claim in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14069723 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14071992 that burkaman was not saying anything about prejudice is untrue. He was directly refuting a claim of prejudice.
The US does legitimately have an imperfect human rights track record, and most Americans who follow the news would agree (while at the same time being aware of China's own hypocrisy in this matter)
Likewise, Russia has a well documented history of sponsoring online propaganda campaigns, and most people who aren't delusional or paid shills would agree.
Two negative things about two different countries can in fact both be based in truth. Weird.
paradite is saying it's not well documented. It's poorly documented by people highly incentivised to lie.
But hey, if you already wrote off anyone who disagrees as "delusional or paid shills" then you're too far gone to reason with. Literally nothing anybody ever says can make you think twice.
> if you already wrote off anyone who disagrees as "delusional or paid shills" then you're too far gone to reason with. Literally nothing anybody ever says can make you think twice.
Not true, but it would definitely take more than that hand-wavy uncertainty yarn you're trying to spin
Both the NY Times and the Guardian seem to hate Russia and all things Russian. I constantly read things in those publications that are ludicrously biased or simply wrong. They don't count as credible sources to me anymore.
And as was already pointed out, you stated that "Russia sponsors" but even the first article states that the alleged project is the work of one guy who apparently has money to burn - not the government.
A significant percentage of younger (as well as non-younger for that matter) people have practically no exposure to mainstream media, so naturally one should expect propaganda (from the various players) will be brought to online forums of all kinds.
Well documented analysis of a corpus of comments on some Latvian sites, yes. Anything in 100+ pages serving as a proof of Kremlin connections with the "hybrid trolls" (gotta love the newspeak)? Not so much. I don't know whether Russians are xenophobic aggressive bastards or knights in shining armor exposing the wrongdoings of others, it's just that claims along the lines like "Russia uses online trolling" seem exaggerated.
Russian here: Russia very definitely does use online trolling domestically (same as the US I guess). They also use paid "pro-government" rally attendees. That's very well documented, including direct video evidence on Youtube.
I very much doubt they're competent enough to pull something like this convincingly here in the US and avoid early detection and counter-intelligence response. Thus far no evidence whatsoever was presented that any of this was Russian, let alone state sponsored. That's either some truly elite level GRU work, to the standard we have not ever seen before, or there is, in fact, no "paid Russian trolls" on The_Donald. My opinion: there's no way in hell they could pull this off without getting noticed _well before_ the anointed Democratic candidate lost the election.
> They also use paid "pro-government" rally attendees.
Christ, even the Canadian government does this, and we're about as unsophisticated as it gets.
The naivete of people getting their panties in a bunch over the revelation that The Evil Russians participate in hacking and propaganda, how can you be so unaware of how the world works?
> claims along the lines like "Russia uses online trolling" seem exaggerated.
What?
gamergate, /pol, /b, alt-right, the_donald, antifa use online trolling. In context, saying a state actor uses online trolling is an extremely conservative claim. I'm sure there's online trolling in favor of and sponsored by US, Chinese and Macedonian interests (to name a few) too - but Russia's actions are much better documented.
Alacritous state actors more nimble at trolling than 4chan? You decide, I don't care. My problem is that US, Chinese, Russian and Macedonian sponsorships by state actors are equally unproved - if you read into "Trolls from Olgino" reports carefully. US's sponsorship is objectively less probable: English being lingua franca hampers American wannabe "hybrid trolls" [0].
> US's sponsorship is objectively less probable: English being lingua franca hampers American wannabe "hybrid trolls"
This is an interesting observation, but I think you either underestimate American resources, or overestimate the logistics of online influence manipulation campaigns.
For illustration : there are about 1m fluent Russian speakers in the US, and about 4m fluent English speakers in Russia. Sure, it's a bigger talent pool : but both countries could rope in bilingual cyber propagandists by the thousands if they felt so inclined.
