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.
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.
For a well documented case: http://www.stratcomcoe.org/internet-trolling-hybrid-warfare-...
So does JTRIG[1][2], and probably many other groups as well. Russia isn't the only suspect for this kind trolling.
Human rights violations in the U.S. are also well documented by China:
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/06/26/china-issues-r...
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.
So why do we say "the Russians" and "the Chinese" as though they each form a political whole.
I mean, we know the CIA gets up to some pretty nefarious shenanigans, quite possibly without the express approval of The Administration.
It just seems like a lot of pots sitting around talking about how black the kettles are. Sure, some kettles are blacker than some pots.
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.
Uh huh
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolls_from_Olgino
https://themoscowtimes.com/news/st-petersburg-troll-factory-...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-...
https://www.inopressa.ru/article/03Jun2014/buzzfeed/web_rus....
https://globalvoices.org/2015/04/02/analyzing-kremlin-twitte...
> 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
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.
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.
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?
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.
[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/05/fillin...
Disagree. There's no such thing as perfect certainty, but the only real question about Russian troll sponsorship is one of scale.
https://globalvoices.org/2015/04/02/analyzing-kremlin-twitte...
> 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.