Re:Russian disinformation distorts American and European dem...
by dang on Wednesday February 28, 2018 @12:53PM
(#16485007)
This comment breaks the site guidelines by making insinuations about astroturfing or shillage. People are orders of magnitude too quick to leap to that conclusion, merely because other users happen to hold opposing views.
It's easy to feel like no one could possibly hold those views in good faith, so if you see something you dislike enough, it must be shills, bots, or spies—but that's not correct. The HN community is large, divided on divisive issues, and has many users on both sides. If we're to survive for civil discourse, community members need to build up enough tolerance to handle it when others disagree, instead of jumping to accusations of manipulation and bad faith.
All: if you're sincerely concerned about abuse, you're always welcome to send links to [email protected] so we can take a look at the data. But please don't shoot from the hip into the threads; you damage the container when you do that.
It's easy to feel like no one could possibly hold those views in good faith, so if you see something you dislike enough, it must be shills, bots, or spies—but that's not correct. The HN community is large, divided on divisive issues, and has many users on both sides. If we're to survive for civil discourse, community members need to build up enough tolerance to handle it when others disagree, instead of jumping to accusations of manipulation and bad faith.
All: if you're sincerely concerned about abuse, you're always welcome to send links to [email protected] so we can take a look at the data. But please don't shoot from the hip into the threads; you damage the container when you do that.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
p.s. I've written a great deal about this issue, if anyone wants to read more on how we approach it: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...