Re:Buzzfeed journalist denied China visa following coverage ...
by dang on Friday August 24, 2018 @12:41AM
(#17832840)
Ok—please don't state it without evidence either!
I know it looks and feels super obvious, but I assure you this is an illusion. On the internet, people are orders of magnitude too quick to leap from "random user with obviously wrong opinion" to "obvious bot/astroturfer/paid shill". It's a crazy bias. We look into this stuff all the time, and 99% of the time it's just that some people disagree with you. More than 99% actually.
Even when we ban an account for trolling, that's almost always someone whose sincere passions about a topic led them to violate the guidelines and not stop when we asked them to stop. That's not astroturfing. People are just very passionate about divisive issues.
I was unaware that discussing astroturfing, trolling, and propaganda on HN was prohibited. Apologies, I will refrain from calling attention to it in the future.