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A comment on Information operations directed at Hong Kong. Parent comment

Re:Information operations directed at Hong Kong by Sir_Cmpwn on Tuesday August 20, 2019 @12:16AM (#20743787)
The problem comes to distinguishing genuinely held beliefs from subversive comments designed to manipulate the HN audience. The fact that an idea comes from your peers is a powerful one. The average commenter on HN is not so different from you, after all, if they independently came to a conclusion then it might have some merit. However, if they came to that conclusion because they will be rewarded for expressing it or punished for expressing a dissenting opinion, the value is much less.

Some people make it easier - on many occasions you'll see someone discussing a subject but first disclosing their relationship, such as an ex-Google employee commenting on a Google-critical article. If a Chinese party official came to HN to express their views and disclosed themselves as such, I would welcome them to express their opinion here. What I'm concerned about is commenters with undisclosed affiliations writing manipulative comments which help prop up an oppressive state.

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Re:Information operations directed at Hong Kong by dang on Tuesday August 20, 2019 @02:02AM (#20744202)
> The problem comes to distinguishing genuinely held beliefs from subversive comments designed to manipulate the HN audience

How do you propose to do that? Clearly one must look for evidence. When evidence shows such abuse, we ban the account. Far more often, though (and I'm understating things when I put it that way), evidence shows the opposite: the user was expressing their genuinely held beliefs. Should others be allowed to denounce them as astroturfers, shills, or spies, based on nothing but how strongly they disagree? On HN the answer is no. That follows from the values of this site, and we have a rule in https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html saying so.

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