Not sure if that was always astroturfing. I certainly feel ambivalent about Julian Assange and he arguably cost Hillary Clinton the 2016 election, which obviously upset a lot of people.

The one responsible for loosing the election was Hillary Clinton, not Julian Assange.

And supporting the prosecution because of this is also quite an apt reason to not vote for her in the first place. And I think that was made clear before the election.

No single person can be attributed all the blame, but any person who (illegally) tried to influence the election is not a good person in my book. That's like saying Russia's misinformation campaign had zero influence and it was all Hillary's fault. That's just plain silly. You can admit Hillary made mistakes while also agreeing that Russia illegally tried to influence the 2016 election.

Don't even have to go very deep. Just look at these tweets [0] for example. Why is some "non-profit" organization started by an Australian trying to influence an American election?

[0] https://www.vox.com/2016/9/15/12929262/wikileaks-hillary-cli...

Wikipedia wasn't perfectly neutral here but released truthful information in contrast to many media outlets, who were just as partisan. The reason why many people craved balance and so they made interna of the DNC public.

I have not seen any evidence of Russian interference, but they probably tried. I don't think they got any talking points across to be honest.

This non profit had proof of war crimes and maybe that influenced their disposition? Understandable in my opinion.

In general I am suspect of anyone pointing fingers at others to build a profile. Trump could do that and some people understood that it was holding up a mirror. That is no Trump endorsement and the Russian story an excuse. I believe internal leaks are much more likely.

> Wikipedia

I'm assuming you mean wikileaks?

> contrast to many media outlets

American media outlets, they're not not foreign nation trying to influence another country's elections. Assange isn't American.

> I have not seen any evidence of Russian interference

So just because you haven't seen it, they don't exist? There's ample proof [0]. 13 people and 3 russian entities were charged.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency

The DNC talking points on this issue were schizophrenic as hell.

At first they said the most damning thing in there was recipes.

Then they said it cost them the election.

But they refused to say which leaks were responsible.

Then they claimed the swing voters they lost believed in pizzagate as if it were a mainstream conspiracy theory believed by many and that all the swing voters were therefore complete idiots.

Also if you're going to blame a conspiracy theory that was conjured out of thin air the leaks really didnt actually matter. An equally stupid pretext could have been invented, so why say they cost you the election?

So, according to them the leaks both cost them the election and didnt matter in the slightest.

If you think about all this for just a second it logically doesnt make any goddamn sense but people still parrot it. Those same people will instinctively hit that downvote button.

> Those same people will instinctively hit that downvote button.

I read your message waiting, line after line, for the dumb statement that got you downvoted. How do people still claim that there's no politically motivated mass-flagging going on on HN?

Unproven: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/julian-assange-drone-strik...

"If I talked about drone striking Assange it would have been a joke"

She said this. This is as close to an admission that you could get. She would never use that wording if this story were fabricated. She'd just say "I never said anything like that".

The "nonlegal" fluff in the emails is bs, but this story itself isnt.

It was, of course, "just a joke" much in much the same way racist jokes are "just a joke", which is why he took it seriously. It's why making a joke about murdering the president will get you hauled in by the secret service.

Arguing it's unproven is FUD. Why snopes is saying this is beyond me.

If one want to see how people perceived the relation between Hillary Clinton and Assange in 2010, this song/video demonstrate it quite well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl4NlA97GeQ

Julan Assange also participated in the creation of a video with the same group released closely afterward, which at least implies that he might share the song writers perspective.

I have tried to found a source for what the lyrics say, but at any rate it seems clear that there existed an opinion (which very likely was shared by Assange) that Hillary Clinton where out to get Assange and an active part of the US actions against him. The exact wording is "charged for high treason", which is different from a drone strike but carries the same result: Death.

In my intepretation, it seems pretty clear that Assange might have had a negative opinion about Hillary Clinton 6 years later, rather than being neutral about the whole thing. Having the perception that someone is after to kill you can have that.

(Anyone that thinks that the band is a right-wing group should check out the videos produced about Trump).

Did Assange believe it? If he believed it, he may have been motivated by it.

Oh. Thanks for that.

Edit: If I talked about droning Julian Assange, "it would have been a joke."

... that's a pretty weak, fence sitting, denial. That's almost saying " if the recording or memo leaks, remember I said it was a joke

I agree it's not a good look--IF it was ever said.

Is there any proof that wasn't a fabrication? Assange was in the UK at the time. Unlikely she was ever advocating for droning the UK...

Even if Assange's personal motivations had any relevance here, that comment alone would be enough to disqualify someone from holding any kind of public office in a functioning democracy that respects human life.

"a functioning democracy that respects human life."

I have yet to see one. The only life they respect is theirs.

She lost to a guy that said 'grab her by the pussy', if you can't win against that I don't know... a rock with painted face might be a challenge to run against for her.

Personally, if I had to point at one single thing it would be calling millions of traditional democratic voters a "basket of deplorables".

Lol not "traditional democratic voters"; the die-hards who saw, and continue to see, Trump as a messiah as he insults anyone from Gold Star parents, to disabled journalists, to Mexican immigrants... Anyway, off topic and deplorably exhausting.

In the end, Assange is just a scapegoat. Although, he wouldn't be the first or the last. When WikiLeaks was being used to disclose information about other countries, US citizens and even the Government saw them as a positive force in the world. But, once the info focused on US affairs, especially around a Presidential election, Assange was public enemy number one (tied with Snowden).

Still very much (1) a tactical mistake and (2) not everyone of the 60 million people who voted for trump fits your description. Working class people fucked over by the establishment voted for the "anti-establishment" candidate, surprise surprise.

Again, that speech was made early in the campaign. Obviously not talking about 60mil people. But, definitely didn't help, especially once pundits pounced on it.

And then the leopards at their faces, as it were.

I'm not saying it wasn't a bad decision, I'm saying it's very understandable why people did what they did. Calling them stupid rednecks is very easy and makes you feel better than them but it's lazy and untrue.

> untrue.

[Citation needed]

And the guy actually increased his vote tally significantly in the next election, against a far less polarizing candidate than Hillary Clinton. I don't know if it's really as easy as blaming it entirely on her.

How many years was he in forced isolation by that point?

The DNC only have themselves to blame, wikileaks exposed their Pied Piper strategy -- they encouraged their media connections to elevate Trump before the playing field thinned out, they were so sure they could beat him [0]. As a Hillary voter, we were sure Trump was a joke. We didn't realize he had the DNC on his side. See the politico piece for quotes from wikileaks:

"How do we prevent Bush from bettering himself/how do we maximize Trump and others?" [1]

"We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to [take] them seriously." [2]

[0] https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/11/hillary-clin...

[1] https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/10348

[2] (PDF) https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails//fileid/1120/251

I don’t know why you’re being downvoted.

Is it a crime to subvert democracy? Apparently not when it’s your side doing it.

There were claims that Assange sat on Trumps mails, but genuinely I don’t think that’s the case and if it was then people likely would still vote for him as he is openly horrible: the emails proved Hilary was calculated.

Honestly if your biggest gripe with Assange is that he caused your person to lose then you have to ask yourself: did you just not want to know that your candidate was trying to subvert democracy?

The Sanders stuff was enough to put me off the DNC (actively hampering his chances of being a presidential candidate by removing him from ballots for instance), but learning that Hillary was the one with media contacts and pushing Cruz and Trump to be president is the ultimate backfire.

Should this man go to prison, for life, because your person didn’t get 4 years in office? Because of things she herself said?

The key question is: and?

Both parties do this. Pointing it out isn't whataboutism. Pointing it out is showing that Assange is the one who made political moves. He targeted specific politicians to leak negative information at opportune times. He didn't do this out of a sense of bringing the truth to light, he did this to further a political agenda. Where are his leaks on the republican party?

>Where are his leaks on the republican party?

Did you provide him with some leaks? As he can't publish what he doesn't have. Though there is some evidence that the same group that leaked the DNC emails had access to RNC data, there is no evidence that shows Assange had any knowledge of or access to RNC data.

Which is certainly why people supported the Trump administration's prosecution of him. Wait, what?

The US media made sure not to make that mistake again with Hunter Biden's laptop.

It's mind-boggling you actually conclude this from

> The companies said they had decided not to conduct the 32-case analysis “after a discussion with the FDA.” Instead, they planned to conduct the analysis after 62 cases.

> Gruber said that Pfizer and BioNTech had decided in late October that they wanted to drop the 32-case interim analysis. At that time, the companies decided to stop having their lab confirm cases of Covid-19 in the study, instead leaving samples in storage. The FDA was aware of this decision. Discussions between the agency and the companies concluded, and testing began this past Wednesday.

It's because the tweet takes the article it quotes out of context. This is what leads up to the quoted part:

> That study design, as well as those of other drug makers, came under fire from experts who worried that, even if it was statistically valid, these interim analyses would not provide enough data when a vaccine could be given to billions of people.

Kind of an important passage to leave out, don't you think?

Do you really think this was comic book supervillain?

I remember this happening at the time and my impression was that it was happening without a doubt. Particularly when they announced the results a few days after the election.

My thinking at the time was inside Pfizer the idea of turning an election on this data was deemed too controversial - they would forever be associated with Trump if he won again. That might cause issue with the Dems.

No idea but unless there’s proof of something shadier? That would be my guess - just an American corporation making sure it doesn’t piss off half the country.

Nah, the most comicbook supervillain event was the fricking New York Times publicly hinting that if the vaccine was approved before the election because enough evidence was found that not doing so would definitely do more harm, they'd push the narrative that it was only approved to help Trump win and that people shouldn't trust its safety, effectively undermining safety in the vaccination program just to make sure Trump lost. All the other morally and scientifically dubious attempts to delay approval mostly seem to be downstream consequences of that.

This is how propaganda works. What is sad is that some journalists never learn (that what happened to Assange can also happen to them) and when they finally get it, it is too late.

There's always going to be a few who don't get it, and those are the ones who end up publishing. What I'd like to see is widespread understanding on the readers' part of sampling biases like this.

It won't happen to the journalists who are anti-Assange, because they aren't journalists, they are advertisers.

"News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising."

Maybe "activists" who have very strong ideological beliefs but unknowingly present their preach as fact-based reports in a very tricky way that looks very objective. The public are misled to believe their distorted conclusions.

I've seen a lot of them. On some topics especially when audience don't have access to the ground truth, they(zesty activists disguised as objective journalists) are majority. This lead to a big gap between the perceptions on the same topic among different groups of audience and each group consider the other one are brainwashed.

The difference between activists and advertisers is: the later are knowingly try to sell something while the former thought they are telling truth which make the hidden activists more deceptive.

Have you considered that some people might genuinely not like Assange for his actions in the past few years?

Disliking him personally is not a good reason to ignore this case or hope he is prosecuted. Assange is an asshole, but this attack on him enables future attacks on all journalists.

I'm not sure that journalists play too big a role. Journalists don't decide what gets printed or played on repeat on TV. Refusing to provide fodder to a propaganda machine (any major news organization) just creates a vacancy that can be easily filled, because it's capitalism and journalists too have kids, mortgages and college debt.

> Journalists don't decide what gets printed

That's exactly what journalists do - newspaper editors are senior journalists.

You're missing the point. There is no plural. There is only one editor in chief who makes final decisions and it's more of a management position. The higher up you are the more directly accountable you are for the bottom line. You don't get to that position by fighting for the truth. You get to that position by maintaining the tone that reliably brings in advertising revenue.

When talking about "astroturfing" it is worth remembering that the average person is dangerously practical and not easily persuaded by "the incentives here are terrible..." style arguments. But they do have very strong loyalty to anything perceived as part of the in-group.

It is likely that the attacks on Assange were all in good faith. Still baseless though, the fellow has all but secured his place in the history books as a hero at this point.

What do you call a bad faith argument adopted by somebody in good faith?

"perfectly ordinary political discou..." oh wait, no that isn't right.

I don't know. Not astroturfing though, that has implications that the people arguing don't believe what they are saying and are just in it for a cheque.

Ok so what do you call the mass of people that includes:

1. In it for the cheque. 2. Believe the people who are in it for the cheque.

Given that there's very rarely an easy way to tell them apart and 2 follows 1?

Honest question.

I would lean towards calling it a wave of astroturfing given that 2 doesnt happen without 1 and 2 and 1 are inseparable, but I can potentially see the argument for using different terminology if there is something more precise.

What, though?

>It is likely that the attacks on Assange were all in good faith.

Then we got the Snowden leaks and that prior had to be updated...

The fact that bad people are certainly involved doesn't change the likelihood that good people were involved. I know a few anti-Snowden types in real life. They're fine people, just not very good at predicting consequences.

So not "all in good faith" then. Probably not all astroturfed is a fair update to that prior.

You should have seen HN discussions about him around the 2016 election. He went from venerated to intensely maligned in the span of a couple weeks. Just like what happened with Glenn Greenwald around the 2020 election.

Greenwald became a common punching target after he criticized the 2008 administration for continuing to significantly expand executive authority and brought black budget activities into a whole other level. Something that Bush Jr also massively expanded and people were much quicker to criticize from various sides.

By 2020 Greenwald was basically persona-non-grata for not pulling either US party lines and his strong support for people like Snowden. Despite his great work in Brazil on human rights and anti-corruption which is something that goes beyond partisan politics and should be lauded.

The problem is people trying to put him (or everybody) into convenient boxes - representing singular view points - without shades of grey, like the 24 hour news talking head guests pushing sound bites.

The type of pressure on any person who dares to enter political news for a living. Which to me seems like a never ending gauntlet.

That's unfair, because Assange's own actions also veered heavily around 2016, so to assume the arguments about him were all astroturfing is extremely misleading.

If tomorrow Sanders starts spouting antivaxx stuff, and half the internet starts attacking him, you wouldn't go and say "there's a misinformation campaign astroturfing against Sanders".

Few people making those comments will be bought commentators. Just people convinced by articles (and the occasional paid commentator).

But is astroturfing the right descriptor then?

No. If you convince random citizens with your propaganda it either becomes accepted rhetoric or grass root opinion

Astroturfing is when you specifically skip the convincing part

In the Bush years he was cool. In the Obama years he wasn't cool. Around 2016 he became a pariah. The press is most often aligned with the interests of the party and is a fair-weather-friend at best.

Not that I'm going to dig through 10 years of reddit comments, but I always hated Assange. It was abundantly clear from the outset that he was only ever self-interested. All he ever did was collect dumps of data from wherever he could, hang his sources out to dry, then try to sell them to the public with the most manufactured drama possible.

Slight rant: People just get enamored with the story of the dark horse "journalist" fighting against the odds to expose corruption. In reality, the NY Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, Pro Publica have all exposed vastly more salient information and done it all ethically and faced down all legal challenges in US courts and won.

I don't see much astroturfing here outside the US at least.

Wikileaks just became a source you wouldn't quote anymore because Assange became an obvious and offensive puppet of a secret service.

He killed it himself. Before that WL was quoted by reputable journalists. They've taken the stuff serious. It's been part of the discussion.

Now it'll never be that again.

> obvious and offensive puppet of a secret service.

This is the result of astroturfing. You don't even need a reference, you can just say this, and people accept it.

True, although this has little to do with the issues of fair trial and trial coverage.

That's a ridiculous assertion. Any reasonable person would know that Assange is disingenuous and not a good person. I can point to his man years of agenda-driven public statements, but you can sum it up pretty succinctly when he tried to blame Seth Rich for the DNC leak. He's a fraud who did a few decent things many years as a complete coincidence.