I've become used to check those users comments and, unfortunately, a lot of them have been posting on HN for many years, even before Trump 1.

It can be Russian disinfo but it's definitely not only that.

Yeah, it's kinda disheartening to be honest.

That being said, the writing was on the wall in 2016, the first time Trump ran, HN (and the anglosphere internet in general) took a sharp dive down in quality, and Covid made it all worse.

I just try to remember that the printing press caused a lot of wars, but over the longer term it lead to a better world.

Russian propaganda isn’t magic: rather, the people crafting it are very adept at finding and exploiting existing fault lines and the areas where the major American media and tech companies can be exploited to amplify a message. They aren’t doing anything which, say, Rush Limbaugh wasn’t doing in the pre-Internet era, and it’s not like they aren’t just part of the larger disinformation sphere.

What they did was see the way 9/11 reset what was allowed in mainstream American discourse, and that as conservatives moved into a tightly-managed bubble they were also willing to give up the idea of verifiable facts in favor of what felt right. That created a big weakness for a patient adversary as they didn’t need to try to get people to trust, say, RT but rather pick which existing voices to quietly support or try seeding ideas to.

I think it’s better to treat them like a catalyst or the accelerant on a fire where they didn’t start it but they both made it worse and might not have much control over it at this point.