Comment by friendzis
6 hours ago
Because cognitive biases are one of the hardest things to even acknowledge, let alone suppress. All the media out there has such a strong bubble effect, because people hate being challenged and love to stay in their comfy echo chambers. Remember labubu? Bao buns certainly do not.
There have been so many bot armies exposed over the years that one would think every narrative being pushed should be considered to be backed by bots. Some state-level actors even operate their narrative-pushing campaigns openly, yet people still happily deny their entire existence.
HN is very much not an exception to this rule. It's very hard to accept that maybe some thoughts you have were actually installed.
> people still
Maybe a few are just “people” (i.e. the same people who normally post in the community.)
But in most cases I’d suspect any such botting campaign brings along with it a few human agitprop agents embedded onto each target platform, well-positioned to deny and discredit anyone pushing back on the narrative the bot farm is spreading.
(Sometimes this is pretty obvious — a lot of accounts coming out of the woodwork to deny Chinese bot farms have a conspicuous “English as learned as a second language in Beijing, to a competent but not fluent level” writing style that does not often otherwise crop up in other discussions in those same communities. But other times it can be far more subtle, making use of operatives hired from within the community’s own majority-culture rather than relying on foreign nationals playing the part of same.)
A Chinese and Russian troll farm employs people from French-speaking Africa for their French-language operations.
There are many Ivorians and Senegalese promoting the CCP’s ‘Community of common destiny’ on Reddit, for example.
Edit: Community of common destiny for mankind/‘Community of Nations’