If you break the HN guidelines this badly again we will ban you. They explicitly ask you not to post like this, for deep, clear, and long-established reasons (which can be summed up like this: well over 99.9% of internet complaints about astroturfing and shillage are demonstrably unfounded, and also full of poison that we don't want here).
So 99.9% of the internet is manipulating the minds of everyone on the internet. Some of those people come to HN and post/upvote/downvote, and as a result of their lives outside of HN, they regurgitate slightly filtered PR as opinions or facts on HN.
I guess what I'm asking is, how do you guys deal with second hand shilling and PR?
If you're asking how we deal with users who aren't consciously shilling but are regurgitating the effects of somebody else doing that, the answer is that there's no way to distinguish that case from the normal general case of people having strong opinions and/or being wrong about things—which is the default on the internet. All we can do is fall back on the general rules of the site (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). That means answering bad arguments with better arguments, and incorrect information with correct information, while remaining patient and respectful with each other, and seeking points to agree about as well as disagree [1].
When feelings are running high, of course, it can often be too hard to do that. In that case, there's a plan B: chalk it up to someone being wrong on the internet, let go, and walk away. When hot under the collar, wait to cool down before posting (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). The internet is mostly wrong about most things anyhow.
People sometimes object to this answer: isn't that just giving in to manipulation, or at least the effects of manipulation? There's a thought experiment that I find helpful here: imagine a Sufficiently Smart Manipulator (SSM) who is disingenuous and totally sinister, but also clever enough to reliably evade detection [2]. I think most people can agree that either SSMs already exist (and by definition, we're not clever enough to catch them), or soon will exist. So we're either facing this situation already, or had better get ready for it. What should we do in that case?
The answer is that we should do what we ought to be doing anyway: answering bad arguments with better ones, bad information with better information, etc., while remaining in good connection with each other. It's in the interest of SSMs to divide and polarize the community, and it's in the community's interest not to let that happen, and instead to pool our energies to figure out the truth together [3]. The answer to the Sufficiently Smart Manipulator is the sufficiently healthy community [4].
The value of the SSM thought experiment is that it directs attention away from the question of detecting manipulators, which is notoriously unreliable (people succumb to all sorts of fantasies about this, and the evidence nearly always points the other way [4, 5]), and toward the question of what positive things we can do to build up a sort of immune system. There's no way to know whether it will work, but in the long run, and maybe the short run too, I don't see what other option we have.
[1] The reason for that last bit is that it introduces a human, relational element into the argument, which makes it much easier for people to do curious, reflective conversation instead of reacting reflexively and hardening into battle mode (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23959679).
>[FooBarWidget is] a CCP apologist par excellence, so you shamelessly referencing propagandists is not as surreal as initially perceived, just some casual undercover shilling.
>well over 99.9% of internet complaints about astroturfing and shillage are demonstrably unfounded, and also full of poison that we don't want here).
Perhaps I need to remind you that astroturfing and shilling mean being paid to say certain things. Why would I accept such payments when I already have a well-paid career? My HN profile is 14 years old, and you can see that before 2020 I basically never posted anything about China. Posting about China is just a hobby, man. I have a day job as a software developer.
There is a reason why I post these things on my public handle: to make the point that I'm not just a random bot. Unlike some other people, who post anonymously out of fear of being socially ostricized, and who have been wrongly called "bots" or "shills" merely for having a different opinion, I choose not to be afraid and not to be silenced.
You should just accept that my opinions are my own, are genuine, and are independently constructed without anyone instructing me. And that merely having a different opinion than the one you want to accept, doesn't make that person a shill.
Sorry for the delay. You were quite wrong about that, and what's worse, wrong about it in a poisonous way (I'm sure unintentionally). The evidence points decisively to that account being a person of Chinese background who simply has different views than you do. It's natural for people of different backgrounds to have different views. If you can't stretch to accommodate that, and instead need to apply labels like 'astroturfer' or 'shill' in order to explain the presence of views so different from your own, the effect of that is to exclude minority voices. (Keep in mind that on this topic, unlike most others, the HN demographic is overwhelmingly one-sided. Although this is a highly international community, the overwhelming majority is Western and comes from a Western perspective.) Another effect is to poison the ecosystem here. That's not in the interest of this community, so we don't allow users to do that.
On a topic like this one, the cumulative effect of such (unintentional) poison is literally to hound users off the site for ethnic/racial/nationalistic reasons [1]. That's definitely not the community any of us wants to have here. Yet it has happened here more than once. If you read through some of the links at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... you'll find the history. Here's one example of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358.
Also, I compiled this list of past moderation explanations a while ago for a different user who was worried about this stuff on HN. Perhaps it will be helpful to others who are worried: https://news.ycombinator.com/chinamod
FooBarWidget is definitely breaking the site guidelines by having posted almost nothing but arguments about China for the last couple of years. We don't allow that, for reasons I just explained elsewhere (and many times previously): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29717102. But that's a separate issue. Someone breaking the site guidelines in that way is not evidence of bad faith, let alone being a shill or foreign agent. It is far more likely to be evidence that they feel strongly about a topic for legitimate reasons, such as family background.
Hey dang, seriously are you completely delusional or are you so open minded that your brain fell out? That guy is following and retweeting actual paid propagandists for which is enough documented evidence out there and you're still preaching some completely out of touch nonsense, what the hell is wrong with you man?
You realized yourself that this guy is talking nonstop about china for the past years, did you bother to read for a second what this guy is actually regurgitating? They are certified CCP talking points white washing and justifying ethnic cleansing, are you that stuck up and confused to be blind to that?
You criticize people who call out dangerous and manipulative narratives, but protect those who are demonstrably and with certainty propagandists, citing guidelines which they are also clearly breaking to begin with.
Instead of copy pasting those guidelines try reading them yourself once in a while. You probably would even classify a holocaust denier as someone who has 'just strong opinions'. Go touch some grass Dang, this forum has completely melted your brain and spare people your self righteous stuck up babble.
You either have some severe conflict of interest in this discussion or extremely naive and out of touch or straight up evil. My bet is on all three.
You're underestimating the number of HN users with a Chinese background or some China connection (work, marriage, family, travel, study) whose experiences have led them to hold different views than you do. That's perfectly legitimate, and the idea that they must automatically be propaganda accounts is deeply inhumane. I don't want to work on a site where that sort of poison—including the poison in your comment—is considered ok.
My GP comment links to cases where users were abused and even hounded off this site by ethnic/national mob behaviors. Those users were innocent—the evidence for this was overwhelming. It was the mobs who were at fault. I think that's shameful. Like most HN users, I sympathize with underdogs, and seeing people get ganged up on gets my dander up. I'm confident that the vast majority of the community here would agree with me about that—at least when their own passions (and fears) aren't activated. None of us want to be that sort of community, but it can easily end up that way by default, so we need to take conscious care to avoid it.
I've asked FooBarWidget to stop posting exclusively in China-related arguments, because that's against the site guidelines in its own right, but that's hardly proof of, or even an iota of evidence for, the cloak-and-dagger fantasies that internet users love to sling at people in minority positions. Those accusations are against the HN guidelines for deep and good reasons. Therefore you can't post like this here, and I've banned the account.
One sign of how foolish these fantasies are is the certainty with which internet warriors declaim them. They never weigh evidence or consider other possibilities. It's always "demonstrably and with certainty"! What good fortune to be surrounded by enemies who are so evil, yet so dumb as to give themselves away at every turn. It's the best of all worlds: a chicken in every pot, a communist under every bed, and a spy (or three) in every internet thread.
What's poignant is that the users who get abused so dramatically in Western forums like this are often the very ones trying to defend and articulate the West to their communities back home—where they no doubt encounter similarly xenophobic feelings on the other side. They're in an impossible position. You don't have to agree with them, but you do have to drop the Boris and Natasha routine if you want to post to this forum. It is cartoonish and incurious, and would be silly if not for its malicious effects.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If you want further explanation, there's many years' worth at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... and you'll find other links there that go deeply into the matter.