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Reddit Has Become a Battleground of Alleged Chinese Trolls

(www.buzzfeednews.com)
142 points mzs | 2 comments | 15 Mar 19 15:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.437s | source
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neaden ◴[15 Mar 19 16:27 UTC] No.19401182[source]▶
I think right now there are three main kinds of internet trolls in things like this. First would be the government sponsored ones who tend to post in unison or have some theme. These seem to mainly be Chinese and Russian. Second are the freelance trolls, people in it to make money by building an audience for advertisements. A lot of these people are in Macedonia where they can make relatively good money spreading false blogs on Facebook or something. Finally are the home grown true believers who are just posting their honest views in an abrasive, hostile, or threatening manner. I think the majority of trolls belong to the last group, but the first two have an outsized impact at creating new stories and coordinating messaging that is amplified by the third.
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1. basch ◴[15 Mar 19 17:09 UTC] No.19401761[source]▶
conflating employees of propaganda machines with "watch the world burn" in bad faith circus-goers is an unfortunate abuse of language. i mourn for our loss of a good word that used to mean something.

whatever they are, they are much closer to shills than trolls.

do words with specific meanings usually become meaningless when they become global mainstream? the world picks up a communities word and doesnt bother to use it in the old context? reminds me of decimate maybe?

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2. bloopernova ◴[15 Mar 19 18:22 UTC] No.19402638[source]▶
That makes me think of Hacking vs Cracking, and the confusion that laypeople have when a programmer refers to "hacking something together quickly"