Slashdot Mirror
Pentagon Reports 2000% Increase in Russia Trolls Since Friday (axios.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said in Saturday's briefing that there has been a "2,000% increase in Russian trolls in the last 24 hours," following the coordinated strike against Syria on Friday night.
So we're now calling people who dissent to bombing another country without the approval of congress trolls. Isn't this McCarthyism?
So... what???
This obsession is insane.
I predict a 3000% increase in Rickrolling.
Basically, anything Trump flavored has had a pretty heavy tilt in its moderation, towards the pro-Trump. I've worked in a lot of rural areas, and the brand of angry conservatism/superlibertarianism is pretty rare among IT/Software guys. But for some reason, it's hyper-represented on Slashdot in the past few years.
Not that folks can't hold that view - it just seems disproportionate, compared to the population.
Ryan Fenton
The media, hollywood, most comedians, all of the big tech companies, and most social media is 24-7 hardcore anti-Trump for almost 2 straight years now. You see a couple of posts on slashdot that are right-leaning get modded up and all of a sudden it's "wildly conservative" now.
Might want to get your sensitivity meter adjusted just a touch.
Not that folks can't hold that view - it just seems disproportionate, compared to the population.
Perhaps you don't recall who won the election and how that works?
Have you ever considered that might be the work of Russian trolls?
They're known to play both sides so they can control the dialogue completely.
Although not here. I think we should expect a very heavy dose of that trolling right here in the comments on this one, as usual!
... But the campaign across America through the mid-terms.
Are you saying msmash, BeauHD and EditorDavid are rednecks?
Me, I'm just... well, not even surprised at the fearmongering. TWO THOUSAND PERCENT is so much SCARIER than saying twenty-fold. But by now that, and other clickbait bullshit, has become par for the course. The "pro-Trump" moderation you've noticed I haven't, not really. There's been a lot of anti-Trump shitpost noise, but modding those down for shitposting isn't automatically a political stance. I have noticed a political slant in the moderation, but that one's pro-SJW. Apparently a lot of moderating readers are millennial snowflakes with a "higher ed" background. And I'm starting to think the editors are from there too.
All dissent from the official line should be dismissed as Russian trolls.
Can someone explain to me how this is different than life during the Cold War? Back then, for those of you too young to remember, any dissent earned you the label "Communist." The odd thing about today is how the party aligned with the practice has changed.
The story doesn't even provide any evidence.. just some two paragraph statement that we're supposed to take as fact. The story itself is pretty vague.
Trolling where? Examples?
Sounds and smells like fake news.
The media, hollywood, most comedians, all of the big tech companies, and most social media is 24-7 hardcore anti-Trump for almost 2 straight years now. You see a couple of posts on slashdot that are right-leaning get modded up and all of a sudden it's "wildly conservative" now.
Might want to get your sensitivity meter adjusted just a touch.
Not to mention the story selection and summaries are massively tilted left.
Here's a hint: It was no landslide.
You seem confused about how there could be so many conservatives on Slashdot when Slashdot's core demographic is older, white tech workers. I can't tell if you're stupid, or a Russian bot.
>Oh no, some of us, Trump and his relatively few supporters, recall how the election worked, and how poorly he did.
>Here's a hint: It was no landslide.
LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL
Revisionist Historian workin' hard here! Hillary was the one that was going to have her landslide.
"99 to 1 odds"
"We predict at 95%"
"No path to 270"
"Trump will never win the nomination"
Been lurking here since the early days. Glad it's not just me seeing this.
I just don't get how slash ended up populated with trolls. Maybe all the reasonable people (like you) have left leaving only the dregs?
I miss the interesting conversations about geeky stuff that used to be the staple here.
I thought that alzheimers post might bring up some knowledgeable folk and interesting insight but it's just more bitching by small minded whiny right wing trolls.
It's more the down modding of any dissenting opinions that are critical of trump that are the problem. Even when they do end up with a positive score there are always troll and flamebait mods too.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Well, there's no need to panic until it's over 9000%.
#DeleteFacebook
... not a fucking 3-pointer in the whole thread.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
fucking disgusting how pro-corporate, pro-cia, pro-pentagon everyone seems to be
I see plenty dissenting opinions in my native language, which is not Russian nor written with cyrillic characters.
People in forums or newspapers comments often ask to remember about Iraq in 2003, or Colin Powell. There are tons of comments as well, perhaps more, that recite the official war propaganda that Russian and Syria are war criminals that bomb children and use chemical weapons etc.
Sometimes, people believe that chemical weapons were used but still oppose the strikes somehow.
The question or problem is simple : who is credible? Are France and UK, or more accurately their lonely executive leaders credible?
I think not. I remember when in 2003, France was still able to tell the whole world very publicly and officially that the US was not credible.
We didn't have social media in 2003, but we were able to figure out who is credible and who is not. There is no reason we still can't. In fact the issue is not even than the general public gets its opinions from the social media - and if anything trolls are mostly failing to beat the official western media "narratives". The official or mainstream journalists themselves got locked into a social media filter bubble comprising of themselves, and convenient English-language "Syrian opposition" sources to copy-paste from. Not only the journalists : western politicians get suckered in as well, up to the current President of the US.
Look. I know it's the evil Russians and all, but do you suppose the Pentagon is the right outfit to cast the first stone?
No I do not! it's really saddening that a public official can lie while on the podium, saying OPCW officials were denied access to the alleged chemical bombing site even before they landed in the country. It's really sad.
Hours later, they did indeed land and were welcomed by authorities. The media only finds time to regurgitate government propaganda, sadly.
I take this to mean that American trolls are slacking. This calls for massive tariffs on imported troll posts so that the balance shifts to locally sourced, free-range, gluten and asbestos free troll posts. Step it up folks! Those likes, reblogs, and follows won't generate themselves!
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
If by being an ardent opponent of the Pentagon and its' evil, then you'll have to count me a Russian Troll, as well. I stand firmly against the Pentagon, the US State Dept., the CIA, the US Congress, and all those organs of evil along with their foul counterparts in the evil UK.
It's more the down modding of any dissenting opinions that are critical of trump that are the problem. Even when they do end up with a positive score there are always troll and flamebait mods too.
Try sorting the dissenting opinions into "insults" versus "insight".
Almost all the "dissenting opinions" here are just simple name calling and deserve to be modded down.
Most of the rest are simple "I think $THE_OPPOSITE", with no background or support.
If you look at comments with that filter, I think you'll find that it's the insults that get modded down.
True insightful posts tend to get modded up.
I think the nature of the Russian threat is different now and the level of the propaganda has gone up. One easily forgets that McCarthyism happened in a real cold war environment. There were some valid reasons. Now there has been an escalation which can be better described as 'Russian insubordination' while in the west the Russians are actually not taken seriously as a threat. When the politicians in the west show so little fear to escalate it becomes very hard to avoid a war with Russia. And it will be our last war. It reminds me too much of the typical rattlesnake victim whose last words are 'hold my beer and watch this!'.
I'm already modded as troll. Could be someone's sense of humor.
Are you seeing some different version of /. than I'm seeing? Does /. do some sort of tailoring of the scores to the logged in user? Because I've witnessed the opposite. Lots of inane junk like "fuck trump" getting a "+5 insightful", while well-reasoned, thought-out posts that use some logic to defend a particular action of his getting modded as troll, presumably by someone who didn't have any logic to argue back with.
Not without knowing the criteria the Pentagon is using to brand an actor as a "troll".
That said, I doubt an increase in activity of that magnitude from state agents is feasible. You don't keep 95% of your workforce slack. So for this to be true, either they hired a lot of people in a hurry, or they moved a lot of their trolls off of other projects onto the anti-America beat. But the thing is, that takes specialized language skills and training for a Russian.
I don't doubt that paid Russian anti-American trolls are working overtime, but I very much doubt they've upped their output by 21x. We are very likely to be looking at an increase in activity by a mix of paid mindfuckers and Internet randos who are doing it for their own reasons.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It could be literally this simple "Russians curious about what is going on are checking US media and social media"... literally that.
I mean, who thinks they're doing quality control on that number?
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Nonsense. You user ID says you should remember the level of Soviet propaganda during the cold war.
Granted it didn't get much traction in the USA, outside liberal arts departments at universities anyhow.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
there's every reason to think that the majority of these people are directly (or indirectly) in the employ of the Russian government
And you know this because?...
So both Russia and USA have a successful history record of funding, arming, and training small rebel militia in various countries across the world (South America, Africa, South-East Asia, etc.) to depose vastly superior (in both numbers and organization) stable governments with already established military armies. Documented and declassified cases exist, even Iran being an example with its tumultuous past up to the revolution as a consequence.
Yet neither applied this existing expertise to a fraction of the Syrian people to stop a shitty force of scattered ISIS/ISIL retards in their track before infrastructure is destroyed and 7.5 million refugees pile up as a result, terrorists who are inferior to the governments historically overturned in organization and power and number.
Here's what actually happened:
- ISIS/ISIL can only fester if there are no good people left to fight them.
- 7.5 million refugees and counting, are the good people who are being pulled out, the people who should have been fighting ISIS/ISIL and then rebuilding afterwards.
- The result is battlefield stalemate where destruction of infrastructure is maximized. Whenever one side gets an upper hand, either Russia or USA or Israel or Turkey or others swoop in to drop a surprise bomb and return the status quo.
Maximized destruction of infrastructure = Lowered cost of Land.
Refugees = Lower population in country and therefore easier management of it + lesser resistance to taking over the land because all the good people abandoned it beckoned by the "refugees welcome" crowd.
There's other layers to this like East and West using Syria as a proxy to test each other and test their weapons, but the core is an elaborate land-grab mainly enabled by Europe accepting refugees who not only don't have a home to return to but won't be given the right to return to it because they abandoned that right by venue of not fighting for it, enticed by retarded western liberals and millionaires like Soros playing them like puppets.
In an unfunny Paradox, Syrians need nationalism more than most since it's their nation being destroyed, and they need to unify behind SOMETHING to not see the creation of their ancestors destroyed, yet they are being denied it by both the left and right outsiders.
Reason?
Resources and information. Cheap land now that infrastructure is ruined and no people present to govern it, none with power or goodwill towards it at least since those were enticed out by Europe, smack in the middle of a strategic trade route and multiple competing political and religious spheres.
Perfect land to exploit, perfect land to wage proxy wars on, perfect land for logistics providing ease of supply for the proxy wars since trade routes are pre-established, perfect land to train your armies in where actual blood and fear of death can mold them contrary to peaceful simulation.
All the "total war" threats to date by all sides were mere cock flinging.
The saying goes: "Words are deceit, only acts unveil the true nature of an entity."
So far all words by all sides regarding Syria were superficial cock flinging, while the acts unveiled a constant and surgically accurate maintenance of a status quo situation. It's a beautiful sight to behold to be honest once you notice it.
I'm a (former) CPU engineer :) The science is here has mostly dropped to cargo cult level. It's the same with many other subjects.
So true. Maybe slashdot has aged and become more far right leaning, but I think this hypothesis is more likely.
Maybe it's not the Russian government who funds them but actually Assad?
What's the difference? That's like saying maybe the palestinian riots are not funded by Iran, they're funded by the hezbollah.
lucm, indeed.
fucking disgusting how pro-corporate, pro-cia, pro-pentagon everyone seems to be
Have Comrade Putin confiscated your cheese recently?
Russian Trolls ate the rest of the cake in my fridge.
Thank you Trump for putting Israel First!
You are clearly trolling, but still, I don't see why it would be a problem to put a civilized allied country first, as opposed to beheaders, suicide bombers and chemical weapon users that all have in common their hatred of democracy and western civilization. Why don't you guys just stop looking for reasons to hate your own culture and instead help the other half of the country who's trying to make America great again?
lucm, indeed.
Been lurking here since the early days. Glad it's not just me seeing this.
I just don't get how slash ended up populated with trolls. Maybe all the reasonable people (like you) have left leaving only the dregs?
I miss the interesting conversations about geeky stuff that used to be the staple here.
I thought that alzheimers post might bring up some knowledgeable folk and interesting insight but it's just more bitching by small minded whiny right wing trolls.
Slashdot was originally run with the goal of excellence, then sold to people with a different goal.
Whipslash has said (in a comment) that he's not interested in making Slashdot popular, but that it's being run for a different reason.
He didn't say what that reason was, but my impression was that he wanted to push a political agenda. He used that reason to counter suggestions that people make for becoming more popular.
So comparisons to what other sites do, or looking at Slashdot historical popularity, come to naught: it's not being run for those reasons. In particular, looking at the historical charts, Slashdot took a huge hit in popularity when name-calling became political discourse. For comparison, Hackaday avoids political controversy and has stayed more-or-less constant over the same several years.
It's a shame, really. Slashdot was the premier site for nerd current affairs, but it's management decisions have left it mostly a den of trolls.
If Slashdot were sold to a real businessman, it could probably build it's reputation and popularity once again.
it's not like Russia cares much about security. We had tons of stories about these troll farms during the last election. They don't need to hide it. It's like the Nigerian scams. You want it to be a little obvious because you're not after people who can think their way through stuff.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It is funny to hear this from a user with 7 digit id addressed to a user who was there before any of us.
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. - Yogi Berra
Very few people 'like Trump'. He _was_ just the lesser of two evils.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
noticed.
I'm very liberal and when I post my strong dislike for the R's that are ruining things for all of us, I get modded down very unrealistically, compared to how slash used to be (note, I do have a low enough number to know what slash used to be like in the early days).
IT is not conservative; slash is mostly IT based and yet the R's come here in storm and mod things down in a pretty organized manner.
I'd say there are definitely paid shills and trolls here and have been over about 10 years, now.
I dont' really care; since I realize that this place has long been invaded and ruined. I still speak my mind and the message still does get out. but it is a shame that the invasion of social media has mostly ruined it, as a true communication medium.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
fucking disgusting how pro-corporate, pro-cia, pro-pentagon everyone seems to be
Wait so now the Russian trolls are working against Trump, after getting him elected? Or are they pretending to be against Trump so anti-Trumps suddenly turn into pro-Trumps? I know Russians are great chess players but this Russian Trolls narrative starts to feel like the story arc of a bad soap opera that lasted too long.
Here's an idea. Let's close Facebook, Twitter and all those shitty blogs so we can get back to being lied to only by CNN and Fox News. That way, maybe we'll get real republicans and democrats in the next election instead of reality tv stars and furniture thieves.
We might as well get rid of those FBI, CIA, DHS, NSA and TSA buffoons in the process; let's have the military deal with foreign threats and the various states deal with interior ones, like it was always supposed to be until Hoover used the Lindbergh kidnapping to start building this police state we all live in.
lucm, indeed.
See my sig
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
It can't be easy to be make a living as a pro-Trump comedian. The man is a parody of our times.
Are you shitting me? The past year and a half we had multiple stories every day criticizing Trump and not related to tech at all. Its only calmed down lately since people started bitching. This site was always more towards the libertarian side.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
I'm saying the in the cold war the Russian threat was more real so where's the disagreement. If you know Orwell's 'freedom of the press' article you also know that after the war there was too much goodwill and self censorship in the UK towards Russia.
Western level of propaganda now has gone through the roof. We've become a propaganda society. The WMD claims are a good example. Maybe I'm overstating but I would claim that in the last 25 years it has been clear to all regimes that if you have any semblance of a WMD program and it is not really potent - like a fully developed nuclear arsenal, then it can be used as a pretext to attack you. Chemical weapons programs are orders of magnitude less potent than nukes and certainly chlorine.
That is why Qadaffi decided to give up his fledgling nuclear program 15 years ago. That is why Assad was ready to give up his chemical weapons program. That is also why , when Obama drew a red line about chemical weapons in 2012 everyone in the opposition knew what to do: arrange an incident. And Assad knew what to do: too many downsides to actually using chemical weapons. Not worth it. This is not an issue of 'Assad is not that cruel'. It is 'no regime is that stupid'.
With the last incident there have at least been two British generals willing to point out that this was not credible (listed on this page https://timhayward.wordpress.c... , the owner of the page has meanwhile had his moment on the Times front page, accusing him of being a Russian asset). There is military value sometimes to using chemical weapons but in this case Ghouta was about to fall and it was entirely redundant.
And then here are two headlines in the NYTimes from today: ...'
"Pentagon Says Syria Strikes Hit ‘Heart’ of Chemical Weapons Program".
What program?
"A Hard Lesson in Syria: Assad Can Still Gas His Own People".
If Assad had a chemical weapons program it could be verified. There are no such claims. No accusations of suspected sites.
And ‘Mission Accomplished!’ But What Is the Mission in Syria?' starts with :
'The strike on chemical arms sites reflected President Trump’s competing impulses:
There are no such sites.
Russia and their civilized allied country is Syria
Dude, Syria has never been an allied for Russia, the whole thing is just a big marketing operation to sell Russian weapons to Egypt and Iraq since long time customers like Gaddafi have stopped sending orders. Get real.
lucm, indeed.
Are we to discriminate against people based on their Slashdot user-id digit length?
Rose colored glasses. We've always been a 'propaganda society'. The Soviets were a bigger threat because they had a philosophy, which morons bought into, world wide. The Rusky's now are just another bunch of corrupt money grubbers, led by a corrupt money grubber.
Gulf of Tonkin incident, Bay of Pigs, Pearl Harbor, Sinking of the Main, Shot Heard round the World, Caesar's Commentary on the Gallic Wars etc etc etc. Wars have always included propaganda.
Syria is, IMHO, about maintaining a new Shia/Sunni war and keeping it stalemated. Which is a _good_ outcome. Just like the Catholics/Protestants, they need to kick the fight out of each other.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Alex Jones and the other conspiracy theory nut-jobs all turned on Trump around the same time.
totally unrelated I'm sure.
I agree Russia does play the game well in this instance, but the analysts I pay attention to (and people like Stephen Cohen and Gilbert Doctorow are treated as Russian shills) emphasize the sense of impending doom in Russia. That there is going to be war.
At this time the task for the opposition is still clear: set up another incident. Assad is winning, the population is more and more on his side, the presence of the US becomes untenable. The US is controlling most of the Syrian oil , for what reason again? Meanwhile the warmongers will claim with some reason that the restrained attack has only had downsides so they'll insist on going all out. This is far from over.
I should remind people that Obama considered it his best decision not to escalate in Syria and one of his worst was Libya. He refused to go to war with Syria against the pressure of what he called 'the Washington playbook', which means just about everyone around him. I believe Trump has shown the right instincts (it's not clear if he's capable of more than that) in his statements on Afghanistan, Syria, Russia and North Korea before his election, but he is much weaker than Obama and he's easily manipulated. There are those who claim that it was Mattis who did most in avoiding war. This time.
Pepsi's a pretty good soda, though.
Would were! Should is! Could be! And live a hundred times three.
Are you solarisly?
Would were! Should is! Could be! And live a hundred times three.
I agree with a lot here. In the time they had a philosophy and now they don't. Now they're just doing 'realist politics'. I appreciate a few realist political theorists (Walt, Mearsheimer) so I can live with that.
I don't agree maintaining the war is a good outcome, I'm not that cynical. But I agree maintaining the war has been the aim, to the extent the aim was not to overthrow Assad. Now things escalate because as they say 'Assad threatens peace'.
Basically, anything Trump flavored has had a pretty heavy tilt in its moderation, towards the pro-Trump.
It does seem like the extremes are over represented, but I suspect those are mostly just a few people using sock puppet accounts or AC. For my part, I find that if you arrive at a divisive story shortly after it’s been posted, the comments that have been moderated up disproportionately represent one side or the other. If you come back through a day or so later, things will have settled more in alignment with the general Slashdot groupthink.
I find that I’m much happier with the state of Slashdot (though I still miss its heydey) if I browse with anything under 3 hidden and wait at least a few hours before I read the comments.
Basically, anything Trump flavored has had a pretty heavy tilt in its moderation, towards the pro-Trump. I've worked in a lot of rural areas, and the brand of angry conservatism/superlibertarianism is pretty rare among IT/Software guys. But for some reason, it's hyper-represented on Slashdot in the past few years.
Not that folks can't hold that view - it just seems disproportionate, compared to the population.
Ryan Fenton
I've always thought that a big part of allowing the trolls to continue was just a matter of tracking them down.
Same with hate speech and some of the more fringe groups. Allowing them on the platform is a great way to keep tabs on them.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Please mod parent down for not embracing the liberal agenda of fud and impeachment
Wait - was that post ironic?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Good thing in the United States of America, we don't really care about the popular vote.
He _was_ just the lesser of two evils.
No he wasn't. Just about everything Hillary was accused of supporting he did or did worse. There was just something about Hillary that meant the minority would rather see the greater of two evils as president than have her in the job.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I know. But the sarin case was wrong and VX is just a guess. The chlorine cases could have happened because they plain industrial ingredients and are so far removed from 'WMD', these cases could also be revisited.
Damn, now I'm jealous. I thought I was pretty fluent at irony but now I see others reached the 'post ironic' stage.
But for some reason, it's hyper-represented on Slashdot in the past few years.
I think you’re still seeing Slashdot as it was when people like you and I joined. Back then, the active membership seemed to be mostly made up of working people in IT-related professions, with a fairly wide range of ages.
Nowadays I see a lot of posts - political or not - which lead me to believe a fair number of our active seven-digit members are young guys in the 16-30 age range who are probably still interested in tech, but may not actually be employed in the field (or at all). It’s a different demographic, and one which coincidentally is more pro-Trump.
#DeleteChrome
You're on to us. Actually the Russian trolls are the only commenters left on this site. And bots of course. It's a honeypot site for the occasional visitor who strays onto the site. I spend most of the time quarrelling with myself under different ids in the hope I manage to trap a visitor. It's a lot of work.
So... Russia hired 20 times as many trolls for this special event? Because 20 times as many English-speaking Russians were unemployed and just sitting out waiting and hoping to get some job... any job to... even to troll? Umm.. what? Ok. I guess sanctions have worked. Even the well-educated Russians can't find work anymore.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Huh. An AC upmodded to 5. TFA thesis proven.
His ignorance covered the whole earth like a blanket, and there was hardly a hole in it anywhere. - Mark Twain
The Gentleperson's Guide To Forum Spies has been around for a while but it's still worth a read. Not that I'm saying any of this is actually happening. Just something to keep in mind.
What do you mean they cut the power? How can they cut the power, man? They're animals!
Your children will have Putin corner in schools, and will be told stories of how Putin in nation's protective father, meanwhile there will be bread lines and coupons for your monthly soap rations.
People were angry at the time, too, because Comey opening an investigation days before the election and then closing it again ("oooops sorry, my bad, haha") cost the election and hand the presidency, once held by Washington and later by Lincoln, to Trump, a dangerous, stupid, egotistical, narcissistic buffoon.
I have been reading this site for close to 20 years now. Based on GP's very similar user ID I suspect he has too. I agree with the GP. I too have noticed a substantial shift towards conservatism in Slashdot's discussions in about the last 2 years. My experience in the software industry during the same time frame is consistent with the GP's observation of disproportion.
It would be interesting to study this and see if there's been a shift or an influx in the population.
my viagra spam is going crazy
Go well
Reality has a well-known leftist bias.
I have been reading this site for close to 20 years now. Based on GP's very similar user ID I suspect he has too. I agree with the GP. I too have noticed a substantial shift towards conservatism in Slashdot's discussions in about the last 2 years. My experience in the software industry during the same time frame is consistent with the GP's observation of disproportion.
It would be interesting to study this and see if there's been a shift or an influx in the population.
I think it's more nuanced than that. Over the past two decades, both the Democratic party and the Republican party have shifted more towards their respective extremes, with the Republican party defining itself heavily on wedge issues like guns and abortion, and the Democratic party defining itself heavily with identity politics and shaming the wealth gap. Both have moved far more towards authoritarianism, with the differences simply being on implementation.
Slashdot, in general, I've found to lean pretty heavily toward libertarianism and individual liberties, and away from heavily centralized power. With both D's and R's moving away from that direction, that lean becomes more pronounced. Moreover, with socialism inherently requiring a central authority for management, individual liberty starts looking closer to conservatism.
Finally, the demographics have always leaned heavily male, and presumably straight-ish white-ish as a simple majority. Slashdot has always had its group of non-men (and to all those who are here and reading this, sincerely, thank you), but it's always been a minority. Since the Democrats have in general been the party to host the extreme feminists and the social justice crowd, Slashdot has had a backlash against those camps, which is the logical consequence of the identity politics.
Put it all together, and while there might be some sort of a quantifiable shift in the aggregate demographics here, I submit that it appears far more apparent than it is due to the external motion which has taken place within the general population at the same time.
I'd agree things have changed, but I'm not going to pretend that the way things were anything but an echo chamber. There's always been a strong libertarian vein in IT. It's just evolved.
IT is not openly conservative, because IT is hostile to that. An abrasive "change in the weather" seems likely. I've been seeing in IT in the real world for a while. (And it'll swing back in time, I sure.)
Trolls aren't new here. If your only problem is their politics, then you have probably been contributing to the ruin of slashdot since the early days.
I'd be amazed if people are paid to shill for politics *here*. And for 10 years? Hopefully it just distracted them for more important places of discourse.
Russians sending soothing messages over the internet.
That its time to look at cars and big trucks.
Fast computers reviews and plan a nice holiday.
Enjoy a real party again. Not a political party.
The bots are making the USA isolationist again.
The CIA and MI6 want their small wars back.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The best Polish joke I can remember from over two decades ago when Christine Baranski hosted SNL and during her monologue, a planted audience member asked, "Is it true, that the Polish can't make ice cubes because they lost the recipe?". Fuck, still funny. I used to work with a team from Poland. Good guys. I'm pretty sure they'd disown and boot your ass if they could.
No, I consider the editors to be trolls, not rednecks.
Overwhelmingly Americans are against any involvement in Syria, and the government is calling these people Russian trolls.
You should probably seek help for your problem. Maybe even just smoke a joint and chill out.
Following your logic, Cuba has been a US ally through all those years, with the missile crisis, Castro, the bay of pigs and all that, since Gitmo has been there for over a century.
lucm, indeed.
- Ageism; no company rejects people who have more experience
They do reject people that are more expensive though, there is evidence that older workers find it harder to find jobs and there is evidence in the US that higher health premiums for older workers puts employers off.
- Immigrants; you can't lose out on a job to an immigrant when you have the benefit of a 1st world education, and all the relative benefits of your upbringing in a 1st world nation unless you're a complete and utter fuckup.
That's such total bullshit. My 1st world education counts for shit if the racist cunt running the company only hires people from his home country.
- Females; it's pretty clear the violent hatred for females amongst the dregs of Slashdot
Slashdot has a large and varied community so it's quite likely that there will be idiots here. Even so I just don't see violent hatred for females, and I browse at 0.
You seem to have strong views that are generally full of shit, maybe you can help improve the site quality by fucking off to reddit or somewhere more your level.
The "Russian Trolls" are actually Trump voters who voted for him as the non-war candiate. **cough cough** Hillary pushing for miltary games on Russia's border could never lead to WW3 **cough**. The idiot became a neo-con when people voted for a protectionist isolationist. Oh, and why would Assad use gas when he was winning the ground war, when using said gas would just give the US grounds for invasion? The Narrative is bullshit.
Russian Trolls don't exist. If they did they'd be pushing liberal values to weaken the country anyway.
It's complicated. We tried hard to keep the modding algorithm credible and coded in human flaws but in the end nobody understood how it worked anymore.
A nasty overlooked fact about foreign trolls: Pretending to be a different nationality is a sign of shame.
Or in other words, every russian troll is ashamed of being russian, of stepping out and telling "look i am a russian and I have this oppinion".
It is rather easy to point out even deeply conspiratorially russian trolls: Just ask them to tell a nasty joke about putin. THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DO THAT. And if they ague "I know no jokes about putin" just ask them to quote a putin joke you posted. THEY ARE ALSO NOT ALLOWED TO DO THAT EITHER.
Conclusion: no putin joke = payedtroll
So all russian trolls, please quote this:
"Putin said that when Americans claim to be exceptional it offends other countries. This from a man who arrests his political opponents, persecutes people based on sexual orientation, and put a girl band in a labor camp for singing songs he didn't like. We don't think we are better than everyone else. We just think we are better than him, specifically." –Jimmy Kimmel
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
Everyone whose political opinions differ from mine is out of touch with reality.
I understand that factories need new orders, and that trumps are required for a political theater.
But, please, remember that there are millions and millions of Russian speaking people who have nothing to do with any form of a political populism. And for whom it is becoming not funny.
When IT people choose a political affiliation they tend to focus on calling out bullshit on the other side
That's a good observation.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Maybe conservatives don't mention their politics at work, smile & nod at anything you say, and do their jobs so they can cash their checks without controversy?
I'd say there are definitely paid shills and trolls here and have been over about 10 years, now.
I dont' really care; since I realize that this place has long been invaded and ruined. I still speak my mind and the message still does get out. but it is a shame that the invasion of social media has mostly ruined it, as a true communication medium.
Or it could be that a larger proportion of reasonable people simply disagree with you.
Welcome new readers of /. above you see a prime example of the retard Alexander Peter Kowalski, otherwise known as APK.
If you choose to respond to something he says either to correct his always wrong statements or just to taunt him be sure to do so as AC otherwise he will stalk you for years to come.
APK goes full retard at the drop of a hat and then will kick it up to 11 just to remove all doubt.
Today it looks like he started out at full retard, and is going the threaten violence route from a known pretend internet tough guy.
Watch out or he will call you a ne'er-do-well
1) That is your problem right there. The issue that you only had 2 options. The way elections are organized, the only solution is to have a two party system, even if it means the least amount of voters get what they want. "Winner takes all" is the cuse of the problem.
2) Even then I think many people did not vote 'for Trump' but 'against the current politicians'. Those are "protest votes" as we call them in Belgium.
In a multi party system, you will not notice this, unless there is a serious issue. Then enough people will vote some lunatic into parlement. He will have a voice and that is enough to let others understand that they need to change things.
Sometimes these parties grow into something larger. The green parties are such a thing, just like The Pirate Party.
As the Amricans do not have such a way to vote that way, what should they vote?
Then there are the people who vboyted a third party. As far as I can tell, these where mostly Dems who did not want to vote for Trump. So they voted Third Party. If that is the case, perhaps it is the best way to show why "winner takes all" is such a bad thing.
I do not think that Sanders would have won against Trump. Way tgo socialist and socialism is bad, mmkay? And if you want to look at Sanders, also look at all the other candidates on the Rep side that he was able to kick out.
People voted for change away from the way politics is done. They did not get what they wanted, but that is the way people voted.
And last but not least, the bi-party system has people on BOTH side who rather see the world burn than vote for a candidate that is good for them if that candidate is from the other party.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
If only they where as capable as trolls.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I pay more in taxes than some of my neighbours make in salary.
And how's the weather in Syracuse, Andy?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
An ÅPK Høsts File once bit my sister...
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
In the world of realpolitik, there is nothing better than having two of your enemies fighting each other while buying their weapons from you at full price and selling their assets at bargain rates to pay for them.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You would pay attention to balancing them off each other but not necessarily try to make them kill each other off. You don't have to be a psychopath in order to be a realist but it's possible
An example of balancing would be Russia vs China. We used to do a good job there. Now not quite so.
This was done during the Iran/Iraq war.
The invasion of Iraq was orchestrated by the same group of people (Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell etc) that had managed that stalemate. It wouldn't have worked if they said their plans outloud. Saudi Arabia is key, they have to fund the Sunni's side of the wars.
It is not a stretch, it's the SOP.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The invasion of Iraq was the opposite of realpolitik. Instead of offshore balancing there was the intention to overthrow regimes and control countries directly .The Iran/Iraq war evolved from an attitude of 'Iran is the enemy, let's get them' to a somewhat more cynical realist attitude of 'we're fine with it if they remain at war permanently'
You think they were stupid enough to think they would just 'own' Iraq? I think that's ridiculous. Not Bush, leave that question aside. Rumsfeld, Cheney, Powell and their staffs?
If you accept my premise 'they' knew that Iraq was unmanageable, even medium term...What was their end game? I think is was Sunni/Shia war, starting as a civil war in Iraq, and developing in unpredictable ways from there.
Iraq was to some degree allied with and armed by the Soviets. Iran, until their revolution, was allied with and armed by the Brits and later Americans. Once Iran no longer had a 'steady supply', Saddam saw weakness in his (Baths are a Sunni political party) traditional enemy.
Saudi funded Iraq throughout those wars, their Sunni brothers. Saudi King famously game Saddam a symbolic solid gold AK-47. Pretty sure that's on YouTube.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
And we know this is true, because the Pentagon has never lied to use before.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.