alt Hacker NewsYes, it is extraordinarily clear that HN, X, Reddit and everywhere else are currently subject to an enormous astroturf influence campaign likely driven by china.
Yes, it is extraordinarily clear that HN, X, Reddit and everywhere else are currently subject to an enormous astroturf influence campaign likely driven by china.
I wouldn't be so quick to conclude China is the source.
It used to be something you'd more or less have to be a state actor to do, but it's been a year since clawd/moltbook/openclaw/whatever first made driving social media accounts from LLMs real easy, the cost and barrier to entry for running an influence campaign has dropped to basically nothing, and all it takes is one person with a bare minimum of technical know how and an axe to grind and that's another couple of hundred bot accounts perpetuating an agenda that could be anything from politics, market manipulation, whatever.
State actors obviously have this tech too, so they should not be ruled out.