> this is such a... wrong conclusion to make from the study. the study has found a correlation and by no means is it a causation.

I'm not seeing any assertion of causation from that quote.

Oh, there are places to pee, if you're brave. My last venture into a NYC public restroom was the one at Sun Yat-sen Plaza, which is under a beautiful pavilion. There was a man hanging around the urinals without apparent purpose other than staring at me because of course there was. There was only 1 working stall of 3, over the entire surface of which someone had managed to squirt at least a quart of liquid poo.

Nazi Germany and occupied forces used census data, municipal population registers, etc., to identify and track down targeted people. The United States, during World War II, used census information to assist in the removal and incarceration of citizens with Japanese, Italian, and German heritage. The Rwanda population database explicitly classified people as Hutu, Tutsi, or Twa. This became the mechanism to target Tutsi during the Rwandan genocide. In China today, these databases are used to surveil and imprison Uyghurs.

Those are examples of official policy turned to dark purposes. It did not even include malfeasance for malfeasance or criminality by individuals or cartels who somehow gain access.

I'm neither a fan of advertising nor Trump, but this reads like yet another patronizing think piece about how the wrong people get a vote and it's terrible that they use it in ways of which the author does not approve. "If only there were some way to control what these people say and hear, we would not have such problems as Trump."

The problem with controlling the flow of information, besides being morally reprehensible, is that it leads inevitably to ignoring problems that do not directly affect or concern the gatekeepers, like rural economic devastation. As well, these censorious advocates always imagine the mechanisms of control will only be used by people they agree with, never imagining the mechanisms of control will be used by their political opponents.

The author later reveals the agenda:

> “But it's free speech!” Bullshit. No one is entitled to yell at you “GET 20% OFF THIS UNDERWEAR YOU GLANCED AT YESTERDAY” with a dopamine megaphone in your bedroom. And to track 90% of your life to know when and how to say it. That's not free speech, that's harassment.

A fair and honest reckoning with the question would acknowledge the problems such a ban would introduce with free speech, not simply dismiss them as he does here. If you make a thing, and then you tell people about the thing, then you transgress against the advertising ban. The idea is nonsense.

The key claim is: “Hoy tenemos evidencia de un cambio de direcciones IP de varios servidores de la Registraduría Nacional. Significa que se vulneró el software...” and then: “El único con capacidad de hacer eso en el mundo es el estado de Israel.”

In English: “Today we have evidence of a change in IP addresses on several National Registry servers. This means the software was breached...” and “The only one with the capacity to do that in the world is the State of Israel.”

To be clear, I think the accusation is absurd, but I am curious to see the reaction of the HN community.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48640969

Points: 8

# Comments: 3

The only erasure is the attempt to diffuse the term to include Akkadians, Amharics, Carthaginians, Phoenicians, Black Israelites, adherents to the Nation of Islam, all 1.3 billions Arabs, what-have-you, when it always and only ever referred to anti-Jew hatred.

* iStrat, Avisa's predecessor, was separately linked in French reporting to fake online personas used to publish commentary about business disputes. The Avisa Partners Wikipedia summary, based on French media reports, says JDN traced fake analyst profiles and critical commentary to iStrat-era activity, while iStrat and its owners denied the claims. [4]

* There was also a France-linked, though not company-linked, covert influence operation in Africa. In December 2020, Facebook/Meta removed networks for coordinated inauthentic behavior targeting African audiences; one network was linked to individuals associated with the French military. Meta said the operation used fake accounts, pages posing as news or military entities, and off-platform domains. Graphika and Stanford described it as French and Russian influence operations going head-to-head in Africa. [5] [6]

* The Washington Post reported the same Facebook takedown as people affiliated with the French military using fake Facebook accounts to meddle in African politics, while noting that Facebook said it did not have evidence that the French military institution itself directed the activity. [7]

[1] Operation Fake Info: firm used by French business elites suspected of infiltrating Wikipedia https://www.mediapart.fr/en/journal/france/230722/operation-...

[2] L'affaire Avisa Partners sur Wikipédia, expliquée https://www.wikimedia.fr/affaire-avisa-partners-sur-wikipedi...

[3] France: Avisa Partners withdraws its defamation actions against a number of media outlets https://europeanjournalists.org/blog/2023/06/29/france-avisa...

[4] Avisa Partners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avisa_Partners

[5] Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior from France and Russia https://about.fb.com/news/2020/12/removing-coordinated-inaut...

[6] More-Troll Kombat: French and Russian influence operations go head to head targeting audiences in Africa https://graphika.com/reports/more-troll-kombat

[7] People affiliated with French military used Facebook to meddle in Africa https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/15/people-...

* Rally Forge, a U.S. marketing firm, was linked by Facebook to a 2020 domestic U.S. operation run on behalf of Turning Point USA, involving fake accounts and coordinated behavior. Axios reported that Facebook removed 200 accounts, 55 pages, and 76 Instagram accounts. [3] [4]

* New Knowledge / Project Birmingham is another ugly example. In the 2017 Alabama Senate race, Democratic-aligned operatives experimented with Russian-style disinformation tactics, including fake or misleading Facebook activity and buying retweets. The effort was reportedly small and probably did not decide the election, but it proves the category exists inside the U.S. political ecosystem. [5] [6]

* There are also U.S.-linked pro-Western covert influence operations. Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory analyzed accounts removed by Twitter and Meta for platform manipulation or coordinated inauthentic behavior; later reporting said the Pentagon ordered a review after fake accounts suspected of being run by the U.S. military were taken down. Meta later attributed a campaign targeting the Middle East and Central Asia to people associated with the U.S. military. [7] [8] [9]

* Cambridge Analytica is adjacent but not identical. It had U.S. offices and U.S. political clients, and it was part of the broader “election manipulation for hire” world, but its central scandal was data harvesting, psychographic targeting, and political ad targeting, not necessarily fake-account bot networks in the same narrow sense. [10]

[1] August 2020 Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report https://about.fb.com/news/2020/09/august-2020-cib-report/

[2] Facebook deletes dozens of fake accounts, pages run by CLS Strategies https://www.prweek.com/article/1693342/facebook-deletes-doze...

[3] October 2020 Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior Report https://about.fb.com/news/2020/11/october-2020-cib-report/

[4] Facebook removes inauthentic campaign linked to Turning Point USA https://www.axios.com/2020/10/08/facebook-turning-point-usa-...

[5] Researcher whose firm wrote report on Russian interference used questionable online tactics during Alabama Senate race https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/19/researc...

[6] Project Birmingham (disinformation campaign) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Birmingham_%28disinfor...

[7] Unheard Voice: Evaluating five years of pro-Western covert influence operations https://public-assets.graphika.com/reports/graphika_stanford...

[8] Meta, Twitter take down accounts pushing pro-U.S. messages https://www.axios.com/2022/08/24/meta-twitter-take-down-acco...

[9] Fewer Bots, More Ads: The Pentagon's Evolving Online Influence Campaigns https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/fewer-bots--more-ads--t...

[10] Cambridge Analytica https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambridge_Analytica

https://youtu.be/T6JFTmQCFHg

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2026/03/plan-to-rein-...

No cap on A minuses though.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48291113

Points: 2

# Comments: 0