> Am I paranoid or do certain topics get upvoted with suspicious frequency lately?
Given the ease of targeting sites for manipulation, HN is probably prominent enough to be worth some psyops effort, though nothing on the scale of the major social media platforms. So, it wouldn't be unexpected though I haven't noticed it, particularly.
> Now that shit is popping off in Europe there is an uptick in NSA/CIA/America bad posts with anti-free press sprinkled on top. Every post about events unfolding in Europe were flagged and didn't even reach the front page here until the last few days.
There's a fairly normal thing here that well-covered potential political events, even fairly extreme ones that don't offer particularly novel discussion opportunities, tend to get down voted along with routine political events. But at a certain level of significance of actual rather than potential events, there's often a phase transition where the down voting is less aggressive (sometimes, there may also be, usually limited, mod intervention to allow some discussion.) So, I’m not convinced that that is particularly suspicious in this case, though the particular content bias may (or may not) reflect some influence of “inauthentic actors”.
Given the ease of targeting sites for manipulation, HN is probably prominent enough to be worth some psyops effort, though nothing on the scale of the major social media platforms. So, it wouldn't be unexpected though I haven't noticed it, particularly.
> Now that shit is popping off in Europe there is an uptick in NSA/CIA/America bad posts with anti-free press sprinkled on top. Every post about events unfolding in Europe were flagged and didn't even reach the front page here until the last few days.
There's a fairly normal thing here that well-covered potential political events, even fairly extreme ones that don't offer particularly novel discussion opportunities, tend to get down voted along with routine political events. But at a certain level of significance of actual rather than potential events, there's often a phase transition where the down voting is less aggressive (sometimes, there may also be, usually limited, mod intervention to allow some discussion.) So, I’m not convinced that that is particularly suspicious in this case, though the particular content bias may (or may not) reflect some influence of “inauthentic actors”.