[HN Gopher] Want to sway an election? Here's how much fake onlin...
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Want to sway an election? Here's how much fake online accounts cost
Author : rbanffy
Score : 86 points
Date : 2025-12-13 20:48 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| haunter wrote:
| Next one to look out for: 2026 Hungary. Fidesz is basically a
| russian backdoor in the EU and they will do everything to stay in
| power.
|
| https://telex.hu/english/2025/12/11/most-hungarians-fear-rus...
|
| They are also doing everything to bypass the no-political-ads-on-
| facebook ban https://telex.hu/english/2025/10/29/despite-the-ban-
| fidesz-c...
| spiderfarmer wrote:
| Man. I logged in to Twitter the other day and it's now 100%
| unfiltered racist fear mongering and nazi propaganda. Truly
| frightening. And I can't believe people still consider it a
| useful platform.
| an0malous wrote:
| Network effects are powerful, it's still the "town square" of
| the world
| flipgimble wrote:
| It's more accurately the "truck stop bathroom wall" of the
| world under new management.
| reactordev wrote:
| Dubious claim now
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| No, it's not 100% anything. The content _you 're_ looking at
| is what you see.
| amitav1 wrote:
| I don't know why you're getting downvoted for this, but
| it's the same thing for me. The For You tab is a cesspool,
| but if you stick to the Following tab and unfollow anybody
| who says pretty much anything political, it's actually a
| pretty nice platform.
| mettamage wrote:
| I've met Hungarian people in the Netherlands and they're doing
| everything they can to become Dutch. One Hungarian even speaks
| fluent with no accent, and that is quite a feat.
|
| I think it's quite unfortunate as it will mean that Hungary
| will become less pro EU, simply because the really pro EU
| people (that are also highly educated) seem to be going out of
| the country according to my anecdata. It's n = 2 to be fair,
| but I think it's enough for it to warrant some more research
| since I am simply stumbling across this group of people, I'm
| not actively seeking it out.
| jsnell wrote:
| The _Science_ paper linked is paywalled, is anyone aware of a
| preprint?
|
| I find it a bit curious that they've chosen to use SMS
| verifications as a proxy for the difficulty of creating an
| account, when there are similar marketplaces for selling the
| actual end product of bulk-created accounts. Was there some issue
| with that kind of data? SMS verification is just one part of the
| anti-bulk account puzzle, for both the attacker and defender.
| lysace wrote:
| I have witnessed obvious and systematic synthetic upvotes of HN
| posts. Over and over. I don't think the site has enough
| protections in place.
|
| Maybe have YC invest in some startups combatting this using
| machine learning?
|
| (Given the focus of HN it's typically some product being pushed,
| though. Not a politician.)
| Nasrudith wrote:
| It is machine learning, not machine telepathy or machine
| precognition. Without causality you just automate superstition.
| alecco wrote:
| Hacked voting machines are a problem... unless _our guys_ do it.
|
| Fake online accounts are a problem... unless _our guys_ do it.
|
| Totalitarian measures like persecuting people for social media
| posts and forcing digital id are a problem... unless _our guys_
| are in power.
|
| It was a good run for democracy. What was it, 200 years? I wonder
| comes is next. Techno-feudalism? Well, I'm sure it won't be a
| problem as long as it's _our guys_.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| How is this little "both sides bad" rant related to the article
| _at all_?
| alecco wrote:
| First off, let me be clear I believe Russian intelligence
| does a lot of election interference in both EU and US and has
| a lot of social media presence. And also, I personally think
| Putin is an evil person worth of being a Bond villain.
|
| That out of the way, if the post were about ballot stuffing
| by the Democrats with irrefutable evidence like I've seen,
| would _you_ feel exactly the same way? Rhetorical question. I
| hope you can come out of the mind-spell and recognize evil
| for being evil whoever does it. Not just thinking evil can
| only be done by "the other people".
|
| Note: I'm not even American and dislike both political
| parties. Same in EU, I deeply dislike the EU self-appointed
| caste, but I also deeply dislike the new right parties. And
| don't get me started with UK... So I think I'm reasonably un-
| biased with regards to those false dichotomies.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| > if the post were about ballot stuffing by the Democrats
| with irrefutable evidence like I've seen
|
| That's incredible. You're not even American, and have seen
| irrefutable evidence of "the Democrats" participating in
| blatant electoral fraud? Why haven't you shared this?
| There's no shortage of literal billionaires who'd reward
| you handsomely for such proof!
|
| Beyond this, why I constantly make fun of "both-sides!"
| guys is because they tend to ignore _degree_. To a
| vegetarian, eating hamburgers is wrong (some might even
| call it evil). But you 'd be hard-pressed to find one who'd
| consider hambuger-eaters and murderers basically the same.
| You'd rightfully consider someone with such beliefs insane.
| Between murderers and hamburger eaters, one is considerably
| worse than the other.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > What was it, 200 years?
|
| Rant aside, I'm curious where you pin the start of this.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| It was known to the Attic Greeks that democracy had a fatal
| bug: a system that entrusts ultimate authority to the masses
| will predictably privilege persuasion over knowledge, passion
| over judgment, and populism over excellence.
|
| It just couldn't be exploited effectively until now. Thanks,
| Mark and Elon.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| No, mass media had been around much longer than just a
| couple years.
|
| But also, that bug is why our government was initially set
| up with the structure it was. And why you'll occasionally
| see complaints about parts of the structure being
| "undemocratic".
| techdmn wrote:
| It was set up the way it was because the founders didn't
| trust voters. Voters don't always make optimal choices.
| Nobody said democracy was perfect. It's just a lot better
| than every other system we've ever tried. Benevolent
| dictatorship is good in theory, but quite rare in
| practice.
| alecco wrote:
| > It just couldn't be exploited effectively until now.
|
| Are you saying until Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 there
| were no effective election interference problems?
| the_gastropod wrote:
| Politics isn't Newton's Third Law of Motion. Prior to
| Musk's takeover, there absolutely and unequivocally was
| no "equal but opposite" deliberately biased system in
| place like there is now.
|
| This is a classic playbook in U.S. politics. Conservative
| media gins up a conspiracy theory (e.g., Hollywood is
| biased, universities are biased, mainstream media is
| biased, social media is biased, etc. etc.) and then they
| use these imaginary foes as justification for _actual_
| retribution. There was no purposeful and systematic bias
| at Twitter under Jack Dorsey (himself, a pretty
| conservative character, having backed Tulsi Gabbard and
| RFK Jr in the past election, both of whom both now work
| in the Trump administration).
| alecco wrote:
| * Athenian Democracy (c. 508-322 BCE) * Roman Republic
| (c. 509-27 BCE) * Dutch Republic (c. 1500?) *
| French and American Revolutions and constitutional monarchies
| (c. 1770-ish-present?)
| perching_aix wrote:
| I don't know man, I think people disappove of voting fraud and
| sockpuppeting rather unilaterally.
|
| > forcing digital id are a problem... unless our guys are in
| power.
|
| Digital government ID based mandatory auth, properly
| implemented or not (read: anon via zk vs. tracking), does not
| "properly remediate" [0] this issue. You'd limit identity
| forgery to those who administrate identities in the first
| place.
|
| [0] if that is even possible, which I find questionable
| mettamage wrote:
| I'm from the Netherlands. That is slightly relevant given that
| we have 20+ parties here, so I'm coming in with that mindset. I
| understand that Americans have a 2 party political system which
| makes things a lot more entrenched.
|
| The political parties I've voted for (all across the board)
| have never felt to me like "our guys". They simply felt like
| the most sane option at the time.
|
| Not everyone sinks into political tribalism.
|
| I simply want a sane democratic voting process.
|
| And I find first past the post voting to be insane. It seems
| that a country is then doomed into having a 2 party system.
|
| From a CS course called distributed systems, we know that if
| you only have a single source of failure, that's a
| vulnerability right there. A 2 party system can be a single
| source of failure if one of the two political parties is
| corrupted and gains too much power. To be fair, that could also
| happen when there are 20+ parties, but it is less likely.
| alecco wrote:
| Yeah. It's complicated. See Veritasium's "Why Democracy is
| Mathematically Impossible"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf7ws2DF-zk
|
| And also Idiocracy. This one is becoming more relevant. In
| all countries and all races.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Plenty of people were pointing out that voting machines had
| poor security for about two decades. Even before that, there
| was the mechanically disastrous Bush vs Gore Florida ballot.
|
| America being what it is, with endless Voting Rights Act
| lawsuits required to keep the southern states running vaguely
| fair elections, it was impossible to get a bipartisan consensus
| that elections should actually be fair. And so the system
| deteriorates.
| thfuran wrote:
| >Hacked voting machines are a problem... unless our guys do it.
|
| If they hack voting machines, they're not my guys, friend.
| ivape wrote:
| I am utterly terrified of elections finally. I didn't expect that
| to be in my timeline. The masses are really crazy.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| The conclusion that an account being cheap is the problem as a
| reason for regulation is a disturbingly wrong-headed on multiple
| levels. It essentially says. "If only superpowers can use it
| would be a-okay!". A monopoly on manipulation is a bad thing for
| the same reasons allowing only incumbents to run political ads
| would be.
| sejje wrote:
| Do we have solid evidence that these accounts actually change
| votes?
| fsflover wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46223522
| dehrmann wrote:
| When Citizens United was a big deal, I was torn over the premise
| of the concern for election integrity. Ideally, voters would make
| rational, informed decisions. They'd see ads, but know they all
| have an agenda, so they'd do their own research and come to a
| conclusion. Worrying about biased or inaccurate noise influencing
| elections means you think _people can 't be trusted to vote_.
| Which might be true, and if it is, it's a bigger problem than
| corporate speech and fake accounts.
| jawon wrote:
| This is "why are we going to space when we haven't cured
| cancer" reasoning.
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(page generated 2025-12-13 23:00 UTC)