[HN Gopher] Who's Been Impersonating This ProPublica Reporter?
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Who's Been Impersonating This ProPublica Reporter?
        
       Author : hn_acker
       Score  : 100 points
       Date   : 2026-04-13 16:05 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.propublica.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.propublica.org)
        
       | Lerc wrote:
       | Judging by the relative scarcity of instances like this being
       | reported, I would guess that they are successful enough to be a
       | ongoing source of intelligence.
       | 
       | Apart from the subject matter (which also points to Russia) if it
       | were not Russia doing this successfully, they would be motivated
       | to do this at a much larger and more obvious scale.
       | 
       | Fake news is obvious and pervasive, because it is trying to be
       | obvious and pervasive. The goal is not to make people believe the
       | falsehoods (although they occasionally have luck there) but to
       | make people doubt the truth.
       | 
       | If impersonating reporters was not working for them for
       | intelligence gathering, or they knew someone else was doing it. I
       | think they would apply some of their misinformation resources to
       | do massive wide scale obviously bad impersonation of reporters.
       | It would create an atmosphere of suspicion that would dry up
       | sources everywhere.
        
       | cynicalsecurity wrote:
       | If the impersonator was asking about Ukraine, rest assured that
       | was a Russian spy. Ukraine is kicking Russia's ass pretty well
       | right now with UAVs, so that's why they are trying to get
       | information on them.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2026-04-13 23:01 UTC)