Yet another Hacker News

LLMs and Data Poisoning Are Weaponized to Manufacture Consensus

13 points marketinganai 1 hour ago 6 comments

TacticalCoder 1 hour ago | parent

TFA is highly confused. The story about the easter front during WWII is well-known: and it's not because Russia lost more men that they were more efficient (they weren't) than the US during WWII. We're talking about one nation whose army orchestrated the biggest logistic event in the world, ever, and that same nation that succeeded in mastering the atom well enough to make Japan surrender (which as a sidenote prevented Russia from capturing Japan).

While meanwhile Russia was sending its troops by feet or on donkeys to the german front.

So please, just please: both Russia and the US (and the UK, and others) participated in defeating the nazis but it's not because Russia sent malnourished troops on donkeyback and lost 27 million men that it "did more" to beat the nazis.

Then TFA seems also very slanted: it begins with Russia, China and Iran poisining the web to manufacture consensus but then it's all about Belgium / Leopold in the late 19th century attacking Congo.

Yes, we know that happened. It was 150 years ago. It's not Leopold who's now data poisoning LLMs to try to pretend Belgium didn't invade Congo in 1880 or something.

The fact is: Russia is currently attacking Ukraine and poisoning the Web (and hence LLMs) and Iran slaughtered 30 000 of its own civilians in early 2026 and publicly hung athletes who were speaking out about islamism and Iran is also poisoning the Web (for example while we constantly hear about Gaza, we hardly ever hear about Iran slaughtering 30 000 civilians, sending its guards into hospitals to finish the wounded).

So who's poising the Web here? TFA's author with its political views and priorities (apparently not denouncing the evilness of the iranian regime in 2026 nor denouncing the evilness of nazism in WWII but denouncing... the acts of Belgium in fucking 1880)?

Seriously:

thiagoharry 56 minutes ago | parent

Of course, defeating Nazi Germany was not the work of a single country. But it is perfectly possible to say that the contribution of the Soviet Union was greater, not because they lost more people, but because they defeated far more Nazi soldiers. The majority of the Nazis' losses were against the Soviet Union. If they did this with less technology than the United States and with fewer resources, that makes the feat even greater, as it explains the much greater sacrifice they made to achieve it.

profsummergig 1 hour ago | parent

Remember, it's only "manufactured consent" when it's about something they don't like.

api 58 minutes ago | parent

TL; DR: propaganda still works in the age of LLMs.

swed420 6 minutes ago | parent

Sounds like it works better and with less manual effort. What could go wrong.