And Jesus fucking Christ what the hell happened to this website that that nonsense right-wing talking point of money hungry scientists is even a thing?
The US estimated that the China's great firewall employs 50,000 people.
With that assumption, you might reasonably conclude that a few of those 50,000 lurk on slashdot and try to direct the conversation in the comments section. It wouldn't take much, a single person could reasonably read all story posts and watch over the comments section.
Much of the analysis could be done by AI, so that no one has to pay attention... just wait for the AI to pop up an alert, verify by hand, and address the issue.
I would also assume that they have banks of automated slashdot logins, so that whenever something comes up that they don't like they can find a login that has mod points.
And perhaps several tiers of responders, so that the "no it isn't" response can be entered by a low-level employee with limited understanding of English, and perhaps a more nuanced fluent speaker for some of the more insightful posts.
And also, perhaps they have files on the individual commenters here, so that they can try out different techniques and see which ones tend to get the commenter angry. Has anyone noticed that responses to their posts have a sort of "tide" to them, where there will be a time period where everyone just contradicts, then a time period where people insult, then a time period where they all say that you (the commenter) aren't qualified? Perhaps they are searching for the correct way to get you so pissed off and leave slashdot.
I know, probably a conspiracy theory, but it doesn't take much of an imagination to visualize what resources *might* be used against various sources on the internet. I mean, if *you* were one of these people, what automated systems would you use to amplify the effective reach of your message?
Anyway, just a thought. Maybe foreign actors are inserting politically charged opinions here just to give the appearance of infighting and to goad people into anger.
(And as a thought problem, if you had access to Slashdot's internal system, what metrics would you use to detect various forms of system abuse?)