The difference between "stash of oppo" and "identifying a viewpoint" is going to come down to intent, imho. These conversations are already more ephemeral than I'd like them to be and context matters. I want to know who I'm talking to and what their deal is in real life, too.
The ideal, at least in my mind, is to judge statements based on their content. If a view is supported and logical? Cool. If it's making extreme claims with no supporting evidence? Not so cool, even more so if it's appealing to emotion or bias which are tell tale signs of BS. So for instance in the above statement where our local stalker chose to claim I "think Russian elections in Crimea are fair and accurate", do feel free to read what I wrote. [1]
Shortly following the Ukrainian referendum, numerous Western organizations began carrying out their own, arguably adversarial, polls (linked in the linked post). And they all ended up showing similar numbers, taking into account that the original referendum was boycotted by those in support of staying in Ukraine. Had Gallup/Pew/etc not carried out their own polls, or even if they somehow felt the authorities were interfering with their polling, then I think there would be reasonable room for belief in the conspiracy. But when everybody keeps coming up with the same numbers?
I don't really understand the mindset in opposition to things like this. It's like people want to believe fake things. I mean just because the election results were valid doesn't mean you suddenly have to start waving a Russian tricolor. If somebody wants to take the position that the election was, nonetheless, invalid because it ran contrary to Ukraine's constitution? More power to them. There's some subjective debates to have there, but it's an absolutely valid and factually supported position to hold.
How? I made the assumption least favorable to Russia's position by assuming that that 100% of people who did not vote would have voted against the referendum. Russia got 97% yes with 83% turnout. Gallup got 82.8% agreeing that 'the referendum represents the will of the people.' Factor in 17% who didn't vote in the official referendum as no's, and you get pretty much the exact same numbers.
Yip. Sampling size can be counter-intuitive, but 500 for a population of 2.3 million is going to be well more than needed. For contrast the typical election poll in the US generally has from 500 to 2000 people, for a nation of 340 million.
Here's a calculator [1]. To get a 95% level of confidence, they would have needed a sample size of 217 people. This is assuming a population of 2.3 million and a response distribution of 83%. If the response distribution was 50% (which maximizes the necessary sample size) they'd have needed 385 people.
The referendum that was conducted by illegal occupation authorities obviously can not be trusted. So those numbers are made up propaganda.
With 500 people the sample size needs to be very carefully selected to eliminate bias and it is really easy to influence the results however way you want.
Gallup is more or less synonymous with careful polling. However, the final thing I'd add is that it wasn't just Gallup either. Russia claimed a total of 82.9% yes (if we assume 100% who did not vote would have voted no), Gallup found 82.8%, GFK (German polling firm) found 82%. The only 'outlier' (so much as 5% can be called an outlier) is Pew who found 88%.
If any of these organizations' operations had been impeded in any way they would have made a big stink of it in their reporting. US and German organizations were not there to support Russia's claims, but to challenge them! But ultimately everybody's numbers ended up the same.
Of course. I think this is a very important point to make.
I also think that even if with the best of intentions when people are calling for not discrediting others views disinfo needs to be called out and challenged as without doing that the gullible might find some new "hidden truth". It's effectiveness should not be overvalued tho.
Please don't do this. HN does not benefit by becoming a forum where members maintain a stash of oppo on each other to discredit their views.