So much of social media pre-supposes that no entity would spend the kinda money to influence an issue. They didn't take a state with limited resources into account.
It turns out you can spice things up on social media with relatively modest ad spends, the mob are so desperate to be incited that you dont even need to light the match.
We need to stop talking about "the mob" as if these people came through a membrane from another universe and are fundamentally non-humans and different from us. Instead of being condescending to people maybe it would be more useful to understand why this behavior happens, instead of dismissing it as "weak mindedness" or "anger issues".
The "mob" are people that are probably finding little meaning in life. Their "match" is probably feeling like they have something to fight for instead of their grueling 9-5 soul sucking work to pay debt in order to enrich just a few.
It's easy for humans to also externalize pain. They might be angry for very valid reasons, but which they feel powerless to change, and that anger is still in their body, needing, indeed a match to escape. Repressed anger causes disease (cf. Gabor Mate). It's a natural instinct to act out and let out misdirected anger.
Talking about "mob" is like talking about "witches" 400 years ago(pharmaceuts) or "hysteric women" 100 years ago (women with BPD or PTSD). It's dehumanizing and misses the point, and in a few years people will look back at comments like this like we look at witch burning and the stone age practices of psychiatry a few years ago.
I recently watched 'Jallikattu'[0] again. The statement on being desperate to be incited matches one of the main themes of the movie so well. Worth a watch.
One of the startup growth-hackers gave us a decent talk on some basic social media manipulation
It is so easy to create entirely false narratives and / or manipulate online discussion, that at this point I would be surprised if any major group of people with access to half decent budget is not doing it.
From twitter to amazon reviews to comment sections on BBC and other websites, who knows how many are fake, the well has been poisoned.
The most important thing a con artist must convince the mark of is this: everyone else is on the take. Once this is believed, the mark will follow the con down any corrupt rabbit hole.
Ask yourself this: who wants you to believe that everything is astroturfing? Who does that serve?
(For the US in fact social media astroturfing doesn't even have to be covert: as the social media belong to domestic companies, they by default promote the national party line and foreign interests - it's only bad when someone else does it).
Two things can simultaneously be true: (1) there is substantial astroturfing in the infosphere & (2) everything is not astroturf.
Ironically, I think the accusations of astroturfing (whether true or not) more directly serve the meta goal of decreasing the public's ability and willingness to engage in debate, and accusations are much more amplification / outrage friendly.
Forget state level resources, plenty of distortion is created by corporations or other much smaller interests with relatively modest resources. I wouldn't' be at all surprised if this were the source of majority of manipulation in practice.
Assuming anything on social media is "untainted" is pretty naive, it seems.
And then there's the other side of it, where people accuse people on the other side of being shills with 0 evidence. It's extremely common in NIMBY v YIMBY fights.
I recall the NYT being a mouthpiece for Bush administration propaganda leading up to the Iraq war. It later came out that they squashed articles which would have cast a critical light on the claim that Iraq had WMD capabilities, in favor of beating the war drum.
Obviously no media outlet is perfect, but yes, corporate media is subject to the influence of monied interests almost by definition. That said, with how easy it is to run ads and hire influencer shills for whatever agenda, social media seems even more malleable if you're willing to spend money. Or, put another way, the financial barrier for creating propaganda is far lower on Facebook than in traditional media.
I would not say NYT publishes propaganda. They just truly believe their own opinion based on some ideology framework but confused their opinions with solid facts. So they see anything not align with their belief as a propaganda. In other words they seem to be against propaganda.
It's a meta-dishonest which is worse than dishonest which is a form of honest dishonest because many people trust meta-dishonest journalist. There are a lot of such kind of MSM journalists. Don Lemon for example.
That's funny, recently there was an article about the magician Teller explaining the foundational rules of magic and illusions. And one of the first secrets is spending a lot of time, effort, or other resources on a method is a good way to fool people.
i care, there is an old saying, absolute power, corrupts absolutely. it is almost never a good sign when power is centralized among a few actors.
online, offline just in general. democratic societies formed knowing this, but there is a will to power among certain people who will at any cost affordable to them will try and become the center focus of attention.
you see this in mega corporations eating up smaller companies in order to centralized power and indirectly control the market.
in the same way, actors use money to pump into traditional and social media in order to influence the masses or part of the masses to sway towards their agenda. which may or may not benefit society.
media is very powerful especially if the transmission is consistent in messaging, and broad as well. meaning coming from many angles to achieve said goal or agenda.
it can be very intoxicating once the scale tips towards the agenda, then social pressure or peer pressure to fit in takes control. it's a very odd thing to observe herd mentality from an outside perspective and almost instantly hammered down and framed as a negative thing to those who are entrenched within conditioning.
i believe transparency is the only way we can subvert mental coups, if we know who is funding what then we can consciously ask why and then maybe, just maybe we will become enlightened of an atrocity before it is too late.
Before you use this as an excuse to accuse the commenter you disagree with as being a Wumao, note that China's propaganda strategy serves to distract rather than directly engage, as they would rather minimize engagement. It's the same principle of "don't feed the trolls."
> Before you use this as an excuse to accuse the commenter you disagree with as being a Wumao
Well, most people generally shouldn't be doing that in the first place (it's against the HN guidelines in particular and bad form in general, with the exception of blatant repeated bad-faith low-effort posts).
Even so, using "is this propaganda a distraction or direct engagement" as a heuristic for "is this post propaganda" is also not a great thing to do. Any large organization engaging in propaganda will have multiple large sub-orgs, stakeholders, and inconsistencies due to misaligned incentives, miscommunications, and the squishiness that comes along with propaganda.
>Well, most people generally shouldn't be doing that in the first place
I'm mostly reminding them for when they post on Reddit, where I occasionally get accused for taking a Realpolitik stance of China issues. Even here, someone mentioned the pervasiveness of the "50 cent meme" as evidence of China's state sponsored propaganda.
>Even so, using "is this propaganda a distraction or direct engagement" as a heuristic for "is this post propaganda" is also not a great thing to do.
I agree it's not a perfect heuristic, but I don't think it matters in practice. A spammer is a spammer regardless of whether they're working for the CCP, and should be treated as such. There's no need to make a spicier accusation that you have no evidence for.
Applying English rules to Chinese words is the ultimate folly. Also, it really depends on your dialect of Chinese, I always hear wu with a w (e.g. woo) if the wu is at the beginning of the word. Inside a word (like fuwuyuan), I usually don't hear or say it.
> Applying English rules to Chinese words is the ultimate folly.
The more I think about this, the less I understand what you were trying to say.
The first problem is of course that a(n) is an English word. But more than that, every sentence of English must apply the rules of English to every part of itself. If instead of "scare" we used the Chinese loanword xia, we would say things like "you xiaed me". We would not say "you xia me" with the past tense present but unmarked, nor would we say "you xiale me".
> But more than that, every sentence of English must apply the rules of English to every part of itself.
But it is undefined. English doesn't have strong dialects like Chinese does. Southerners are more likely not to pronounce the "w" in wu, so they might say "an wugui" (since they are more likely to say oogway like in Kungfu Panda) while a northerner will say "a wugui", since they are more familiar with saying the w sound. This is only if they are very familiar with English also, otherwise they will completely ignore the distinction between a and an.
> But it is undefined. English doesn't have strong dialects like Chinese does.
The second part is a more interesting claim. But broadly speaking, for any two Chinese dialects you could probably identify two languages, one being a variety of English, that stand at a similar distance from each other. The second language might or might not be called "English"; it might be called Scots, or Dutch.
Whether to pronounce a(n) with the /n/ realized is not undefined, but it is specific to the speaker. This is a case where variation within languages named "English" is more than enough to show disparities, as witness the confused Americans who copy the phrase "an historic occasion" from British usage.
I took the position, in my original comment, that I was responding to someone who didn't speak Chinese (and therefore didn't know how to pronounce "wumao") but did speak English (and therefore did know how to pronounce "an"). I didn't think I was speaking to someone who knew the pronunciation of "wumao" but wasn't sure how to use an article with it.
I don't think regional variation in pronunciation in China can explain an English speaker pronouncing wumao or Wuhan with an initial w-. The citation form of the syllable has no initial consonant, and all sources are explicit about this. Chinese broadcast media, in running speech, still doesn't produce anything an English speaker would recognize as an initial w-. (I'm having to rely, for this claim, on the television programs I found on youtube, linked elsewhere.) There just isn't a source that would provide an English speaker outside China with an example of using w-. So I assume what's happening is that people pronounce w- because they see the spelling.
(Also, I don't see many English speakers pronouncing it Taivan instead of Taiwan.)
I find it very plausible that regional variation exists, though, because I know the Shanghainese (吴 dialect) pronunciation of 勿 is -- using a pinyin-like spelling -- "ve" with an initial /v/-like sound.
This isn't correct, because "an" is only used in front of words that begin with a vowel sound (in the dialect of English used).
> The form an is used before words starting with a vowel sound, regardless of whether the word begins with a vowel letter. This avoids the glottal stop (momentary silent pause) that would otherwise be required between a and a following vowel sound. Where the next word begins with a consonant sound, a is used. Examples: a box; an apple; an SSO (pronounced "es-es-oh"); an MP3 (pronounced "em-pee-three"); a HEPA filter (here, HEPA is an acronym, a series of letters pronounced as a word rather than as individual letters); an hour (the h is silent); a one-armed bandit (pronounced "won..."); an heir (pronounced "air"); an herb in American English (where the h is silent), but a herb in British English; "a unionized worker" but "an ionized particle".
For example, "womb" starts with the same sound as "wumao", but we say "a womb" instead of "an womb". For the same reason, we say "a wumao" instead of "an wumao".
I don't think 五 ("wu", which means "five") is pronounced the same way as the "oo" in "oops", at least in Mandarin Chinese. I hear the "w" very clearly in this counting video:
I think there is a lot of irony in this subthread, since it is responding to a comment about derailing the discussion by distracting from the main topic as a strategy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29655271. Intentional or not, this subthread shows just how effective this strategy can be.
You are hearing something that isn't present. There's no "w" sound in that video for the number 5. This is a really common misconception/mispronunciation caused by pinyin as it needs the "w" for disambiguation purposes (see also the use of apostrophes, xian vs. xi'an).
> There's no "w" sound in that video for the number 5.
Yes there is. You can argue it's not as strong as an English 'w', but it's there.
> This is a really common misconception/mispronunciation caused by pinyin as it needs the "w" for disambiguation purposes (see also the use of apostrophes, xian vs. xi'an).
That may have been the case in the past, but the 'w' is definitely pronounced now, just like all the other 'w' sounds in Pinyin.
I live in a Mandarin-speaking country and speak Mandarin every day. There is no W sound. lol I mean, foreigners can continue mispronouncing it they want, but native speakers are gonna continue to be confused as to why foreigners emphasize the non-existent W sound so much. Foreigners (in my experience) also get confused as to why native speakers _don't_ pronounce a W sound.
Maybe some regional accents overemphasize a W sound? I've never heard one, though.
> I hear the "w" very clearly in this counting video:
I'm curious how you think a video with an edited audio track could have any value as evidence. If you're willing to truncate and splice your recorded audio, you can easily transmute some sounds into other sounds.
> I think there is a lot of irony in this subthread
Yes, we talk about the things we think are interesting, often even when there are other people whose opinions differ.
Yes I know how Wuhan sounds like and I clearly hear a w sound in there, don't you? Maybe it's not as clear as in the English word west, but you can't deny it's there no? Don't 我 and 武 start with the same sound? Do 窝 and 喔 sound the same to you?
> Yes I know how Wuhan sounds like and I clearly hear a w sound in there, don't you?
No?
> Don't 我 and 武 start with the same sound?
You could make that argument. But 武 never transitions out of it. That transition is how you get a glide (or semivowel) as opposed to a vowel. 我 is /wo/, with a brief /w/. 武 is /u/, and that vowel persists through the entire syllable. If you wanted to call it /w/ instead of /u/, you'd have a syllable with an onset and no rime, and your /w/ would last much too long to be called a semivowel.
> Do 窝 and 喔 sound the same to you?
I can't really speak to this, but I'll assume by 喔 you mean something that is like 窝 without the w- onset. Something like 哦?
They don't sound the same. This actually raises an interesting question...
> I know how Wuhan sounds like and I clearly hear a w sound in there
Am I right that you're a native Mandarin speaker? Mandarin doesn't distinguish between /wu/ and /u/, or at least no minimal pair exists that would prove the distinction is drawn. (Granted, the sequence /wu/ is not at all common in English, but we do have a minimal pair -- woo / ooh -- as long as you're willing to accept "ooh" as a word.) The lack of a distinction in Mandarin leaves the judgment of a Mandarin speaker open to question.
seanmcdirmid mentioned 服务 - do you also clearly hear a W sound there?
> Am I right that you're a native Mandarin speaker?
No I'm not. Are you? I'm open to the idea that I'm mislead by pinyin, but I really cannot unhear the w sound there. How do you pronounce Wuhan? Do you start with you lips closed or can you do it with your mouth open?
> seanmcdirmid mentioned 服务 - do you also clearly hear a W sound there?
Not really, but syllables changing depending on what comes before (or after them) is fairly normal.
- You cannot travel abroad (no passport for average citizens, except for those that study/work abroad)
- You cannot go beyond China's intranet
- You cannot transfer money out of country legally, pretty soon can't invest in other countries's stocks
- You cannot watch Spiderman, BTS, squid games, porn and many many more things legally
- You have very little rights as LGBT
- You have to work 9-9-6. Which is why many citizens are lying flat
- You are constantly watched, monitored, "invited" to police station for tea, banned for posts that contain any words that are on the growing banned list
- You should not get rich (1/3 of billionaires have died or disappeared)
- You have little recourse as a woman who is abused by men in power
- You are constantly subjugated to random mass testing
- Oh and there's the yearly flood + crashing economy + crashing real estate + aging workforce + factory jobs leaving + dictatorship
I used to think China was some North Korean-style hellscape and hated the country.
Then I had a flight transfer through China and decided to take a couple days there just to see how bad it was. Ended up realizing most internet comments and news articles are posted by people who are absolutely obsessed with China and only get their information through seventh-hand sources--it's that insanely distorted.
Left loving the country because everything was so contrary to my conditioned expectations and went back for a few more trips.
Pushing a super hard anti-anything narrative in this age is bound to backfire, because finding information contrary to it isn't hard.
Everyday life is generally okay there, and it's not hard to have a great time as a tourist there. The problems are if you are unhappy with the status quo and are a dissenter.
You can flourish there, relatively, if you follow the rules. But if you get on the government's bad side you will be quashed.
A few hours in some towns were more than enough to make it very clear that I'd never want to go there ever again.
It's weird how people come out and complain about this with only one specific country. Nobody gets angry when they say a trip to somewhere else was enough to make them enjoy a place.
I mean, I've also got friends there and speak the language to some extent now. It's not like I walked in on some sanitized tour for a day and left.
The country has problems. But it's not a prison camp of 1.4 billion like the internet would make you think. Most people are pretty happy living there, even people who've been to other countries.
It's definitely not a good place to be a political or religious activist. Most countries outside of the EU aren't and China is definitely on the worse end when it comes to that issue, but it's pretty nice for most people.
I've traveled to countries for weeks, even months in total, then moved there, before the real issues of said country / culture / society become properly apparent and people open up about things. I'm not saying it was bad, but it takes a bit of time to read a place. Imagine that in a place where saying the wrong thing can have you landed in prison.
I've actually worked with some Chinese for years and it wasn't until I went out on a dinner that some really ugly stuff about why Han people in the past have been treated badly and that being the justification for the treatment of Uighur people, then I listened to an hour about why Muslim people are a problem and all the horror stories they'd read about them in the paper (it was clearly propaganda). Scarier for me one of their best friends at the time, who just missed the dinner, was Muslim. That wouldn't be an isolated case I'm sure.
This is not to single out Chinese by the way, I'm just reinforcing my point that it seems naive to just say, "I stopped by, looked pretty good, I'd go back, seems like a good place."
I've had people from virtually every country randomly start racist discussions with me. I've been in Paris waiting for a train, and had some white Canadians come up and say "Hey, are you American?" (presumably my bad fashion made me stand out) Then suddenly start complaining about black people just because I said "Yeah, I am" as if that was an OK to be racist. I don't use that to say "yep, Canada's bad."
I've also dealt with countless people who've said "You've been to China? Oh, let me tell you how they justify racism" and seeing zero irony in their statement.
Bizarre. Seriously
And people somehow take any claim of saying "China is decent" to mean it's flawless and attack it. People don't do this with any countries unless they're East Asian, and they specifically get angry about China these days. You can't even mention enjoying Japan without someone online saying "oh they're all racist. I would know because I had dinner with a Japanese man." It's tiring.
You don’t even need to go to a foreign country for this experience. I read bullshit about how bad conditions in California are all the time from right-wingers who just want to propagandize for their own political benefit.
However: you seem to be telling a native Chinese person that they’re wrong about their impressions of their own country. Do you want to maybe add some nuance to that?
> However: you seem to be telling a native Chinese person that they’re wrong about their impressions of their own country. Do you want to maybe add some nuance to that?
I don't read forgotmyoldname's comment as telling chunghuaming that they are wrong about their impressions of China. It's more about forgotmyoldname's own impressions, and his/her assessment of people in general who comment online about China.
In follow up comments, forgotmyoldname also provides first and second hand supporting experiences. Do you have any of yours that would contradict theirs?
I don't think the guidelines of HN allow insinuating other commenters are paid shills. It's entirely possible someone visited China and genuinely loved the country and the people. Let's not be rude.
Did you even bother to read my top level comment about not calling people you disagree with as shills before you replied to it? Or did you just piggyback off the top comment at the time to soapbox?
It's really wild that people are so crazed that they think everyone is a paid shill. There's medical terminology to describe people who think everything is a grand conspiracy and make unfalsifiable claims about anyone who opposes them.
But good luck with that issue, dude. Maybe you should try visiting countries sometime. Anyone can claim to have lived in a country for 30 years. :)
It shows the effectiveness of massive weapons of deception, and cognitive defects of modern human. Most people know the ground truth just stay away of the argument. Most time I do the same thing but not this time.
I mean, I have. I've been to a few provinces and seen small towns and big cities. It's way better than I was led on to believe after reading daily reports about it being hell on earth--the low expectations made it way better. I'm not saying it's utopia or anything. Just not even 5% as bad as the wild stuff reddit or news sites would try to make me believe.
But people on the internet are way too into the Red Scare Part II and think literally anything against their personal opinion is someone paid by a state actor specifically to attack them on the internet. It's, quite frankly, nuts, and an unhealthy way of looking at the world and seeding visible increases in racism.
You sounds like a paid endorsement sponsored by CIA. You were born and lived there for 30 years? I was born and lived there 30 years then live in Western democracy with freedom along with human rights. I clearly know where the CPP hater's delusion come from
Then after a few months your Chinese business partner gets a bit too envious and denounce you to the police for "spying" or "fraud". Of course being not Chinese you basically have no rights and you get exit banned or disappeared while your partner takes over everything your owned.
>You cannot travel abroad (no passport for average citizens, except for those that study/work abroad)
Really? What accounts for all the Chinese tourists visiting Europe/UK/USA? I have a friend who runs a hostel in Edinburgh and the majority of her guests are Chinese so much so that they have had to print signs in Mandarin asking people to abide by certain rules.
>You cannot transfer money out of country legally, pretty soon can't invest in other countries's stocks
This must not be enforced that severely given how much capital has flowed into other countries real estate market. In fact this is a common loophole used to get US citizenship. (invest 500k and you can get a green card).
The "cannot travel abroad" claim might refer to one of two things:
1. China requires extremely long quarantines when entering the country. 14 days in a quarantine hotel + 7 days at home is standard. Some jurisdictions go as high as 28 + 28.
2. China has recently restricted issuances of new and renewed passports. This is being done locally, so enforcement is inconsistent, but generally one needs a strong reason ("studying abroad", "international business") to get a passport issued now.
China allows transfer out of the country for the purpose of buying homes, but cash transfers are restricted to a certain annual limit. The restrictions on transferring currency out of China and on exchanging currency are a huge problem for expats leaving the country. Until this year, the recommendation for expats leaving the country was to use bitcoin.
The policy changed pretty recently, a friend of mine married to a Chinese citizen, and has been living there for almost a decade. They left in 2019 because the attitude to foreigners working in China, and Chinese going abroad has undergone a sea change. There are strict controls on capital flows, it's much harder to get work or visit visas for Chinese going abroad, many Chinese working abroad have been put under pressure to go back. They left before him working there got untenable, and it got too hard for his wife to leave.
This has been masked over the last 2 years by the pandemic, but it started a few years before.
I literally transfer money back and forth almost every week. So, not true. Regular international wire transfer work just fine, and most major banks allow it. Even foreigners can open such accounts. I have one.
It's still possible to transfer money for businesses. China is still heavily integrated into the global economy, so they're not going to cut the lines completely, but my family and friends over there who are Chinese citizens used to do direct bank transfers internationally from their personal current accounts in China and now they can't.
My wife has a BoC account (personal), no problem transferring money back and forth whatsoever, dunno other banks. You obviously need to get the iban or the shift code right. Your local bank should be able to help you.
The problem seems to be that, as with many things in China, the laws and regulations are considered more guidelines than actual rules. If the authorities want to crack down on stuff, they do and there's nothing anyone can do about it, and it's not always clear what criteria are used to make decisions on these things, if any.
A friend of mine (Chinese student studying abroad) has a BoC account which automatically transfers money to a foreign account, and it has a relatively low annual transfer limit: around $10,000 per year.
Things like banning porn simply don't work unless substituted. People have already turned to amateur recordings instead. That's things the elderly rulers don't want to or can't understand. Ultimate control is not possible with human beings, especially in the 21st century.
How did that happen? Iirc, according to Hurun Report 10 years ago, some 80% of the upper class Chinese had an escape plan ready. You'd think, as a billionaire they have a plane waiting for them 24/7 to get out of the country.
> You cannot travel abroad
In the border with Vietnam, at night you can cross the border for 5 yuan on one of the smuggler boats.
> You have little recourse as a woman who is abused by men in power
Only country in the world with more female suicides than male suicides.
Also, no recourse if CCP thugs steal your stuff. Guy I knew had his Ferrari stolen. Couldn't do anything because the thief was a local party functionary's son.
None of these can be attributed to authoritarian, or some form of CCP brutality, when moderate amount of scrutiny is applied ...
> - You cannot travel abroad (no passport for average citizens, except for those that study/work abroad)
This is of course because of China's CVOID policy, which is 0 tolerance. That's a rational decision of China's high-density population, and manufacturing-based economy. I do not think it's inherent anti-human-rights, as the death count is fractional to open-co-existence policy. Life itself is a human right, and probably the most precious one.
> - You cannot go beyond China's intranet
VPNs are legal in China. You just need to be technically-sophisticated enough to find the correct VPNs, and make sure it falls in the boundary of Chinese law.
> - You cannot transfer money out of country legally, pretty soon can't invest in other countries's stocks
This is just not true... You can use various services to transfer money out. The only issue is that they are subject to certain limitations, which are far more restrictive than US. But again, US dominates world financial system, there is a view that financial imperialism is a key part of US capitalist exploiting Chinese workers. Thus the financial limitation. I doubt that anyone other than the rob-barrons are affected by this. I personally know a lot of Crypto super riches, trust me, they are absolutely a net negative force in society.
> - You cannot watch Spiderman, BTS, squid games, porn and many many more things legally
You can. VPN to netflix. And a lot of pirated content.
They were just not allowed to go through the official channel.
Of course, CCP is wrong here. But let's not paint a picture that Chinese people are sheeps.
> - You have very little rights as LGBT
Not sure what you are talking about.
LGBT is not discriminated officially in any form in the CHinese society.
Society still holds stigma over these people. One primary reason is that these groups are associated with higher chance of sexually-transmitted diseases.
And dont assume me a CCP associate, I have a good friend who is gay. He is my college friend. He is pretty happy.
> - You have to work 9-9-6. Which is why many citizens are lying flat
This is probably what forced upon by the private firms.
These are punished heavily by CCP recently.
Jack Ma and Alibaba are the defender of 996...
> - You are constantly watched, monitored, "invited" to police station for tea, banned for posts that contain any words that are on the growing banned list
This is not true.
I have several wechat groups discussing serious political issues in China. None of the 50 people ever had any sign of being bothered.
I mean, there is no way that one is constantly watched in China. If that's true, China either already have an AGI, or what we bought everyone are not actually made in China, because there are simply not enough cheap labor to produce them in the first place, and most of them are employed in watching others.
> - You should not get rich (1/3 of billionaires have died or disappeared)
1/3 of billionaires have died or disappeared...
First, the number of billionaires are unknown. Chinese society had a tradition of the rich become victims during the terminal phase of the dynasty. So the rich is very well aware of this fact, and they hide. Do you know that Mr. Deng Xiaoping's son is astronomically rich, but you'll never see anywhere his net worth is published?
Second, please give a citation... To engage this discussion is putting legitimacy on this ridiculous claim...
> - You have little recourse as a woman who is abused by men in power
Come on... This becomes ridiculous...
Gender equality in China is pretty high. Ranked 38th out of 157 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_inequality_in_China
I mean it's not spectacular, but your statement is just outlandish...
> - You are constantly subjugated to idiotic mass testing/lockdown
What do you mean? I said a lot of bad words about CCP. I was not distant by my family or friends...
> - Oh and there's the yearly flood + crashing economy + crashing real estate + aging workforce + factory jobs leaving + dictatorship
If you read western media, then these are what they said.
But these are not true according to what I hear from my friends and family.
> Life itself is a human right, and probably the most precious one.
How can welding front gates shut be protecting human life? How can anyone survive after being cut off from food, medicine, supplies, contact, income? Don't pretend zero-tolerance policy is about protecting people, it is to protect Xi JingPing who has staked his personal political standing on the zero tolerance policy[1].
Some regions have been under continual lock-down for the better part of this year. Do you know how many people have died from lock-down? Does anyone know? Does CCP permit anyone to count? For that matter, how many people died in Wuhan two years ago? Why is CCP killing a citizen journalist for writing about Wuhan outbreak[2]? Is her life not human?
>VPNs are legal in China. You just need to be technically-sophisticated enough to find the correct VPNs, and make sure it falls in the boundary of Chinese law.
Pray tell which VPNs are legal in China? Which one can I use to visit HN legally in China? What is stopping an enterprising person to make your "correct" VPNs user friendly to the mass? I will you, because it does not exist!
> I have several wechat groups discussing serious political issues in China.
Why don't you post to your WeChat groups "佟丽娅嫁给中宣部副部长," reputed marriage of an actress to the vice minister of Propaganda Ministry and take a screenshot? You cannot even search it in Baidu, and you have the gall to say the Internet in China is constantly watched.
> Why don't you post to your WeChat groups "佟丽娅嫁给中宣部副部长," reputed marriage of an actress to the vice minister of Propaganda Ministry and take a screenshot? You cannot even search it in Baidu, and you have the gall to say the Internet in China is constantly watched.
Dude, what is this thing? I have no idea what's going on with this "佟丽娅嫁给中宣部副部长,"?
> Dude, what is this thing? I have no idea what's going on with this "佟丽娅嫁给中宣部副部长,"?
You say you are born in China, so presumably you can read Chinese. Then you can head over to [1] and read all about oversea Chinese making fun of CCP censoring salacious rumors about an actress and vice minister of Propaganda. The most powerful police apparatus and most sprawling internet censorship machinery working in overdrive to suppress tabloid, not because the rumor may or may not be false but because the Party knows the people believe it true in their heart.
This is an US site, most people here believe that they hear from the media, and is understandable, the same way most Chinese people believe that they see in CCTV. I get people in China asking if I'm safe, or if my house was assaulted by antifa. I think people if they are really interested of what is happening in either country should do their research, instead of parroting what they hear in Youtube. But yeah, you will get downvoted , so will I. ;)
Well said. But the major problem is vetting the source of your research. Even academic studies are subject to bias or are simply statistical outliers (e.g., type 2 errors).
You can only go so far down the rabbit hole of research before you're wasting time. It's a lot like signal detection theory: Where do you strike the balance between effort and accuracy in research?
Indeed, maybe my phrasing was wrong, but I feel nationalism only creates feeds xenophobia, because is never "X government", is always "the chinese", "the russians" , "insert_the_current_buggy_man_here"... I also understand that there is no chance this will ever change.
> I have several wechat groups discussing serious political issues in China.
Maybe you do, but do you discuss how millions of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province were (are?) detained in concentration camps [0] and forced to provide quarter to government agents in their own homes under a dehumanizing “big brother” program [1]? Or how the CCP forced Uighurs to surgically implant IUDs and undergo forced abortion and sterilization procedures [2]? That would probably get you on the CCP’s radar.
Don’t pretend like there’s any semblance of open discussion about truly controversial issues.
> I mean, there is no way that one is constantly watched in China.
The “constantly watched” bit is a total strawman. Nobody is implying that all Chinese citizens are constantly watched by CCP thugs. All that is needed is a search engine on top of indexed WeChat message contents to help direct a limited number of investigations against political dissidents who may threaten the CCP’s grip on power - or as they refer to it, “stability”.
Selected quote: “Every former camp detainee Amnesty interviewed in the report recounted cruel and degrading treatment, including torture. The report, released Thursday, is based on interviews with 108 people, including 55 camp survivors and several government cadres who worked in the camps.”
Yes, it happened. Your most recent comment as of right now attempts to cast doubt on this fact.
Selected quote: “Her four "guests" are Chinese government cadres who lived in her home for 10 days every month for two years before her family fled, she said.”
Think about what that would be like. It’s as horrible as it is effective, and it’s partly why the Third Amendment to the US Constitution exists.
Selected quote: “But while equal on paper, in practice Han Chinese are largely spared the abortions, sterilizations, IUD insertions and detentions for having too many children that are forced on Xinjiang’s other ethnicities, interviews and data show.”
Think about what it would be like for your government to show up at your door, handcuff you, take you to a hospital, anesthetize you, and surgically remove your ability to procreate. That’s what the CCP does to its own people.
> do you discuss how millions of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province were (are?) detained in concentration camps [0]
We discuss that. That was viewed as a western media propaganda. I.e., no hard proof from any reputable organizations (UN for example).
> All that is needed is a search engine on top of indexed WeChat message
I know far worse things the local government did using their information monopoly. You don't need to educate me on that.
What I replied is that the OP wanted to paint a picture of a dystopian monitoring in China, that's not what happens.
> Your most recent comment as of right now attempts to cast doubt on this fact.
These are reports, not facts.
I dont believe these reports, because these media shows some incredible buntant manipulation. I simply cannot trust people like these. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS8EceIa1MQ&t=115s
> Her four "guests" are Chinese government cadres who lived in her home for 10 days every month for two years before her family fled, she said.
> But while equal on paper, in practice Han Chinese are largely spared the abortions, sterilizations, IUD insertions and detentions for having too many children that are forced on Xinjiang’s other ethnicities, interviews and data show.
LMAO
My mother, a Han people, was subject to forced abortion. I was born in a different city than my hometown to evade that.
Stop painting racial conflicts, when there is none.
The lies can go on for a while, but they cannot last forever...
I have friends visiting Xinjiang and talked with local people, Uyghur and non Uyghurs. There is no evidence that supports the 1M number. You can watch a lot of YouTube video of people visiting Xinjiang and the local people. Make your own judgement.
>We discuss that. That was viewed as a western media propaganda. I.e., no hard proof from any reputable organizations (UN for example).
In response to that comment, I linked reports from the United Nations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Those are 3 of the most reputable organizations in the world in the field of human rights (the links also point out that it's impossible to investigate thoroughly because the Chinese Government won't allow access).
I'm supposed to believe some random Youtuber over them? That's what you're telling me? That's especially hilarious because the very article we're discussing is about manipulating social media, including creating videos specifically for youtube.
Or are you nitpicking the 1M number? If it's 10,000 or 1 million it's still a gross violation of human rights.
They are allegations based on western media reports, which themselves are based on dubious evidences.
Everything so far regarding Xinjiang are all one-sided news rehashing from a few individuals, while the US intelligence with its cutting-edge spy satellites, field agents, cannot find any concrete evidences. Just coincidence?
The Liberian Ministry of Agriculture hasn’t presented any evidence publicly, either. And there’s no mention of it in the Beatles’ 1969 album Abbey Road. I guess you would like to enter these facts into the record as well.
You don’t get to pick and choose the evidence that is presented against you. Evidence that you have failed to explain beyond claiming a grand “media conspiracy”. This is textbook misdirection.
> You cannot transfer money out of country legally, pretty soon can't invest in other countries's stocks.
Not true.
> You should not get rich (1/3 of billionaires have died or disappeared)
Also not true. FuErDais are praise on TV, movies, etc... Crazy Rich Asians , the movie , was a huge hit in China for example, etc... Money and superficiality have always being huge in China (even to get married, you need to buy a house , a car, and give the girl's family money (CaiLi)).
> You have to work 9-9-6. Which is why many citizens are lying flat
Highly depends on where you work. But is not standarized, and there have been recently a huge push back from the goverment about this.
> You cannot go beyond China's intranet
Literally that's what VPNs are for, many chinese companies offer VPN services to mainland users, etc.
All other points are more or less right. Also, p*rn is illegal in most places. I wouldn't live there, but posting lies here wont help anyone.
> You cannot transfer money out of country legally
True. It used to be 50k limit per year. Now because many bureaucratic procedures by banks, it might as well as be zero since you have go to the bank 10+ times. You're talking from a view of a foreigner. I'm talking from a view of native citizen.
> Money and superficiality have always being huge in China
Not so right now which is what I mentioned.
China bars celebrities from showing off wealth and 'extravagant pleasure' on social media
> True. It used to be 50k limit per year. Now because many bureaucratic procedures by banks, it might as well as be zero since you have go to the bank 10+ times. You're talking from a view of a foreigner. I'm talking from a view of native citizen.
Not true, I (and my wife) use our personal accounts to send money back and forth almost every week, so the thousands of chinese students, workers, etc...
Fair enough, I haven’t figured out the exact breakdown from that link, although it seems fairly equally split to me.
Still, that map lends credence to my initial gut feeling, that defending China’s porn ban to someone with a seemingly Western perspective by saying it’s banned in a lot of other places too probably isn’t very effective - they most likely feel the same about these laws where they exist in the rest of Asia, Eastern Europe and in Africa, too. Presumably they’re comparing China to Western Europe and the US here.
On a relevant note, the Tiananmen Massacre monument at the University of Hong Kong was removed last night. They were careful to barricade everything to prevent any videos or images of the monument being destroyed.
Imagine living somewhere like China and not liking it. It would be hellish, you couldn’t even talk about it without a police visit or your boss passing trouble along to you. A giant human spirit grinder
This did not get to the bottom, the police will visit all your family members actually. You will simply give up and shut up as the cops will harass/threaten your family members. It's a common practice for many years and it's getting 10X worse under Xi, who is said to be the designer of "Culture Revolution 2.0" these days, who already painted every other countries(especially USA) to be enemies(except for North Korea, Russia, Iran and Taliban).
On a related note, we have here in the US a sudden wave of "culture revolution 3.0" with its proponents using the very same tactics. It's well known that Xi is preparing to enter the chip manufacturing business in 10 years, and since US is the only real opponent, Xi wisely chose to disarm us with the adapted version of "culture revolution". For this reason, I believe, he'll massively increase investments in pushing this movement in the coming years.
I've never understood why people support the escalating US-China conflict since it's so easy to just keep focusing on win-win collaborations but your comment gave me an insight.
Please let me know if this is wrong, but I think this is the argument:
1. The US is a better leader than China because it is a significantly better place. Notable US problems that cause lots of suffering are significantly less severe than notable Chinese problems.
2. As a result, the US government should put a lot of effort into making sure that China doesn't become too powerful. It is ok for the US to publish articles that are less reliable than those on Iraq WMDs because if China becomes too powerful, the world will be far worse. In particular, China should not become powerful enough to project its values on other countries as much as the US does. China also should not be able to non-democratically reform international, democratically-decided rules such as International Maritime Law.
For most people in the US, it would take heaps of evidence and learning could to even make them doubt that US might not be a significantly better place than China (Note that I'm not arguing that the US is not far better). On the other hand, many people in China doubt that the US is significantly better as China because of how much better they see their life compared to the past. So, they don't understand why people in the US are confident about their conflict against China.
I personally can't buy into this argument though because I lack the confidence in my personal philosophy to know what a "better life" truly is. However, many people in the US have a more stable philosophical foundation and could never be convinced that the US is not a significantly better place than China.
Chinese people don't believe the US system is inferior solely based on improvements in their own country. I think this discredits them. Chinese students study English and America in school, many have come as exchange students, they consume American media - they are comparing things firsthand in a way that Americans mostly refuse to do.
Nice anecdote, I tried to speak more to the point that I think that most US citizens are right to support the US escalating the conflict against China. Their values align with their actions.
Furthermore, people that think they can convince US citizens that they should not escalate the conflict are focusing on a lost cause. This does not mean no discourse should happen, but people should understand that differences in opinions are due to very big differences in values.
I did not look much into why a Chinese citizen would support China escalating the conflict against the US nor have I done much research on how China builds up anti-US sentiment.
> On the other hand, many people in China doubt that the US is significantly better as China because of how much better they see their life compared to the past. So, they don't understand why people in the US are confident about their conflict against China.
Are you refering to military conflict? My guess would be that the Chinese people are very misled about the military prowess of their country. It seems like a weekly occurrence that a PRC military propaganda video is shown to actually use footage of foreign military exercises.
On the other hand, the US military (one might argue government as a whole) seems to be slipping in basic competencies. The navy has had three very public ship navigation errors in four years, and continues to be absolutely clueless about drones. ("UFOs") The air force has a new fighter which is still not functioning at design capabilities, and the withdrawl from Afghanistan was less organized than the 1970s withdrawl from Saigon. At least in the US the failures are public and might inspire change.
1. Hedonism is "fairly correct". In a well-fed and low-violence society, the pleasure/pain axis explains >40% of what every human cares about, especially chronic pleasure/pain.
- 1a. Both the US and China are low-violence and well-fed.
2. Obesity is responsible for a high amount of pain. Furthermore, there are few things in society that don't kill you which are worse that obesity.
- 2a. People don't die that much in societies like China.
3. Modern entertainment is a good painkiller. However, obese people that consume it still experience great amounts of pain throughout the day. Entertainment that distracts people from fixing the chronic pain they feel is a negative to society.
With these assumptions, the US doesn't look like a significantly better place than China. In theory, the freedom enabled by the US allows people to do well on the pain/pleasure axis. In practice, the US enables companies to do things that lead people into greater chronic pain.
Note that I think that Taiwan could be a significantly better place than China by this logic.
Those are definitely good quality of life indicators.
Every country can do better. The US should do better at a lot of things and poverty, inequality, and racism are for sure big drivers of things like childbirth death rate, lack of education and more!
But to OP's comment, there is no way in hell you can convince me or even a significant minority of Americans that China is better on the whole or even on a minor slice.
Lol even life expectancy and health seems like a lot of people here don't care about and are perfectly happy to guzzle cola and sit in front of a tv lmfao.
In terms of do better, China's list is ginormous and some of the things on it - like not building interment and forced 'integration' for millions of their citizens - are so extremely opposite of the values most here hold that it far outweighs any good weights on this 'better than' scale. It feels farcical to say otherwise.
I commented an open ended question in the first place is because these one off comments similar to OP feel to me exactly like what the article shows are active campaigns to interact on social networks like HN. But pointing that out without proof (impossible for me to get) is against HN ethics. I'm guilting of doing it though this is a moral and emotional issue for me.
Plus we americans are pretty self confident and often beligerantly arrogant. Makes it hard to convince people anything beyond american exceptionalism even on obviously nice things. Like that historical pamphlet comparing French lifestyle during the war that was posted here a long time ago. Yes they can value family and well being over working, that's horrible and un american ;) !
Imagine living somewhere like China where it's gotten to the bad state it is in now - when 5-6 years ago there was a real trajectory away from where it is now, and the world (including myself) was cheering on China.
Plenty people who have lived under communist regimes can tell you a lot what it feels like. In a way, you learn to live with it. You can talk about it with your family, your close friends. But not with colleagues - as you can't be certain who is and who isn't a spy. You need to be careful not to get involved in any provocation. If you have kids, you need to be extra careful - also about them. When you think about it, it's a bit tragic: normally you worry about your kid taking crack, but you'll probably notice that. But in a totalitarian regime, your kid can go to jail not for dealing drugs, but for being a sensitive, honest individual, naively believing they can change their country to be a better place. But most of the time it's not jail but things like being expelled from the university, losing your job (and not being able to find a new one), and similar forms of harassment to your family. But deaths were not uncommon, even after the Stalinist regime ended.
I'm sometimes thinking about the bigger picture, and wondering what will happen in hundreds of years? Will Western country end up more and more divided, and will China become more and more united and like-minded? One variable that seems to indicate to the contrary is that transparency is a huge factor in allowing a society to improve itself, and China is becoming more and more opaque.
Please stop posting this sort of generic flamewar dross to HN. I realize you mean well, but you do this so often that I've started to wince when I see your username.
This is seriously not cool. If you keep ignoring the intended use of this site, we're not going to have any choice left but to ban you, much as I don't want to.
> Americans can say anything, even if it's proudly proclaiming "fuck [current politician]"
as the joke goes:
The American says: ''I can walk in front of the White House and shout 'Down with Reagan,' and nothing will happen to me.'' The Russian retorts: ''I can walk in front of the Kremlin and yell 'Down with Reagan,' too, and nothing will happen to me, either.''
I'm a Canadian, but I often watch American rallies on the news.
I always laugh when some American protestors say they're being oppressed/the current regime is fascistic.
I mean, you're gathered, in a crowd, often armed, with your message being broadcast, with a reasonable expectation (I know, I know, not always - especially for certain demographics) of going home/surviving.
I'm not sure they really understand what fascism is
EDIT:
I'm completely supportive of gathering/protesting. But be clear that you're protesting particular, discrete issues. And probably not fascism in the general sense.
The existence of worse problems does not make other problems go away. It's reasonable and desirable to strive for a better future no matter how good the present is.
The issue is that calling America a "fascistic regime" is flat-out wrong (at this point in time). It's just completely false - it doesn't matter that there are some issues, because it's crystal-clear to anyone who has read a few history books (or lived under an actual fascist regime, as one of my relatives has) that America ain't it.
If your line of work is "being one of those who can properly identify and point out oppression," and then "sell training/books/seminars/etc to make people feel like they're doing something to resolve it," it would be bad for business to actually change the state of things.
Greer did some writing on this state of things, and termed it "The Rescue Game" [0].
It's notably static, in that the people who claim the high position in the game really don't want to be removed from that position.
Welcome to the news cycle! The world improves, but one thing remains constant (stubbornly disconnected from whether or not, and how much, things are improving): amount of outrage
No because if the law is applied equally to all people regardless of background by definition the reason to protest does not exist anymore. Think about it, this was the whole point of BLM: Please stop shooting/killing/maiming unarmed Black people at a disproportionally higher rate than members of other groups.
I'm happy when people are motivated to protest, regardless of the issue or political affiliation. Better than just taking it on the chin, over and over, slowly boiling as politicians make things worse.
The problem is that little by little these freedoms are being chipped away so it requires constant fighting and pushing back in an extreme fashion to hopefully slow it down.
For example: You want to protest Israel? Great but now in 35 states you cannot accept any government jobs.
Another example: NSA is slurping up every last detail of Americans complete being. That we know thanks to snowden. If we keep going down this slope, what is to prevent them from using this data on you? Already we saw examples of them targeting Trump cabinet officials. If a real hard left candidate makes it anywhere close to the white house, you can be sure any skeletons will come out thanks to this data trove.
And finally an example closer to protesting: How is a country not creeping closer to fascism if they are literally kidnapping protesters and putting them in unmarked vans?
So yeah I guess you can say that America is a lot more polite about oppressing people. They don't typically pull their citizens into a back alley and shoot them. These days that is less effective than their current strategy. They accomplish the oppression in smarter more tangible ways through the ease of passing restrictive laws in addition to making trouble and asking forgiveness later(this is what happened with the unmarked van story although I don't know how the investigation turned out).
Well the report is circa 2013 based on years old documents from before that and it details bulk data collection of US nationals' phone related material. It is feasible that in the post smartphone world and the collapse of storage tech costs it is entirely possible that this has been expanded to any device that receives and transmits IP packets. That is enough to piece together everything needed to personally know about a specific individual. Storing this info for later use (even in encrypted form) is exactly what I was detailing and that is a foregone conclusion based on what we do know.
Well, less so these days than 20 or even 10 years ago - the suppression just doesn't come from the government now. There are a lot of things you really can't say in America and there are a lot more of them than there used to be.
that's an entirely fair criticism, but peer-led opinion suppression is via taboo and taboos are transient and organically go through cultural waves -- have been for centuries. When a state starts doing it it usually requires catastrophic change that, maybe if you're lucky, won't hurt too many people -- but it's almost always painful, and sudden.
And the free press, if we're talking about Australia. It doesn't count if one billionaire owns it all. Or being forcibly drafted by your government to spy on your employer.
I think it's called American Exceptionalism. But i do agree that America is not bad, that's probably because they never managed to completely shake off their British roots.(before you downvote me that was a joke). I sometimes wonder if the main consequence of the Rebellion is that they have George Washintons face on their money instead of the Queen.
Don't be soft, the USA is way, way more complicated than simply "British roots". All that throwing off the shackles of imperial rule is sort of true but mostly bollocks (that's how you invite a major DV frenzy!)
Presumably the portrait of George W that is on the note is from post revolution ie mid 1770s otherwise there is a depiction of a British citizen on rather a lot of greenbacks.
> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
Some substantial portion of Americans poll as not owning guns but being glad their neighbors do. The reasons vary, deterring criminals and/or state authority often appearing. It's not surprising that some of these people use reddit and HN.
> Some substantial portion of Americans poll as not owning guns but being glad their neighbors do. The reasons vary, deterring criminals often appearing. It's not surprising that some of these people use reddit and HN.
I've heard this said often, but people who I've heard saying this have never offered up an actual poll to back this supposed sentiment up. Surely there must be at least a Rasmussen poll (that tilts heavily conservative) that backs claims like this up with numbers?
>America isn't perfect, but it's pretty damned good.
And this is because of generations who got blasted for fighting against the current norms at the time. Whether it was fighting against slave holders or during times like the civil rights era when the southerners were willing to make some compromises but in regards to full civil rights they pushed back and said "lets not move too fast on this, its too much change too quickly". No, it took the real brave people who were that generations extremists to drag the country kicking and screaming in to the future. Even then the rebels were only successful because of circumstances beyond their control (eg. JFK assassination paved the way for pushing the civil rights bill through).
So yeah you seem to be implying that the Americans whining and complaining today should look at places like China and see how good they have it(the standard right wing trope displayed on places like the Joe Rogan podcast) however you fail to see how this messy process that unfortunately involves things like wokeism, BLM and this constant extreme push for other real progressive causes will hopefully eventually lead to an America that the next generation can say with more confidence that "America isn't perfect, but it's pretty damned good."
The brainwash has been going on for 70 years, when internet became a concern, the great firewall covered for that.
You ended up being brain-washed in no time.
There is no doubt CCP made infrastructure a priority, and did 10X better than the west socializing countries as a whole, but if you curse Xi just for fun on any street for 3 minutes you will be in jail quickly without access to attorneys. When you have absolutely zero individual rights where it is needed the most, you will miss your Germany dearly.
I get the point but reality is unless you cursed Xi with more than 5 people cursing together as well - otherwise people will just think you lost your mind
You would be handing over full political and military control to a group of individuals, with no way of taking it back. If those individuals turn out to perform as well as the current Chinese leaders, you would be ahead. If they turn out to perform more like the past Chinese leaders, you would be behind. Over the past 5,000 years, China got it more wrong than right, which is the only reason that they haven't been the undisputed world leader with the highest GDP, which is where they belong given their vast human and natural resources.
Democracy was never meant to be as efficient as a dictatorship. In fact, inefficiency is baked in by design to hedge against bad leadership (at the cost of good leaders having their potential impact massively reduced). Think of democracy as a political system with an expensive but effective insurance policy.
"If i could vote for the CCP here in germany, i would."
You could not vote for a system like that - if you did, you'd stop having a right to vote for a different system RIGHT after. 'nuff said.
It's unfathomable someone in 2021, that is not a Xi-paid troll (precisely what this article is about) would advocate for more authoritarian control, rather than less. The people you spoke to (including your farcical example) didn't exist or were fully brainwashed by propaganda. Again, IF they exist, THEIR PERSPECTIVE would have necessarily been skewed and manipulated by their internal propaganda, which is again, what this article is about.
China pretends to exist in a vacuum, but it does not. Many of its citizens and residents seem to, but they are wrong.
"EVERYONE IS BRAINWASHED EXCEPT OF US BLESSED AMERICANS" F15 flyoverbombing of some random civilianscool individualism that was build on exploitation of the planet and the 90% of the world KEK, sustainable, mate.
China workd. I lived there for years and people were happier than here in Germany.
I am just sooooooo sick and tired of those anti-China sentiment here in HN. EVERY SINGLE TIME a china article is posted, you just read shit. If it was balanced, i would not care, but it is so predictable. I just want to rant and vomit.
Please stop "ranting and vomiting" on HN. Not only does it not help, you're reinforcing exactly the situation you're deploring. That damages this community in a deeper way.
HN is a highly international community but it is also highly Western. You can't expect attitudes on topics remote from Western understanding to be either balanced or informed—especially not when the topic is politically and nationally charged. The same would be true of any group of HN's size and regional composition. That's a baseline condition we can't do a thing to change. The question is how we should handle it.
I've expended a huge amount of effort trying to protect this place for minority voices (including about China - here's a list I put together for another user some time ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/chinamod). I regularly get accused of being a communist agent and all the rest of it (which expresses the stupidity-of-the-collective in a way that would be scary if it weren't so trivial), and I can tell you for sure that accounts like yours, making the opposing case in a name-calling, ranting way, are a big part of the problem on this. So please stop.
Anyone who wants to represent a minority view to a majority (especially a highly-charged majority) has a special responsibility not to "rant and vomit" in a wake-up-sheeple fashion. If you do that, all you achieve is to recharge the majority and reinforce its righteousness in precisely the places you want to see change. Should you happen to be arguing in favor of the truth (or some aspect of the truth), then you discredit the truth, which hurts everybody. I've been trying to make this point to people for years, on a wide range of topics: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor....
Arguably it's not fair that the minority has an additional burden that the majority doesn't have, but it's the way these conversations work, and we can't do a thing to change that either.
It's not just a civility burden, it's a factual burden.
If somebody came onto HN posting obviously dumb stuff about how American people feel and think, they'd be downvoted, because everyone can see the obvious falsehood.
But when it's Chinese, majority vote of Americans decides the truth! They will tell you the real deal on how things work inside China. And if someone calls them morons, we have you to come in and keep things civil.
I'm not sure what your point is. Obviously majority vote does not decide the truth, and ignorant people don't know what they're talking about. And still we have to try to find a way to operate this forum and not allow people to destroy it. Burning the community down doesn't serve the truth in any way.
Nice talk, but you are one of the biggest offenders by using moderation powers to curtail discussion around topics which may not fit the majority world-view while refusing to treat the view of ignorant morons similarly. I have seen it happen several times over the last decade. And no, I am not going to present any "evidence" here.
I'll match your evidence-free comment with one of my own: you have no idea how hard we work to do just what I described above, and how much pressure we come under because of it.
Re what you've "seen happen several times over the last decade": I'm sure you've seen some dots, but how you connect them into the picture you've got is not a thing you've seen, but something you yourself have made out of the dots. If you started with different priors, you'd collect different dots and build a totally different picture—and believe me, people do.
Your (and others') dot collections are smatterings of datapoints out of which, like magic beans, you can grow whatever beanstalk of bias you want. People with different priors have different tastes in datapoints and "ignorant morons", therefore collect different beans, and therefore grow different visions of massive, outrageous bias—and they're all just as angry about it.
I'll believe it when I see "anti-China" posts being removed from the first 3-4 pages with as much enthusiasm as much as "anti-US" posts. Or when flags are removed from posts related to death of Kobe Bryant (or conversely, discussion about the death of a nobody like Bill Gates' father demoted by moderation action).
Look at this immediate thread above your comment, majority vote did decide the truth about how Chinese people think (they're brainwashed!). Then you scolded someone who got salty about it.
If you want to have some actual influence over how we handle these situations, I need you to engage with the detailed explanation I gave above. If you think you know a better way to handle it, I'd like to hear how, but if you don't even try to respond to the argument (and worse, if you just post glib dismissals), that comes across as blaming us for a difficult situation that we actually work hard as hard as we can to try to mitigate. This is not helpful.
You'd probably like to ban the topic entirely, but it'd be weird to have one banned topic and you've said that doesn't work, so that's out.
So what's left, being even-handed, I guess. Except it's a 10-1 ratio, so being even-handed, ban people from both sides leaves you with a 9-0 ratio.. congrats? Even if you're really, really, really trying to be even-handed with regards to content, most people would bias towards handing out 50-50 to feel fair, while 10-1 (or whatever ratio) is actually statistically fair. But that would feel quite biased if you did it! Practically taking a side! So we get a phenomenon where a bad Chinese-adjacent comment (or even a polite one) is super likely to be moderated, but you can't possibly moderate all of the really bad anti-China comments in this thread, there's too many, they rule the day and they establish truth for passersby.
Tech is one of the few industries with a large Chinese minority during this time of rising tension. It would vastly improve the intellectual tone of the site if we had more of them explaining their viewpoint and less of people telling them they're brainwashed.
Failing that, I think the actual real-world answer is to pro-actively push down the repetitive anti-China stories that hit the front page multiple times a week, and then just deny it if anyone asks. They're not intellectually interesting, they're hostile to a significant tech minority, and you don't like the flamewar. Why keep them?
I wouldn't like to ban the topic. I would like people to treat each other respectfully.
I agree with you that it would be better for HN if Chinese users, and users of Chinese background, could share more of their experiences and observations. I've been arguing that for a long time, as I believe you know. But it's not super cool of you to be making that argument as long as your own contributions to HN are undermining that possibility. We're each responsible for how we individually affect the collective situation, and pointing the finger at others—even if they're behaving badly, and even though they're benefitting from an unfair, lopsided fight—is not helpful.
HN will continue to trend towards having 2-5 content-free "china bad amirite" threads a week with an echo chamber of people who don't know any history of the region saying completely nonsensical things. People who know a little more, or who point out things like "the belt and road initiative isn't a literal road and can't be used to invade someone" will be banned for contributing to flamewar.
For example, in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29655341[1]. You can't be everywhere, there will always 10x comments like that for every 'bad' comment going the other way, and your even-handedness means that 9/10 of them are implicitly judged as fine, acceptable and encouraging intellectual something-or-other.
[1] Check that guy's history, he writes Xi Jinping as Hsi Chunping.. his commitment to ideology is so strong that he wade-giles'd Xi, lol
I've been trying to persuade baybal2 for years to stop breaking the site guidelines, and have banned and unbanned him over the years, but you're quite wrong in your assumptions—he has a lot of experience in the region and knows a lot. Not only that but people have attacked him unfairly in the past here too (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195898). I also don't believe that he's primarily an ideologue—his comments (at least many of them) are more interesting than that. Whether he was using an obsolete transliteration as flamebait or not is beyond my ability to say, but he's not a native English speaker, so maybe there are some crossed signals here too.
This is a good example of how people jump to conclusions and assume the worst about each other. It's no more ok when you do that than when other users do it, even if you are (or feel you are) part of a minority that gets treated unfairly.
I understand and empathize about how frustrating this is—but lashing out at the very people who are bending over backwards to try to bring some semblance of tolerance and neutrality to an impossible situation is neither nice nor helpful.
I've discussed the lopsided dynamic of these conversations with you many times. The question is how to deal with it. No matter how frustrating it is, it's important not to respond to ignorance by losing your cool, becoming abusive, and so on. When you do that, you're reinforcing the very situation you deplore, and by that you actually make yourself responsible for the status quo. Each of us has a small quantum of energy to contribute, and it's important not to use yours to cause further harm (even when it's for deep reasons).
It's much better to respond to ignorance patiently and with good information, seeking points of connection and opportunities to treat the other person better than they expect and maybe better than they deserve (or you feel they deserve). Then you're investing your quantum in a good way. Also, it's good to remember that we're all ignorant, just about different things, and we all share the same hard-wiring that causes people to project bad things into dark spaces and thus treat each other poorly. If you happen to know more about $topic and thus can see how ignorant others are, that's not because you're better than them, or any different from them in the end. It's an accident of circumstance.
This has been eating me up all day in case you happen to check in again.
I didn't start posting to whine about being banned a few months ago, I was more concerned about the immediate thread.. but since you brought up my posts, you specifically told me while banning me that civility wasn't "good enough". I was doing this exact recommended pattern of responding patiently and civilly at the moment that you banned me.
Maybe I'm just really oblivious, or a congenitally bad poster, but what would be good enough? It's irrelevant since I'm banned but I always like to self-improve if I can, there must be something I'm missing here. If you're busy or don't see this, no biggie.
There are two levels to consider. At the individual post level, conversation needs to be thoughtful, respectful of the other person, and patient when correcting wrong information or responding to bad arguments. If that's what you mean by civility, that's good (we stopped using that word years ago, but that's a separate issue).
At the overall account level, an account needs to be using HN for its intended purpose, which is intellectual curiosity. It's not ok to post primarily on battle topics (like nationalistic ones or ideological ones or partisan ones), because curiosity doesn't work that way. If the primary use of one's energy is for nationalistic or political battle, that pretty much guarantees that curiosity is not part of the mix. I've written extensively about this in the past:
Past tense. Things have been getting worse in china. Many of us who are shitting on china are doing so out of love and out of pain because it looked like there was a chance it would have become an awesomer place.
This is not anti-chinese sentiment. This is an objective take on geo-political matters regarding an outwardly belligerent anti-western world power functioning under authoritarian rule (which is freely admitted by them, btw). T
This same power is also allied with another major anti-western power, the russian federation, forming an alliance meant to disrupt and expand. An empirial mindset that is threatening global stability.
I wish we had visa-less travel so more people could visit and see that it's not a scary place. It's a different system for sure, and you can be jailed for saying certain things, but that's true for almost everywhere except America. Germany jails holocaust deniers.
At least for Americans, I don't think many can afford to travel and those who do probably have considered visiting or have visited. Only ~1/3 of Americans have a valid passport. I assume part of it is due to the US itself being so vast and diverse that you can really explore this country and probably be content but also that ~51% of Americans have less than three months of emergency savings. Combine this with no legal mandated days off and its not looking good for a lot of the country.
I met an English teacher who did visit China not too long afo. They were arrested and interrogated for days in a concrete room until his government paid a bribe (called a fine) for his release. His crime was teaching English after some regional goon changed the rule silently near the end of his visit in order to extort people. My professor at the time talked about how this was common
No thanks for the visit. Not to mention how china is detaining foreigners lately with death penalty sentences to blackmail other nations into obeying them (most recent example I can think of was Canada)
State driven kidnapping and extortion really kill tourism
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait to HN? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly, and we ban that sort of account. We're trying for a different sort of forum here.
> i wonder how people here inte west think of china. do you really think that GESTAPO will come and beat the shit out of you just because you were talking shit?
I have no idea what it is like generally, but this video[1] (which I admittedly cannot confirm the authenticity of) depicts a man who has been arrested for comments he made on social media. He is chained to the table and his arms are restricted as he tries to apologize for comments he made about the police to a WeChat group with 75 people in it.
If someone in this thread claims otherwise, you should post those videos.
I was responding to this point:
> i wonder how people here inte west think of china. do you really think that GESTAPO will come and beat the shit out of you just because you were talking shit?
My point is that it does appear that the police in China will come and arrest you if you speak negatively about them. My point is not "The American system is better than the Chinese system". We should speak candidly and truthfully about the failings of each system.
Does that make sense?
Edit: I just now realize you were the original poster. You made a comparison between Germany and China and when an inconsistency was pointed out to you, you responded by pointing out faults in the American justice system.
It would likely do you good to reflect on this. When flaws with China are pointed out, why would you jump to point out wrongdoings in America? It had as much relevance as pointing out police brutality in Brazil or some other unrelated country. You should try to better understand why you have reacted this way.
This happens quite a lot, the answer is yes. One of the travesties of the American system though is that it’s often these videos that cause justice to be done when it would not be done otherwise.
Yes, all true. The treatment of post Soviet Russia was extremely opportunistic and shameful. It is not a great surprise that Putin's Russia regards the West as an existential threat.
I haven’t been to China but I grew up in post communist Europe.
A concept unfamiliar to westerners are “open secrets”. Things that everyone knows, everyone talks about with each other, and never get mentioned in any official capacity. If someone asks with a camera, the answer is whatever it needs to be. If an official asks in the line of duty, the answer is the correct answer. If the same person asks as a friend 3 hours later, you both talk shit.
Kinda like schoolyard rules. We can be fighting to the death to the death but if a teacher asks, we’re best friends having fun together.
“as long as my shit city in germany is planning a 10km subway line for 15 years already … while china is builing the best infrastructure in the world, i will prefer the chinese system.”
And people wonder how Hitler came to power in Germany.
> Have you watched any of the interviews conducted on the street in China on the Asian Boss YouTube channel?
Why should anyone care about "man on the street" interviews on some Youtube channel? I mean, it's not like someone in a repressive country is going to open up with all their complaints about their repressive government to some rando with a camera.
> True. But you also just made the assertion un-falsifiable.
How so? Even if a quiet dissident won't open up to some obnoxious youtuber creating content, they may express their true feelings in other ways. My main point is you have to be pretty careful with what you "learn" from Youtube, and "have you seen this rando youtuber" (with the implication they should change your mind) is not a very strong response.
Most people going to China to make money don't come there wearing pink glasses. It's a Faustian bargain. Eat your soul for money, and an opportunity to run a factory without being sued by everybody on the day 1.
Such people come with real delusions. Either delusions of grandeur, or delusions of being so smart that they think they will trick communists, people who grew giving their whole lives to intrigue, and insane political culture which makes GOP look like kindergarteners.
Because we enjoy HN as one of the few places on the internet where meaningful discussion can still occur, which is what comments like yours ("communists grow giving their whole lives to intrigue") undermine. The world is a lot more nuanced.
There is nothing nuanced about what mafia-like organisations, which includes communist parties, turn to. They consume their members with life of fear, and strife. One wrong word to the boss, or something allowing others to set you up, and you are killed.
It's cutthroat, it's one sided, and is exactly as boringly simple as the history textbook tells. I lived in communist hellholes for 18 years of my life, and I will not be entertaining a wish of people wanting to rewrite these textbooks to say that black is white.
It's a bad tendency I see more, and more: people drawing nuance when there is none, for a want of being "nuanced," "sophisticated," "succinct"
So I actually paid for subscriptions to a couple of these news sites and they keep forgetting my session and lack a deeplinking feature to their app which doesnt forget my session
I would rather they starve due to lack of revenue at this point so they actually do something competitive
I don’t understand why a site like a news site would EVER time out your session. Or at least not unless there’s been like 6+ months of inactivity. So crazy every time I visit nytimes.com (from the same phone) I have to sign in again.
Says right in their about page they are under a govt. mandate. The local language pages also have this information.
> Radio Free Asia operates under a Congressional mandate to deliver uncensored, domestic news and information to China, Tibet, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Burma, among other places in Asia with poor media environments and few, if any, free speech protections. All broadcasts are solely in local languages and dialects, which include Mandarin, Tibetan, Cantonese, Uyghur, Vietnamese, Lao, Khmer, Burmese, and Korean.
Edit: A discussion like this wouldn't even happen inside China.
Well one can argue that the Shanghai police was also quite transparent about it, given the following:
> On May 21, a branch of the Shanghai police posted a notice online seeking bids from private contractors for what is known among Chinese officialdom as public opinion management.
I see what you mean, but it is only evident when you actually know of RF as a political entity. It's not as evident when they operate under localised brands posing as "just small local news".
In Russia RF's news outlets were the ones who resisted the foreign funded media explicit labeling regulations the most and were the slowest to comply and start labeling their content explicitly.
What I mean is their degree of transparency is quite debatable and raises some red flags.
Growing up in the USSR I used to listen to pirate radio - Voice of America, BBC, and likes. They never called for regime change. They broadcasted news, music, and interviews with Russian speaking dissidents like Solzhenitsyn.
> Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in "what about…?") is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy, which attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving the argument
The American media is attempting to frame China as worth of fighting over Taiwan by demarcating it as exceptionally evil by demonstrating that it does things that no acceptable country would do. Unfortunately for that argument, usually the US is doing something more exceptional and extreme than the demonstrated behavior.
> usually the US is doing something more exceptional and extreme than the demonstrated behavior
Actually, it's almost always the opposite.
CCP requiring Chinese companies to hand over all user data unencrypted > USG occasionally sending NSLs to specific companies for information on specific persons.
CCP stealing IP from the US, EU, Japan, and other countries > ???.
CCP Operation Fox Hunt[1] > ???.
CCP police threatening the family of a student in the US speaking about Tianamen Square[2] > ???.
CCP hiring massive numbers of 50c posters to write hundreds of millions of social media posts under false aliases > USG operating Free Radio Asia with the explicit notice that it's controlled by the government.
CCP restricting children to three hours of video games a week > USG preventing those under age 21 from smoking or drinking.
CCP massacring unarmed students in Tiananmen Square with tanks > ???.
CCP censoring all information about Tiananmen Square inside the Great Firewall > USG asking newspapers not to publish classified information.
CCP operating a concentration camp in Xinjing with about a million people indefinitely in it for no reason other than their religion > USG holding a few thousand refugees in cages for a limited time until they can be returned to their country because they crossed the border illegally.
CCP blackmailing various companies for stating that Taiwan is a separate country > ???.
CCP invading Taiwan for holding the former rulers of the country that fled after a bunch of murderous revolutionaries overthrew the government and killed millions of people > USG invading Afghanistan to find a terrorist group that flew planes into our buildings and killed thousands. (note that in the first case, the perpetrators (or associates thereof) are doing the invasion, while in the second case, it's the victims).
In almost every single case that China is doing something bad, America's equivalent is either far less bad or nonexistent.
Even beyond that - no country is perfect (especially not the US), but when the USG (or governments of most other countries) does something bad, the citizens usually get angry about it, and the officials responsible either try to hide or eventually reverse course. With the CCP, the citizens defend it, and the officials claim that they're actually doing the right thing, deny that it exists at all (e.g. the Uyghur concentration camps), or counter with misinformation.
You've completely proved my point, which is that in every argument people make bad comparison between the US and China. In every single item here, you greatly stretch either what the US has done to clearly over-exaggerate it, stretch what the CCP has done to under-exaggerate it, or sometimes out-right make a completely false comparison - it's really clear you're not doing it in good faith. Examples:
(1) > If you don think that the NSA is spying on half the western world
If you'd read the Snowden papers, you'd see that the NSA collects metadata on US persons, and can only collect specific (non-meta-)data on those that they submit a warrant for. Completely invalid comparison, not remotely comparable to the CCP requiring all companies to hand over all data of all persons in China non-encrypted.
Bonus points for the "If you don't think" emotional manipulation.
(1b) > the CIA on the other half
Baseless speculation that conveniently fits the position you hold and nothing else.
(2) > When every country develops, they "borrow" from the previously developed countries.
Classic whataboutism. What America did centuries ago has no bearing on what China does now - it's actually far worse now, because we generally have better-developed senses of morals and that stealing is bad. Also, while US citizens might have taken technology from other countries, the CCP government is doing the theft here - and it's outright breaking and entering to do so, too.
(3) > Target and extradite people for "corruption" (real or not), US targets and attempts to extradite people for leaking evidence of war crimes and spying.
Nope, false comparison. In Operation Fox Hunt, the CCP (a) targeted people for merely speaking out about government (b) targeting their families and (c) didn't charge many of the targets with any crime whatsoever. None of those things apply to the US. Thinking that this is even remotely similar to charging someone for espionage and attempting to extradite them using the legal system is actually completely insane; there's no similarities whatsoever to the CCP trying to covertly and illegally coerce citizens to return home for crimes for which they have never been charged by threatening their families.
You just literally didn't make any point at all here. So, to recap for viewers at home: there's no US equivalent to the CCP massacring students with tanks at Tienanmen Square.
(5) > Surprise surprise but the US has its own 50 cent army.
Fine, as a US citizen, I condemn any forms of propaganda taken by my government on my behalf. You're defending yours. Also, uh, any evidence that the US has also hired two million propaganda creators to create several hundred million posts? Barely comparable, but this is the only solid point you've made so far.
(6a) > Yes let us go liberate the enslaved children
You engage in sarcasm because it's clear that you don't have a point. Let me be clear what this point is: the CCP is tyrannical in a way that other governments are not.
(6b) > and sometimes mandatory
Mandatory abortion is more tyranny, not less.
(7) > The unlucky and unarmed populations of Iraq and Afghanistan who are continued to be massacred via drone strike.
Completely insane comparison. You do know that the point of Tienanmen Square was that the people getting massacred were (a) intentionally killed (b) unarmed (c) students (d) peacefully protesting (e) Chinese citizens and (f) the government has enforced a media blackout on it? That's literally the opposite of Iraq/Afghanistan in every single way. Meanwhile, the closest comparison you can make is (a) accidentally killed collateral damage (which is terrible, but not that it's not intentional) from the US hunting people who flew airplanes into the Twin Towers on 9/11, and the targeted people are (b) armed (c) terrorists (d) trying to kill us who are (e) not US Citizens and (f) the US government doesn't enforce a media blackout when they mess up, and calling a few dozen deaths (which are tragic, but all accidental - the result of the military being careless, not the PLA tank operators intentionally running over students) "massacre" is also crazy.
(8) > Assange and Snowden
Insane comparison. Snowden and Assange both leaked classified information that cost the US billions (tens of billions? hundreds?) of dollars of taxpayer money to develop and resulted in lives lost, and whose significance was military and intelligence capabilities (yeah, Snowden wasn't about telling the people about a spying program - if it was, he would have only leaked docs about the NSA spying on American citizens in particular, but you know what? 99% of the material leaked had nothing to do with spying on American citizens at all, and was just straight-up sending classified military+defense information to other countries). Not even remotely comparable to the CCP suppressing information on the military massacring peacefully protesting civilians with no defense or strategic value.
(9a) > What is Guantanamo Bay?
A place that (a) many Americans actively protest (unlike Xinjiang, which it seems like is constantly defended by Chinese nationals) (b) holding a few thousand people (instead of a few million) that (c) are suspected of committing terrorism (not "innocents").
(9b) How many millions of blacks are locked up in American prison for no reason other than their skin color and a sham charge of jaywalking or dug possession.
Also a completely insane comparison. Bringing up skin color is crazy - US judges do not, as a rule, discriminate based on skin color. Prisons in the US aren't even remotely comparable to the labor camps in Xinjiang, and even though the American justice system has problems (that are being protested by its citizens, as opposed to being defended, like Chinese nationals defend Xinjiang), every person taken in has a public trial with a charge that's on the books - as opposed to the CCP disappearing citizens with no trial, and no charge other than just being Uyghur, and denying that the places they're being held exist in the first place.
(10a) > The US literarily strong arming its states for trying to boycott Israel.
This is one of the only even partially-valid points you have made here. "Partially" because while it's very bad for the federal government to pass laws on the states about this matter, it's also categorically different for the federal government to restrict what state governments can do for geopolitical reasons, than it is for the CCP to financially blackmail foreign companies for expressing a very sane and reasonable position: that Taiwan is a separate country from China.
(10b) > The US enacting regime change when the wrong person was democratically elected...
This isn't even relevant to anything here. You're just throwing it out to try to add chaff to your arguments.
(11) > ???????
This is the only fully-valid point/comparison you've made in this entire post. I misspoke - I meant to say "CCP planning to invade Taiwan..." and it was because I perceived that the old leadership of China (before the cultural revolution) had fled there - but I can't find any evidence of that, so I'm withdrawing this claim.
> To find this level of ignorance here is semi-astounding.
Pure emotional manipulation.
> Propaganda works, and that post is proof of it.
What are some of the characteristics of propaganda? Assertions of vague or unknown truths (1b, 5, 10b), exaggerate the facts (1, 2, 3, 7, 9b), misdirection of attention (6, 10b), emotional manipulation (6a, 9a, 9b, last sentence), wild comparisons that aren't valid (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10a). I made the points that I had in good faith, using sound logic, and withdrew the one that I realized was wrong (11).
It's not that, though. This is about showing that something that's being painted as a terrible abomination is, in fact, perfectly normal behaviour, and the whole story is essentially an exercise in double standards.
The idea of "whataboutism" and attempting to present it as something inherently wrong awfully seems like a convenient way to dismiss uncomfortable points of the discussion and turn it into yet another two minutes hate.
Comparing how different agents deal with similar problems is not a thoughtcrime, you know. It is quite a healthy way of understanding how such problems arise and how to deal with them.
"Whataboutism" was popularized by Western propagandists at the height of the Cold War to deal with the uncomfortable reality that the USA and USSR, as modern empires competing for global economic/military/ideological domination, had far more in common than either would like to admit. Food for thought.
If someone wants to assert those similarities in a separate conversation, that's fine. Trying to derail an existing conversation about the actions of one country by mentioning actions of another country is a distraction at best, and arguing in bad faith at worst.
The point is that if you disagree, counter the argument. Asserting similarities does not counter the argument. If I say: "Bob is bad because he steals apples." Saying "But you also steal apples!" does not counter the argument at all. It's changing the subject.
If you do in fact steal the apples then no. It is calling you a hypocrite and having little moral standing to talk about the subject because you lack the integrity.
If you were genuinely concerned about the fact of stealing the apples you should be working toward the easiest way of reducing said theft. Namely stop doing it yourself and then start worry about Bob.
Whataboutism is not "compare and contrast". It's "shut up" or at best "look at the wookie".
Not every "let's look at what other countries do" is whataboutism. One-line "X does Y" almost always is. (Longer posts can also be, but the one-liner is a heavy signal.)
Please don't take HN threads into generic flamewar, and certainly not generic nationalistic flamewar. It's tedious, predictable, nasty, and not what we want here.
I think for most of HN's readership, China is the current Big Bad. There will be exceptions, like there always are for anything, but in general this will be true.
The US is something to be criticized because many HN readers either live in the US or interact with US companies/tech. Critiquing what one knows is to be expected. But they do not consistently describe every action of an American company, business or initiative as some sort of lie or conspiracy to suppress dissent. Some companies, they do; but many they do not. What would be HN's readership instinctive reaction to a mainland Chinese company that claimed to be like YC?
I think the parent comment was referring to this comment section. If you scroll down and read the grayed-out comments, there are indeed quite a few people trying to argue that "everybody does it" as a way of downplaying this.
People get the government they deserve. If Chinese society, in the 21 century, is still elevating monarchs to engage in genocide and totalitarianism, I’m not persuaded that it’s bigotry to conclude the society is not something to be admired. YMMV.
There is saying or idea or something, I don't remember how it's called, but the gist of it is down to that you are always going be more extreme when those closest to you go out of line. A religion can tolerate and live peacefully around other people that are part of a different religion but if a heretic group starts blooming in the midst, things are going to get ugly really fast.
It's sort of the same with politics. You expect more from countries you see as sharing most of our cultural values. That's one of the reasons Israel for example is criticized much more than worst human rights offenders.
Consent for what exactly? A direct war with China is not going to happen (MAD). I could see USA pushing to set up more defences for Taiwan, if Taiwan would allow it. And that would be a good thing. Far better to spend money on setting up defences for a peaceful and valuable ally than to spend on wars in the middle east.
I'm not sure that MAD is always a bulwark. China only has a few dozen ICBMs that can hit the US, plus another couple dozen SLBMs probably on three to four submarines.
It's a very dangerous game to play, but I can see the same sort of group think that led to the Iraq war saying "our defense systems could totally handle that".
Nothing you say makes your comment any more true, either. At the moment, we're at "That's just, like, your opinion, man."
[Edit: Do you have any evidence that the NYT is deliberately seeking to manufacture consent? Or even that they are unwittingly being used to manufacture consent?
Or are they just reporting what's actually happening, namely that China is manipulating western media?
And, even if the NYT is manufacturing consent, that's still pretty much a "whataboutism", unless you're claiming that China is not manipulating Facebook and Twitter.
Propaganda is among others what to say, or not to say. When to say it. What words to use.
1) Where the NYT uses manipulating western media, I would say China is engaging with world leading social networks. Basically China is buying likes. Big frickin' deal. But the NYT calls this manipulates Facebook and Twitter ( as if they are influencing the companies in itself ).
2) Manufacturing consent implies war : foreign adventures. It is not whataboutism because the US has a track record of these adventures and China has not.
Do you regard Tibet as an internal Chinese matter?
The US has more of a track record, I'll admit. On the other hand, China keeps forever in a way that the US does not.
I asked if you have any evidence. You didn't even hint that you had any, so I will assume that you do not. So we're back to "That's just your opinion."
Asking for evidence of manufacturing consent is not understanding manufacturing consent. Without being told, the media knows what is supposed to report on and what not to report on.
"It's clearly true, no evidence needed"? At a minimum, that's not very persuasive to anyone who doesn't already agree with you.
But worse, that kind of thinking is how you wind up with beliefs that no external evidence can persuade you are false. It's the same approach of both religious cults and conspiracy theorists.
Mind you, you could in fact be right. But the thinking pattern has, at best, disreputable fellow travelers. Be cautious of that pattern of thinking.
In this case it means you misunderstand the model [1] which doesn't require conspiracy or malicious intent. The book they published on it is just a mass of evidence that this is how it works, check it out if that's what you want.
Might it make you uncritically believe anything the NYT and Washington establishment media claims? Even if their primary sources are extremely dubious?
No, I mean I myself am bombarded by people who self-identify as wumao on the various internet forums I visit. I don't read the New York Times or other "mainstream" journalism outlets. The 50 cent army has become extremely pervasive and obnoxious with their off-topic spam over the last 12 months. It's very frustrating to use most of my usual forums because of just how intensely the wumaos spam them now.
I do not read anything, close of a statement "cambodian genocide is just us propaganda"
What I read is:
"What filters through to the American public is a seriously distorted version of the evidence available, emphasizing alleged Khmer Rouge atrocities and downplaying or ignoring the crucial U.S. role, direct and indirect, in the torment that Cambodia has suffered"
Because he believed so, too. The US would have had incentive to paint the picture worse of the communist side doings after they left the area in a mess. After the pentagon papers and everything, that would have been a plausible scenario - it just happened to be real murder on big scale, even unseen in sowjet russia before.
This comment is parroting Chomsky critics that stretched pretty damn hard to find some way to defame him.
He compared the US media coverage of 2 similar genocides, nowhere does he claim either was "just US propaganda", nor does he downplay the seriousness of either, just that the coverage of it was handled different than the other.
I don't think that says what you're claiming it says. In fact, my reading of the content is contradictory to my reading of your comments. Am I missing something?
You started a hellish flamewar with this comment, exactly what the site guidelines ask you not to do. You also fueled it egregiously. That's seriously not cool and will get you banned here, regardless of how right you are or feel you are.
as I take a look at some of the comments in the threads about China, I wish you were more consistent with your stance, especially with comments on the opposite side of the spectrum.
Hacker News was supposed to be niche, but your inconsistency to demote threads of China (as they are consisntely upvoted), is now making Hacker News very generic.
You can ban me, I spend much more time reading than I do posting anyways.
But I know where Hacker news stands with their ulterior motives in doing so.
People routinely jump to conclusions like this from the small number of data points they happen to see. Specifically, when they see something they dislike, they place a far greater weight on it, and are more likely to notice it in the first place [1]. This leads to false feelings of generality [2] and basically guarantees that everyone with passionate feelings (i.e. strong dislikes) feels like the mods are against them [3]. This is all false—it's powered by cognitive bias, which is why users with opposite passions notice opposite things and feel like the mods are against them.
Consistency is a red herring, not because we secretly side with one view, but because it's impossible. We can't moderate what we don't see, and we don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here. If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it [4]. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.
There is a gradient from cultural assimilation -> cultural genocide -> genocide. People quickly jump from former to the later.
Are there re-education camps? Yes. Is it cultural assimilation or cultural genocide? I don't know.
Are there genocide as we understood as Armenian genocide or the Holocaust? I don't think there are many data to support that claim. If we say these two are the same, from what I can gather, it also trivializes Holocaust.
Desmond Shum fled China with his son after his wife, one of the richest women in China, was disappeared back in 2017. He was told all sorts of things, like a bullet was put in her head, but supposedly she called him briefly shortly after the book was published (he doesn't know for sure). His son (12 years old) often cries uncontrollably, as his mother has disappeared and not contacted him in years. He gives a detailed explanation of how business and power works in China, and to say it is anything like America or other Western liberal countries would be patently absurd.
High power is always corrupted. Even today we have Kennedy assassination, Eperstein, Assange. Desmond Shum is connected to Wen Jiabao. No 2 in China at its time. You think dealing with these people is not dangerous?
CCP is bad in different way than any other political organizations.
That does not make China unique in any significant way at all.
I'm late to this thread, but this is such an egregious violation of the site guidelines that we should probably ban you at this point. It seems like no amount of pleading with you to follow the site rules is working:
As I told you last month, this is seriously not cool. I hate to ban an account with this much established history, so I'm going to give you one more chance. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and fix this.
Please do not take HN threads further into generic, hellish flamewars. This sort of shallow, angry denunciation is not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. You've broken them in other places recently, too—not cool. Fortunately your good comments are good.
> there's really no excuse for what China is doing to Uyghurs atm.
First make sure everyone agrees upon what happened to Uyghurs first.
China is closed to foreign examination in the sense that they do not want to show all the details. But BBC and western media decide that that's a legitimate excuse to allow manipulative reporting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS8EceIa1MQ&t=101s
You are not going to get people to be honest, if you try to force that with lies.
Does your evidence of manipulated reporting consist entirely of adjusting the saturation of an image or is there anything more substantial?
Just look at the skin of the human being in both photos - the less saturated one looks 100% more natural (unless the guy actually has orange skin). If anything the over-saturated image is more misleading than the other, more dull, image. But neither are particularly egregious.
This might be hard for you to believe, but there are a lot of people who have genuine and consistent empathy for needless suffering, no matter where it happens. You might not hear from us much online, because we often get crushed under the relentless cynicism your comment chillingly embodies.
there seems to be a really powerful group of people that don't approve of facebook selling access to "eyeballs" fairly and equally to anybody willing to buy this.
I conjecture that they'd prefer if somebody (i.e. them) had preferential access
> the Committee found ample evidence to suggest that the Russian government was developing and implementing capabilities to interfere in the 2016 elections, including undermining confidence in U.S. democratic institutions and voting processes.
Calling it hysteria is counterproductive. With that said, I'm not sure what happened or what has been done since.
It was, because they were claiming it all the way along, even before any real evidence was apparent. Thus guaranteeing the issue would not be adequately dealt with, and showing Trump the way to undermining election results in his defeat.
Also, weaponising facts is not a good way to increase public confidence in a democratic process.
Why would Shanghai police care to manufacture opinion abroad? I consume a decent amount of news and rarely see Shanghai mentioned in American newspapers.
Or is this supposed to be one part of a larger effort, tasked to work on stories that are actually of global concern, having nothing to do with Shanghai?
It's the same reason that the NBA came under fire after one of their GM's sent a tweet out in support of Honk Kong [1].
Of course it's important for the CCP to shape opinion abroad, it's seeking to supplant the US as a global power and needs the soft-influence that the US has.
I don't think modern US soft power has much to do with 19th century politics. More than enough happened since then to completely override whatever was before.
Those people either haven't lived in a dictatorship, or in a democracy, otherwise they wouldn't really have questions about which one is better, as far as treating your own citizens goes.
International relations are indeed law of the jungle though, if that's what you mean.
Manufacturing opinion is only one part of what they do:
The authorities used a phrase common among China’s internet police that refers to tracking down the actual person behind a social media account: “touching the ground.”
With growing frequency, the country’s internet police have hunted down and threatened internet users who voice their opinions. At first, its agents focused on local social media platforms. In 2018, they began a new campaign to detain users of Twitter inside China — account owners who had found ways around the government’s blocks — and force them to delete their accounts.
Now, the campaign has extended to Chinese citizens who live outside of China. The document spells out how the Shanghai police want to discover the identities of people behind certain accounts and to trace their users’ connections to the mainland. Its officers can then threaten family members in China or detain the account holders when they return to the country in order to compel online critics to delete posts or even entire accounts.
The supplier should publish designated content on overseas forums. They should increase the number of views of the post and ensure that the post appears at the top of the forum. The service should be provided at least 10 times per month.
Page 14 of the bidding document detailing what services the police required.
Shanghai is a city with a unique role in the progression of the CCP and its global efforts. Also PLA Unit 61398 is in Pudong, the shanghai district mentioned in the article. Overall there's a lot of CCP/PLA-adjacent tech talent in the area, and of course the local police still ultimately report to the CCP.
The Shanghai party chairman (and its always a man) is pretty influential and has a good chance of scoring a high-level national role after their stint. Also as the richest city with the most resources, Shanghai is often delegated national tasks...you shouldn't think of it at the local/state/national government separation that exists in the USA.
Realizing that this game is played by many others, governments and private entities included, leaves me to conclude that the “Metaverse” has been with us for some time.
Where are those proof-of-biological-existence services to counter this? And are they lacking because the platform owners are disincentivized for some reason?
There are laws and rules designed to safeguard open and free exchange of information and opinions, and covert influence is regularly forbidden.
The big difference is that domestic influence is much easier to (eventually) unveil (see Watergate, Snowden, panama papers etc.). Foreign influence is harder to detect if it comes from a country that executes its whistleblowers and disappears its critics.
Product placement is not marked. That's the whole idea before product placement, not marking it so that it appears "organic".
When a think tank expert comes on TV and talks in favor of (or against) building an oil pipeline, they will briefly announce that "X is from the Open House think tank", but not mention "a know oil company defender".
You confuse "legal and regulated" with "transparent to the public".
When Ford pays money to product place one of it's cars in a movie, that might be declared and invoiced in some contract, but you as a film watcher will never know it (unless they make a point of announcing it). So please explain how movie product placement is not covert.
The same with PR, think tanks, and a lot of advertising.
As usual, they represent a spectrum of desirability, harm, regulation and sanctions. Complete transparency to the public is of course an utopian goal.
The key here is that political influence is handled very differently from commercial influence. Regulation of un-branded advertisements vary by country with some being more lenient and others more strict.
But political content is frequently held to higher standards, and should be.
When watching FoxNews or CNN, we know that someone is making editorial decisions. When looking at something popular on Twitter, we assume that the number of likes is "real" and not made-up.
This is akin to FoxNews or CNN presenting a poll where they just made up fake data.
This is akin to FoxNews or CNN interviewing someone and saying that they're "an independent voter" when they're actually a paid spokesperson for a political party.
If comments and votes/likes/etc. come in without someone saying that they're paid-for views, it's very different.
China can certainly influence media outlets in ways that one would consider fair. They can push CNN to have a Chinese Government Spokesperson interviewed. They would say a pro-China message, but viewers would be aware that they're a paid spokesperson.
In the US, the FTC requires that paid promotion be disclosed because there's a difference between someone pushing a product because they're getting paid for it and someone talking about something they like. Similarly, there's a certain moral duty to disclose when you're being paid to push certain views/agendas.
Likewise, we all hate fake reviews on products. This process is basically getting lots of fake social media accounts to give you "fake reviews" along with the impression of many people (who are actually fake) validating those fake reviews as real.
We see it here on HN. People writing from mostly anonymous accounts will say things like, "full disclosure, I work at X, but not on anything related to Y." The reason why is that we feel we should be honest. We're (hopefully) not pushing agendas on here for money. We're just saying things that we think.
I think China should be able to tweet things from government-labeled accounts to try and influence people. But what the article describes is basically a fake review problem. Shady companies hire people with fake accounts to post positive reviews. There's a reason people hate that.
Which countries don’t do this? What China is doing is bad, but is this some sort of new development? Russia, Germany, France to name a few have been caught doing the same thing. Not to mention the USA.
Facebook and Twitter need to handle this issue. This type of stuff is going on meanwhile they’re banning people for the stupidest most innocuous actions.
It's ultimately a gradient, some countries are more aggressive with their astroturfing effort.
China's astroturfing for example has gotten so bad, that the "50 cent army" meme has become pervasive and well-known to mostly anyone that spends time online.
I honestly worry that with the development around language models like GPT-3, the internet as we know it will be completely blanketed with astro-turfed content by language models and low-paid contractors.
I am very certain that within 10 years we will all fail at distinguishing bots from real people posting online. What that future holds is scary and I hope that humanity will be smart enough to not destroy democracy just because Russia, China, et cetera told them lies via those bots.
It's actually not. In global politics actors rarely engage in things their peers don't. It seems to me that this is rather ultimately something more like finding the most wildly looking thing about how other culture manages information flows and PR and focusing optics on it.
> I honestly worry that with the development around language models like GPT-3, the internet as we know it will be completely blanketed with astro-turfed content by language models and low-paid contractors.
Tbh I think that we had already passed this point, with all the low-grade SEO and myriads of copy-paste clickbait internet-tabloids. The internet has already drowned in low-grade media-content and language models would hardly change anything fundamentally in that matter.
Basically. Western reporting trying to overindex PRC influence campaigns as part of manufacturing consent has gotten so bad that useful idiots in the west start to reflexively accuse 50C everywhere. And brainwashed enough to genuinely believe it. Official 50C operates domestically, not abroad. Even then, 50c posting is characterized by spamming low effort platitudes instead of high effort engagement. PRC isn't wasting valuable human capita with English proficiency to argue/troll on platforms like HN or Reddit. Millions sympathetic to PRC opinions like diaspora / VPN users do that on their own free time. To date, PRC influence campaigns are limited to a hundreds / low thousands of accounts boosting discourse of official accounts on Twitter and Facebook. So far, they've been low effort campaigns with poor reach. But repetitive headlines tries to insinuate otherwise.
PRC will probably harness GPT-3 to exploit asymmetry in censorship ability. They just haven't yet.
> China's astroturfing for example has gotten so bad, that the "50 cent army" meme has become pervasive and well-known to mostly anyone that spends time online
Just because a meme got popular on the internet doesn't make it true.
In the case of 50 cent army, it got popular because it's the easiest way to shut down pro-China argument without refuting their points.
It certainly looks like this, until you look at facts. What did the "50 cent army" actually achieve? Anything even close to manufacturing American consent to invade Middle East and kill million random people?
Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms regularly publish (and in some countries are required by law to publish) reports on coordinated inauthentic behavior.
Here's the GCHQ unit that somehow never shows up in the coordinated inauthentic behavior reports. We know some of the specifics because of the Snowden leaks.
> Campaigns operated by JTRIG have broadly fallen into two categories; cyber attacks and propaganda efforts. The propaganda efforts (named "Online Covert Action"[3] utilize "mass messaging" and the "pushing [of] stories" via the medium of Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and YouTube.[2] Online "false flag" operations are also used by JTRIG against targets.[2]
I's pretty clear to me that every country does this, and it's only the countries without any political sway over Facebook, et al that end up in the 'inauthentic behavior' reports.
I don't understand why you'd expect anything from Facebook to be a reliable source? Or from any platform about their own integrity? Their historical record on truthful reporting is dismal, and they have every incentive to report what the moral fashion of the day is about.
Excuse me? Please link to articles of German and French police doing this:
>The Shanghai police are looking to create hundreds of fake accounts on Twitter, Facebook and other major social media platforms. The police department emphasizes that the task is time sensitive, suggesting that it wants to be ready to unleash the accounts quickly to steer discussion.
It would be foolish to think that either of the companies would move an inch in tackling this. Governments need to enforce policy to lower the ridiculous amount of influence this platforms have. They can start by forcing open standards on these platforms like SMS used to be for messaging. There is barely any technological challenge to the basics of Facebook and Twitter.
Here in the Netherlands the PM had a phase where he exclusively posted his messages on Facebook instead of government websites. Acts like that are ridiculous and only feed the hand. Of course the PM and his party gets helpful marketing in return which fuels the cycle.
I agree that the platforms have too much market power... but astroturfed propaganda from a centralized authoritarian power requires a centralized defense; a true "open competitive marketplace" of ideas and discussion would have just as much astroturfing and more.
I'm not arguing in favor of Facebook at all, shut them down and lock up Zuck, but I'm simply saying "careful what you wish for".
Then what good would open standards do? Genuine question, since I have the same fears about decentralized social networking that the above poster mentioned.
It atleast opens up the space for more healthy competition, and will aid in shaping the conversation for regulation. I don't see it as a final solution, but rather a step in the right direction.
So in short, I don't think a True and pure open market is the right way, much like a completely open market is healthy. There is a middleway. But the current situation seems like the worst solution.
Ideally, countries would just not do this. “Everybody does it” is not a convincing argument to move the conversation elsewhere and let it slide. FB/twitter is trying to mitigate this to some extent, but it’s a weird notion that companies are expected to regulate governments now. When an actor abuses a platform, the blame should be focused on the actor.
It just weird seeing how China's propaganda is so good that western nation went from positive and neutral toward China too wanting to sit on a throne of Chinese skulls.
The issue of this behavior is that CCP built an apparatus that information flow is managed across the whole country. As a result, one can no longer trace this document on any official channel. Since there is no public trace of this document, one is impossible to pinpoint the chain of evidence.
So block chain has been touted as an advanced tech by Xi, you'll notice that it's adoption is never free. The line that crossing would result into hard to predict consequences is itself intractable.
http://web.archive.org/web/20211222201356/https://www.nytime...