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Reddit Has Become a Battleground of Alleged Chinese Trolls

(www.buzzfeednews.com)
142 points mzs | 2 comments | 15 Mar 19 15:33 UTC | HN request time: 0.479s | source
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JohnJamesRambo ◴[15 Mar 19 17:00 UTC] No.19401632[source]▶
I’m not so sure Hacker News is free of the same group. Post an article critical of China sometime and watch the comments. People genuinely posting opposing viewpoints is fine and normal but there is something very uncanny valley about most of them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

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NoodleIncident ◴[15 Mar 19 17:28 UTC] No.19401998[source]▶
At least they're relatively easy to spot, due to how different English and (presumably) Mandarin are as languages. Check out the quotes from the banned user(s) in TFA, almost all of them have some sort of grammatical error. I've seen comments here with similar errors, pushing extremely pro-china arguments while not actually saying they're from China themselves.

I think the recent issue with the harassment of the Tibetan student council president(?) by Chinese students shows that it doesn't matter whether it's government-sponsored "trolling" or not. If your government punishes people who aren't outspoken in favor of the Party while abroad, then those people are still shilling on behalf of the Party, even if they're not actually paid to do so.

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1. fireattack ◴[15 Mar 19 19:01 UTC] No.19403026[source]▶
This type of comments similar to what you made are the worst and that's why while I tried my best to avoid political "discussions" here (not like there is any room for a two-sided discussion), I still can't stop myself to type this.

I know my comment probably will just reinforce your prejudice/bias, and make you laugh and say "wow see what I said? Another troll started to attack me immediately!!", but I don't care.

> At least they're relatively easy to spot,.. sort of grammatical error

Yeah, because they're Chinese, who are using their second language. It is indeed easy to spot non-native speakers (or Chinese if you will), how does it have anything to do whether they're "government shills" or not? Just because people have a different view from you, and the fact they come from China, don't make them government shills. There are plenty of actual Chinese people like me lurking here (mainly to read tech news).

> while not actually saying they're from China themselves

Since when people need to reveal their nationality to make an argument or opinion on Internet? Should I claim HN are full of "Western trolls", because the anti-China threads/comments here are probably 10x the amount of the pro-China ones (the ratio would be close to 100:1 on some subreddits like /r/worldnews), and 99% never actually "reveal where are they from" (including you)?

Just to save you a click: I'm a Chinese and I often be frank about it. I don't think it should be necessary, since people should judge my comment purely based on what I said, not where I'm from; but because of people like you I have to do so otherwise my comments will be downvoted to oblivion.

> those people are still shilling on behalf of the Party, even if they're not actually paid to do so

Wow. Brilliant, now we don't even need any evidence to proof these Chinese people are shills (not like there is any to begin with, besides they are somewhat pro-China in SOME ASPECTS), they AUTOMATICALLY are.

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2. dang ◴[16 Mar 19 01:19 UTC] No.19405788[source]▶
I had the same thought as you about English. As should go without saying, non-native speakers of English are as welcome here as anyone. Indeed, we should all be grateful to them for the extra effort they're taking to be here. The idea that this is somehow incriminating is obviously absurd and shocking. So shocking, in fact, that I'm sure people don't realize what they're saying when they say it.