Information operations directed at Hong Kong

Good on Twitter and Facebook.

On top of blocking thousands of websites (which includes Facebook, Google, Twitter) China's government employs thousands of government employees just to purge even the most mild criticism of the CCP on Weibo [1]. They also employ tens of thousands to export their propaganda overseas, using sock puppet accounts to push their worldview[2]. And their worldview is fiercely anti-democratic.

The Internet cannot remain free if we allow governments to use their power to control narratives and suppress the truth. US-based Social media companies are not ideal judges, but at least they publish their methodology and allow public criticism of their platforms.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sina_Weibo#Censorship [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

Even here on Hacker News, a week or so ago I saw someone being chided for “breaking the HN guidelines” by calling out a sock puppet. When I looked at the comment history of the account doing the chiding, all of its comments were on China related articles, taking a pro-China view.

I mostly only comment on China related articles, with a pro-China view. Sometimes I find it necessary to comment because it is rare to see pro-China comment here. I am definitely not state-sponsored, I might be brainwashed in your opinion, but definitely not getting paid for those comments, and those comments are from the bottom of my heart :)

I don't really like to read political posts on Hacker News, I am mostly interested in technology, but those posts with China in their title are just a click bait for me because I knew they are probably biased.

Edit: yeah, a downvote when I am just expressing myself. you want me to shut up and leave, right?

I have a question from you. How, as a pro-China person, do you view the Dalai Lama? Because I see a certain inconsistency that nobody can explain to me: the DL insists he doesn't care about the complete autonomy or independence [0] of Tibet, just faving a bit more freedom so that people can practice their religion and cultivate their culture. This, in my opinion, is a moderate view, and in no way a threat to the integrity of China. But somehow the Chinese freak out whenever the DL is mentioned. Why is that? If anything, I'd say the DL could help in keeping peace in Tibet. Seems absurd to me. And I'm wondering what is the official Chinese opinion about this.

[0] https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/past-is-past-tibet-not-seeki...

> "The past is past. We now have to look into the future," he said.

> "We are not seeking independence... We want to stay with China. We want more development," the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people said.

I don't care so much about Dalai Lama to be honest. I think religion has its place, but shouldn't be the center of stage. In my view, if you don't allow kids to vote before 18, why pushing religious view to them when they are young? I think that's more important to a person than political views. On personal level, I find religion is fundamentally exclusive (where you believe something is the ultimate truth), I think it shouldn't reform and develop with society and should eventually disappear. New religion should come out and replace old ones. Now religion is just trying to modernize and it shows it doesn't hold the ultimate truth, only want to win as many people as possible, like a pop band

I understand but could you explain why the Chinese government freaks out so much about the DL when in fact he has such moderate views?

I am not the government, and I cannot take their position to explain this. But here is my naive thoughts: Chinese government are engineers. If there is a bug in a feature cannot be fixed, keep the feature out of the delivery until it is fixed. DL is the feature. Also no one is willing to take the risk of working on the bug, because you may fail your KPI. So every time a customer request this feature, we will scare them off, so that no one is requesting this any more. It is kind of coward, but it doesn't know how to deal with it. And politicians in west really like the influence of DL, his popularity can help them in their career, so they want to bring him up again and again. I guess that basically is what's going on. Does it really matter every time Chinese government freaks out?

I am been told by the moderator not to comment on political issues, mainly because although I use Hacker News for tech news, I do mostly comment on China issues (not many though), apparently it is against the community guideline. so I will not comment any more. For me, I have lost wills to read news, and Hacker News is the only thing I read in the morning before work, it is unfortunately there are more and more political topics here.