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2525 points hownottowrite | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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loceng ◴[] No.21191490[source]
From Reddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/de1ysj/china_acc... -

"If you ever wondered how the whole world stood by and watched as the Nazis came to power and began committing atrocities here’s your answer."

The whole thread has similar commentary - along with morbid humor: "The next Disney movie will feature forced abortions to appease China."

Makes me think of brand names - who are still in existence today - who provided services, products, to similar regimes; Russell Brand Rips on GQ, Hugo Boss, referencing Syria War and Nazi Germany - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inB-6R1-4ng

Edit to add: Seems the pro-tyrants of China's leadership brigade is here: I had 2 upvotes, now at 0. Or if the people downvoting don't understand what's going on in China is akin to Nazi Germany then they're either indoctrinated in propaganda or haven't studied, analyzed, understood the situation adequately.

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grecy ◴[] No.21192633[source]
The pro-china movement on HN is extremely strong. It's fun to look at all the pro-China commenters, and then look through the account history for how long their account has existed, the kind of articles they submit and their comments.

It couldn't be more obvious.

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dang ◴[] No.21195089[source]
Your comments here and below have broken the site guidelines badly. Please read and follow them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Note this one: Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data.

No one who reads these threads remotely objectively would say "The pro-china movement on HN is extremely strong". Accounts that argue that side are a tiny minority, and frequently get barraged with accusations of bad faith, which is a form of internet bullying. It's true that people sometimes create throwaway accounts to argue the other side. But it's easy to understand why—like I just said, they get barraged.

When we look into such cases, we nearly always find—to the extent that we find anything—that these commenters are people in Western countries who are either of Chinese background, have experience in China, or are Chinese expats. Sometimes they are Westerners living in China. Overwhelmingly, the evidence is that they are good faith users just like you are, who have different backgrounds and experiences from you, which lead them to see the same situations differently than you do. What that calls for is not accusation and suppression but tolerance. As a seasoned HN user, someone who has shared many of your own wide-ranging experiences over the years, you ought to be practicing and modeling that for others.

Could they be spies or shills or foreign agents? Sure they could; so could you. What can we do other than look for evidence? Some evidence of something—anything. You have zero evidence for making these dramatic sinister claims, which poison discussion and destroy community. Just imagine if someone accused you of being a paid propagandist or spy when you were simply posting in good faith. This is a mob behavior. It's not welcome on HN, which is why we have that guideline. (No, not because we're pro-Chinese or secret communists.)

How you leap from zero evidence to "it couldn't be more obvious" or (downthread) "the increasing number of accounts that are very, very obviously paid or otherwise government controlled to influence opinions on HN" is really shocking to me. You're far from the only user doing this—it's rampant—but it's utterly dismaying to see a longstanding and good HN contributor pouring this poison in here by the bucket.

By the way, when we find accounts that are using HN primarily for political battle, including nationalistic battle, we either ban them or ask them to stop. We do that regardless of what they happen to be battling for—it's against the site guidelines either way. But I can tell you from the heart, as the person responsible for keeping the peace here, that pro-China accounts doing such things are barely a blip of an issue compared to comments like the ones you posted here. They exist, but they're impotent. It's comments like yours, which manifest the real shadow of this community, that have me scared and worried for HN.

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grecy ◴[] No.21197389[source]
Thank you for taking the time to type out such detailed and thoughtful replies here and down thread. I sincerely appreciate your input and perspective.

Obviously you have infinitely more experience and insight than I do, and you have given me a lot to think about. I had never before realized that it is in fact me who is the toxic element in this community by singling out individuals and putting them on trial. I feel bad about it (as I should) and I will never do that again.

Down thread you linked to [1], and I also appreciate your thoughtful and detailed explanation there. I agree with you that putting individuals on trial pitch-fork style is not a nice path to go down, though I can't help wonder if there isn't a "bigger picture" or anonymized way to demonstrate to the community (or just me) that the "shill" problem isn't really an issue on HN.

Like you said I seem to have jumped to the conclusion that "paid government influencers" (for want of a better term) are at work on HN, and it feels like it will be a hard assumption to shake. I'm at a point in my life where I utterly distrust any media, and I have extended that to social media. I strongly believe that virtually everything we are given from media is only one perspective, and typically it's given to us that way to benefit the entity giving the media (financial or political power).

I can only imagine how busy you are, so I feel bad adding to your stack. Would you have any interest in writing a blog post, or a "sticky" with numbers and and data that demonstrates how you know the shill problem on HN is minor? I'm thinking something along these lines [2] , though I'm sure you have way better ideas than I do.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358

[2] https://twitter.com/AirMovingDevice/status/11811206016430735...

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1. dang ◴[] No.21197970[source]
Thanks for such a calm and kind reply. I've not gone easy on you and I know it sucks to get those sort of moderation comments. I hope you can trust that it's absolutely not personal and that my point was directed at the community, not you.

I do need to write something more definitive about this, if only so I can link to it in the future instead of writing variations of the same comment over and over again, which is slowly driving me crazy. But I fear it won't convince anyone. Personal interactions, like the one we're having here, sometimes seem to move the needle—which btw goes a long way toward repairing the hopelessness I often feel about this issue. But I'm unsure how to effectively deliver this message to the community as a whole, or if that's even possible.

My gut feeling about a statistical analysis is that it would probably be unsatisfying and stir up more objections than it settled. That tweet you linked seems to depend on much higher volume, 1000x if not more, compared to what we see on HN. That is, he's analyzing 5000 instances of a measurable kind of comment, of which HN probably wouldn't even get 5 over the same time period. Trying to analyze the HN corpus on these questions would be frustrating, because you'd be forced into semantic analysis right away and no one would agree whether you'd done it right. But I'm open to suggestions.