Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

I wouldn't feel so safe from US Gov't backed propaganda either. The US recently enacted the "Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act," which, in following recent bill naming history in the US, seems to be more about the opposite of its title: setting up the gov't infrastructure to push it's own propoganda and controlling speech it deems as sourced from "enemies".

Anonymity allows for sockpuppetry, the digital equivalent of ballot stuffing. A dedicated actor can essentially commit a sybil attack against an online community, creating the illusion that a particular point of view is more widespread than in reality.

Most individuals don't have the time or resources to perform this or hire people who can, but state-level actors can and do, as can influence groups, in which case it's either called astroturfing or marketing. Money buys influence. There's a reason why loyalties are still best tested face to face, and why most social progress requires people in a room, people on the street, and a few allies behind the scenes.

Different groups struggle for influence all the time, even within the same state. On the international level, states compete against other states by winning hearts and minds and swaying the public, despite publicly preaching cooperation, trade, and peace. This has always been this way, and the upside is fewer commoners are getting killed in the field of battle at the behest of their king.

For a critical reader, when reading anything, ask yourself, are the points raised plausible? Are the sources believable? Could anyone have an agenda (yes), could anyone have an axe to grind? (maybe) Who does this information benefit or hurt? Could it be genuine, or a false flag? Then consider your existing beliefs. Do they still hold? If yes, you were exposed to some new information and a different point of view and you're enriched for it. But are your views invalidated as a result of this new information? If so, then slow down and repeat these steps until you're satisfied with the conclusion.

(On the other hand, anonymity is a partial countermeasure against reprisal. I'm a sock of a medium volume HN poster, and predictably, I don't know if you'll believe me, and you won't know if I'm being genuine)

A New York billionaire with decades of supporting liberal policies and democratic politicians was elected as a champion of the conservative working middle class. That's a propaganda victory.

If the goal of Correct The Record was to brainwash the public then it failed spectacularly. If the puppetmasters of the world are behind it, they don't seem very effective at all.

The poll numbers did move. But polls are just polls. The election is the real count but it only happens once, you can't draw trend lines.

> This makes me wonder more at the pro-Chinese position of a lot of western media, particularly the New York Times. Its fairly telling that Taiwan is most often described as a "renegade province" as opposed to a "peaceful high-income democracy", for example.

The original article is usually something like this "China considers Taiwan to be a renegade province, while the self-governing island Ms. Tsai leads traces its roots to the formation of the Republic of China in 1911 that overthrew the last Chinese dynasty, only to lose the Chinese civil war to the Communists in 1949."

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/11/world/asia/taiwan-tsai-ch...

This is pretty standard description covering both side that I see in various news media (BBC usually calls it break-away province).

> Having talked to a lot of English speaking, wealthy, educated, overseas Chinese people I am always disturbed at how many of them take communist party positions, despite being able to google "Tiananmen Square". More disturbing when they weren't even born in China.

That's an entirely different issue all together. I think part of the reason is that they (myself included) are sick of seeing all the negative coverage of China 24/7 so they are just trying to balance things out. I myself recently did this on Hacker News:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13398849

Also I read from some research that this is quite a common phenomenon among overseas Chinese to defend China because they boost their national pride and at the same time have nothing to lose anyway since they are not living in China.