Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

marginalrevolution.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 156 posts

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#81

Post by nickpsecurity »

dragonwriter wrote: post #44
ConfuciusSay02 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the DNC? They openly had whole organizations with budgets in the millions whose sole purpose was to influence opinion online. We also know thanks to Snowden that the US government has long had operational programs to influence and subvert online discussion. At this point I'd estimate a minimum of 30% of all posts online, including HN, are done by people with an agenda whether political or financial.

> At this point I'd estimate a minimum of 30% of all posts online, including HN, are done by people with an agenda 100% of all communication by humans is done by people with an agenda.

Sometimes it's done in confusion or while people are asleep. Hard to imagine an agenda there.

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#82

Post by [deleted] »

importantbrian wrote: post #55

This reminds me of the storyline from Newsroom where Neal tries to infiltrate the troll underground. The scary thing is how effective this kind of manipulation can be. I often check the comments on HN before reading the article to see if it's going to be worth my time. With sports or controversial news articles I love to jump to the comments to see what the debate is. I like to think of myself as a critical thinker,…

[deleted]

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#83

Post by maxxxxx »

clairity wrote: post #72

i'd say our political machine in the US has done a great job for the last 35 years at distracting us from the biggest social threat of our times: wealth disparity. instead, the public conversations revolve around terrorism, who uses which bathroom, twitter, celebrities, and even health insurance. if recent political movements (tea party, the 99%) and national elections have taught us anything, it's that this is incre…

You are right. Unfortunately the american electorate is easy to manipulate so they will blame their problems on other groups that are suffering the same problems. Instead of asking why salaries don't go up anymore while the company makes record profits people start attacking each other. The last election was a classical example of distraction. there was almost no discussion of things that would make people's lifes better but instead the propaganda machine talked about e-mail servers, infidelity and "he said, she said".

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#84

Post by lacampbell »

paradite wrote: post #69
lacampbell wrote: post #62

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. 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, de…

> 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…

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."

No mention of the dramatically different standards of living (Taiwan has a higher PPP per capita than any PRC province, including Tianjin). No mention of the fact that the ROC declared the civil war over in the 1991. There is one aggressor and agitator here.

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:

Might I suggest voting with your feet and repatriating yourself back to the motherland? Wealthy chinese are often upset at hearing criticism of a communist dictatorship with an atrocious human rights record - but they don't want to live there themselves if they can avoid it. Clearly the benefits of western civilisation are wasted on them. They can go back to the unfairly slandered land they love, and the rest of us might be able to afford a house in our own country again.

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#85

Post by LyndsySimon »

MichaelGG wrote: post #53
LyndsySimon wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm not sure what Trump's arm of this kind of propaganda is In all seriousness - it's /pol/. See also /r/The_Donald, gab.ai, and a handful of niche forums. As an aside, I'm sad that gab.ai hasn't seen adoption outside that political group. It's really got a lot of potential as a platform.

Do you have any links about paid propaganda on /pol/?

I've not seen any allegations of that.

I'm not saying it's paid, I'm saying it's his propaganda arm. They serve the function, officially or not.

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#86

Post by tangent128 »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #76
jobu wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US it seems like the stuff that really goes viral is just bullshit schemed up by people trying to make a few bucks: http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2016/11/23/503... And as the stories spread, Coler makes money from the ads on his websites. He wouldn't give exact figures, but he says stories about other fake-news proprietors making between $10,000 and $30,000 a month apply to him. Here's a great…

As much as that author may wish to take all the credit, "Poor/Black people using food stamps to buy things that anger conservatives" is a long established genre in certain media circles, and it's clear he just put a small twist on it. The most recent one I saw was people using food stamps to buy food from Amazon. I don't even understand why that's a bad thing, but someone wrote a story trying to gin up some outrage o…

The "logic" probably goes that somebody with internet access is well-off enough to not need food assistance.

(Internet access still being seen as a luxury rather than a necessity to participate in modern society/economy.)

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#87

Post by [deleted] »

AngrySkillzz wrote: post #56
analyst74 wrote: post #7

This is really scary, because I do read comments critically, and have seen those sections being flooded with nonsense, or convincing arguments being pushed without evidence. Heck, this even happens on HackerNews, which users are thoughtful hackers and which are secretly trying to push an agenda? Or is there even a line between those? Now some food for thought, does online anonymity ultimately help the powerful more t…

Pushing an agenda is one thing if the person is doing it in good faith, even if I think their ideas are bad or not supported by evidence. In all likelihood there are large scale information operations going on with world powers trying to subvert each other's populations. The really sinister thing is that we have paid, bad faith actors whose full time jobs are to spread misinformation and shape narratives online. Ther…

[deleted]

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#88

Post by paradite »

lacampbell wrote: post #84
paradite wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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." No mention of the dramatically different standards of living (Taiwan has a higher PPP per capita th…

> Wealthy chinese are often upset at hearing criticism of a communist dictatorship with an atrocious human rights record - but they don't want to live there themselves if they can avoid it.

Yes. I agree with this part. I try not to "waste benefits of western civilization" by engaging in meaningful discussions on topics like this. Unfortunately I have my own circumstances that forbid me from going back. Also, I find your tone quite intimating. Since you already figured out that these "wealthy Chinese" people are hypocrites, why not accept the fact for what it is and move on with your own life. It is not like they are going to follow your call to action.

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#89

Post by jmcgough »

maxxxxx wrote: post #83
clairity wrote: post #72

i'd say our political machine in the US has done a great job for the last 35 years at distracting us from the biggest social threat of our times: wealth disparity. instead, the public conversations revolve around terrorism, who uses which bathroom, twitter, celebrities, and even health insurance. if recent political movements (tea party, the 99%) and national elections have taught us anything, it's that this is incre…

You are right. Unfortunately the american electorate is easy to manipulate so they will blame their problems on other groups that are suffering the same problems. Instead of asking why salaries don't go up anymore while the company makes record profits people start attacking each other. The last election was a classical example of distraction. there was almost no discussion of things that would make people's lifes be…

Plenty of people on the left were talking about it, but they live in highly populated states (CA, NY) where their vote counts for a lot less.

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#90

Post by lacampbell »

paradite wrote: post #88
lacampbell wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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." No mention of the dramatically different standards of living (Taiwan has a higher PPP per capita th…

> Wealthy chinese are often upset at hearing criticism of a communist dictatorship with an atrocious human rights record - but they don't want to live there themselves if they can avoid it. Yes. I agree with this part. I try not to "waste benefits of western civilization" by engaging in meaningful discussions on topics like this. Unfortunately I have my own circumstances that forbid me from going back. Also, I find y…

Why is wealthy chinese in scare quotes? You have to be very wealthy by PRC standards to relocate in a western country to study or work. Think about what percentage of Americans (3.5-4 times the GDP per capita of china) could afford to relocate to relocate to a country with a much higher cost of living like Australia.

My call to action is not intended for overseas chinese. It is to make westerners think about the reality of the situation.

Post reply on HN