I don't think HN is immune to these kinds of CCP ops.
The mods here state that HN is immune. Anyone that calls out potential hostile information operations is threatened by the mods.
Information operations directed at Hong Kong
121–130 of 480 posts
Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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. Would it be too cynical to suggest the only reason they're doing this is because they don't operate in mainland China? Do you think they would write a report like this if they found the US governmen…
> Do you think they would write a report like this if they found the US government trying to push a pro-democracy narrative into China instead? Yes, they would. No doubt about it. > This puts them on the right side of US regulators where as exposing a US propaganda campaign, not so much. Which regulator do you think would object to such a revelation? > It's not about truth, or what's morally right, it's about money.…
Hong Kong has independent jurisdiction system. So yes, they are living under a system where due process is respected.
Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong
#123An analysis of information operations that caused and more importantly sustained the protests would be equally interesting. I am 90% certain that foreign intelligence services or service are actively involved in the riots. Probably funding it at least partially and inciting the crowd. Probably have assets in the group of protesters to direct their activity. I have written before that China has been far more lenient t…
While that possibly might be, there are legitimate grievances when you see that many people in the street.
I'd say this is almost certainly not instigated by foreign intelligence services and I'm skeptical they would risk trying to run it. (they probably aren't too broken up about it happening though).
Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right. This part of the work is left to the foreign-living chinese nationalistic diaspora. They get their directions from the CCP nonetheless. Again, for casual readers: Chinese people in the US who don't support squashing democracy fighters in HK (I think/hope that's the vast majority of them - maybe more hope now that I'm being downvoted) are awesome.
Devils advocate. Perhaps it's less they get directions and more they actually hold those views. Which, we could say is because brainwashing since youth and perhaps there is some truth to that. But I think likely the biggest thing is the same thing that motivates everyone else. Self interest. They want to see an expanded China with greater say in world events and greater share of the economic pie. Because it would ben…
[deleted]
Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong
#125I don't think HN is immune to these kinds of CCP ops.
The mods here state that HN is immune. Anyone that calls out potential hostile information operations is threatened by the mods.
We've never said that. All we say (and have said for years: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9115965) is (a) that there needs to be evidence, and (b) that someone holding an opposing view is not evidence (https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...).
The trouble is that most "calling out" that people do about this is easily seen to be bogus, even from just the public records of the commenters—unless you believe that Chinese (or, before that, Russian) moles were posting, say, GitHub projects in 2013 so they could get away with propaganda 6 years later. A lot of what we do as moderators is simply to sift carefully through the publicly available information. It's an indication of how lazy these accusations are that the users making them mostly don't bother to do that.
It's a cheap shot to fire off "you must be a shill-spy-astroturfer-bot-troll" in an internet argument. It degrades discussion, and the overwhelming majority of the time, there's no information in it beyond "I don't like what you say". The users who do this need to learn how unreliable this impulse to denounce others is, and restrain themselves from letting those neurons fire. Not only does it degrade the community in general, it often targets individuals in ugly and distressing ways, which none of us wants to see here. For an example, see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358.
What Twitter and Facebook are writing about in today's posts is something completely different. The fact that such manipulations exist does not give HN users license to cheaply smear each other. Both are wrong.
Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
If it's not from the government, we call it marketing. :-)
This is incorrect. Marketing is not necessarily used to promote political change. There are plenty of examples of propaganda in for-proft and non-profit (yet non-state) media which is clearly propaganda and not marketing simultaneously.
When Trump sells MAGA hats, it is both marketing and a tool for political change.
Musk selling electric cars can also fall under both categories. People with electric cars are more likely to support policies that make it easier to own electric cars and less likely to care about fossil fuels.
Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong
#127What makes coordinated activity from government entities different from brigading performed in coordinated ways by non-government people with political or activist agendas? Isn’t that also manipulation? Or is it that Twitter just has its own political and economic agenda and their TOS/rules/blog posts are self-justification?
Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong
#1281.7 million were marching on the streets yesterday. Imagine, that's like every 4th resident of Hong Kong.
Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong
#129Let me guess, all pro-China tweeks are blocked but anti-China are not blocked. Keep toeing the party line Twitter.
Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong
#130Good 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. T…
You know whats going to be an interesting dev in the next ten years: Musk's Skynet! How will that be regulated. What device signals and routing can be blocked from that. Imagine a GoPro which is perm-linked up to that constellation and a cloud storage platform that it streams its blobs to. And a not youtube corrupt POS viewing platform. Get these devices that talk to the constellation and stream continuously and cant…
I was thinking the same thing. But powerful countries (US, China, Russia, and probably a few other countries) have the capabilities to shoot down satellites. Maybe they will opt for that or at least threaten to do that if Musk allows to much freedom?