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Information operations directed at Hong Kong

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Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#251

Post by ospider »

adammenges wrote: post #244
ospider wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native Chinese here. Hacker news have been a great place to learn new things to me for 5 years. But the political views on Hacker news are somewhat naive to me. It seems that the Chinese Government is always evil and wrong, but why haven't the government collapsed after so many years if there were no people supporting them? People in China, at least those millions people who are able to cross the Great Firewall, know…

This doesn’t make sense. The slaving government in ancient Egypt was supported for a long time. Just because a form of government exists doesn’t mean it isn’t abusive to some of it’s people or to other countries.

I'm not saying that the Chinese government is a good government. But a slaving government IS better than warlords. And historically speaking, the current government did unify China in 1949, which is a very important thing in Chinese culture.

If we were to overthrow the Chinese government, can we get a better tomorrow for the Chinese people? The west have show us what happened in Middle East. Clearly, wars are not what we want.

I'm saying that we want democracy, we do want that, but blaming it all to "the evil communist party" is not a good way show us how to get a democracy, please provide some practical guidance. Thanks.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#252

Post by mythrwy »

interpenetrate wrote: post #243
mythrwy wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be surprised if many or any posters on this forum want to "topple China". Probably more just believe the current government of China should behave differently.

yes just like they just believed the government of libya should've behaved differently... the point is to provide an explanation as to why people here just happen to share the same opinion as those "uncoordinated" U.S.-led operations whose explicit goal is to topple china. also it's important to note that not everyone in the U.S. who is exposed to U.S. propaganda is going to develop the same opinion (specifically tho…

Ya me neither. Plenty of bad behavior on all sides. I don't excuse any of it.

I'm just saying your characterization of the motive of the average poster here may be off.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#253

Post by utbabya »

dang wrote: post #160
woah wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are two site guidelines that apply to this. First, it's not ok to use HN primarily for political, ideological, or national battle. If a commenter is posting as you describe, we ask them to stop. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20727426 . But by no means does it follow that a commenter behaving that way must be a sockpuppet, astroturfer, shill, spy, foreign agent, etc. That's where the second guide…

Another way to look at it, I get a lower trust score to people holding pro-China view because such disinformation campaign is rampant. It is in a way a social punishment that disincentivize such underhanded technique. Does your good faith measure in a way undermine such natural counter mechanism.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#254

Post by abacadaba »

dang wrote: post #160
woah wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are two site guidelines that apply to this. First, it's not ok to use HN primarily for political, ideological, or national battle. If a commenter is posting as you describe, we ask them to stop. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20727426 . But by no means does it follow that a commenter behaving that way must be a sockpuppet, astroturfer, shill, spy, foreign agent, etc. That's where the second guide…

Also to note, we've been hearing non-stop about puppet accounts taking over social media for the last few years. As mortal users on this and other sites, most of us don't have the tools or information available to us to reliably distinguish between puppet accounts and someone who genuinely holds stupid views. Some suspicion along these lines is to be expected.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#255

Post by LilBytes »

chrischen wrote: post #239
ospider wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Native Chinese here. Hacker news have been a great place to learn new things to me for 5 years. But the political views on Hacker news are somewhat naive to me. It seems that the Chinese Government is always evil and wrong, but why haven't the government collapsed after so many years if there were no people supporting them? People in China, at least those millions people who are able to cross the Great Firewall, know…

I'm generally anti-Communist party of China, but mostly because I believe their bureaucracy is completely inept. But I have to agree with you, the vast majority of Western-based HN commenters are politically naïve, as if they just stepped out of a high school US government class. The reason is that US education, while it acknowledges the flaws of democracy, also proclaims that it is the only acceptable form of govern…

I dispute this. Democracy is not advertised as the only acceptable form of Government, but it is the fairest and best model we've got. You're creating a straw-man with this argument.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#256

Post by Hello71 »

dang wrote: post #160
woah wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are two site guidelines that apply to this. First, it's not ok to use HN primarily for political, ideological, or national battle. If a commenter is posting as you describe, we ask them to stop. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20727426 . But by no means does it follow that a commenter behaving that way must be a sockpuppet, astroturfer, shill, spy, foreign agent, etc. That's where the second guide…

Your comment seems to imply that posting a link to a thread elsewhere in an attempt to attract sympathetic commenters is a legitimate strategy to "open a debate". On Wikipedia, such commenters are sometimes derisively referred to as meatpuppets; although they may not technically be sockpuppets, the value and effect does not differ significantly, either practically, or, in my view, ethically. Even HN agrees with this in at least one context: it is agreed among almost all members, and, as far as I know, moderators, both past and present, that posting a link to a thread with the purpose of attracting users to take some binary action on the thread (usually upvoting, but sometimes downvoting or flagging) is bad and wrong.

Why should mass commenting be different?

I think an analogy might be drawn to corporate representatives. If they want to advertise and market their products, that may be acceptable, if they are otherwise contributing to the community, outside of their narrow product. If they only post links to their website, they will be banned with great haste. Similarly, if pro-China users want to legitimately contribute to the discussion, they should be free to do so as legitimate members, participating in all elements of the site, not only via pro-China comments.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#257

Post by chrischen »

LilBytes wrote: post #255
chrischen wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm generally anti-Communist party of China, but mostly because I believe their bureaucracy is completely inept. But I have to agree with you, the vast majority of Western-based HN commenters are politically naïve, as if they just stepped out of a high school US government class. The reason is that US education, while it acknowledges the flaws of democracy, also proclaims that it is the only acceptable form of govern…

I dispute this. Democracy is not advertised as the only acceptable form of Government, but it is the fairest and best model we've got. You're creating a straw-man with this argument.

Firstly, I'm not arguing anything, so there is no straw man.

Obviously it's not the only form of government, but we are told that it's the only one that's acceptable. There's no objective evaluation and consideration of any alternative political systems. You prove my point. The idea that it's the fairest and best is also subjective. A government gets its authority from the people, and if the Chinese grant authority to its leaders, even absolute authority, (and you can grant authority by simply being pacifist), then who's to say the Chinese government is illegitimate? You? To them your opinions are illegitimate.

Even our government is not a perfect democracy. We do not direct vote the president (Trump lost the popular election), and we are not equally represented in these elections (through gerrymandering, electoral college, etc). So to claim that a democracy, any democracy, or even our own democracy, is somehow the "fairest and best" is extremely disingenuous. These things are justified as a way to prevent "tyranny by the majority", but really it's just another 3/5ths law (black peoples' votes only counted as 3/5ths of a vote)—a way to prevent the redistribution of power.

We don't have a perfect government system, which means it's arguable if we have the best system because that would imply there is no room for improvement. Our education system espouses propoganda that our democratic system is the best in the world, as exemplified by LilByte's statement and views.

That being said, in my experience, the Chinese system is much worse, but due to incompetent bureaucracy, rather than a fundamental issue with a 1-party system. I'm sure Europeans think their multi-party system is also the "fairest and best" too, at least compared to America's 2 party system. I don't believe the Chinese have a better system, but it's fundamentally flawed to walk around with the assumption that our democracy is the best way out there.

One of the big misconceptions of the Chinese political system is that it's something akin to a dictatorship, but it's not. While it has 1-party, internally there are still votes, discourse, and factions. The main difference is that once a decision is made on something, the factions are not allowed to act in their own interest against the unified goals that were already decided on. In the US system, if, say the President has decided something, the opposing party can work to counter his progress in implementing whatever agenda he has decided on. This makes sense to keep one party in check, because if the President is in a different party, he probably has an agenda to ignore the agenda of the opposing party. Civic engagement is also not forced upon people, especially uneducated or ill-informed people. But this doesn't mean that people cannot participate in government.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#258

Post by Hello71 »

ospider wrote: post #237
ryanchankh wrote: post #22

HongKonger here. I have some friends in China posting similar anti-protest posts on WeChat social media. It's like the news they read has a completely different story than what it's being told in legitimate new sources. The problem of fake news does become very apparent, and I hope people in China can eventually gain awareness or at least start to question the validity of their news sources.

Native Chinese here. Hacker news have been a great place to learn new things to me for 5 years. But the political views on Hacker news are somewhat naive to me. It seems that the Chinese Government is always evil and wrong, but why haven't the government collapsed after so many years if there were no people supporting them? People in China, at least those millions people who are able to cross the Great Firewall, know…

> Most westerners and HongKongers on Hacker news have a very extreme political view, you just believe "democracy is good"(TM)

this is itself a very extreme statement. can you provide sources of such claims? I would agree there is a general sentiment of "CCP is bad", but there are similar consternations about many governments, usually the US government.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#259

Post by adventured »

chii wrote: post #230
justaguyhere wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that is super impressive about these protests (other than the sheer number of people) is the lack of looting, violence etc (not counting police violence on unarmed people). Very very impressive. Compare this with French riots etc in recent years - night and day!

I actually expect that a lot of violence and such are false flag operations, designed to taint the image of the protesters.

Given what we've seen there with the planted triad attacks, it would make perfect sense that they would infiltrate and stage violence as well. That's a tactic that has been used even in liberal democracies in the past when dealing with rampant protests.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#260

Post by phs318u »

dang wrote: post #160
woah wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There are two site guidelines that apply to this. First, it's not ok to use HN primarily for political, ideological, or national battle. If a commenter is posting as you describe, we ask them to stop. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20727426 . But by no means does it follow that a commenter behaving that way must be a sockpuppet, astroturfer, shill, spy, foreign agent, etc. That's where the second guide…

I contend it’s unavoidable that all sites such as HN will tend towards Slashdot over time. The fundamental reason for this is that any appeal to respect the commons and allow others free use of it, will only fall on the ears of the respectful users of said commons. Other users will exploit the freedoms afforded by the commons to indirectly deny others said freedoms or to “poison” the commons against reasonable users. At some point a tipping point occurs and the majority of the reasonable users leave.
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