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Information operations directed at Hong Kong

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Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#291

Post by cbluth »

pstuart wrote: post #289
olalonde wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw the comment you are referring to and it was most likely wrong. The majority of Chinese people are genuinely "pro-China" and there are vastly more regular Chinese people than professional sockpuppets. That being said, I do agree with keeping politics off HN and wish it was enforced a bit more strictly.

Information warfare is both political and technological. It's happening all about and is worth discussing in a mindful manner.

I agree.

Let's not silence ourselves.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#292

Post by Arn_Thor »

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…

IMO the CCP gets its legitimacy to govern from its performance in some key areas: economic development and stability/security. That plays to the party's strengths, so the state-controlled media has actively promoted the view that these factors are the most important. Note how issues like the environment and health care were very much put on the back burner until public awareness and criticism reached a critical threshold, after which the party acknowledged the issues. So it's no surprise that the CCP enjoys a broad level of support on the mainland—it has performed well in the key areas it has convinced people matters most.

In a liberal democracy, on the other hand, people expect much more responsiveness to their concerns. And people tend to value freedom of expression and freedom from suppression. Those values are treasured in Hong Kong.

So no wonder mainlanders and HKers have different outlooks on this issue.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#294

Post by mirimir »

bobjordan wrote: post #273
Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your principles seem to be summed up as: so long as someone is speaking their opinion respectfully and in good faith, it matters not what that opinion is; and that the defense of this necessitates a generous presumption of good faith. We must acknowledge that HN carries a substantial degree of influence, and consider how to responsibly wield that influence. The readers here are a lucractive demographic - generally we…

"In the case of Hong Kong, the ideals at risk here are the right to self-governance." American here using a VPN from China, not an operative. My view after 10 years in China with businesses in China and Hong Kong, is that it is useful to think about Hong Kong similarly to a USA state. It's a state where the people inside can exit into China at will, while all the other people in all the other states in China must get…

> But from a bigger picture, Hong Kong is not anymore entitled to complete self-governance apart from China's oversight than California is entitled to act against the US federal government.

Except that California has "act[ed] against the US federal government" for years, regarding marijuana. As have several other states.

I do agree, however, that Hong Kong represents a far stranger situation. From a traditional Chinese perspective, it likely appears that Hong Kong was "corrupted" by years of British governance. And I can appreciate how that shows up as British occupation. Just as it did in India etc.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#295

Post by hker »

LilBytes wrote: post #290
hker wrote: post #207

For those who want to understand the bigger picture of this propaganda campaign, check out this allegedly leaked instruction for how China controls media (picture in Chinese [1], transcribed in Chinese [2], google translated to English [3]). [1]: https://pincong.rocks/article/3572 [2]: https://pastebin.com/anMtU0Lz [3]: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u...

[3] - what a read. "5. Video images of excessive use of force by police from outside the country must be promptly blocked and deleted at the first time, and it is absolutely forbidden to spread on WeChat and any social media."

For a better translation then the Google translate (i.e., [3] above), see the following Reddit comment:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/csj4ca/chinas_pro...

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#296

Post by rickycook »

ospider wrote: post #251
adammenges wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wha…

i think the problem is that the current chinese government is going further and further away from what average chinese citizens would probably want, and them using misinformation to keep order

hong kong has demonstrated, with some of the largest protests in global history, that they do not want the chinese government to interfere with the autonomy that they currently have. the chinese government has responded with misinformation to sway their population so that they can continue to constrain hong kong in ways that they don’t want

the point isn’t really that the chinese government isn’t better than an alternative, it’s that it’s going in a direction further away from what it’s citizens would generally agree they want, and not allowing people the knowledge to even know it’s happening, let alone the freedom to have a discussion about alternatives

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#297

Post by Schnitz »

r1b wrote: post #293

Would twitter, fb et al ever expose a Western intelligence operation with this tone? See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent Edit: In other words, is this post itself not an “information operation”?

A foreign state actor is using a platform maintained by a US-based company to spread anti-democratic propaganda that goes against the values of the US. They got blocked and called out. Sounds like a no-brainer to me, especially after the 2016 election.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#298

Post by 0x8BADF00D »

liuliu wrote: post #186
Canada wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's that worth to Hong Kongers when they can simply be renditioned to Beijing? Does it make sense to you why Americans were extremely upset when the US government did that to people in foreign countries during the Bush administration?

First, they cannot be renditioned. That's what this protest is about. Yes. It is upset. It is also upsetting that the U.S. actually have limited due process as well (thus, can forfeit the asset without due process). There are practical reasons why, but it is still ideologically upsetting.

Due process and rule of law can never really exist in Asian countries. It simply is not a part of the shared history and political economy.

It is a fundamentally Western tradition, which is why it never works in non-Western countries. My father would often tell me stories of growing up in India during Indira Gandhi and how rule of law never really existed there. It is a philosophy that is fundamentally incompatible with non-Western cultures.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#299

Post by dang »

ddevault wrote: post #276
bobjordan wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In the case of Hong Kong, the ideals at risk here are the right to self-governance." American here using a VPN from China, not an operative. My view after 10 years in China with businesses in China and Hong Kong, is that it is useful to think about Hong Kong similarly to a USA state. It's a state where the people inside can exit into China at will, while all the other people in all the other states in China must get…

[flagged]

> I sought out information about you to judge your biases. I found that you're...

I don't know how you could think that it's ok to pull a move like that on HN, but it's not ok. Specifically, checking up on and bringing in someone's personal circumstances, which they didn't choose to mention, in order to use them as ammunition an argument is not ok on HN. Please don't do that.

I'm glad that you didn't publish the details, which would have been even worse, but that also means that what you wrote there is just an insinuation.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#300

Post by pjanoman »

egdod wrote: post #287
girvo wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make a decent argument that it has been, and definitely is sometimes, for certain definitions of "government" and subsections of people. Whataboutism is lazy though, and I do find it telling that the go-to argument a lot of pro-China commenters across platforms use is exactly that...

When slavery was legal, sure. But in the last, say, 50 years (e.g., since the 64 Civil Rights Act)? I don't see it. Also, I'm not aware of multiple definitions for the US government.

Firstly, gay marriage has only been legal since 2015 federally — that's a type of abuse. But even if you don't think it is, the American Revolution had some type of value even though slavery was still a part of America's history. Therefore, America still provided some value even though it was abusing its citizens.
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