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China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

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Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One is justified to say anything one pleases One is not justified in belieiving anything one pleases. There are things which are justified and things which are not and a coherent epistemology distinguishes between the two.

Can you describe your coherent epistemology? The one that leads you to believe a throughly context-free, slapdash list of low-quality wiki text spanning hundreds of topics over hundreds of years counts as a citable piece of evidence for... anything really?

> that leads you to believe

It doesn't. It's just a summary, akin to a comment.

> evidence for

It wasn't intended to be evidnence for anything but a reminder of the pattern of behavior that the US is throughoughly documented (elsewhere) to have engaged in over the years.

Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#83
post #56

Just some personal observations, maybe relevant to recent misinformation topics, or maybe not. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. are all blocked in mainland China. Many people, especially those young and well-educated, use VPN to access them, have an account and follow world news and foreign celebrities sometimes. There are popular and feature-rich counterparts in mainland, and most people prefer to have their daily…

I know that the propaganda department requires it's employees to register accounts on Chinese social apps and actively ask them to post messages to flood the different opinions on hot issues.

It's not news to Chinese as we call them 5毛 (50 cents)

Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#84
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another factor here--China pushes a lot of propaganda domestically. Some of these tweets might be mindless repetition of the propaganda. On the other hand, how many of those "ordinary people" are really part of the operation and simply complaining to create doubt?

Some? Given how much blatant propaganda I see in my Facebook feed, from very clearly real people, who very clearly believe the garbage they spew, I would say that the correct answer is most. There's no shortage of people who will happily repeat the most inane, counterfactual political rhetoric. Don't assume they are paid shills, bots, or foreign spies.

'Useful idiots'.

Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#85
post #21

Full report: https://www.aspi.org.au/report/tweeting-through-great-firewa... >Researchers from the International Cyber Policy Centre (ICPC) at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute have conducted a preliminary analysis of the dataset. Our research indicates that the information operation targeted at the protests appears to have been a relatively small and hastily assembled operation rather than a sophisticated in…

Bad how?

Extreme in degree or volume? Incompetent? Obvious?

Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#86
The irony here seems to be that the Chinese government seems to have discovered (or long known and recently harnessed) the power of celebrity culture for advertising.

George Monbiot on that theme (outside China) recently:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/20/celebr...

As for the lack of sophistication: we tend to presume evil super-geniuses. What in fact makes for audacious acts (evil or otherwise) is disinhibition. The ability to act with immunity or impunity, or acting without regard or knowledge for possible consequences, is what tends to distinguish normal from both evil and heroic acts. When doing evil, the consequence is harm done to others, heroism and bravery are disregard to help others.

Ignorance, ideology, and legal shields are all forms of providing that immunity or impunity.

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