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

How China Unleashed Twitter Trolls to Discredit Hong Kong’s Protesters

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 150 posts

Re: How China Unleashed Twitter Trolls to Discredit Hong Kong’s Protesters

#31

Post by RobertRoberts »

dirtyid wrote: post #28

What is stopping Twitter from releasing server logs for others to independently authenticate attribution? Facebook, Google have not declared. The ASPI analysis proceeds on assumption that Twitters attribution is correct. The startup Digital Intelligence concludes confidently "China has made its debut as a confirmed information operations actor" because the bots coordinated behavior "emulat[es] divisive disinformation…

I watched a few videos of a western man living in China (married to a Chinese woman). Their views on propaganda, information, privacy, leadership, marketing, power structures, etc... are all so vastly different from ours that it's almost unbelievable until you hear about it first hand.

China's propaganda style is unabashedly similar to "Baghdad Bob". [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muhammad_Saeed_al-Sahhaf

Re: How China Unleashed Twitter Trolls to Discredit Hong Kong’s Protesters

#32

Post by chvid »

hktruth wrote: post #18
chvid wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curios - hktruth. What is your background and interest in this subject? I mean: you call yourself hk truth and your only two posts has been on Hong Kong.

Throwaway account to talk about Hong Kong. Look at the downvotes I'm getting.

Fair enough - sorry to be personal.

Personally I am very skeptical of the western media coverage of the Hong Kong demonstrations. I do not think for a minute that it has the popular support now that it had earlier (2 mios in the streets etc.).

And a lot of the pro-China support online gets categorised as bots or Chinese agents because it is in broken English and comes from the same few vpn ip-addresses.

But it is quite real.

Re: How China Unleashed Twitter Trolls to Discredit Hong Kong’s Protesters

#33

Post by praptak »

president wrote: post #7

There needs to be some sort of internet sanction where the offending country's internet access to the world is cut off until they start acting like good global citizens.

We cannot even eradicate botnets operated by individual criminals.

Re: How China Unleashed Twitter Trolls to Discredit Hong Kong’s Protesters

#34

Post by bjourne »

chvid wrote: post #13
hktruth wrote: post #10

Why would anyone trust the NYTimes which has just discredited itself over the weekend with its latest (botched) hatchet job on Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh? There are genuine voices out there who disagree with the protestors political aims and who completely reject the violence employed by a radical minority of the protestors. Not everyone is a "wumao" or "5 cent" paid troll or bot. It would be nice if there were…

I am curios - hktruth. What is your background and interest in this subject? I mean: you call yourself hk truth and your only two posts has been on Hong Kong.

It is not far-fetched to believe that hktruth is a Chinese person living abroad. They would have an interest in preserving their anonymity. In this tense environment, a Chinese person in a Western country expressing support for the Chinese regime would risk being accused of being a Chinese spy.

Re: How China Unleashed Twitter Trolls to Discredit Hong Kong’s Protesters

#35

Post by eznoonze »

mullingitover wrote: post #11
hktruth wrote: post #10

Why would anyone trust the NYTimes which has just discredited itself over the weekend with its latest (botched) hatchet job on Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh? There are genuine voices out there who disagree with the protestors political aims and who completely reject the violence employed by a radical minority of the protestors. Not everyone is a "wumao" or "5 cent" paid troll or bot. It would be nice if there were…

Looks like China unleashed their bots on HN as well?

It's so obvious it's not even funny.

Re: How China Unleashed Twitter Trolls to Discredit Hong Kong’s Protesters

#36

Post by llIIlIlIllIIlIl »

55436throw wrote: post #30
bernierocks wrote: post #19

China has been using armies of bots for many years to sway public opinion. Much scarier than Russia, because they have 10X the resources.

Well they’ve been doing a pretty bad job then, considering how often they are bashed on HN, Reddit, Imgur, etc.

It's incredibly funny to me how concerned western netizens seem to be about Chinese astroturfing... as if it's an actual problem they need to worry about.

99.9999% of comments you'll find online are highly critical of China. The most upvoted submissions on Reddit and HN are often those critical of China. Most Americans (60% last time I checked) already have a negative view of China and their knee-jerk reaction is to support anything or anyone who speaks out against the CCP.

Does anyone really think 17 bots on Twitter tweeting messages in Chinese is going to change this?

Re: How China Unleashed Twitter Trolls to Discredit Hong Kong’s Protesters

#37

Post by vkou »

mullingitover wrote: post #15
hktruth wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the typical Pavlovian response which has infected social media and HN. If you disagree with the "narrative" you're either a China bot or a Russian troll.

I mean, your account has zero history and is strongly advocating a pro-China position. If it walks like a duck...

Frequently, people have political opinions that are incredibly nationalistic, to the point of sounding like complete gibberish to anyone outside their bubble.

I generally don't assume that they are bots, shills, or trolls, even if they sound like them. I need only look at the outcome of elections to know that those positions have incredibly broad grassroots support.

Re: How China Unleashed Twitter Trolls to Discredit Hong Kong’s Protesters

#38

Post by AFascistWorld »

machbio wrote: post #5

Am starting to feel this trolling is an industry (like troll farm) of its own - there are people or bots dedicated to trolling and reporting people who raise voice against the discrimination.. I recently had to report an unfair service by virgin atlantic staff after an emergency landing - I tweeted the pictures and video of the incident.. I was immediately trolled by twitter accounts about how i should be happy that…

You may not believe it, the vast majority of Chinese actually love the CCP and the system, they only just hate that a few corrupt low-level officials who are the bad apples fucking up leaders' glorious visions.

These "bots" are mostly spontaneous people, they are not even government-sponsored Wumao, they genuinely love China and defend it, their reason being it may have some flaws but any other country has too and is worse than China, and them being either students or comfortable middle-class help.

Re: How China Unleashed Twitter Trolls to Discredit Hong Kong’s Protesters

#40

Post by no_opinions »

They go by the name 50 Cent party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

This is purely something that's pushing a political agenda. In China, there's a single party, so disagreement is perceived as sabotage. While in other countries, its accepted as part of the system.

In US we have a house/senate minority leader: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minority_leader

In Westminster-based systems (Australia, Canada, UK), they call them opposition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parliamentary_opposition

So if China lacks this representation, what is there to counterbalance? Wouldn't it lead to viewpoint discrimination?

There are things that need a more direct form a democracy to fix. Rent control, tighter restrictions on who does business/runs for election there. For instance, should agents of Beijing be fit to represent the people of HK and craft laws?

If you'd like to see what happens when foreign governments sabotage legislature, Poland's first legislative councils were rampant with it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Poland_in_the_Early...

What other outlet is there but giving control to HK citizens have total and complete sovereignty to handle their own localized issues?

Post reply on HN