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Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

theguardian.com

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Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#21

Post by baylearn »

kohtatsu wrote: post #10

This post is incredibly downmodded on the front page.

Interesting. I took a screen snapshot of the front page: https://imgur.com/gallery/thY5Tl6

Compared to #1 and #2 ranked posts, which have half the upvotes, but uploaded within the same hour or two, this post is ranked #19.

Maybe many people are "flag"-ing the post so the HN ranking algorithm pushes it lower.

(Edit: For the record, I don't believe the HN mods are doing any downmodding here, and it's probably just due to the ranking algorithm and behavior of the HN audience)

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#22

Post by BurningFrog »

Aqua wrote: post #3

Isn't it surprising that Microsoft, Apple, Google, Netflix, Blizzard and others don't express their deep regret and support the people of Hong Kong? If they really stood by their values they would act in the same way as they did by supporting the BLM movement. It's just another proof that they only did that to get press coverage for being "benevolent" and not because they genuinely supported the people. Disgraceful.

People do things that benefit them, and avoid doing things that harm them.

They motivate their selfish actions, to others but also to themselves (Motivated Reasoning) with noble sounding arguments. Our brains are very good at coming up with those.

Once you understand and accept this, you can process the world on a higher level.

The hardest part is seeing when you do this yourself.

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#23

Post by wxnx »

baybal2 wrote: post #8
Aqua wrote: post #3

Isn't it surprising that Microsoft, Apple, Google, Netflix, Blizzard and others don't express their deep regret and support the people of Hong Kong? If they really stood by their values they would act in the same way as they did by supporting the BLM movement. It's just another proof that they only did that to get press coverage for being "benevolent" and not because they genuinely supported the people. Disgraceful.

> Microsoft, Apple, Google, Netflix, Blizzard Don't you think that C-levels of all of them were previously dying to get into China, and were ready to do anything? On my memory, Google's advisers were all over Kremlin, coaching the regime in "internet media operations" in 2005-2008, teaching them how to hound opposition online, and doing psyops style public opinion manipulation, while inventing silly lies about the na…

> Don't you think that C-levels of all of them were previously dying to get into China, and were ready to do anything?

> ...

> treason

In the case of China, doesn't the US government in some ways encourage this? I forget the colloquial name for the "policy" (if you can call it that, because I don't think it's codified into law), but isn't the idea that if the US shares some of the fruits of capitalism and liberal democracy with China, the people of their country may follow suit?

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#24

Post by baylearn »

anonms-coward wrote: post #7
Aqua wrote: post #3

Isn't it surprising that Microsoft, Apple, Google, Netflix, Blizzard and others don't express their deep regret and support the people of Hong Kong? If they really stood by their values they would act in the same way as they did by supporting the BLM movement. It's just another proof that they only did that to get press coverage for being "benevolent" and not because they genuinely supported the people. Disgraceful.

Microsoft and Apple makes good money from China, so don't expect them to do anything. Microsoft Bing works and censors in China, and yet microsoft PR department is so good to keep them safe from any outrage over this.

LinkedIn also works in mainland China, but it is subject to censorship. [1]

[1] https://www.inkstonenews.com/tech/linkedin-says-profile-poli...

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#25

Post by jpgreens »

Aqua wrote: post #3

Isn't it surprising that Microsoft, Apple, Google, Netflix, Blizzard and others don't express their deep regret and support the people of Hong Kong? If they really stood by their values they would act in the same way as they did by supporting the BLM movement. It's just another proof that they only did that to get press coverage for being "benevolent" and not because they genuinely supported the people. Disgraceful.

This is not surprising at all. BLM is a neomarxist movement which is ideologically aligned with the CCP. The fact that all these companies are expressing support for BLM is absolutely terrifying and shows how much power this new neomarxist movement has.

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#26

Post by chadcmulligan »

arkades wrote: post #20
chadcmulligan wrote: post #12

How is it that many Chinese students are schooled in the west, and have access to all these books and thoughts, but then they don't exist when they go back home. There must be some significant cognitive dissonance between the two situations. I don't see how they can keep a lid on this long term.

As a Russian, seeing how Russians perceive things, which I imagine is something of an analogue: They don't believe our internal propaganda. That's why Russia and the like spend so much time hyping up where we don't live up to our ideals - it lets them sell the line that we're just as bad, just as corrupt, just as etc. but we either mouth the propaganda trying to get by, or we're dumb/gullible enough to fall for the p…

interesting, but Russians afaik don't get schooled overseas too much, like so many Chinese students spend years at overseas uni's, you'd think some of it would seep in. If not I'm very disappointed with the universities.

Edit: a world without dissent seems so ... pointless

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#27

Post by baybal2 »

paganel wrote: post #18
baybal2 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft, Apple, Google, Netflix, Blizzard Don't you think that C-levels of all of them were previously dying to get into China, and were ready to do anything? On my memory, Google's advisers were all over Kremlin, coaching the regime in "internet media operations" in 2005-2008, teaching them how to hound opposition online, and doing psyops style public opinion manipulation, while inventing silly lies about the na…

Any handy links for that Google-Russia story? It’s not that I don’t believe, because I do (IMO this is something that Google would have done) it’s just that I’m on mobile and am too lazy to search for those links myself.

That episode has near no coverage in English, and I don't think much of coverage in Russian survived to this day.

But here is it in basics:

Russian opposition was completely dominating the Internet at the time, before around 2005, a complete opposite of the picture on the TV, and fake opinion polls.

Kremlin was not happy, and went straight to the Internet's "kingmaker" — Google (or maybe it was the other way around?) Publicly it was to get its officers "taught" about internet media, but the writing on the wall was way more obvious.

At around late 2005, Google announces them "optimising their algorithms against abuse," and within weeks opposition's websites start to disappear from Google one after another. Google obviously claim "we did not hardcode anything," but simply rearranging the word order in search was enough to expose them doing that.

At the same time, we saw a wave of very weird adsense political ads on sites associated with opposition, and a wave of exhilarating pro-Putin drivel in Western media, clearly suggesting they got some Western spin masters on their side now.

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#28

Post by pixelrevision »

arkades wrote: post #17
Aqua wrote: post #3

Isn't it surprising that Microsoft, Apple, Google, Netflix, Blizzard and others don't express their deep regret and support the people of Hong Kong? If they really stood by their values they would act in the same way as they did by supporting the BLM movement. It's just another proof that they only did that to get press coverage for being "benevolent" and not because they genuinely supported the people. Disgraceful.

Did you at some point think that the corporate leadership of a massive for-profit organization was going to make a public statement that was anything other than the bare minimum lip service they were required to pay in order to weather the PR storm of the day, so that they could continue doing business? The answer to that question is almost always "no," and certainly until proven otherwise. Complaining that these cor…

What a wonderful world we’re building for ourselves

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#29

Post by catalogia »

chadcmulligan wrote: post #12

How is it that many Chinese students are schooled in the west, and have access to all these books and thoughts, but then they don't exist when they go back home. There must be some significant cognitive dissonance between the two situations. I don't see how they can keep a lid on this long term.

I once asked a Chinese citizen I was working with this question. The response was that it's important for the Chinese government to censor the internet for the masses because the masses are dumb and will believe anything they read. However it wasn't important to censor the internet for smart people because smart people aren't susceptible to harmful information. So when he was in the west on uncensored internet or at home using a VPN, that wasn't a problem for China because he's smart.

Re: Hong Kong: books by pro-democracy activists disappear from library shelves

#30

Post by hkt »

jpgreens wrote: post #25
Aqua wrote: post #3

Isn't it surprising that Microsoft, Apple, Google, Netflix, Blizzard and others don't express their deep regret and support the people of Hong Kong? If they really stood by their values they would act in the same way as they did by supporting the BLM movement. It's just another proof that they only did that to get press coverage for being "benevolent" and not because they genuinely supported the people. Disgraceful.

This is not surprising at all. BLM is a neomarxist movement which is ideologically aligned with the CCP. The fact that all these companies are expressing support for BLM is absolutely terrifying and shows how much power this new neomarxist movement has.

I don't think wanting black people to not get regularly murdered by the police is marxism, per se. Neither is being against celebrating slavers etc.

Claiming the CCP and BLM are on the same page would be comical if I wasn't so sure you were serious.

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