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China suppression of Uighurs meets U.N. definition of genocide, report says

npr.org

211–220 of 239 posts

Re: China suppression of Uighurs meets U.N. definition of genocide, report says

#211
post #205

As of right now, the post is 3-hour old, has 391 votes, second only to another post in the top 60 posts, and yet is is ranked... #59. HN mods have likely flagged it as flamewar, or non relevant, or both, effectively contributing to the soft censorship on the topic. Content platforms have many challenges ahead of them.

Only users can flag posts, mods can only unflag

There is an option for mods to accelerate or slow the decay function of the post.

This is a practice that all content platforms use and few know about. Burying content down, or removing from feed (for Facebook/YouTube) is a soft censoring that avoids user and regulatory backlash.

I would like the platforms to be more transparent about the practice. They could display a ‘derank’ or ‘delisted’ label to all users.

Re: China suppression of Uighurs meets U.N. definition of genocide, report says

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original comment said this was true of "almost all human beings", the vast majority of whom are neither elites nor high-level government officials.

Right, but....if we "all" didn't value these things, how did these people gain their power and status over us?

Likely because those specific people value it, rather than everyone on earth.

Re: China suppression of Uighurs meets U.N. definition of genocide, report says

#213
post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump was putting people in camps? You mean the throngs of asylum seekers? Slightly different scenario, no?

Different scenario, similar disregard for basic human rights.

Please stop defending China.

Re: China suppression of Uighurs meets U.N. definition of genocide, report says

#214
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Different scenario, similar disregard for basic human rights.

Please stop defending China.

Please show where I did so?

And since you can't: please stop making transparently false accusations on HN.

Re: China suppression of Uighurs meets U.N. definition of genocide, report says

#215
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think we really learned any lessons. Stalin and Mao were at least as bad as Hitler in terms of body count. Hitler just lost the war, while the other two were able to continue to invest in propaganda to whitewash their histories. If Nazi Germany had emerged from the war intact, they too would have been able to whitewash their history for decades after. I'm sure in time they would have "moderated" a bit, and th…

Fundamentally, civilization is about control. The control is codified and accepted only because there is a certain amount of inhumanity that is required for it. I would argue that killing comes naturally to humans, and other acts of similar cruelty. Morality and ethics are learned behaviors that are distilled from societal mores. If "thou shall not kill" or some equivalent in another religion didn't exist, for exampl…

Is/ought... I agree that humans are entirely capable of it. Is it the best thing for us to do?

My biggest problem with secular thought and especially the "pop atheist" variety is that it seems to often lead to is=ought. Regardless of the reality behind any form of theism, theistic thought never accepted that equality. It's always posited that there must be a "better than the way things are now." Some secularists dismiss that as wishful thinking and a coping mechanism, but if so why bother building or doing much of anything beyond the simple core of eat, shit, fight, and fuck?

Re: China suppression of Uighurs meets U.N. definition of genocide, report says

#216
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s an obvious difference between suppressing births of all groups vs. suppressing only a particular group.

It wasn't about "all groups" though, ethnic minorities (like the Uighur) were exempt or allowed to have more children.

Fair point, my comment was incorrect. I suppose the distinction I would draw is that the restrictions on Han births were imposed by a Han government. That seems different than imposing it on other groups.

Re: China suppression of Uighurs meets U.N. definition of genocide, report says

#217
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely singled out > Even while the use of IUDs and sterilization has fallen nationwide, it is rising sharply in Xinjiang. > But while equal on paper, in practice Han Chinese are largely spared the abortions, sterilizations, IUD insertions and detentions for having too many children that are forced on Xinjiang’s other ethnicities, interviews and data show. Some rural Muslims, like Omirzakh, are punished even for havi…

You also have to take in account the rate of compliance to the law by Uighurs. If they're strongly religious and fiercely determined to keep their traditions, I guess they might also be much less compliant than the rest of the population, and therefore subject to more widespread repression.

Again:

> But while equal on paper, in practice Han Chinese are largely spared the abortions, sterilizations, IUD insertions and detentions for having too many children that are forced on Xinjiang’s other ethnicities, interviews and data show. Some rural Muslims, like Omirzakh, are punished even for having the three children allowed by the law

Re: China suppression of Uighurs meets U.N. definition of genocide, report says

#218
post #205

As of right now, the post is 3-hour old, has 391 votes, second only to another post in the top 60 posts, and yet is is ranked... #59. HN mods have likely flagged it as flamewar, or non relevant, or both, effectively contributing to the soft censorship on the topic. Content platforms have many challenges ahead of them.

> HN mods have likely flagged it as flamewar, or non relevant, or both, effectively contributing to the soft censorship on the topic.

IIRC, HN has a couple of algorithms to automatically detect "flamewars," and I wouldn't be surprised if this post tripped one, since much of the discussion is flamewar-ish.

I've been on forums where the moderators would remove "derailing" comments/threads, and I think this is a topic that probably needs that kind of moderation, unfortunately.

Re: China suppression of Uighurs meets U.N. definition of genocide, report says

#219
post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In reply to a flagged sibling: what's there to see in the edit history? There was an edit war (or maybe I should use the plural, didn't look too closely), which is common on controversial topics, and judging from the talk page it has been resolved with a compromise. Bottom line, dude did coauthor that book, and even the title is telling enough. Also, unrelated, it's sad that any comment trying to discuss or question…

It seems the comments about iraq, yemen, afghanistan them have been downvoted / flagged. I guess this one too. There's a documentary on netflix showing the 13th amendment's relation to the labor camps, shocking to say the least. I don't think there is anything new in the article. It's the standard rhetoric used by UK/US media. Also notice the conspicuous absence of Saudis, they too are involved in messy labor practic…

It is very unfortunate that Saudi Arabia is mentioned by all the supporters of human rights abuses as a benchmark, I don’t see how the absence of mentioning Saudi Arabia is conspicuous at all. The absurdity of it is that normally the countries compared with Saudi are allies [1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Saudi_Arabia_rel...

Re: China suppression of Uighurs meets U.N. definition of genocide, report says

#220
post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also have to take in account the rate of compliance to the law by Uighurs. If they're strongly religious and fiercely determined to keep their traditions, I guess they might also be much less compliant than the rest of the population, and therefore subject to more widespread repression.

Again: > But while equal on paper, in practice Han Chinese are largely spared the abortions, sterilizations, IUD insertions and detentions for having too many children that are forced on Xinjiang’s other ethnicities, interviews and data show. Some rural Muslims, like Omirzakh, are punished even for having the three children allowed by the law

> in practice Han Chinese are largely spared...

Yes, so are the Han actually complying more with the law (which seems very probable, since they're culturally aligned with the state)? Or is this "largely spared" already taking in account relative percentages of non-compliance? It's not clear.

> Some rural Muslims, like Omirzakh, are punished even...

This is very vague ("some" followed by the name of a single person is not really a strong statement).

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