What really happened to Jack Ma? • Hacker News Board

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#171

Post by dang » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 7:00 PM UTC

blablablerg wrote: post #20

dang wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't take HN threads into generic ideological or nationalistic flamewar. No, we don't care about Xi [1]. We just care about not having tedious and nasty HN threads, which is what comments like this point to. Plesae don't do that here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [1] and if you worry that we may secretly be communist agents please see this mini-FAQ: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=266…

Well Xi is responsible for a lot of bad things, so someone wishing him a trip to the Hague is far from "generic ideological and nationalistic flamewar" but a fair response to what is happening to people that Xi doesn't like. The only one that is starting the flamewar is you.

It was cheap internet flamebait that guaranteed a degraded discussion. If people have substantive comments to make about such things, they need to clear a much higher bar.

Moreover they need to do it in a way that avoids generic tangents, and the GP was a classic generic tangent, sucking the thread into the nearest black hole:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#172

Post by dang » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 7:01 PM UTC

TX0098812 wrote: post #22

dmos62 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm torn about this comment. On the one hand it's inflammatory, like dang pointed out; on the other, we're frustrated about the perceived injustice and our seeming powerlessness at the face of it, and this comment vents that in a relatively calm way. I guess dang is right. I'd prefer not to have venting on HN, even if I sometimes sympathize.

Your comment is inflammatory. Don't post this sort of thing.

We've banned this account for trolling. Please don't create accounts to break HN's guidelines with.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#173

Post by dang » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 7:09 PM UTC

rorykoehler wrote: post #160

Aunche wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of comments critical of the CCP like half the comments here. The difference is that they are actually relevant to the article, which has very little to do with Xi and has even less to do international law. This is probably why dang interpreted as flamebait.

First let me say I think dang does an exceptional job (far better than I could) in moderating this site and I am very grateful for it. Anytime I have fallen on the wrong side of the rules dang has been very fair and patient. I don't disagree with your comment however none of the rules dang mentioned were actually broken. I read through the link and it only raised more questions. As I see it either the rules need to b…

Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#174

Post by rorykoehler » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 7:24 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #169

rorykoehler wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eventually sticking your head in the sand is condoning behaviour. I understand your perspective however given YC's conflict of interest due to investing in Chinese companies I think it would be prudent to stick YC's flag in the ground. Inaction and fence-sitting is radically political too.

That's quite a stretch for justifying garden-variety flamebait. As it turns out, you're wrong on the facts as well. YC got out of China years ago. But none of that ever had anything whatsoever to do with how we moderate HN. It's much more straightforward: we don't want predictable, tedious, nasty flamewars on HN, we want the opposite. That's literally all there is to this, even though I routinely get accused of being…

YC got out of China but still invests in Chinese companies. At least that's what the press release that I read said. Is that wrong?

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#175

Post by stickfigure » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 7:42 PM UTC

ailun wrote: post #69

skrebbel wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? How are LGBTQ chatrooms a threat to the power and stability of the CCP leadership in a way comparable to Jack Ma? EDIT: I don't mean this critically, I'm actually quite interested. There seems to be a correlation between how repressive a government is and how nasty they are towards LGBTQetc people. I never considered this to be a causal relationship until your comment. Maybe somehow Putin and Orban…

LGBTQ as a movement is seen as a western influence. It’s funny that I saw your comment, earlier today I read a machine-translated version of this article(1) that was shared by a Wechat contact. I would say this attitude is fairly common among people 40+ in China. Warning if you don’t want to get angry: it is full of repulsive views. (1) https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Qar43EmA7x8yhntk5OhXTw

Wow, that was a novel interpretation of Brokeback Mountain.

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#176

Post by boomboomsubban » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

mthoms wrote: post #164

boomboomsubban wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or like civil forfeiture, the only difference is how rich the victims are.

That's quite a stretch. In civil forfeiture the victim isn't disappeared/re-educated.

The victim has little influence in the first place, there's no need to make sure they can't cause further trouble.

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#177

Post by noone321 » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

MsMowz wrote: post #165

TwoFerMaggie wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well last time there was a "successor problem" China went through a decade-long political and economic turmoil that was the Cultural Revolution. Having experienced that first hand, Deng implemented the term limit, so that there won't be a position of absolute power for the rest of one's life (it's just too much a temptation and thus recipe for chaos every 20-30 years or so). Now that the term limit is gone, I don't t…

This overlooks many changes that have occurred in the recent decades, such as the restructuring of the PLA (including their decoupling from state business), the development of the socialist market economy, and the further development of the rank and file organization of the party. All of these give structure and order where they didn't exist before. The leadership roles in the party have never been less significant w…

I really don't know where to start with this. The short answer is no.

The long answer is Stalin's supporters said the exact same things. And it's not a surprise -- Xi is borrowing a lot from Stalin's centralization playbook, including "restructuring" the PLA (i.e., purging generals who weren't loyal to him personally and ensuring he has a Party loyalist on every ship) and developing the rank and file (to replace the Party leaders he purged in "corruption scandals"). However, this time around, those of us outside the system smells the b.s. a mile away.

China would be wise to remember that Stalin came thisclose to losing WWII because of these changes. Purging military leaders may make them loyal to you, but it doesn't make them good at their actual jobs.

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#178

Post by pydry » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 9:47 PM UTC

ng12 wrote: post #122

pydry wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm indifferent. Honestly I think I'd rather see elites fighting among themselves than select a particular brand of unchecked unaccountable power to be lorded over me. Would you prefer to live under Kim Jong Il or Kim Jong Un?

It's not about the elites. If China's not afraid to disappear their richest, most internationally well-known celebrities what does that mean for the average citizen?

Not much? They were never afraid to disappear them either.

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#179

Post by noone321 » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 9:56 PM UTC

meibo wrote: post #83

dfadsadsf wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LGBTQ by itself is not a threat to either Putin or Xi but what LGBTQ represents is a threat to traditional society and gender roles. The judgement is still out if new type of society developed in the west with modern gender norms, women’s rights and sexual freedoms is viable long term and from demographic perspective it’s frankly probably not. Authoritarians instinctively cling to the old roles/family and even if are…

What's your point? Countries with LGBT and woman's rights aren't sustainable demographically? I think you're severely overstating the effect of LGBT people on this matter - western countries struggle with demographics, but it's not because more gay people are able to live their lives without being forced into straight relationships.

No. I'm saying this is how elite Russian and Chinese party policy makers view their own demographic situation. Although they don't really talk about modern Russia or China, Helene Carre and Walter Scheidel probably have the most readable books about how demographic imbalances relate to empire collapses. And if you read them, it's very easy to see why China and Russia are far more reason to be concerned than the West does. Russia already fell off one in 1991, and both nations really are close to another.

(Also, American elites don't really see themselves as struggling demographically.)

Personally, I think they also like being able to blackmail powerful LGBT within their countries/satellites. Historically, when their targets realized that America's fairly tolerant towards foreigners, leftover women, and LGBT people, their targets tended to defect.

Re: What really happened to Jack Ma?

#180

Post by noone321 » Wed, Jul 07, 2021, 10:12 PM UTC

hkai wrote: post #149

Admit it, many Americans want something like this to happen to Musk and Zuck.

I wish we still had real investigative journalists. If you're bored sometime, go through the Deng/Murdoch divorce papers and look at how the Murdochs claim Deng altered Lachlan, Rupert and James' business practices to benefit the Chinese government.

From the outside, it sounds like certain SV companies are behaving in the exact same way. But I guess we won't know until someone leaks, huh?