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Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

nytimes.com

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Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#31

Post by hetspookjee »

uniqueuid wrote: post #26
endisneigh wrote: post #17

Which countries don’t do this? What China is doing is bad, but is this some sort of new development? Russia, Germany, France to name a few have been caught doing the same thing. Not to mention the USA. Facebook and Twitter need to handle this issue. This type of stuff is going on meanwhile they’re banning people for the stupidest most innocuous actions.

It would be very helpful if you provide some links to your claims. There are many platform reports on state-sponsored influence, and they routinely do not name Germany and France. Instead, the overall picture of perpetrators is that of authoritarian regimes.

Platform reports by whom?

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#32

Post by uniqueuid »

323 wrote: post #13

Why would that be a bad thing? The Republicans influence FoxNews. The Democrats influence CNN. Why wouldn't China also influence some outlets? It's a free market, you don't like a media source, you are free to use one suitable to your bias.

It's not a free market for manipulation.

There are laws and rules designed to safeguard open and free exchange of information and opinions, and covert influence is regularly forbidden.

The big difference is that domestic influence is much easier to (eventually) unveil (see Watergate, Snowden, panama papers etc.). Foreign influence is harder to detect if it comes from a country that executes its whistleblowers and disappears its critics.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#34

Post by cscurmudgeon »

foverzar wrote: post #25
creato wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Radio Free Asia/Liberty/etc. don't pretend to be someone else while they are broadcasting.

What exactly do you mean by "don't pretend to be somebody else"? They often operate under an umbrella of media projects that act as "local" news.

https://www.rfa.org/about/info/mission.html

Says right in their about page they are under a govt. mandate. The local language pages also have this information.

> Radio Free Asia operates under a Congressional mandate to deliver uncensored, domestic news and information to China, Tibet, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Burma, among other places in Asia with poor media environments and few, if any, free speech protections. All broadcasts are solely in local languages and dialects, which include Mandarin, Tibetan, Cantonese, Uyghur, Vietnamese, Lao, Khmer, Burmese, and Korean.

Edit: A discussion like this wouldn't even happen inside China.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#35

Post by thanhhaimai »

endisneigh wrote: post #17

Which countries don’t do this? What China is doing is bad, but is this some sort of new development? Russia, Germany, France to name a few have been caught doing the same thing. Not to mention the USA. Facebook and Twitter need to handle this issue. This type of stuff is going on meanwhile they’re banning people for the stupidest most innocuous actions.

The line of reasoning in this post is a fallacy. If you're not familiar with the concept, it's worth a read: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#36

Post by uniqueuid »

hetspookjee wrote: post #31
uniqueuid wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be very helpful if you provide some links to your claims. There are many platform reports on state-sponsored influence, and they routinely do not name Germany and France. Instead, the overall picture of perpetrators is that of authoritarian regimes.

Platform reports by whom?

By platforms.

Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms regularly publish (and in some countries are required by law to publish) reports on coordinated inauthentic behavior.

Example: https://about.fb.com/news/2021/07/june-2021-coordinated-inau...

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#38

Post by chroem- »

hutzlibu wrote: post #27
chroem- wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chomsky spent a good part of his career claiming the Cambodian Genocide was just US propaganda.

That would be news to me, src? Quick search suggest, that this statement is just propaganda. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-01/brull---the-boring-tr...

Nice try

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Chom...

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#39

Post by bloqs »

the-dude wrote: post #11
chroem- wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chomsky spent a good part of his career claiming the Cambodian Genocide was just US propaganda.

This too doesn't make it less true.

Of course it does, it offers a pervasive arguement that the source is unreliable.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#40

Post by foverzar »

cyb_ wrote: post #7
tehjoker wrote: post #5

Doesn't the US broadcast regime change propaganda into the country via Radio Free Asia / Radio Free Liberty etc?

> Whataboutism or whataboutery (as in "what about…?") is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy, which attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving the argument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

The idea of "whataboutism" and attempting to present it as something inherently wrong awfully seems like a convenient way to dismiss uncomfortable points of the discussion and turn it into yet another two minutes hate.

Comparing how different agents deal with similar problems is not a thoughtcrime, you know. It is quite a healthy way of understanding how such problems arise and how to deal with them.

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