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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

#191

Post by dragonwriter »

gerdesj wrote: post #184
FridayoLeary wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's called American Exceptionalism. But i do agree that America is not bad, that's probably because they never managed to completely shake off their British roots.(before you downvote me that was a joke). I sometimes wonder if the main consequence of the Rebellion is that they have George Washintons face on their money instead of the Queen.

Don't be soft, the USA is way, way more complicated than simply "British roots". All that throwing off the shackles of imperial rule is sort of true but mostly bollocks (that's how you invite a major DV frenzy!) Presumably the portrait of George W that is on the note is from post revolution ie mid 1770s otherwise there is a depiction of a British citizen on rather a lot of greenbacks.

> Presumably the portrait of George W that is on the note is from post revolution ie mid 1770s

It is from 1796.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#192

Post by [deleted] »

vmception wrote: post #23

So I actually paid for subscriptions to a couple of these news sites and they keep forgetting my session and lack a deeplinking feature to their app which doesnt forget my session I would rather they starve due to lack of revenue at this point so they actually do something competitive

[deleted]

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#193

Post by Aunche »

throw10920 wrote: post #156
Aunche wrote: post #103

Before you use this as an excuse to accuse the commenter you disagree with as being a Wumao, note that China's propaganda strategy serves to distract rather than directly engage, as they would rather minimize engagement. It's the same principle of "don't feed the trolls." Here's a Harvard paper that covers this topic more in depth, though it's about domestic propaganda: https://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/50c…

> Before you use this as an excuse to accuse the commenter you disagree with as being a Wumao Well, most people generally shouldn't be doing that in the first place (it's against the HN guidelines in particular and bad form in general, with the exception of blatant repeated bad-faith low-effort posts). Even so, using "is this propaganda a distraction or direct engagement" as a heuristic for "is this post propaganda"…

>Well, most people generally shouldn't be doing that in the first place

I'm mostly reminding them for when they post on Reddit, where I occasionally get accused for taking a Realpolitik stance of China issues. Even here, someone mentioned the pervasiveness of the "50 cent meme" as evidence of China's state sponsored propaganda.

>Even so, using "is this propaganda a distraction or direct engagement" as a heuristic for "is this post propaganda" is also not a great thing to do.

I agree it's not a perfect heuristic, but I don't think it matters in practice. A spammer is a spammer regardless of whether they're working for the CCP, and should be treated as such. There's no need to make a spicier accusation that you have no evidence for.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#194

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #185
adzm wrote: post #142

On a relevant note, the Tiananmen Massacre monument at the University of Hong Kong was removed last night. They were careful to barricade everything to prevent any videos or images of the monument being destroyed. https://hongkongfp.com/2021/12/23/breaking-fears-for-condemn...

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#196

Post by guerrilla »

Tostino wrote: post #138
foverzar wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So where exactly do you draw the line between "whataboutism" and asserting similarities?

If there are actual comparisons between them, it's much less likely to be "whataboutism".

This doesn't answer the question, it's literally begging the question by assuming there aren't such similarities.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#198

Post by nebula8804 »

bgroat wrote: post #73
echelon wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I'm a Canadian, but I often watch American rallies on the news. I always laugh when some American protestors say they're being oppressed/the current regime is fascistic. I mean, you're gathered, in a crowd, often armed, with your message being broadcast, with a reasonable expectation (I know, I know, not always - especially for certain demographics) of going home/surviving. I'm not sure they really understand what fa…

The problem is that little by little these freedoms are being chipped away so it requires constant fighting and pushing back in an extreme fashion to hopefully slow it down.

For example: You want to protest Israel? Great but now in 35 states you cannot accept any government jobs.

[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws#Anti-BDS_laws_in...

Another example: NSA is slurping up every last detail of Americans complete being. That we know thanks to snowden. If we keep going down this slope, what is to prevent them from using this data on you? Already we saw examples of them targeting Trump cabinet officials. If a real hard left candidate makes it anywhere close to the white house, you can be sure any skeletons will come out thanks to this data trove.

And finally an example closer to protesting: How is a country not creeping closer to fascism if they are literally kidnapping protesters and putting them in unmarked vans?

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XomXxmJTrLI

So yeah I guess you can say that America is a lot more polite about oppressing people. They don't typically pull their citizens into a back alley and shoot them. These days that is less effective than their current strategy. They accomplish the oppression in smarter more tangible ways through the ease of passing restrictive laws in addition to making trouble and asking forgiveness later(this is what happened with the unmarked van story although I don't know how the investigation turned out).

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#199

Post by lovecg »

akomtu wrote: post #171
synergy20 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This did not get to the bottom, the police will visit all your family members actually. You will simply give up and shut up as the cops will harass/threaten your family members. It's a common practice for many years and it's getting 10X worse under Xi, who is said to be the designer of "Culture Revolution 2.0" these days, who already painted every other countries(especially USA) to be enemies(except for North Korea,…

On a related note, we have here in the US a sudden wave of "culture revolution 3.0" with its proponents using the very same tactics. It's well known that Xi is preparing to enter the chip manufacturing business in 10 years, and since US is the only real opponent, Xi wisely chose to disarm us with the adapted version of "culture revolution". For this reason, I believe, he'll massively increase investments in pushing t…

> On a related note, we have here in the US a sudden wave of "culture revolution 3.0" with its proponents using the very same tactics

What on Earth are you talking about?

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