Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

341–350 of 463 posts

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#341

Post by trasz »

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

It's not that, though. This is about showing that something that's being painted as a terrible abomination is, in fact, perfectly normal behaviour, and the whole story is essentially an exercise in double standards.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#342

Post by jjcc »

chunghuaming wrote: post #293
forgotmyoldname wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think China was some North Korean-style hellscape and hated the country. Then I had a flight transfer through China and decided to take a couple days there just to see how bad it was. Ended up realizing most internet comments and news articles are posted by people who are absolutely obsessed with China and only get their information through seventh-hand sources--it's that insanely distorted. Left loving the…

This sounds like a paid endorsement sponsored by CCP. No real refutes, just brush air away by hand. You visited a few times huh? I was born and lived there for 30 years.

You sounds like a paid endorsement sponsored by CIA. You were born and lived there for 30 years? I was born and lived there 30 years then live in Western democracy with freedom along with human rights. I clearly know where the CPP hater's delusion come from

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#343

Post by brobinson »

commoner wrote: post #333
thaumasiotes wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "an" is only used in front of words that begin with a vowel sound Yes, that's what I'm saying. > For example, "womb" starts with the same sound as "wumao" No, it doesn't. "Oops" starts with the same sound as "wumao". "Womb" has a /w/ sound before that. There is no /w/ in 五毛. What did you think I meant by saying "the initial W doesn't represent a sound"?

I don't think 五 ("wu", which means "five") is pronounced the same way as the "oo" in "oops", at least in Mandarin Chinese. I hear the "w" very clearly in this counting video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eLP3FuuEVs I think there is a lot of irony in this subthread, since it is responding to a comment about derailing the discussion by distracting from the main topic as a strategy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item…

You are hearing something that isn't present. There's no "w" sound in that video for the number 5. This is a really common misconception/mispronunciation caused by pinyin as it needs the "w" for disambiguation purposes (see also the use of apostrophes, xian vs. xi'an).

Edit: another poster has some more examples of there not being a "w" sound at all in "wu": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29657822

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#344

Post by jjcc »

forgotmyoldname wrote: post #296
chunghuaming wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a paid endorsement sponsored by CCP. No real refutes, just brush air away by hand. You visited a few times huh? I was born and lived there for 30 years.

It's really wild that people are so crazed that they think everyone is a paid shill. There's medical terminology to describe people who think everything is a grand conspiracy and make unfalsifiable claims about anyone who opposes them. But good luck with that issue, dude. Maybe you should try visiting countries sometime. Anyone can claim to have lived in a country for 30 years. :)

It shows the effectiveness of massive weapons of deception, and cognitive defects of modern human. Most people know the ground truth just stay away of the argument. Most time I do the same thing but not this time.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#345

Post by HKH2 »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #335
HKH2 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Mandarin, it's pronounced like the latter. You can definitely hear a 'w' sound.

> You can definitely hear a 'w' sound. Compare "han wudi de muzang" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9TeG6MdbmY#t=117 Or "wuhan de yi tian" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWw6emkxmos#t=82 Or "yi zuo shi da wuhan" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWw6emkxmos#t=66 (same video as above, earlier timestamp)

You can argue it's not as strong as a 'w' in English, but it's definitely there, enough to justify saying 'a' instead of 'an'.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#346

Post by avsteele »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #141
gentleman11 wrote: post #21

Imagine living somewhere like China and not liking it. It would be hellish, you couldn’t even talk about it without a police visit or your boss passing trouble along to you. A giant human spirit grinder

Plenty people who have lived under communist regimes can tell you a lot what it feels like. In a way, you learn to live with it. You can talk about it with your family, your close friends. But not with colleagues - as you can't be certain who is and who isn't a spy. You need to be careful not to get involved in any provocation. If you have kids, you need to be extra careful - also about them. When you think about it,…

This is very well written. Thank you. Did you live under such a regime yourself?

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#347

Post by HKH2 »

brobinson wrote: post #343
commoner wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think 五 ("wu", which means "five") is pronounced the same way as the "oo" in "oops", at least in Mandarin Chinese. I hear the "w" very clearly in this counting video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eLP3FuuEVs I think there is a lot of irony in this subthread, since it is responding to a comment about derailing the discussion by distracting from the main topic as a strategy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item…

You are hearing something that isn't present. There's no "w" sound in that video for the number 5. This is a really common misconception/mispronunciation caused by pinyin as it needs the "w" for disambiguation purposes (see also the use of apostrophes, xian vs. xi'an). Edit: another poster has some more examples of there not being a "w" sound at all in "wu": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29657822

> There's no "w" sound in that video for the number 5.

Yes there is. You can argue it's not as strong as an English 'w', but it's there.

> This is a really common misconception/mispronunciation caused by pinyin as it needs the "w" for disambiguation purposes (see also the use of apostrophes, xian vs. xi'an).

That may have been the case in the past, but the 'w' is definitely pronounced now, just like all the other 'w' sounds in Pinyin.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#348

Post by [deleted] »

lunatuna wrote: post #324
blitzar wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out you can spice things up on social media with relatively modest ad spends, the mob are so desperate to be incited that you dont even need to light the match.

I recently watched 'Jallikattu'[0] again. The statement on being desperate to be incited matches one of the main themes of the movie so well. Worth a watch. [0] - https://youtu.be/ItcQNybOOHM

[deleted]

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#349

Post by hulahoof »

IsThisYou wrote: post #243
chunghuaming wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being a Chinese citizen right now means: - You cannot travel abroad (no passport for average citizens, except for those that study/work abroad) - You cannot go beyond China's intranet - You cannot transfer money out of country legally, pretty soon can't invest in other countries's stocks - You cannot watch Spiderman, BTS, squid games, porn and many many more things legally - You have very little rights as LGBT - You…

> (1/3 of billionaires have died or disappeared) How did that happen? Iirc, according to Hurun Report 10 years ago, some 80% of the upper class Chinese had an escape plan ready. You'd think, as a billionaire they have a plane waiting for them 24/7 to get out of the country. > You cannot travel abroad In the border with Vietnam, at night you can cross the border for 5 yuan on one of the smuggler boats. > You have litt…

> You'd think, as a billionaire they have a plane waiting for them 24/7 to get out of the country.

I guess disappeared could mean they are on a beach somewhere under an alias, but I don't think we can assume that for all of them

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#350

Post by cwhy »

raimundjoss wrote: post #33

So much of social media pre-supposes that no entity would spend the kinda money to influence an issue. They didn't take a state with limited resources into account.

No they definitely don't pre-suppose so. They run ads for main revenue, and just think about what is the definition of ads.
Post reply on HN