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Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

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411–420 of 463 posts

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#411
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are widespread allegation of UK conservative party using bots: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-50218615 One of the startup growth-hackers gave us a decent talk on some basic social media manipulation It is so easy to create entirely false narratives and / or manipulate online discussion, that at this point I would be surprised if any major group of people with access to half decent budget is not doing i…

The most important thing a con artist must convince the mark of is this: everyone else is on the take. Once this is believed, the mark will follow the con down any corrupt rabbit hole. Ask yourself this: who wants you to believe that everything is astroturfing? Who does that serve?

Two things can simultaneously be true: (1) there is substantial astroturfing in the infosphere & (2) everything is not astroturf.

Ironically, I think the accusations of astroturfing (whether true or not) more directly serve the meta goal of decreasing the public's ability and willingness to engage in debate, and accusations are much more amplification / outrage friendly.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#412
post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still possible to transfer money for businesses. China is still heavily integrated into the global economy, so they're not going to cut the lines completely, but my family and friends over there who are Chinese citizens used to do direct bank transfers internationally from their personal current accounts in China and now they can't.

My wife has a BoC account (personal), no problem transferring money back and forth whatsoever, dunno other banks. You obviously need to get the iban or the shift code right. Your local bank should be able to help you.

The problem seems to be that, as with many things in China, the laws and regulations are considered more guidelines than actual rules. If the authorities want to crack down on stuff, they do and there's nothing anyone can do about it, and it's not always clear what criteria are used to make decisions on these things, if any.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#413
post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just a civility burden, it's a factual burden. If somebody came onto HN posting obviously dumb stuff about how American people feel and think, they'd be downvoted, because everyone can see the obvious falsehood. But when it's Chinese, majority vote of Americans decides the truth! They will tell you the real deal on how things work inside China. And if someone calls them morons, we have you to come in and kee…

I'm not sure what your point is. Obviously majority vote does not decide the truth, and ignorant people don't know what they're talking about. And still we have to try to find a way to operate this forum and not allow people to destroy it. Burning the community down doesn't serve the truth in any way.

Look at this immediate thread above your comment, majority vote did decide the truth about how Chinese people think (they're brainwashed!). Then you scolded someone who got salty about it.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I know how Wuhan sounds like and I clearly hear a w sound in there, don't you? Maybe it's not as clear as in the English word west, but you can't deny it's there no? Don't 我 and 武 start with the same sound? Do 窝 and 喔 sound the same to you?

> Yes I know how Wuhan sounds like and I clearly hear a w sound in there, don't you? No? > Don't 我 and 武 start with the same sound? You could make that argument. But 武 never transitions out of it. That transition is how you get a glide (or semivowel) as opposed to a vowel. 我 is /wo/, with a brief /w/. 武 is /u/, and that vowel persists through the entire syllable. If you wanted to call it /w/ instead of /u/, you'd hav…

> Am I right that you're a native Mandarin speaker?

No I'm not. Are you? I'm open to the idea that I'm mislead by pinyin, but I really cannot unhear the w sound there. How do you pronounce Wuhan? Do you start with you lips closed or can you do it with your mouth open?

> seanmcdirmid mentioned 服务 - do you also clearly hear a W sound there?

Not really, but syllables changing depending on what comes before (or after them) is fairly normal.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people going to China to make money don't come there wearing pink glasses. It's a Faustian bargain. Eat your soul for money, and an opportunity to run a factory without being sued by everybody on the day 1. The remaining minority is unfortunately a big problem, and higher up on the status ladder the bigger. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/china-s-president-... Such people come with real delusions. Eith…

> that they think they will trick communists, people who grew giving their whole lives to intrigue Please don't do that here.

Why?

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#416
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are widespread allegation of UK conservative party using bots: https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-50218615 One of the startup growth-hackers gave us a decent talk on some basic social media manipulation It is so easy to create entirely false narratives and / or manipulate online discussion, that at this point I would be surprised if any major group of people with access to half decent budget is not doing i…

The most important thing a con artist must convince the mark of is this: everyone else is on the take. Once this is believed, the mark will follow the con down any corrupt rabbit hole. Ask yourself this: who wants you to believe that everything is astroturfing? Who does that serve?

Ask yourself this: who isn't astroturfing?

(For the US in fact social media astroturfing doesn't even have to be covert: as the social media belong to domestic companies, they by default promote the national party line and foreign interests - it's only bad when someone else does it).

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#417

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.

There is plenty of material published by NYT that is very much on par with what they are criticizing social media for.

It's bad when others do it.

Same how it's ok when the US does it globally, but not when foreign powers do it.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#418
post #411
post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most important thing a con artist must convince the mark of is this: everyone else is on the take. Once this is believed, the mark will follow the con down any corrupt rabbit hole. Ask yourself this: who wants you to believe that everything is astroturfing? Who does that serve?

Two things can simultaneously be true: (1) there is substantial astroturfing in the infosphere & (2) everything is not astroturf. Ironically, I think the accusations of astroturfing (whether true or not) more directly serve the meta goal of decreasing the public's ability and willingness to engage in debate, and accusations are much more amplification / outrage friendly.

So it’s better to just never acknowledge it? As if there is no alternative?

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> usually the US is doing something more exceptional and extreme than the demonstrated behavior Actually, it's almost always the opposite. CCP requiring Chinese companies to hand over all user data unencrypted > USG occasionally sending NSLs to specific companies for information on specific persons. CCP stealing IP from the US, EU, Japan, and other countries > ???. CCP Operation Fox Hunt[1] > ???. CCP police threaten…

Quoted post unavailable.

You've completely proved my point, which is that in every argument people make bad comparison between the US and China. In every single item here, you greatly stretch either what the US has done to clearly over-exaggerate it, stretch what the CCP has done to under-exaggerate it, or sometimes out-right make a completely false comparison - it's really clear you're not doing it in good faith. Examples:

(1) > If you don think that the NSA is spying on half the western world

If you'd read the Snowden papers, you'd see that the NSA collects metadata on US persons, and can only collect specific (non-meta-)data on those that they submit a warrant for. Completely invalid comparison, not remotely comparable to the CCP requiring all companies to hand over all data of all persons in China non-encrypted.

Bonus points for the "If you don't think" emotional manipulation.

(1b) > the CIA on the other half

Baseless speculation that conveniently fits the position you hold and nothing else.

(2) > When every country develops, they "borrow" from the previously developed countries.

Classic whataboutism. What America did centuries ago has no bearing on what China does now - it's actually far worse now, because we generally have better-developed senses of morals and that stealing is bad. Also, while US citizens might have taken technology from other countries, the CCP government is doing the theft here - and it's outright breaking and entering to do so, too.

(3) > Target and extradite people for "corruption" (real or not), US targets and attempts to extradite people for leaking evidence of war crimes and spying.

Nope, false comparison. In Operation Fox Hunt, the CCP (a) targeted people for merely speaking out about government (b) targeting their families and (c) didn't charge many of the targets with any crime whatsoever. None of those things apply to the US. Thinking that this is even remotely similar to charging someone for espionage and attempting to extradite them using the legal system is actually completely insane; there's no similarities whatsoever to the CCP trying to covertly and illegally coerce citizens to return home for crimes for which they have never been charged by threatening their families.

(4) > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes

You just literally didn't make any point at all here. So, to recap for viewers at home: there's no US equivalent to the CCP massacring students with tanks at Tienanmen Square.

(5) > Surprise surprise but the US has its own 50 cent army.

Fine, as a US citizen, I condemn any forms of propaganda taken by my government on my behalf. You're defending yours. Also, uh, any evidence that the US has also hired two million propaganda creators to create several hundred million posts? Barely comparable, but this is the only solid point you've made so far.

(6a) > Yes let us go liberate the enslaved children

You engage in sarcasm because it's clear that you don't have a point. Let me be clear what this point is: the CCP is tyrannical in a way that other governments are not.

(6b) > and sometimes mandatory

Mandatory abortion is more tyranny, not less.

(7) > The unlucky and unarmed populations of Iraq and Afghanistan who are continued to be massacred via drone strike.

Completely insane comparison. You do know that the point of Tienanmen Square was that the people getting massacred were (a) intentionally killed (b) unarmed (c) students (d) peacefully protesting (e) Chinese citizens and (f) the government has enforced a media blackout on it? That's literally the opposite of Iraq/Afghanistan in every single way. Meanwhile, the closest comparison you can make is (a) accidentally killed collateral damage (which is terrible, but not that it's not intentional) from the US hunting people who flew airplanes into the Twin Towers on 9/11, and the targeted people are (b) armed (c) terrorists (d) trying to kill us who are (e) not US Citizens and (f) the US government doesn't enforce a media blackout when they mess up, and calling a few dozen deaths (which are tragic, but all accidental - the result of the military being careless, not the PLA tank operators intentionally running over students) "massacre" is also crazy.

(8) > Assange and Snowden

Insane comparison. Snowden and Assange both leaked classified information that cost the US billions (tens of billions? hundreds?) of dollars of taxpayer money to develop and resulted in lives lost, and whose significance was military and intelligence capabilities (yeah, Snowden wasn't about telling the people about a spying program - if it was, he would have only leaked docs about the NSA spying on American citizens in particular, but you know what? 99% of the material leaked had nothing to do with spying on American citizens at all, and was just straight-up sending classified military+defense information to other countries). Not even remotely comparable to the CCP suppressing information on the military massacring peacefully protesting civilians with no defense or strategic value.

(9a) > What is Guantanamo Bay?

A place that (a) many Americans actively protest (unlike Xinjiang, which it seems like is constantly defended by Chinese nationals) (b) holding a few thousand people (instead of a few million) that (c) are suspected of committing terrorism (not "innocents").

(9b) How many millions of blacks are locked up in American prison for no reason other than their skin color and a sham charge of jaywalking or dug possession.

Also a completely insane comparison. Bringing up skin color is crazy - US judges do not, as a rule, discriminate based on skin color. Prisons in the US aren't even remotely comparable to the labor camps in Xinjiang, and even though the American justice system has problems (that are being protested by its citizens, as opposed to being defended, like Chinese nationals defend Xinjiang), every person taken in has a public trial with a charge that's on the books - as opposed to the CCP disappearing citizens with no trial, and no charge other than just being Uyghur, and denying that the places they're being held exist in the first place.

(10a) > The US literarily strong arming its states for trying to boycott Israel.

This is one of the only even partially-valid points you have made here. "Partially" because while it's very bad for the federal government to pass laws on the states about this matter, it's also categorically different for the federal government to restrict what state governments can do for geopolitical reasons, than it is for the CCP to financially blackmail foreign companies for expressing a very sane and reasonable position: that Taiwan is a separate country from China.

(10b) > The US enacting regime change when the wrong person was democratically elected...

This isn't even relevant to anything here. You're just throwing it out to try to add chaff to your arguments.

(11) > ???????

This is the only fully-valid point/comparison you've made in this entire post. I misspoke - I meant to say "CCP planning to invade Taiwan..." and it was because I perceived that the old leadership of China (before the cultural revolution) had fled there - but I can't find any evidence of that, so I'm withdrawing this claim.

> To find this level of ignorance here is semi-astounding.

Pure emotional manipulation.

> Propaganda works, and that post is proof of it.

What are some of the characteristics of propaganda? Assertions of vague or unknown truths (1b, 5, 10b), exaggerate the facts (1, 2, 3, 7, 9b), misdirection of attention (6, 10b), emotional manipulation (6a, 9a, 9b, last sentence), wild comparisons that aren't valid (1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10a). I made the points that I had in good faith, using sound logic, and withdrew the one that I realized was wrong (11).

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I've also got friends there and speak the language to some extent now. It's not like I walked in on some sanitized tour for a day and left. The country has problems. But it's not a prison camp of 1.4 billion like the internet would make you think. Most people are pretty happy living there, even people who've been to other countries. It's definitely not a good place to be a political or religious activist. Mos…

I've traveled to countries for weeks, even months in total, then moved there, before the real issues of said country / culture / society become properly apparent and people open up about things. I'm not saying it was bad, but it takes a bit of time to read a place. Imagine that in a place where saying the wrong thing can have you landed in prison. I've actually worked with some Chinese for years and it wasn't until I…

I've had people from virtually every country randomly start racist discussions with me. I've been in Paris waiting for a train, and had some white Canadians come up and say "Hey, are you American?" (presumably my bad fashion made me stand out) Then suddenly start complaining about black people just because I said "Yeah, I am" as if that was an OK to be racist. I don't use that to say "yep, Canada's bad."

I've also dealt with countless people who've said "You've been to China? Oh, let me tell you how they justify racism" and seeing zero irony in their statement.

Bizarre. Seriously

And people somehow take any claim of saying "China is decent" to mean it's flawless and attack it. People don't do this with any countries unless they're East Asian, and they specifically get angry about China these days. You can't even mention enjoying Japan without someone online saying "oh they're all racist. I would know because I had dinner with a Japanese man." It's tiring.

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