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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

#451

Post by fc373745 »

dang wrote: post #435
fc373745 wrote: post #66

[flagged]

You started a hellish flamewar with this comment, exactly what the site guidelines ask you not to do. You also fueled it egregiously. That's seriously not cool and will get you banned here, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting to HN, we'd appreciate it.

as I take a look at some of the comments in the threads about China, I wish you were more consistent with your stance, especially with comments on the opposite side of the spectrum.

Hacker News was supposed to be niche, but your inconsistency to demote threads of China (as they are consisntely upvoted), is now making Hacker News very generic.

You can ban me, I spend much more time reading than I do posting anyways.

But I know where Hacker news stands with their ulterior motives in doing so.

Almost evil.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#452

Post by fc373745 »

dang wrote: post #435
fc373745 wrote: post #66

[flagged]

You started a hellish flamewar with this comment, exactly what the site guidelines ask you not to do. You also fueled it egregiously. That's seriously not cool and will get you banned here, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting to HN, we'd appreciate it.

for example,

why haven't you banned the user chunghuaming?

his account is EXCLUSIVELY devoted to starting hellish flamewars.

Your hypocrisy is in suit of the entirety of western countries.

Western Countries are now on the wrong side of history for this one.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#453

Post by refenestrator »

dang wrote: post #449
refenestrator wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, fine. Food for thought: You'd probably like to ban the topic entirely, but it'd be weird to have one banned topic and you've said that doesn't work, so that's out. So what's left, being even-handed, I guess. Except it's a 10-1 ratio, so being even-handed, ban people from both sides leaves you with a 9-0 ratio.. congrats? Even if you're really, really, really trying to be even-handed with regards to content, most…

I wouldn't like to ban the topic. I would like people to treat each other respectfully. I agree with you that it would be better for HN if Chinese users, and users of Chinese background, could share more of their experiences and observations. I've been arguing that for a long time, as I believe you know. But it's not super cool of you to be making that argument as long as your own contributions to HN are undermining…

That's not good enough.

HN will continue to trend towards having 2-5 content-free "china bad amirite" threads a week with an echo chamber of people who don't know any history of the region saying completely nonsensical things. People who know a little more, or who point out things like "the belt and road initiative isn't a literal road and can't be used to invade someone" will be banned for contributing to flamewar.

For example, in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29655341[1]. You can't be everywhere, there will always 10x comments like that for every 'bad' comment going the other way, and your even-handedness means that 9/10 of them are implicitly judged as fine, acceptable and encouraging intellectual something-or-other.

[1] Check that guy's history, he writes Xi Jinping as Hsi Chunping.. his commitment to ideology is so strong that he wade-giles'd Xi, lol

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#454

Post by dang »

refenestrator wrote: post #453
dang wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't like to ban the topic. I would like people to treat each other respectfully. I agree with you that it would be better for HN if Chinese users, and users of Chinese background, could share more of their experiences and observations. I've been arguing that for a long time, as I believe you know. But it's not super cool of you to be making that argument as long as your own contributions to HN are undermining…

That's not good enough. HN will continue to trend towards having 2-5 content-free "china bad amirite" threads a week with an echo chamber of people who don't know any history of the region saying completely nonsensical things. People who know a little more, or who point out things like "the belt and road initiative isn't a literal road and can't be used to invade someone" will be banned for contributing to flamewar.…

I've been trying to persuade baybal2 for years to stop breaking the site guidelines, and have banned and unbanned him over the years, but you're quite wrong in your assumptions—he has a lot of experience in the region and knows a lot. Not only that but people have attacked him unfairly in the past here too (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195898). I also don't believe that he's primarily an ideologue—his comments (at least many of them) are more interesting than that. Whether he was using an obsolete transliteration as flamebait or not is beyond my ability to say, but he's not a native English speaker, so maybe there are some crossed signals here too.

This is a good example of how people jump to conclusions and assume the worst about each other. It's no more ok when you do that than when other users do it, even if you are (or feel you are) part of a minority that gets treated unfairly.

I understand and empathize about how frustrating this is—but lashing out at the very people who are bending over backwards to try to bring some semblance of tolerance and neutrality to an impossible situation is neither nice nor helpful.

I've discussed the lopsided dynamic of these conversations with you many times. The question is how to deal with it. No matter how frustrating it is, it's important not to respond to ignorance by losing your cool, becoming abusive, and so on. When you do that, you're reinforcing the very situation you deplore, and by that you actually make yourself responsible for the status quo. Each of us has a small quantum of energy to contribute, and it's important not to use yours to cause further harm (even when it's for deep reasons).

It's much better to respond to ignorance patiently and with good information, seeking points of connection and opportunities to treat the other person better than they expect and maybe better than they deserve (or you feel they deserve). Then you're investing your quantum in a good way. Also, it's good to remember that we're all ignorant, just about different things, and we all share the same hard-wiring that causes people to project bad things into dark spaces and thus treat each other poorly. If you happen to know more about $topic and thus can see how ignorant others are, that's not because you're better than them, or any different from them in the end. It's an accident of circumstance.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#455

Post by dang »

fc373745 wrote: post #451
dang wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You started a hellish flamewar with this comment, exactly what the site guidelines ask you not to do. You also fueled it egregiously. That's seriously not cool and will get you banned here, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting to HN, we'd appreciate it.

as I take a look at some of the comments in the threads about China, I wish you were more consistent with your stance, especially with comments on the opposite side of the spectrum. Hacker News was supposed to be niche, but your inconsistency to demote threads of China (as they are consisntely upvoted), is now making Hacker News very generic. You can ban me, I spend much more time reading than I do posting anyways. B…

People routinely jump to conclusions like this from the small number of data points they happen to see. Specifically, when they see something they dislike, they place a far greater weight on it, and are more likely to notice it in the first place [1]. This leads to false feelings of generality [2] and basically guarantees that everyone with passionate feelings (i.e. strong dislikes) feels like the mods are against them [3]. This is all false—it's powered by cognitive bias, which is why users with opposite passions notice opposite things and feel like the moderation goes against them.

Consistency is a red herring, not because we secretly side with one view, but because it's impossible. We can't moderate what we don't see, and we don't come close to seeing everything. If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it [4]. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.

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

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

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

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

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#456

Post by dang »

fc373745 wrote: post #452
dang wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You started a hellish flamewar with this comment, exactly what the site guidelines ask you not to do. You also fueled it egregiously. That's seriously not cool and will get you banned here, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting to HN, we'd appreciate it.

for example, why haven't you banned the user chunghuaming? his account is EXCLUSIVELY devoted to starting hellish flamewars. Your hypocrisy is in suit of the entirety of western countries. Western Countries are now on the wrong side of history for this one.

You're jumping to false conclusions. Please see my answer here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29692971.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#457

Post by refenestrator »

dang wrote: post #454
refenestrator wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not good enough. HN will continue to trend towards having 2-5 content-free "china bad amirite" threads a week with an echo chamber of people who don't know any history of the region saying completely nonsensical things. People who know a little more, or who point out things like "the belt and road initiative isn't a literal road and can't be used to invade someone" will be banned for contributing to flamewar.…

I've been trying to persuade baybal2 for years to stop breaking the site guidelines, and have banned and unbanned him over the years, but you're quite wrong in your assumptions—he has a lot of experience in the region and knows a lot. Not only that but people have attacked him unfairly in the past here too ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195898 ). I also don't believe that he's primarily an ideologue—his com…

No post body was provided.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#458

Post by refenestrator »

dang wrote: post #454
refenestrator wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not good enough. HN will continue to trend towards having 2-5 content-free "china bad amirite" threads a week with an echo chamber of people who don't know any history of the region saying completely nonsensical things. People who know a little more, or who point out things like "the belt and road initiative isn't a literal road and can't be used to invade someone" will be banned for contributing to flamewar.…

I've been trying to persuade baybal2 for years to stop breaking the site guidelines, and have banned and unbanned him over the years, but you're quite wrong in your assumptions—he has a lot of experience in the region and knows a lot. Not only that but people have attacked him unfairly in the past here too ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21195898 ). I also don't believe that he's primarily an ideologue—his com…

This has been eating me up all day in case you happen to check in again.

I didn't start posting to whine about being banned a few months ago, I was more concerned about the immediate thread.. but since you brought up my posts, you specifically told me while banning me that civility wasn't "good enough". I was doing this exact recommended pattern of responding patiently and civilly at the moment that you banned me.

Maybe I'm just really oblivious, or a congenitally bad poster, but what would be good enough? It's irrelevant since I'm banned but I always like to self-improve if I can, there must be something I'm missing here. If you're busy or don't see this, no biggie.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#459

Post by isoprophlex »

dang wrote: post #436
isoprophlex wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Please do not take HN threads further into generic, hellish flamewars. This sort of shallow, angry denunciation is not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it. You've broken them in other places recently, too—not cool. Fortunately your good comments are good.

You're right, that wasn't a very insightful or novel comment I made. My apologies for further fanning the flames on this topic.

Thanks for calling me out, and thanks for your efforts in keeping this place interesting..!

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#460

Post by toomanyrichies »

avgcorrection wrote: post #404
toomanyrichies wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone wants to assert those similarities in a separate conversation, that's fine. Trying to derail an existing conversation about the actions of one country by mentioning actions of another country is a distraction at best, and arguing in bad faith at worst.

One man’s “distraction” is another man’s “broadening the conversation”.

Unless the person started the conversation, it's not theirs to "broaden".
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