China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation • Hacker News Board

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#181

Post by the_doctah » Wed, Sep 27, 2023, 3:02 PM UTC

unclebucknasty wrote: post #128

vuln wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For instance, social media platforms did a better job of not being completely owned as fire hoses for propaganda and disinfo. Better job by not cashing the adversaries checks? https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/01/russian-facebook-ad-spend/... > Of course, some then complained that this constituted "censorship" by the platforms. Ah you mean the government going hunting and finding accounts that violated the ever changi…

Yes and yes. Safe to say that $46K ad spend was a drop in the bucket versus their overall effort, but sure, Facebook not accepting those rubles in 2020 counts as a small example. I have no problem with the U.S. government working with American communications platforms to prevent adversarial propaganda, disinformation and disruption of US elections. These are foreign governments engaged in psyops against American citi…

The US government didn't stop there though. They used their influence to censor US citizens' tweets. That's censorship, and that's what happens when you give the government this power. Put censorship in quotes all you like, you support it.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#182

Post by rawgabbit » Wed, Sep 27, 2023, 3:35 PM UTC

aragonite wrote: post #124

jcranmer wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Causing harm to the names, images, reputations, and honor of heroes and martyrs through insult, defamation, or other such means" pretty clearly means to me something along the lines of "you can't point out that Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward caused a famine that killed tens of millions of people." There's nothing along those lines in any EU country, let alone the US (where such a concept is in extremely flagrant vi…

"heroes and martyrs" is the English translation of 英雄烈士, which is not a generic term of praise in Chinese but specifically applies to someone who died in battle (or some similar act of bravery) — think acts worthy of Victoria Cross in UK or Purple Heart in US. Even people who worship Mao do not think of him as one of the "heroes and martyrs". In China you certainly can point out, even criticize, Mao's role in the Gre…

The grandparent poster was referring to Peng Dehuai who dared to question the Great Leap Forward and was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peng_Dehuai

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#183

Post by PawgerZ » Wed, Sep 27, 2023, 3:42 PM UTC

nradov wrote: post #138

threeseed wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst part is that X/Twitter is deliberately not trying to help this cycle. They pulled out of the EU Code of Practice around disinformation back in May and they have been warned as recently as yesterday that the platform was the worst of all of the social networks at allowing Russian disinformation. And I am sure everyone who used it has seen the massive uptick in bots and other coordinated activity.

Fake news. I haven't seen any uptick in bots or coordinated activity. You might be following the wrong sort of accounts.

You might be following the wrong set of accounts

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#184

Post by calyth2018 » Wed, Sep 27, 2023, 3:47 PM UTC

snehk wrote: post #142

praisewhitey wrote: post #3

>She points to a spurious claim that America “wants to blow up” TSMC, a Taiwanese chipmaker. It originated with a misleading video posted on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, which featured an American lawmaker appearing to discuss the possibility. This part stood out to me as I've seen this mentioned several times on HN in the past. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Absolutely hilarious that - in an article talking about disinformation - they make the 100% wrong claim that the video is somehow misleading. It exists and the contents are absolutely clear. Claiming that the video is misleading is 100% disinformation. Reminds me of Trudeau who talked about Russian disinformation after they gave a standing ovation to a literal SS soldier. Anything I don't like is a Russian/Chinese fa…

You'd think when Rota, the speaker said that the soldier thought against the Russians in WW2, people would clue in.

We have 338 trained seals up in Parliament.

And they're still saying it's Russian propaganda...

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#185

Post by Paradigma11 » Wed, Sep 27, 2023, 5:44 PM UTC

snehk wrote: post #145

WiSaGaN wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is said by "Rep. Seth Moulton (Mass.) — one of the Democratic Party’s leading voices on defense": Speaking at a Milken Institute panel in Los Angeles, Moulton said: “One of the interesting ideas that’s been floated out there for deterrence is just making it very clear to the Chinese that if you invade Taiwan, we’re going to blow up TSMC.” He continued: “I just throw that out not because that’s necessarily the be…

> And of course, the Taiwanese really don’t like this idea. Reminds me of when Biden was standing next to the German chancellor and said he'd make sure Nord Stream would be stopped if Russia ever invaded Ukraine and then when Russia invaded Ukraine and Nord Stream was blown up, everyone just ignored it.

We pretty much know that it was Ukraine but there are more important things going on so it is on the backburner till the crisis is over. The main impetus behind NS was not to create new additional supply lines but to become independent from the Ukraine pipelines.

In the end this is a matter between Ukraine and Germany and nobody cares what Russia thinks.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#186

Post by threeseed » Wed, Sep 27, 2023, 9:52 PM UTC

MissingAFew wrote: post #167

threeseed wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the difference between making fertiliser for farming or to build a bomb. Intent matters. And so if they are creating viruses to better understand how to cure them or prepare responses for dealing with them then that is a good thing. Creating a virus for use in a bio-weapon is a bad thing. If you don't have bio-labs then you don't have cures so we can't get rid of them entirely.

The amount of engineering required to go from fertilizer to bomb is astronomical. Deploying a virus covertly does not compare in the slightest, that's a disingenuous comparison and you know it.

"It's a very simple explosive to make," she said. "In fact, for years the IRA {Irish Republican Army} made their bombs this way."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1995/04/21/a...

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#187

Post by celu » Wed, Sep 27, 2023, 11:29 PM UTC

shashurup wrote: post #154

bratbag wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Both sides' is a core part of the authoritarian propaganda playbook. Pretending that occasional manipulation in the information produced by Liberal democracies is somehow equivalent to the constant stream of lies autocracies produce, is part of how they stop their people wanting change.

What Russian or Chinese press do you read to come to this conclusion?

Err... CGTN? > CGTN is a state-run foreign-language news channel based in Beijing, China. It is one of six channels provided by China Global Television Network, owned by the Chinese state broadcaster China Central Television, under the control of the Central Propaganda Department of the Chinese Communist Party

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#188

Post by unclebucknasty » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 2:53 AM UTC

the_doctah wrote: post #181

unclebucknasty wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and yes. Safe to say that $46K ad spend was a drop in the bucket versus their overall effort, but sure, Facebook not accepting those rubles in 2020 counts as a small example. I have no problem with the U.S. government working with American communications platforms to prevent adversarial propaganda, disinformation and disruption of US elections. These are foreign governments engaged in psyops against American citi…

The US government didn't stop there though. They used their influence to censor US citizens' tweets. That's censorship, and that's what happens when you give the government this power. Put censorship in quotes all you like, you support it.

Twitter is infested with trollbots and sock puppets, and can't even agree with itself on its count of real users. So, if some real user accounts that parroted disinfo were swept up in bans or whatever you're calling "censorship" during the disinfo fight, then so be it.

And, in any case, if they're parroting the same disinfo as foreign adversaries who are working to destroy us, then they don't get special dispensation just because they're U.S. citizens.

This is why the First Amendment famously has limits.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#189

Post by the_doctah » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 2:53 AM UTC

unclebucknasty wrote: post #188

the_doctah wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US government didn't stop there though. They used their influence to censor US citizens' tweets. That's censorship, and that's what happens when you give the government this power. Put censorship in quotes all you like, you support it.

Twitter is infested with trollbots and sock puppets, and can't even agree with itself on its count of real users. So, if some real user accounts that parroted disinfo were swept up in bans or whatever you're calling "censorship" during the disinfo fight, then so be it. And, in any case, if they're parroting the same disinfo as foreign adversaries who are working to destroy us, then they don't get special dispensation…

>Twitter is infested with trollbots and sock puppets, and can't even agree with itself on its count of real users.

You just described every social media platform.

Re: China is flooding Taiwan with disinformation

#190

Post by netheril96 » Thu, Sep 28, 2023, 3:03 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #32

China is having an internal information crackdown. It's approaching the nutty level, which probably indicates that Xi is losing it. The latest thing is a crackdown on clothing "detrimental to the spirit of the Chinese people."[1] [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-66737272

I don't count that Xi losing, but Xi winning. He's very conservative in China's sense, and he's basically crushed less conservative forces in the Party. A crackdown on clothing "detrimental to the spirit of the Chinese people." doesn't serve any real interests of Xi other than enforcing the ideals of China's conservatives.

Similar to how the Republican party always try to inhibit abortion wherever they can. You won't say that Republican party successfully passing an anti-abortion law indicates they are losing, will you?