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Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences

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Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences

#31

Post by bigbillheck »

krapht wrote: post #5
globalnode wrote: post #3

[flagged]

1) whataboutism 2) citation needed 3) Even if both sides utilize propaganda, historically the scale of agitprop coming from authoritarian countries has been much greater. This is still newsworthy. You can't even read most Western propaganda in China because the government goes to great lengths to censor narratives counter to offical views.

> historically the scale of agitprop coming from authoritarian countries has been much greater

Is this actually the case or is it just that we're not seeing the stuff the west does?

> You can't even read most Western propaganda in China because the government goes to great lengths to censor narratives counter to offical views.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/15/all-lies-how... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera_bombing_memo#Previo...

Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences

#34

Post by reaperducer »

xbmcuser wrote: post #32

This is the time of information warfare I guess they learned something from India "Pro-Indian 'fake websites targeted decision makers in Europe'" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50749764

In the U.S., rich people and political organizations are actually buying or setting up real newspapers in small towns so that when they post fake news on social media, they can reference a dead tree "news source" that is actually their own P.R. machine.

There have been a few articles about it in the real press (NYT, etc) over the last couple of years.

Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences

#35

Post by somenameforme »

So I decided to take the really sophisticated step of doing a "link:www.milanomodaweekly.com" search on Google. It turned up this [1] page, and pretty much only that page. But that seems to explain what this probably is.

This looks like an amateur hour scam operation. Somebody sets up some sites that look vaguely passable (targeted at an audience who does not even speak the language on the site), auto-populates them with auto-translated Chinese newswire and blog stuff, local scraped stuff, etc. and then claims they're "major foreign media outlets", which they then sell access to for the riveting price of just 1.4 million won - about $1000. It looks like a modern take on something like a 419 scam, except I expect they probably do follow through on publishing whatever people submit!

Granted not as exciting a discovery as a shadowy influence operation with a super sexy nickname, but probably more accurate.

[1] - https://kmong.com/gig/497744

Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences

#36

Post by psunavy03 »

reaperducer wrote: post #34
xbmcuser wrote: post #32

This is the time of information warfare I guess they learned something from India "Pro-Indian 'fake websites targeted decision makers in Europe'" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50749764

In the U.S., rich people and political organizations are actually buying or setting up real newspapers in small towns so that when they post fake news on social media, they can reference a dead tree "news source" that is actually their own P.R. machine. There have been a few articles about it in the real press (NYT, etc) over the last couple of years.

This is no different from the majority of US history. Partisan/slanted news outlets have been a thing in the US going back to the Revolution, on both sides of the aisle. It's often a reason why larger cities had multiple papers. One for each side.

Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences

#37

Post by ryandrake »

mschuster91 wrote: post #29

Nothing new, sadly. Before the 2016 and 2020 election, fake news farms in Macedonia made the rounds [1] - these were in it for the money, and in 2015 there were reports about Russian propaganda farms targeting Serbia and the rest of Europe [2]. [1] https://money.cnn.com/interactive/media/the-macedonia-story/ [2] https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/russische-trollf...

Yes, back before You-Know-Who neutralized the phrase "fake news" by turning it into a generic insult to disparage legitimate news organizations, the big story was all these actual fake newspapers popping up, made to look legitimate, but actually pumping out nonsense and political propaganda instead. Suddenly the phenomenon just stopped getting reported on, and we now mostly forget that these fake sites even exist.

Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences

#38

Post by [deleted] »

andsoitis wrote: post #27
boomboomsubban wrote: post #24

So Chinese people are running some of the low quality spam content farms that have been plaguing the internet for years, seemingly primarily for financial reasons like the rest of them. The only real difference is their Reuters is linked to China rather than the West.

> their Reuters is linked to China rather than the West. Reuters is a company in a regulatory and political framework with high degree is freedom of the press and expression, rather than an instrument controlled by a government for the purpose of propaganda.

[deleted]

Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences

#39

Post by CrazyStat »

lolinder wrote: post #20
CrazyStat wrote: post #19

What is up with the font rendering on this website? It looks terrible at default zoom (100%), looks fine if I change it to 90% or 110%. Chrome 120.0.6099.200 on Windows 11. Screenshot at 100% zoom: https://i.imgur.com/X7bN7hT.png

> Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—e.g. article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It’s an earnest question, not a complaint. I looked at and messed around with the CSS a bit but I’m not a web dev so I don’t know what the problem is.

Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences

#40

Post by pessimizer »

andsoitis wrote: post #27
boomboomsubban wrote: post #24

So Chinese people are running some of the low quality spam content farms that have been plaguing the internet for years, seemingly primarily for financial reasons like the rest of them. The only real difference is their Reuters is linked to China rather than the West.

> their Reuters is linked to China rather than the West. Reuters is a company in a regulatory and political framework with high degree is freedom of the press and expression, rather than an instrument controlled by a government for the purpose of propaganda.

Reuters is an outlet completely captured by its owners, for whatever purposes that benefit its owners, exactly like whatever this is. UPI is owned by the Moonies. The Falun Gong have multiple OTA television stations in the US that give no indication that they are owned by the Falun Gong.

edit: I forgot that the Epoch Times is also owned by the Falun Gong, an outlet that plays a significant part in US politics. If you are familiar with the Epoch Times, did you know it was owned by the Falun Gong?

Did you know that the Washington Times, another important newspaper, is also Moonie-owned?

Or that the "International Business Times" and Newsweek are likely controlled by the Korean Christian sect The Community?

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