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

Loss of nearly a full decade of information from early days of Chinese internet

chinamediaproject.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 105 posts

Re: Loss of nearly a full decade of information from early days of Chinese internet

#71

Post by trealira »

pessimizer wrote: post #67
demosthanos wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Posted on Wednesday, May 22, He’s post had been removed from WeChat by the following day, yielding a 404 message that read: “This content violates regulations and cannot be viewed.” You don't get your comments censored by commenting about natural entropy on the internet. You do get your comments censored by drawing attention to the censors. I get very tired of people drawing false equivalences between organic human…

[flagged]

I don't see how your comment relates to the parent's comment; however, here's a reply.

> All anyone has to do is farm a few accounts to flag the mildest mention of this out of existence, and to upvote the most obtuse, simplistic anti-enemy animus to the top.

Have you considered that the negative sentiment against Russia and China is genuine? I know of no evidence that the DoD has shills or bots upvoting pro-US-government comments and downvoting other ones. People probably just read the news and form their opinions that way, and there's a variety of different news sources with many different perspectives, which don't get censored.

> I'm jealous of the fact that Chinese people speaking out of the government-range just get deleted, rather than patronized.

It's strange to be jealous of them not having protection from government censorship.

Re: Loss of nearly a full decade of information from early days of Chinese internet

#72

Post by WalterBright »

demosthanos wrote: post #48
lostemptations5 wrote: post #33

Intentionally or not this is -- exactly -- what 1984 is all about: changing our perception of history by rewriting or erasing previous writings. Unfortunately alot of it from the article seems typical: blogs going off line as bloggers move to new technolgoies, social media companies going defunct or just not keeping old content. Alot of these things can happen in the west. Remember these books you could read? "The Fe…

> Posted on Wednesday, May 22, He’s post had been removed from WeChat by the following day, yielding a 404 message that read: “This content violates regulations and cannot be viewed.” You don't get your comments censored by commenting about natural entropy on the internet. You do get your comments censored by drawing attention to the censors. I get very tired of people drawing false equivalences between organic human…

I've love to have a single letter from some of my ancestors.

Re: Loss of nearly a full decade of information from early days of Chinese internet

#73

Post by yorwba »

demosthanos wrote: post #48
lostemptations5 wrote: post #33

Intentionally or not this is -- exactly -- what 1984 is all about: changing our perception of history by rewriting or erasing previous writings. Unfortunately alot of it from the article seems typical: blogs going off line as bloggers move to new technolgoies, social media companies going defunct or just not keeping old content. Alot of these things can happen in the west. Remember these books you could read? "The Fe…

> Posted on Wednesday, May 22, He’s post had been removed from WeChat by the following day, yielding a 404 message that read: “This content violates regulations and cannot be viewed.” You don't get your comments censored by commenting about natural entropy on the internet. You do get your comments censored by drawing attention to the censors. I get very tired of people drawing false equivalences between organic human…

The original post was about natural entropy on the internet. Websites from 2005 that have disappeared or been redesigned so that you can't find their old content anymore, and the uselessness of search engines, domestic or foreign, for date range queries reaching that far back into the past. Even on the Internet Archive, the earliest working snapshot of Baidu Tieba is from 2006.

You may think that it's impossible for an innocuous post to get censored unless it has inadvertently unmasked a conspiracy to bury the past, but censorship decisions also get made to prevent unwanted reactions. If a post about disappearing content inspires people to complain about censorship, that's enough to suppress it.

If the disappearance of old websites were entirely deliberate, you'd also need to explain why the West is in on it.

Re: Loss of nearly a full decade of information from early days of Chinese internet

#74

Post by Natsu »

WalterBright wrote: post #72
demosthanos wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Posted on Wednesday, May 22, He’s post had been removed from WeChat by the following day, yielding a 404 message that read: “This content violates regulations and cannot be viewed.” You don't get your comments censored by commenting about natural entropy on the internet. You do get your comments censored by drawing attention to the censors. I get very tired of people drawing false equivalences between organic human…

I've love to have a single letter from some of my ancestors.

I have one, actually, from my grandpa's generation. He told another family member about his time growing up in the early 1900s, riding trolleys and eating Walnettos (a strange Walnut-based candy bar). Then the Spanish Flu came around and the eldest sister just died at the breakfast table one day. Later, the family rallied together to care for each other after his father lost his job due to automation. He moved on to doing odd jobs, then later fell off the roof and broke his back, ending up as an invalid for the rest of his days. They talked about the cherry trees they used to feed themselves, which explains grandma's fondness for the cherry soup I hated so much, and how my grandma and grandpa got married and took care of great grandpa while he was invalid.

They also talked about how Wonder Bread (the original sliced bread and origin of the phrase "best thing since sliced bread") came into town and the eldest son went to work for them to support the family after the local baker he had worked for folded, lost a finger to the machinery. At some point, he had some kind of heated dispute at work due to this, was beaten by security, and as I'm told, died from injuries sustained during that beating some time afterwards.

It was a weird little window into bits of family history that would have otherwise been erased.

Re: Loss of nearly a full decade of information from early days of Chinese internet

#75

Post by demosthanos »

yorwba wrote: post #73
demosthanos wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Posted on Wednesday, May 22, He’s post had been removed from WeChat by the following day, yielding a 404 message that read: “This content violates regulations and cannot be viewed.” You don't get your comments censored by commenting about natural entropy on the internet. You do get your comments censored by drawing attention to the censors. I get very tired of people drawing false equivalences between organic human…

The original post was about natural entropy on the internet. Websites from 2005 that have disappeared or been redesigned so that you can't find their old content anymore, and the uselessness of search engines, domestic or foreign, for date range queries reaching that far back into the past. Even on the Internet Archive, the earliest working snapshot of Baidu Tieba is from 2006. You may think that it's impossible for…

> The original post was about natural entropy on the internet.

The post by He Jiayan was, but that post was taken down for violating regulations. TFA is largely about the censorship angle which He Jiayan specifically avoided talking about (not that it helped him).

> If the disappearance of old websites were entirely deliberate, you'd also need to explain why the West is in on it.

Name one figure who was prominent in between 1995-2005 who you can't find any content about from that era when using Google's date filters. A single figure.

Some sites go down organically. It happens. Every site that references a figure who was once favored and is now out of favor? That doesn't happen in the Western internet.

Re: Loss of nearly a full decade of information from early days of Chinese internet

#77

Post by MichaelZuo »

rasz wrote: post #23
Arnavion wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.google.com/search?q=jack+ma&tbs=cdr%3A1%2Ccd_min... First result for me is https://www.scb.co.th/en/personal-banking/stories/business-m... which Google thinks is from 2003-03-15, except it mentions COVID-19 so it obviously isn't. Second result is https://www.instagram.com/jack_overpower/feed/ which Google thinks is from 2001-01-02, except Instagram didn't exist at that time. It might have pictures from 20…

Google has perfect vision of the past (didnt latest leak confirm they keep everything crawled indefinitely and have extensive historical records for all domains?) but zero incentive for redirecting you to old websites with no advertisements.

Many old forums are only sporadically indexed by Google even if you do verbatim text searches using the site:... modifier.

Re: Loss of nearly a full decade of information from early days of Chinese internet

#78

Post by loa_in_ »

akira2501 wrote: post #57
lostemptations5 wrote: post #33

Intentionally or not this is -- exactly -- what 1984 is all about: changing our perception of history by rewriting or erasing previous writings. Unfortunately alot of it from the article seems typical: blogs going off line as bloggers move to new technolgoies, social media companies going defunct or just not keeping old content. Alot of these things can happen in the west. Remember these books you could read? "The Fe…

> In the past the physicality of the letters would persist I'm willing to bet that these physical letters have historically fared about as well as our digital letters are; otherwise, our world would be absolutely filled with the written detritus of the past. > Those that love historical understanding should be very worried. As humans we've always disposed of more than we've kept. It's just not worth the energy cost t…

I inherited plenty of handwritten notes, etc. from my father. Not much from my mother.

After I read them, keeping them doesn't serve much of a purpose... in short-term. That's why I keep them.

What you describe as single data points is exactly what we want, but somehow we don't know that until it's too late. We cherish tablets about copper orders from times far past because somehow it's now more valuable. Who's to say yesterday's letters aren't going to be?

Re: Loss of nearly a full decade of information from early days of Chinese internet

#79

Post by Animats »

lostemptations5 wrote: post #33

Intentionally or not this is -- exactly -- what 1984 is all about: changing our perception of history by rewriting or erasing previous writings. Unfortunately alot of it from the article seems typical: blogs going off line as bloggers move to new technolgoies, social media companies going defunct or just not keeping old content. Alot of these things can happen in the west. Remember these books you could read? "The Fe…

> Intentionally or not this is -- exactly -- what 1984 is all about: changing our perception of history by rewriting or erasing previous writings.

Yes.

China's current leadership is terrified of dissent. Even mild dissent. Even discussions within the party. There's no good reason to clamp down that hard. The current leadership is doing a reasonably good job. But they now have an Xi personality cult, which never ends well.

Yes, China botched their housing bubble, but so did Japan and the US.

Re: Loss of nearly a full decade of information from early days of Chinese internet

#80

Post by akira2501 »

loa_in_ wrote: post #78
akira2501 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the past the physicality of the letters would persist I'm willing to bet that these physical letters have historically fared about as well as our digital letters are; otherwise, our world would be absolutely filled with the written detritus of the past. > Those that love historical understanding should be very worried. As humans we've always disposed of more than we've kept. It's just not worth the energy cost t…

I inherited plenty of handwritten notes, etc. from my father. Not much from my mother. After I read them, keeping them doesn't serve much of a purpose... in short-term. That's why I keep them. What you describe as single data points is exactly what we want, but somehow we don't know that until it's too late. We cherish tablets about copper orders from times far past because somehow it's now more valuable. Who's to sa…

> We cherish tablets about copper orders from times far past because somehow it's now more valuable.

There were three discovered tablets and that was one of them. They were discovered in 1920 but only widely known about 100 years later. They're notable because they're described as the oldest found written complaint. They're mildly useful because they describe specific details of the commerce being conducted at the time, which comports well with other contemporary sources of the same information.

This particular artifact was written in 1750 BC. Our oldest writings extend back to 3400 BC. They're not particularly "cherished" but they are a widely known "meme" thanks to the Guinness Book of World Records.

Post reply on HN