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Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

gking.harvard.edu

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Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#101

Post by rdlecler1 »

vthallam wrote: post #12

T - 30 mins before this post gets buried. I don't understand despite the high upvote count, why do articles critical of China are not able to be in the first page for more than a couple hours. Also, China is the new Saudi Arabia. With the economic power, they can get away with anything and actually, you can't do anything to stop that. Even Trump who was so critical wanted to help ZTE as soon as the Chinese asked for…

Which would suggest that if you wanted to bury a thread you don’t downvote it but fake a flame war and then it’ll quietly go away... may need to figure out how to deal with this problem.

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#102

Post by rdlecler1 »

Lionsion wrote: post #29
foodislove wrote: post #22

[flagged]

> Whenver there is any negative story about china, the downvotes happen immediately and "defends of the honor of china" pop up magically throwing dirt everywhere. Maybe a little, but the main thing I see in stories like that is dozens of comments that that derail the comments into a "the US is just as bad!" flame-war, and kill discussion of the negative story. It's really effective, because Western users are often ig…

Or it’s a false flag operation: create flame wars and toxify certain subjects.

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#103

Post by Aunche »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #38
aj7 wrote: post #11

When the NY Times covered the Chinese robotic moon landing, it was in the top 10 stories for more than a week. In the most space-jaded country on the planet. The rating was sustained by constant comments by Chinese studying in the US and burnishing their reps with the Party. You can almost always make Chinese English, an AI program could be trained to do it. I wrote to their ombudsman. Down in a day.

Very interesting. I always get that uncanny valley feeling even on Hacker News, especially when the comments concern China. This would explain a lot.

You get an uncanny valley feeling because the Western media always exaggerates the degree of how Orwellian or how much influence the Chinese government really has, so that they can get more clicks from people unfamiliar with China or who are mildly racist.

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#104

Post by rdlecler1 »

jonathanyc wrote: post #98

We should definitely be wary of attempts by the Chinese government to distract from meaningful discussion. It’s worth remembering that leftist organizations in the US and around the world during the Cold War were sometimes funded by the Soviet Union. At the same time, I am reminded of how organizations that in hindsight we know were definitely not funded by the Soviet Union were accused of exactly that during the 50s…

Perhaps ones karma score should be displayed with the username on post flagged as political.

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#105

Post by Lionsion »

jonathanyc wrote: post #98

We should definitely be wary of attempts by the Chinese government to distract from meaningful discussion. It’s worth remembering that leftist organizations in the US and around the world during the Cold War were sometimes funded by the Soviet Union. At the same time, I am reminded of how organizations that in hindsight we know were definitely not funded by the Soviet Union were accused of exactly that during the 50s…

You're literally trying to carry the same derail into a new thread where it's even less on-topic?

Here, I made a new post for you for your derail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17105121. Please take it there.

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#106

Post by jonathanyc »

Lionsion wrote: post #105
jonathanyc wrote: post #98

We should definitely be wary of attempts by the Chinese government to distract from meaningful discussion. It’s worth remembering that leftist organizations in the US and around the world during the Cold War were sometimes funded by the Soviet Union. At the same time, I am reminded of how organizations that in hindsight we know were definitely not funded by the Soviet Union were accused of exactly that during the 50s…

You're literally trying to carry the same derail into a new thread where it's even less on-topic? Here, I made a new post for you for your derail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17105121 . Please take it there.

Would you like to respond to my points, or are you going to use the same tactic you did last time and completely ignore what others write in order to push your own agenda?

Why is it that your account is only 67 days old and >75% of your comments are about China? Do you even comment on normal Hacker News topics that aren't related to politics?

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#107

Post by jryle70 »

imbokodo wrote: post #7

I have seen the US government doing this a lot. Example, whitewashing the No Gun Ri massacre on Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=No_Gun_Ri&diff=185... ). That one is from US Central Command Multi National Security Transition Team Iraq. Also have seen similar edits on Wikipedia from Ft. Benning/WHISC/SOA and so forth.

> I have seen the US government doing this a lot.

I find it funny that an article mentioning "...the goal of this massive secretive operation is instead to distract the public and change the subject..." contains a comment that does exactly that.

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#108

Post by jonathanyc »

rdlecler1 wrote: post #104
jonathanyc wrote: post #98

We should definitely be wary of attempts by the Chinese government to distract from meaningful discussion. It’s worth remembering that leftist organizations in the US and around the world during the Cold War were sometimes funded by the Soviet Union. At the same time, I am reminded of how organizations that in hindsight we know were definitely not funded by the Soviet Union were accused of exactly that during the 50s…

Perhaps ones karma score should be displayed with the username on post flagged as political.

I think it'd be neat if we could also separate karma out by the type of post, somehow. For example, although my account is relatively old, most of my karma is just from a series of comments about the Uber autonomous car crash. I'm not sure that my karma accurately reflects that I'm primarily a lurker.

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#109

Post by Theodores »

reaperducer wrote: post #39
foodislove wrote: post #22

[flagged]

On HN it's not unique to China. Anything negative about India is downvoted into oblivion. You can almost time it to the rising of the sun in India Standard Time. I'm not saying that it's being orchestrated by the Indian government, but it does happen.

How many Indian people live in India and in the global diaspora?

How many Chinese people live in China?

How many Americans are there?

I have not counted them all myself, however this discussion has not talked the numbers and there are a fair few Chinese and Indian people and not so many American people, therefore some presence online is to be expected by people that don't go along with what Washington says.

Regarding whether it is bots or not, the guys in the China office where I work sometimes send out company wide emails that do not look like they have been written by humans. Particularly salient are the 'employee of the month' nominations that should be sent to HR and not 'cc all'. These emails definitely look like they could be written by an auto-translating bot. Reflected in these emails are different values and different ways of praising people that cause us in the UK to chuckle a bit.

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#110

Post by Lionsion »

jonathanyc wrote: post #106
Lionsion wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're literally trying to carry the same derail into a new thread where it's even less on-topic? Here, I made a new post for you for your derail: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17105121 . Please take it there.

Would you like to respond to my points, or are you going to use the same tactic you did last time and completely ignore what others write in order to push your own agenda? Why is it that your account is only 67 days old and >75% of your comments are about China? Do you even comment on normal Hacker News topics that aren't related to politics?

> Would you like to respond to my points

No. Please take your points to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17105121.

> in order to push your own agenda?

My agenda is to stay at least vaguely on-topic.

> Why is it that your account only 67 days old yet >75% of your comments are about China? Do you even comment on normal Hacker News topics that aren't related to politics?

Because you didn't look past two days of comments? Most of my comments over the past two days have been in this article and the other about Xinjiang, which are both about China. But you're right, I have an interest in it.

Anyway, this thread with you is clearly off-topic, so I'm going to stop it. If have further questions for me, you can study my other comments or figure out a way to privately message me.

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