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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

#131

Post by carapace »

creaghpatr wrote: post #82
Lionsion wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Distraction can be really disruptive to having meaningful, productive discussions. I think many people even do it reflexively even if they're not getting paid or instructed to. There was a recent HN post about terrible reeducation camps in Xinjiang [1]. Almost no one talked about the heartbreaking story or what it might mean, as most of the comments were tired derails into "the US is bad, too" territory and…

Whether you are correct or not about the re-education camps post, accusing the government of sending groups of real (let's define real as regular HN contributors with at least 10 karma pts) people to deflect/defend on a HN post is a technically a conspiracy theory. >Almost no one talked about the heartbreaking story or what it might mean, as most of the comments were tired derails into "the US is bad, too" territory…

Robert Anton Wilson, in the introduction he wrote for some other book, pointed out that, of the regime changes to occur in the last century, well over half of them were the result of some sort of coup d'état. In other words, conspiracy is the norm.

"Lesson number one: trust no one. The minute God crapped out the third caveman, a conspiracy was hatched against one of them."

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#132

Post by jessaustin »

Lionsion wrote: post #96
creaghpatr wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether you are correct or not about the re-education camps post, accusing the government of sending groups of real (let's define real as regular HN contributors with at least 10 karma pts) people to deflect/defend on a HN post is a technically a conspiracy theory. >Almost no one talked about the heartbreaking story or what it might mean, as most of the comments were tired derails into "the US is bad, too" territory…

> accusing the government of sending groups of real (let's define real as regular HN contributors with at least 10 karma pts) people to deflect/defend on a HN post is a technically a conspiracy theory. I never claimed that in my comment, you should read it more closely. What I did claim is that regular HN posters will often comment (for their own reasons) in a way that would make the Chinese propagandists and censors…

Yes we often agree with the Russians too. We think it's because we'll agree with the truth wherever we see it, but it's quite possible that you know our minds better than we ourselves do.

Do you think we're in an "information war"? If we are, who are our most dangerous opponents?

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#133

Post by jessaustin »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #69
nothrabannosir wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you joking ? How literally can you be the very essence of what this article is about? This, literally this is what that research is describing. Stop changing the bloody subject ! Gah. Edit: this account is a smoking gun. Have a look at the comment history.

Maybe grandparent was being ironic in their sarcasm?

We should always try to see more irony. It is a good antidote to the bullheaded self-righteous certainties that seem to plague these sorts of threads.

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#134

Post by galo_sengen »

fspeech wrote: post #112
DenisM wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you please provide some example of hacker news comments you consider racist or otherwise worth fighting against?

How about right there the post he is responding to? Especially considering the context provided by the earlier post: "... 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. " Do you think following up that with "Very interesting. I always get that uncanny valley feeling even on Hacker News, espe…

yeah thats quite a reach you’re making my dude

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#135

Post by woodandsteel »

elefanten wrote: post #90
woodandsteel wrote: post #86

Xi is a very smart fellow, and he seems to sincerely want what is best for his country. That said, I think he is making some terrible mistakes. Instead of helping the population become smarter, better-informed thinkers, he is trying to turn them into robots. Xi is creating an illusion of unity, which means if things start to go seriously wrong, there will be an explosion, as happened so many times in China's past. Ci…

I agree with your starting premise about Xi and your concluding advice about independent (or at least, non-Party filtered) information. But I don't think it's wise or diplomatic to phrase it as a growing "intelligence" deficit in Chinese people. That word is tricky enough to define as it is, but people can hold deeply one-sided views about a lot of things and still be highly intelligent. As a counterpoint, browsing s…

>But I don't think it's wise or diplomatic to phrase it as a growing "intelligence" deficit in Chinese people. That word is tricky enough to define as it is, but people can hold deeply one-sided views about a lot of things and still be highly intelligent.

I think the term "intelligent" has more than one meaning, and one of them is what I was trying to get at, something like "able to act in an effective manner." But perhaps you can suggest a less ambiguous term.

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#136

Post by fermienrico »

hungryhobo wrote: post #121
fermienrico wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very typical response in a thread about China. Please stop comparing it with other nations. China's government and its modus operandi is a completely different ball game. It is not even the same sport. It only detracts from the discussion. If you would like to discuss US topics, please open a new thread and we are happy to have a conversation.

but if you are criticizing something while doing the same thing, it's just hypocrisy.

I beg your pardon?

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#137

Post by Sangermaine »

noobermin wrote: post #72
Sangermaine wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The inevitable "whataboutism" comments that any discussion of China generates are indeed just noise.

That's probably a good reason. The thing is I get sick of the moralizing that underlies all these threads, as if our media doesn't do the exact same thing. re: manufacturing consent. The thing is there's this strange, "uncanny" feeling I get whenever these things are shared too, all of a sudden, HN readers who are usually critical start to coalesce around a common fear of the other.

>The thing is I get sick of the moralizing that underlies all these threads, as if our media doesn't do the exact same thing. re: manufacturing consent.

But this is exactly the whataboutism I'm talking about.

The point of the article is that our media doesn't do the exact same thing. When Chomsky and Herman talked about "manufacturing consent", they didn't mean that there is literally a cabal of media companies and the government guiding the American media. However in China there is, in fact, a documented, government-sponsored program to manipulate Chinese media.

If you want to discuss the problem of manufactured consent in the US or the West, start a thread about that, but don't clutter this discussion with irrelevant derails seemingly designed to muddy the waters and deflect from the point of the discussion.

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#138

Post by zug_zug »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #8

"In contrast to prior claims, we show that the Chinese regime's strategy is to avoid arguing with skeptics of the party and the government, and to not even discuss controversial issues. We show that the goal of this massive secretive operation is instead to distract the public and change the subject, as most of the these posts involve cheerleading for China, the revolutionary history of the Communist Party, or other…

> Sensible. Cuts, however, against my mental caricature of an astroturfing shill.

Interesting. The confirmed astroturfer Monsanto[1] is a fairly active one, and though I can't prove some of the people I saw were Monsanto shills, I've never met a person in real life advocate on behalf of that company.

Anyways, their tactics were incredibly distraction-centric and ad-hominem. As soon as anybody brought up the scientific research on pesticides, they'd start comparing this position to anti-vaccine, even completely out-of-context.

It's not hard to debase a conversation so much it falls apart entirely online, which is why the technique seemed effective.

[1] https://usrtk.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/MDLLetNothingGo...

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#139

Post by alexandercrohde »

nothrabannosir wrote: post #33
foodislove wrote: post #22

[flagged]

The HN moderating skew on anything regarding China is palpable. Anecdotal, but I’ve witnessed it every single time I participated (both ways). And I systematically see posts buried which otherwise would not have been. It’s becoming a nuisance, which is fine. But I fear what will happen if the trend continues. It may very well end up suffocating thoughtful discussion about China and their policies. Which, ironically,…

> And I systematically see posts buried which otherwise would not have been.

I'm skeptical that mods are deliberating burying such posts. What can happen is

1 - it gets flagged then vouched, but still has a huge karma hit. This happened to all the Damore discussions.

2 - it has a much greater ratio of comments to upvotes. This is taken as a marker of bickering and leads to penalization

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#140

Post by alexandercrohde »

foodislove wrote: post #26
ericjang wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the last remark about Xi Jinping's wife was uncalled for (I'm Taiwanese American).

Yet it is a fact. Not only do trolls seek to degrade and destroy freedom and democracy, they defend a bunch of corrupt morons who's only real ability is to either steal or exploit their own people.

It is the exact type of ad-hominem, inflammatory, and irrelevant distraction that this article is pointing out.
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