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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

#141

Post by putlake »

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…

I see you're being downvoted but I agree with you. I cringed when I read "Chinese studying in the US" and "burnishing their reps with the Party". OP is probably not racist but this is a clear case of ascribing motivations to people you know nothing about.

If I was permitted the same liberty of ascribing, I'd guess that it betrays an unconscious bias against Chinese people. It's probably not something Americans would be attuned to. But as a non-white (but not Chinese) immigrant myself, my radar is probably more sensitive to it.

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#142

Post by alexandercrohde »

pixelpp wrote: post #16

So does the US with it's media machine.

Nobody is saying it doesn't, but the two things are entirely independent from each other. It's not a competition between countries, it's a question of how people of earth can get the best lives for themselves.

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#143

Post by mindfulhack »

I love it when we have moments like this where truth comes out (in the form of scientific research if need be) that previously was moronically dismissed (by people including government shills I'm sure) as 'conspiracy theory'.

Snowden and NSA spying was another one. Truth is not as boring as they may make you want to believe. The world is very, VERY interesting and you just have to discover it.

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#147

Post by kolpa »

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.

Which Social Network was this observed on?

Wasn't that landing 5 years ago? Any more recent examples?

I get nothing when I search HN for the NYT article

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=As%20Rover%20Lands,%20China%20...

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=https:%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F...

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#148

Post by kolpa »

John_KZ wrote: post #54
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.

Personally I was disappointed by the lack of coverage this landing got. Same with their space station. I'm genuinely interested in this, but the Chinese won't translate articles/sources themselves, and given the (strategic? image-preserving?) indifference by the US, I can't find any content about them in English. I find this really annoying.

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/world/asia/china-lands-pr...

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#149

Post by dragonwriter »

xster wrote: post #144

This is literally and exactly what Correct The Record ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record ) is and is as standard as it gets in American political discourse online https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?two_year_transaction... .

> This is literally and exactly what Correct The Record [...] is

No, it's not. Propaganda by competing domestic partisan interest groups seeking to influence elections in their own country is not “literally and exactly” the same thing as state sponsored propaganda.

Re: Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction

#150

Post by kolpa »

elefanten wrote: post #79
johnchristopher wrote: post #27

> Many academics, and most journalists and activists, claim that these so-called 50c party posts vociferously argue for the government’s side in political and policy debates. As we show, this is also true of most posts openly accused on social media of being 50c. I am not a native speaker. I can't parse that sentence :/. Why is this `also` true ? In addition to what ? Wouldn't it follow that posts arguing in favour o…

I read those two sentences to describe an existing misconception among BOTH (sentence 1) academics/journalists/activists AND (sentence 2) people posting on social media. The misconception is that the strategy of 50c party posters is to argue loudly from the perspective of the CCP. The following sentence in the abstract helps put it in context: "Yet, almost no systematic empirical evidence exists for this claim, or, m…

I still don't get it. To me, they are saying that the general online public thinks "pro-CCP" and "50c" are the same thing, just as everyone says pro-HillaryClinton people are "Correct the Record" troops, and all pro-Trump people were Russian trolls, and all pro-Israel posters are AIPAC troops, and all shitposters are 4channers
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