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How China Unleashed Twitter Trolls to Discredit Hong Kong’s Protesters

nytimes.com

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Re: How China Unleashed Twitter Trolls to Discredit Hong Kong’s Protesters

#141

Post by legacynl »

jjcc wrote: post #128
gleenn wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like all the people who are involuntary organ-donors might disagree if they weren't dead. China has a way of disappearing people who don't like it. I wonder how many people would come out more vocally if you weren't disappeared for disagreeing or even being outspoken. https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/true-stories/the...

Give you some hint: According to Godel theorem, a system in higher order is necessary to judge the truth in current system. So self claim the story is true implied the story teller (i.e. the author of the news) is not quite intellegent and maybe very naive to mix fact and belief. I totally respect your strong belief about the story. But don't enforce others accept your personal opion by imply your personal belief is…

> I totally respect your strong belief about the story. But don't enforce others accept your personal opion by imply your personal belief is truth. It's quite insulting.

Are you Chinese? You being offended by his post makes me feel like you are. He wasn't forcing his oppinion on you.

Also godel's theorem doesn't have anything to do with this, as godel's theorem is about mathematical systems.

Re: How China Unleashed Twitter Trolls to Discredit Hong Kong’s Protesters

#142

Post by freeflight »

mike_hearn wrote: post #137
freeflight wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You may not believe it, the vast majority of Chinese actually love the CCP and the system, they only just hate that a few corrupt low-level officials who are the bad apples fucking up leaders' glorious visions. This has been a common theme with this "Fake News and Social Bots" stuff since the very beginning not reserved to China. On the 34C3 there was a really interesting talk [0] about the troublesome nature of cl…

I'm glad more people are noticing this. The idea of huge bot or troll farms on Twitter is, as far as I can tell, more or less completely in the heads of people with particular political views. You can see this at the start. The guy has to give a grovelling disclaimer in his first slide that he's leftist, hates Nazis, hates racists etc. He has to say this because he's about to destroy a conspiracy theory held exclusiv…

> The guy has to give a grovelling disclaimer in his first slide that he's leftist, hates Nazis, hates racists etc. He has to say this because he's about to destroy a conspiracy theory held exclusively by these kinds of people.

He said that because in Germany it's actually quite mainstream to blame everything on social bots.

When the German alt-right gained popularity, and alt-right topics became very popular on Facebook, the reaction of the German mainstream to that was to go "Those are all Russian social bots! There are no alt-right Germans! Facebook you need to fight those fake news and social bots harder!" [0].

By now those supposed "social bots" are going to elections and are voting [1]. The German mainstream reaction to that is to keep ignoring it, after marginalizing it as "Russian propaganda" didn't work.

[0] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/11/ge...

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/01/world/europe/german-far-r...

Re: How China Unleashed Twitter Trolls to Discredit Hong Kong’s Protesters

#143

Post by RobertRoberts »

dirtyid wrote: post #133
RobertRoberts wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's complicated" is a phrase to dodge facts. Here's some balance. The US has done a bunch of terrible things to other countries, they aren't a good and righteous nation, none are, and neither is China. There are ghost cities in the US, to say there are none in China is ridiculous. You can do quick search and turn up many respected news sources reporting this. One side of the argument has been heard for decades, we…

>phrase to dodge facts Not so much as dodge facts as, I assume your questions are rhetorical, and it's not worth the effort to elaborate on each. Re: Ghost Cities I didn't claim there are none? Though if we are on the topic they are loaded propaganda characterization like "debt trap" to paint a certain image of Chinese (mis)allocations of resources which was used to support unending China inflate GDP, China collapse…

>Xi has to play domestic politics...

All tyrants have the same excuse.

Re: How China Unleashed Twitter Trolls to Discredit Hong Kong’s Protesters

#144

Post by jjcc »

legacynl wrote: post #141
jjcc wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give you some hint: According to Godel theorem, a system in higher order is necessary to judge the truth in current system. So self claim the story is true implied the story teller (i.e. the author of the news) is not quite intellegent and maybe very naive to mix fact and belief. I totally respect your strong belief about the story. But don't enforce others accept your personal opion by imply your personal belief is…

> I totally respect your strong belief about the story. But don't enforce others accept your personal opion by imply your personal belief is truth. It's quite insulting. Are you Chinese? You being offended by his post makes me feel like you are. He wasn't forcing his oppinion on you. Also godel's theorem doesn't have anything to do with this, as godel's theorem is about mathematical systems.

Legally I'm not Chinese but it's not relevant in this context. You have a wrong assumption about the cause. Another wrong assumption is I'm offended which I’m not. Here's the subtle difference: A person's behaviour is insulting meanings he/she could offend some (not all) people who follow some rules, which might be: reasoning process should base on relative facts/axioms within the same axiomatic system.

Let me explain a little more about where the insulting comes from. During daily conversation people usually omit many relevant consensus details: context and premises. Otherwise communication would be extremely redundant.

One thing is important is: anything put into premise that other conclusions can drawn from, should be relative facts which all the parties agree. By providing personal belief as premise to draw other conclusion without explicitly stating that’s just personal belief means the “evidence” provider cannot tell the difference , unintentionally and implicitly force others reasoning within “evidence” provider’s own axioms system, without knowing there’s totally different axioms system with other premises exist.

In short: There's no problem at all to express personal opinions. However put personal opinion into a premise to draw other conclusions during reasoning without explicit emphasise is not good.

About Godel theorem, strictly it’s only about Math. You are right on that. I’m half joking but it’ an analogy. In sports field there’s a referee because if one team can act as authoritative way to claim they own truth implicitly gives the other team the same authority which will lead to chaos. There’s a parallel relation here.

EDIT: typo and grammar fix

Re: How China Unleashed Twitter Trolls to Discredit Hong Kong’s Protesters

#145

Post by bigwavedave »

bigbluedots wrote: post #129
jjcc wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give you some hint: According to Godel theorem, a system in higher order is necessary to judge the truth in current system. So self claim the story is true implied the story teller (i.e. the author of the news) is not quite intellegent and maybe very naive to mix fact and belief. I totally respect your strong belief about the story. But don't enforce others accept your personal opion by imply your personal belief is…

Being insulted by someone who is expressing what they believe to be true is not very conducive to participating in a rational discussion of anything.

Being insulted is not a choice, being offended is.

Re: How China Unleashed Twitter Trolls to Discredit Hong Kong’s Protesters

#146

Post by plausibilities »

freeflight wrote: post #93

I really hate how inherently biased and subjective most reporting about "social bots" seems to be. For these last years headlines about all kinds of "bot armies" are constantly making the rounds, getting blamed for pretty much everything from Trump's election to Brexit. Often based on some research that defines the parameters for a user being a "social bot", that they have extremely high false-positive rates, but sti…

We've all already been successfully trolled.

The well has already been poisoned.

Paranoia has now been compounded.

Clarity regarding contemporary domestic political landscape has now been further muddled.

Effective astroturfing was always a secondary objective.

Re: How China Unleashed Twitter Trolls to Discredit Hong Kong’s Protesters

#149

Post by gleenn »

jjcc wrote: post #128
gleenn wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like all the people who are involuntary organ-donors might disagree if they weren't dead. China has a way of disappearing people who don't like it. I wonder how many people would come out more vocally if you weren't disappeared for disagreeing or even being outspoken. https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/true-stories/the...

Give you some hint: According to Godel theorem, a system in higher order is necessary to judge the truth in current system. So self claim the story is true implied the story teller (i.e. the author of the news) is not quite intellegent and maybe very naive to mix fact and belief. I totally respect your strong belief about the story. But don't enforce others accept your personal opion by imply your personal belief is…

Godel has nothing to do with this. Chinese organ donation is well documented across many news organizations. There are some crazy facts regarding how quickly you can get a new liver, for instance. It can take people months or years in most cases to find an appropriate liver, but in China you can get one in weeks. They execute prisoners and extract their organs. Chinese doctors have even admitted this. [0]

'In 2006, allegations emerged that a large number of Falun Gong practitioners had been killed to supply China's organ transplant industry. An initial investigation stated "the source of 41,500 transplants for the six year period 2000 to 2005 is unexplained" and concluded that "there has been and continues today to be large scale organ seizures from unwilling Falun Gong practitioners".' [1][2]

'In December 2005, China's Deputy Health Minister acknowledged that the practice of removing organs from executed prisoners for transplants was widespread.' [3]

'China Daily reported in August 2009 that approximately 65% of transplanted organs still came from death row prisoners. The condemned prisoners have been described as "not a proper source for organ transplants" by Vice-Health Minister Huang Jiefu...' [4]

[0] Matas, David (2011). Steven J. Jensen (ed.). The Ethics of Organ Transplantation. Catholic University of America Press. p. 234. ISBN 978-0-8132-1874-8. [1] http://organharvestinvestigation.net/ [2] http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/00... [3] http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/asia/article2612313... [4] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8222732.stm

Re: How China Unleashed Twitter Trolls to Discredit Hong Kong’s Protesters

#150

Post by artsyca »

artsyca wrote: post #44

We gotta stop blaming `China` -- The China brand has been tarnished unfairly in my view as we use it to be synonymous with the so-called `Communist Party of China`

As usual, with the downvotes, allow us to clarify:

At present there are still people just like us being saddled with some mandarin fever dream of the social credit system while we're treating the whole continent of China like a troll brigade pumping fake news on twitter and suppressing Hong Kong video clips on TikTok

We've gotta understand that fighting totalitarianism with prejudice and stereotypes plays right into the hands of the puppet masters and doubly victimizes the innocent people caught in the crossfire, who could very well be us in another life

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