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

Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 463 posts

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#311

Post by forgotmyoldname »

shukantpal wrote: post #306
forgotmyoldname wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's really wild that people are so crazed that they think everyone is a paid shill. There's medical terminology to describe people who think everything is a grand conspiracy and make unfalsifiable claims about anyone who opposes them. But good luck with that issue, dude. Maybe you should try visiting countries sometime. Anyone can claim to have lived in a country for 30 years. :)

> But good luck with that issue, dude. Maybe you should try visiting countries sometime. Anyone can claim to have lived in a country for 30 years. :) Maybe you should visit the country. Anyone can make a claim they stayed there for a few days and only visited the elite, rich parts of the country.

I mean, I have. I've been to a few provinces and seen small towns and big cities. It's way better than I was led on to believe after reading daily reports about it being hell on earth--the low expectations made it way better. I'm not saying it's utopia or anything. Just not even 5% as bad as the wild stuff reddit or news sites would try to make me believe.

But people on the internet are way too into the Red Scare Part II and think literally anything against their personal opinion is someone paid by a state actor specifically to attack them on the internet. It's, quite frankly, nuts, and an unhealthy way of looking at the world and seeding visible increases in racism.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#312

Post by ravel-bar-foo »

masterof0 wrote: post #290
simonh wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still possible to transfer money for businesses. China is still heavily integrated into the global economy, so they're not going to cut the lines completely, but my family and friends over there who are Chinese citizens used to do direct bank transfers internationally from their personal current accounts in China and now they can't.

My wife has a BoC account (personal), no problem transferring money back and forth whatsoever, dunno other banks. You obviously need to get the iban or the shift code right. Your local bank should be able to help you.

A friend of mine (Chinese student studying abroad) has a BoC account which automatically transfers money to a foreign account, and it has a relatively low annual transfer limit: around $10,000 per year.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#313

Post by will4274 »

baby wrote: post #283
nebula8804 wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

~60% of Americans don't own a gun. Just 3% of American adults own a collective 133m firearms out of a supposed 265m.

Yet every time there's a subject about guns on reddit or HN comments are overwhelmingly pro-guns.

Some substantial portion of Americans poll as not owning guns but being glad their neighbors do. The reasons vary, deterring criminals and/or state authority often appearing. It's not surprising that some of these people use reddit and HN.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#314

Post by seanmcdirmid »

will4274 wrote: post #313
baby wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet every time there's a subject about guns on reddit or HN comments are overwhelmingly pro-guns.

Some substantial portion of Americans poll as not owning guns but being glad their neighbors do. The reasons vary, deterring criminals and/or state authority often appearing. It's not surprising that some of these people use reddit and HN.

> Some substantial portion of Americans poll as not owning guns but being glad their neighbors do. The reasons vary, deterring criminals often appearing. It's not surprising that some of these people use reddit and HN.

I've heard this said often, but people who I've heard saying this have never offered up an actual poll to back this supposed sentiment up. Surely there must be at least a Rasmussen poll (that tilts heavily conservative) that backs claims like this up with numbers?

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#315

Post by the_af »

chunghuaming wrote: post #293
forgotmyoldname wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to think China was some North Korean-style hellscape and hated the country. Then I had a flight transfer through China and decided to take a couple days there just to see how bad it was. Ended up realizing most internet comments and news articles are posted by people who are absolutely obsessed with China and only get their information through seventh-hand sources--it's that insanely distorted. Left loving the…

This sounds like a paid endorsement sponsored by CCP. No real refutes, just brush air away by hand. You visited a few times huh? I was born and lived there for 30 years.

I don't think the guidelines of HN allow insinuating other commenters are paid shills. It's entirely possible someone visited China and genuinely loved the country and the people. Let's not be rude.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#316

Post by refenestrator »

dang wrote: post #226
88840-8855 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"EVERYONE IS BRAINWASHED EXCEPT OF US BLESSED AMERICANS" F15 flyover bombing of some random civilians cool individualism that was build on exploitation of the planet and the 90% of the world KEK, sustainable, mate. China workd. I lived there for years and people were happier than here in Germany. I am just sooooooo sick and tired of those anti-China sentiment here in HN. EVERY SINGLE TIME a china article is posted, y…

Please stop "ranting and vomiting" on HN. Not only does it not help, you're reinforcing exactly the situation you're deploring. That damages this community in a deeper way. HN is a highly international community but it is also highly Western. You can't expect attitudes on topics remote from Western understanding to be either balanced or informed—especially not when the topic is politically and nationally charged. The…

It's not just a civility burden, it's a factual burden.

If somebody came onto HN posting obviously dumb stuff about how American people feel and think, they'd be downvoted, because everyone can see the obvious falsehood.

But when it's Chinese, majority vote of Americans decides the truth! They will tell you the real deal on how things work inside China. And if someone calls them morons, we have you to come in and keep things civil.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#317

Post by ravel-bar-foo »

atomicity wrote: post #282
gentleman11 wrote: post #21

Imagine living somewhere like China and not liking it. It would be hellish, you couldn’t even talk about it without a police visit or your boss passing trouble along to you. A giant human spirit grinder

I've never understood why people support the escalating US-China conflict since it's so easy to just keep focusing on win-win collaborations but your comment gave me an insight. Please let me know if this is wrong, but I think this is the argument: 1. The US is a better leader than China because it is a significantly better place. Notable US problems that cause lots of suffering are significantly less severe than not…

> On the other hand, many people in China doubt that the US is significantly better as China because of how much better they see their life compared to the past. So, they don't understand why people in the US are confident about their conflict against China.

Are you refering to military conflict? My guess would be that the Chinese people are very misled about the military prowess of their country. It seems like a weekly occurrence that a PRC military propaganda video is shown to actually use footage of foreign military exercises.

On the other hand, the US military (one might argue government as a whole) seems to be slipping in basic competencies. The navy has had three very public ship navigation errors in four years, and continues to be absolutely clueless about drones. ("UFOs") The air force has a new fighter which is still not functioning at design capabilities, and the withdrawl from Afghanistan was less organized than the 1970s withdrawl from Saigon. At least in the US the failures are public and might inspire change.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#318

Post by tehjoker »

throw10920 wrote: post #201
tehjoker wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The American media is attempting to frame China as worth of fighting over Taiwan by demarcating it as exceptionally evil by demonstrating that it does things that no acceptable country would do. Unfortunately for that argument, usually the US is doing something more exceptional and extreme than the demonstrated behavior.

> usually the US is doing something more exceptional and extreme than the demonstrated behavior Actually, it's almost always the opposite. CCP requiring Chinese companies to hand over all user data unencrypted > USG occasionally sending NSLs to specific companies for information on specific persons. CCP stealing IP from the US, EU, Japan, and other countries > ???. CCP Operation Fox Hunt[1] > ???. CCP police threaten…

No post body was provided.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#319

Post by alistairSH »

ska wrote: post #265
raimundjoss wrote: post #33

So much of social media pre-supposes that no entity would spend the kinda money to influence an issue. They didn't take a state with limited resources into account.

Forget state level resources, plenty of distortion is created by corporations or other much smaller interests with relatively modest resources. I wouldn't' be at all surprised if this were the source of majority of manipulation in practice. Assuming anything on social media is "untainted" is pretty naive, it seems.

Yep. I see it locally with shill groups acting at the behest of real estate developers.

Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter

#320

Post by seibelj »

justicezyx wrote: post #244
seibelj wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you read this book? https://www.amazon.com/Red-Roulette-Insiders-Corruption-Veng... Desmond Shum fled China with his son after his wife, one of the richest women in China, was disappeared back in 2017. He was told all sorts of things, like a bullet was put in her head, but supposedly she called him briefly shortly after the book was published (he doesn't know for sure). His son (12 years old) often cries uncontr…

What's the connection of this to the parent? High power is always corrupted. Even today we have Kennedy assassination, Eperstein, Assange. Desmond Shum is connected to Wen Jiabao. No 2 in China at its time. You think dealing with these people is not dangerous? CCP is bad in different way than any other political organizations. That does not make China unique in any significant way at all.

No post body was provided.
Post reply on HN