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Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences

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Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences

#41

Post by pphysch »

andsoitis wrote: post #27
boomboomsubban wrote: post #24

So Chinese people are running some of the low quality spam content farms that have been plaguing the internet for years, seemingly primarily for financial reasons like the rest of them. The only real difference is their Reuters is linked to China rather than the West.

> their Reuters is linked to China rather than the West. Reuters is a company in a regulatory and political framework with high degree is freedom of the press and expression, rather than an instrument controlled by a government for the purpose of propaganda.

Reuters has been linked to covert government influence operations regarding Russia and Syria. Their "trust principles" facade is just that. They are no more reliable than any other serious news outlet, from China, Russia, or America. They publish things that their owners find acceptable.

Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences

#42

Post by imiric »

somenameforme wrote: post #35

So I decided to take the really sophisticated step of doing a "link:www.milanomodaweekly.com" search on Google. It turned up this [1] page, and pretty much only that page. But that seems to explain what this probably is. This looks like an amateur hour scam operation. Somebody sets up some sites that look vaguely passable (targeted at an audience who does not even speak the language on the site), auto-populates them…

Did you miss the part in the article where these sites contain blatant pro-China propaganda, and ad hominem attacks on CCP political dissidents?

I did the same cursory look as you. Go to https://www[.]eiffelpost[.]com/?s=china with a VPN. It shows 24 pages of CGTN greatest hits. How you can interpret this to be anything other than a CCP psyop is beyond me.

It's disappointing to see this kind of dismissal on a forum of highly educated people. It's common knowledge that the Chinese government has a history of censoring information that shows them in a bad light, promoting largely false self-aggrandizing narratives, and attacking anyone who challenges them. It shouldn't be surprising at all that the internet outside of their great firewall is a major focus of their operations. Given a lack of direct sources to determine the truth of the situation, I will always lean towards believing that this is part of their established modus operandi, rather than minimizing it by claiming it's just another "amateur hour scam operation".

Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences

#43

Post by lostlogin »

ryandrake wrote: post #37
mschuster91 wrote: post #29

Nothing new, sadly. Before the 2016 and 2020 election, fake news farms in Macedonia made the rounds [1] - these were in it for the money, and in 2015 there were reports about Russian propaganda farms targeting Serbia and the rest of Europe [2]. [1] https://money.cnn.com/interactive/media/the-macedonia-story/ [2] https://www.spiegel.de/netzwelt/netzpolitik/russische-trollf...

Yes, back before You-Know-Who neutralized the phrase "fake news" by turning it into a generic insult to disparage legitimate news organizations, the big story was all these actual fake newspapers popping up, made to look legitimate, but actually pumping out nonsense and political propaganda instead. Suddenly the phenomenon just stopped getting reported on, and we now mostly forget that these fake sites even exist.

As an aside ‘You-Know-Who’ is an immediate Harry Potter reference for me.

Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences

#44

Post by ryandrake »

lostlogin wrote: post #43
ryandrake wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, back before You-Know-Who neutralized the phrase "fake news" by turning it into a generic insult to disparage legitimate news organizations, the big story was all these actual fake newspapers popping up, made to look legitimate, but actually pumping out nonsense and political propaganda instead. Suddenly the phenomenon just stopped getting reported on, and we now mostly forget that these fake sites even exist.

As an aside ‘You-Know-Who’ is an immediate Harry Potter reference for me.

Yea, I've made it my general practice on HN to not even say the guy's name because whenever you do, your comment boards the upvote-downvote roller coaster, and I'm not going for controversy.

Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences

#45

Post by somenameforme »

imiric wrote: post #42
somenameforme wrote: post #35

So I decided to take the really sophisticated step of doing a "link:www.milanomodaweekly.com" search on Google. It turned up this [1] page, and pretty much only that page. But that seems to explain what this probably is. This looks like an amateur hour scam operation. Somebody sets up some sites that look vaguely passable (targeted at an audience who does not even speak the language on the site), auto-populates them…

Did you miss the part in the article where these sites contain blatant pro-China propaganda, and ad hominem attacks on CCP political dissidents? I did the same cursory look as you. Go to https://www[.]eiffelpost[.]com/?s=china with a VPN. It shows 24 pages of CGTN greatest hits. How you can interpret this to be anything other than a CCP psyop is beyond me. It's disappointing to see this kind of dismissal on a forum o…

What do you think Chinese news and blogs are full of?

Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences

#46

Post by imiric »

somenameforme wrote: post #45
imiric wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you miss the part in the article where these sites contain blatant pro-China propaganda, and ad hominem attacks on CCP political dissidents? I did the same cursory look as you. Go to https://www[.]eiffelpost[.]com/?s=china with a VPN. It shows 24 pages of CGTN greatest hits. How you can interpret this to be anything other than a CCP psyop is beyond me. It's disappointing to see this kind of dismissal on a forum o…

What do you think Chinese news and blogs are full of?

These are not Chinese news and blogs. These sites are created in the language and region of other countries, sometimes by scraping the content of other local sites, and then filling them with the usual Chinese propaganda. Chinese people are not the target audience.

Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences

#47

Post by aembleton »

CrazyStat wrote: post #19

What is up with the font rendering on this website? It looks terrible at default zoom (100%), looks fine if I change it to 90% or 110%. Chrome 120.0.6099.200 on Windows 11. Screenshot at 100% zoom: https://i.imgur.com/X7bN7hT.png

Looks OK for me. Its loading the font from https://citizenlab.ca/wp-content/themes/citizenlab-wp-theme/...

Can you access that URL or is it being blocked for you?

Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences

#48

Post by dang »

imiric wrote: post #42
somenameforme wrote: post #35

So I decided to take the really sophisticated step of doing a "link:www.milanomodaweekly.com" search on Google. It turned up this [1] page, and pretty much only that page. But that seems to explain what this probably is. This looks like an amateur hour scam operation. Somebody sets up some sites that look vaguely passable (targeted at an audience who does not even speak the language on the site), auto-populates them…

Did you miss the part in the article where these sites contain blatant pro-China propaganda, and ad hominem attacks on CCP political dissidents? I did the same cursory look as you. Go to https://www[.]eiffelpost[.]com/?s=china with a VPN. It shows 24 pages of CGTN greatest hits. How you can interpret this to be anything other than a CCP psyop is beyond me. It's disappointing to see this kind of dismissal on a forum o…

Please make your substantive points without swipes, as the site guidelines ask: https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html.

This is particularly important when the topic is divisive. That's in the guidelines too btw.

Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences

#49

Post by dang »

stratigos wrote: post #25

China makes war through deception and gaslighting, not through tanks and bombs. They declared war on the entire world more than two decades ago.

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar, regardless of which nation. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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