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Instead of redacting your comment, you should admit that you were wrong and learned something. I've never seen someone do this on HN before, and it's annoying to see it.
Information operations directed at Hong Kong
441–450 of 480 posts
Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong
#442Earlier quoted context omitted.
Police brutality, racially targeted drug operations by the CIA/FBI, and the ignoring of the AIDS crisis come to mind in the past 50 years. The civil rights act didn't magically solve everything. Those are just a few major things, plenty of others to go around.
> Police brutality Actions taken by individuals who are employed by the government--especially when such actions are explicitly illegal--hardly count as an abusive government. > racially targeted drug operations by the CIA/FBI Got a link? > ignoring of the AIDS crisis Allocation of scarce resources in a way that you personally disagree with is not the same as an abusive government.
> Actions taken by individuals who are employed by the government--especially when such actions are explicitly illegal--hardly count as an abusive government.
When the justice department does not enact the punishments for the laws they set, it is absolutely government abuse. Authority is authority, and people rarely use it uniformly. All are government action unless actual steps are taken to punish it.
> Got a link?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_involvement_in_Contra_coca... https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/hear...
And then combine that with the sentencing differences between crack cocaine and cocaine (same drug, vastly different punishments). You can also look at the legal treatment of opioids and the origins of marijuana laws (originally targeting mexicans)
http://www.drugpolicy.org/issues/race-and-drug-war
> Research shows that prosecutors are twice as likely to pursue a mandatory minimum sentence for black people as for white people charged with the same offense. Among people who received a mandatory minimum sentence in 2011, 38% were Latino and 31% were black.
Again, the justice department's actions are government actions. Absolutely abuse of citizens.
> Allocation of scarce resources in a way that you personally disagree with is not the same as an abusive government.
Not that scare really, first of all. Secondly, resource allocation is a powerful tool that's literally used to strongarm other countries and across world politics. The action does not define abuse, the effect of the action does (in my book at least). Letting thousands die because it is affecting a minority population is an abusive policy. To take this to an extreme, food is a scarce resource, so if the US made a law saying X people don't get food, that would 100% be abuse. Now that's nowhere near the same thing, but it shows that again, the effect defines abuse, not the action.
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I think the latter two come down to a fundamental difference in the definition of abuse. If you use a literal model of an army physically hurting people then sure. And it's not the exact same thing - nowhere did I say HK = USA. But your first comment got the reaction it did because it appeared to sweep a lot of the US's less than ideal history under the rug for the revisionist "Well post slavery/civil rights everything was great!".
Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong
#443Earlier quoted context omitted.
> First, it's not ok to use HN primarily for political, ideological, or national battle. You need to up the Karma req for downvotes. @Dang, Look at my current comment hist... I provide a valuable perspective. Even if others disagree with me. YC as a greater community is greater than the sum of its (unicorn) parts. Stop fucking censoring people for some lame idealogical moral standard which you dont even meet yourselv…
Maybe it isn't what you're saying but how you say it that gets you downvoted. It is much more difficult to ask someone to stop doing something than to encourage them to do an alternative thing. Suggest how the alternative activity would bring them greater success. While they may still disagree, at least they'll see that you're on the same team.
:-)
Ona lighter note.
I made some amazing flower arrangements today.
And I appreciate your comment and you. Thank you.
Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong
#444Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are two site guidelines that apply to this. First, it's not ok to use HN primarily for political, ideological, or national battle. If a commenter is posting as you describe, we ask them to stop. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20727426 . But by no means does it follow that a commenter behaving that way must be a sockpuppet, astroturfer, shill, spy, foreign agent, etc. That's where the second guide…
Your principles seem to be summed up as: so long as someone is speaking their opinion respectfully and in good faith, it matters not what that opinion is; and that the defense of this necessitates a generous presumption of good faith. We must acknowledge that HN carries a substantial degree of influence, and consider how to responsibly wield that influence. The readers here are a lucractive demographic - generally we…
> Your principles seem to be summed up as: so long as someone is speaking their opinion respectfully and in good faith, it matters not what that opinion is;
While I'm generally an admirer of dang and sctb, a variation of this is my criticism, as well:
They tend to overemphasize "manners", while being blind to anti-social and trollish behaviour.
It's fine to chide me for blowing off steam, I shouldn't do that. But when it is because "the other guy" has behaved and "discussed" very dishonestly, I don't think he should get a pass.
At least the whole sub-thread should be deleted, but usually my (wrong, but still rather slight) reaction (like "I find your way of responding dishonest" – not even "I find you dishonest", mind you) is deleted and the dreck that I was subjected to remains.
Because he did not use the words "asshole" or "dishonest" and rather cleverly expressed the same in a "clean" way.
It just incentivises commenters to get more sneaky, back-handed and dog-whistly. And that is already destroying this community, I feel.
Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong
#445Earlier quoted context omitted.
Your principles seem to be summed up as: so long as someone is speaking their opinion respectfully and in good faith, it matters not what that opinion is; and that the defense of this necessitates a generous presumption of good faith. We must acknowledge that HN carries a substantial degree of influence, and consider how to responsibly wield that influence. The readers here are a lucractive demographic - generally we…
> Your principles seem to be summed up as: so long as someone is speaking their opinion respectfully and in good faith, it matters not what that opinion is; While I'm generally an admirer of dang and sctb, a variation of this is my criticism, as well: They tend to overemphasize "manners", while being blind to anti-social and trollish behaviour. It's fine to chide me for blowing off steam, I shouldn't do that. But whe…
They tend to overemphasize "manners", while being blind to anti-social and trollish behaviour.
It just incentivises commenters to get more sneaky, back-handed and dog-whistly
I can't express how surprised I am (in a good way) to see this finally addressed and vocalized, because I myself have struggled with a way of putting it to words, and wishing to see others communicating it publicly.
Among women and people of color this site has a VERY unfavorable reputation for how our opinions and thoughts are moderated rather strongly because of the frustration we express with dog-whistle arguments that are delicately delivered with kid gloves, while the harbingers of opinions and principles that dehumanize, otherwise, minimize, de-legitimize and/or otherwise ostracize our lived experiences as women and minorities in tech are left alone and allowed to promulgate throughout the rest of the community unmolested.
Thank you both to the two previous commenters for giving my frustrations with this moderation style a voice.
Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong
#446Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think when you are getting a large amount of commentary from a totalitarian state, your default response should be suspicion not to just allow it. Each of the totalitarian states in our world today have proven they have massive information operations ongoing to deceive people in democracies. They have found this as a weakness in free states. You should be responsible and delete all such accounts by default.
Of course we would ban accounts that are part of "massive information operations to deceive people". The problem is that users routinely accuse other users of such nefariousness without evidence, and that unfortunately is also a form of abuse. Someone simply disagreeing with me is not evidence that they are an "information operation" or "commentary from a totalitarian state". In most cases it simply indicates that op…
I agree with you when it comes to topics like Trump. Obviously, there are many people on both sides of that issue.
When it comes to a topic like should protesters in Hong Kong be allowed to continue and make requests for freedom, generally the only opponents are going to be state sponsored. I think you need to draw your moral lines not just at preventing someone who supports outright genocide, but probably at those supporting the extinguishing of others freedom.
Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong
#447Earlier quoted context omitted.
Native Chinese here. Hacker news have been a great place to learn new things to me for 5 years. But the political views on Hacker news are somewhat naive to me. It seems that the Chinese Government is always evil and wrong, but why haven't the government collapsed after so many years if there were no people supporting them? People in China, at least those millions people who are able to cross the Great Firewall, know…
IMO the CCP gets its legitimacy to govern from its performance in some key areas: economic development and stability/security. That plays to the party's strengths, so the state-controlled media has actively promoted the view that these factors are the most important. Note how issues like the environment and health care were very much put on the back burner until public awareness and criticism reached a critical thres…
In a poor country, how are economic development and stability/security not pragmatically the most important values?
Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong
#448Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think when you are getting a large amount of commentary from a totalitarian state, your default response should be suspicion not to just allow it. Each of the totalitarian states in our world today have proven they have massive information operations ongoing to deceive people in democracies. They have found this as a weakness in free states. You should be responsible and delete all such accounts by default.
Of course we would ban accounts that are part of "massive information operations to deceive people". The problem is that users routinely accuse other users of such nefariousness without evidence, and that unfortunately is also a form of abuse. Someone simply disagreeing with me is not evidence that they are an "information operation" or "commentary from a totalitarian state". In most cases it simply indicates that op…
One more thing, freedom around the world is under assault from massive state sponsored attacks that have been well documented by a number of news organizations and now social platforms. Lies and fake stories have been discovered by these totalitarian regimes to be far more effective in undermining democracy and freedom than guns and bullets.
HN is an immensely popular community and most likely is facing similar assaults. If you have not found state sponsored attacks, it may be because you haven't looked hard enough yet. Dang, I know you are a talented programmer and with full access to the database, I think you could build tools to unearth this sort of behavior.
Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong
#449HongKonger here. I have some friends in China posting similar anti-protest posts on WeChat social media. It's like the news they read has a completely different story than what it's being told in legitimate new sources. The problem of fake news does become very apparent, and I hope people in China can eventually gain awareness or at least start to question the validity of their news sources.
Native Chinese here. Hacker news have been a great place to learn new things to me for 5 years. But the political views on Hacker news are somewhat naive to me. It seems that the Chinese Government is always evil and wrong, but why haven't the government collapsed after so many years if there were no people supporting them? People in China, at least those millions people who are able to cross the Great Firewall, know…
It's almost impossible for westerners to conceive of living in a society without a strong and independent judicial system and without being able to vote for their political leaders.
Westerners in general deeply value their political voice and freedoms.
And since the Chinese government doesn't value these at all, then you can't blame us for thinking that the Chinese government does very few things right.
Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong
#450Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe you, but it's against the site guidelines to use HN primarily for political battle (which includes nationalistic arguments), and it seems you have been doing so exclusively. We ban accounts for that, not because we think they're insincere, but because political flames will take over the entire site if we let them, and there's a big difference between accounts that use HN this way and accounts that use HN as…
Thanks. I will not comment any more on any topics from now on. I use Hacker News to follow what's going on in tech world, unfortunately I see there are more and more political posts these days. I generally only read without commenting (either others comment has reflected my view or I don't feel the need of commenting). It is just those posts so one sided made me wanting to comment. Since your request is clear, I will…
Alas, I don't think my request was clear at all, if it seemed like I was asking you to stop commenting. Please don't! You are welcome here, and welcome to share your experience and perspective. It's just necessary to do it in the right spirit. To pick one example, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20307074 is the sort of comment that we would interpret as political battle.