Information operations directed at Hong Kong • Hacker News Board

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#461

Post by amaccuish » Tue, Aug 20, 2019, 11:50 PM UTC

Sir_Cmpwn wrote: post #304

dang wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I sought out information about you to judge your biases. I found that you're... I don't know how you could think that it's ok to pull a move like that on HN, but it's not ok. Specifically, checking up on and bringing in someone's personal circumstances, which they didn't choose to mention, in order to use them as ammunition an argument is not ok on HN. Please don't do that. I'm glad that you didn't publish the deta…

The information is in their profile, just one click away and you don't even have to leave HN. Don't you think we ought to be vigilant of these biases when discussing the very matter of whether or not these biases are subverting the discussion?

And what are your biases?

The thing is, it's not relevant to the discussion, either yours or anyone elses, because we're discussing issues, not investigating people or putting them on trial.

A point is a point, no matter who made it. It's up to you if you wish of course, to refute it, but by using argumentative devices, evidence, studies, or explaining how you arrived at your point of view only. Not via character assassination.

As an aside, I feel these accusations merely make some people shut up on here. I've actually loved this thread in general mostly because people have come out of the woodwork and explained why they think this or that, and there have been some really inquisitive questions.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#462

Post by dang » Tue, Aug 20, 2019, 11:52 PM UTC

throawayofcolor wrote: post #445

Tomte wrote: post #444

Earlier 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; 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 col…

When you say "moderated" I assume you're talking about the moderators of this site, who are me and sctb. I don't agree with you at all that this is how we moderate HN. In fact, what you describe is something that we both try to be careful not to do. If you're going to accuse us of something so awful, you should supply links to cases where you think we did this. That way we can learn from our mistakes if you're right, and readers can see for themselves if you're not.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#463

Post by amaccuish » Tue, Aug 20, 2019, 11:57 PM UTC

joelx wrote: post #446

dang wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

> 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 dang answered this eloquently and you're merely prompting him to repeat himself: "Someone simply disagreeing with me is not evidence that they are an "information operation" or "commentary from a totalitarian state"

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#464

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Aug 20, 2019, 11:59 PM UTC

joelx wrote: post #446

dang wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

[deleted]

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#465

Post by amaccuish » Wed, Aug 21, 2019, 12:00 AM UTC

joelx wrote: post #448

dang wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 assau…

> If you have not found state sponsored attacks, it may be because you haven't looked hard enough yet.

> I think you could build tools to unearth this sort of behavior.

Dang has said they already look for this sort of behaviour and ban accounts if discovered. You're implying that nothing is done at all. You're implying that dang hasn't looked at the database and tried to sort this, and that it's an easily solvable problem. If it were, I'm sure dang would have automated it. Twitter and Facebook struggle with this, so the problem is not solved.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#466

Post by dang » Wed, Aug 21, 2019, 12:02 AM UTC

powerapple wrote: post #423

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand but could you explain why the Chinese government freaks out so much about the DL when in fact he has such moderate views?

I am not the government, and I cannot take their position to explain this. But here is my naive thoughts: Chinese government are engineers. If there is a bug in a feature cannot be fixed, keep the feature out of the delivery until it is fixed. DL is the feature. Also no one is willing to take the risk of working on the bug, because you may fail your KPI. So every time a customer request this feature, we will scare th…

Just to repeat what I tried to express elsewhere: I think your perspective is valuable. I think you should keep sharing it, as long as you do so within HN's guidelines (which you've mostly but not always done). But we do also have a rule asking people not to use HN primarily to argue about politics. The best would be for you to participate in other threads that gratify your curiosity as well—even if only to ask questions and learn. That would be much easier for us, because otherwise people are going to complain about why we enforce that rule in some cases but not others.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#467

Post by throawayofcolor » Wed, Aug 21, 2019, 12:42 AM UTC

dang wrote: post #462

throawayofcolor wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 col…

When you say "moderated" I assume you're talking about the moderators of this site, who are me and sctb. I don't agree with you at all that this is how we moderate HN. In fact, what you describe is something that we both try to be careful not to do. If you're going to accuse us of something so awful, you should supply links to cases where you think we did this. That way we can learn from our mistakes if you're right,…

Yes, your assumption is correct, but I'm not particularly interested in how much you agree or disagree because I don't have much hope that this will change, and your mere disagreement alone isn't going to make me pull an about face on the frustrations I feel about topics people of my social-persuasion and the others I elucidated on and pretend that those frustrations don't have merit--not in the face of my six years of participation in this community.

And further, frankly:

If you're going to accuse us of something so awful, you should supply links to cases where you think we did this.

No, I don't think I will because believe it or not (which you probably wont, but again: don't much care), you and I have interacted on this very topic before via a different account, you and other individuals have interacted on this topic before. I've watched those interactions happen.

This isn't the first time HN has been called out on this Dan, and it's not the first time you've responded to people levying them, so I'm not entirely convinced you need help finding such examples.

If you want "cases", I'm pretty sure you know the correct hashtag on twitter to go looking for because I and many others catalogue these events quite actively and quite publicly.

But I'm not holding your hand finding them.

Be well.

Edit:

I'd be remiss not mentioning this: Just because I'm calling out the HN moderation tactics does not mean I'm laying down accusations on the HN moderators as individuals or what your individual beliefs on this topic are. I-like the two commenters above me have done-am pointing out what I feel to be a glaring blind spot in the moderation styles as experienced by a member of a specific social group. A group I would also feel remiss not mentioning is not represented in the moderation ranks. Take this however you will, feel about it however you want, consider my peace on the matter spoken.

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#468

Post by SubiculumCode » Wed, Aug 21, 2019, 4:52 AM UTC

revel wrote: post #99

tmux314 wrote: post #42

Good on Twitter and Facebook. On top of blocking thousands of websites (which includes Facebook, Google, Twitter) China's government employs thousands of government employees just to purge even the most mild criticism of the CCP on Weibo [1]. They also employ tens of thousands to export their propaganda overseas, using sock puppet accounts to push their worldview[2]. And their worldview is fiercely anti-democratic. T…

The internet is already not free for much of the world. It's depressing to type this but China successfully created a parallel version of the internet that is anything but free. That model got exported and now you see the same approach being taken across the world. The direction we seem to be heading in is one where the world's collective internet systems are effectively Balkanized.

In this vein, perhaps there needs to an internet restricted to Democracies?

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#469

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Aug 21, 2019, 5:01 AM UTC

throawayofcolor wrote: post #467

dang wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say "moderated" I assume you're talking about the moderators of this site, who are me and sctb. I don't agree with you at all that this is how we moderate HN. In fact, what you describe is something that we both try to be careful not to do. If you're going to accuse us of something so awful, you should supply links to cases where you think we did this. That way we can learn from our mistakes if you're right,…

Yes, your assumption is correct, but I'm not particularly interested in how much you agree or disagree because I don't have much hope that this will change, and your mere disagreement alone isn't going to make me pull an about face on the frustrations I feel about topics people of my social-persuasion and the others I elucidated on and pretend that those frustrations don't have merit--not in the face of my six years…

[deleted]

Re: Information operations directed at Hong Kong

#470

Post by joelx » Wed, Aug 21, 2019, 5:56 AM UTC

amaccuish wrote: post #465

joelx wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 assau…

> If you have not found state sponsored attacks, it may be because you haven't looked hard enough yet. > I think you could build tools to unearth this sort of behavior. Dang has said they already look for this sort of behaviour and ban accounts if discovered. You're implying that nothing is done at all. You're implying that dang hasn't looked at the database and tried to sort this, and that it's an easily solvable pr…

Why not open an API and ask for the community here to help? Tons of excellent programmers who would be happy to help.