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
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Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter
51–60 of 463 posts
Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter
#52[deleted]
Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
What exactly do you mean by "don't pretend to be somebody else"? They often operate under an umbrella of media projects that act as "local" news.
https://www.rfa.org/about/info/mission.html Says right in their about page they are under a govt. mandate. The local language pages also have this information. > Radio Free Asia operates under a Congressional mandate to deliver uncensored, domestic news and information to China, Tibet, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Burma, among other places in Asia with poor media environments and few, if any, free speech…
Well one can argue that the Shanghai police was also quite transparent about it, given the following:
> On May 21, a branch of the Shanghai police posted a notice online seeking bids from private contractors for what is known among Chinese officialdom as public opinion management.
Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter
#54Why would Shanghai police care to manufacture opinion abroad? I consume a decent amount of news and rarely see Shanghai mentioned in American newspapers. Or is this supposed to be one part of a larger effort, tasked to work on stories that are actually of global concern, having nothing to do with Shanghai?
It's the same reason that the NBA came under fire after one of their GM's sent a tweet out in support of Honk Kong [1]. Of course it's important for the CCP to shape opinion abroad, it's seeking to supplant the US as a global power and needs the soft-influence that the US has. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/07/houston-rockets-gm-morey-del...
Yeah, threatening civilian organizations isn't how you gain soft power.
The has the power it does because, aside from being very rich, before the 20th century they made extremely reasonable foreign policy decisions.
Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would be news to me, src? Quick search suggest, that this statement is just propaganda. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-01/brull---the-boring-tr...
Nice try https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide_denial#Chom...
I do not read anything, close of a statement "cambodian genocide is just us propaganda"
What I read is:
"What filters through to the American public is a seriously distorted version of the evidence available, emphasizing alleged Khmer Rouge atrocities and downplaying or ignoring the crucial U.S. role, direct and indirect, in the torment that Cambodia has suffered"
a much more nuanced statement.
Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter
#56What happened with all that hysteria a few years ago that russia was using FaceBook and twitter to manipulate Brexit and American elections?
https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Pillars-of-...
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
> the Committee found ample evidence to suggest that the Russian government was developing and implementing capabilities to interfere in the 2016 elections, including undermining confidence in U.S. democratic institutions and voting processes.
Calling it hysteria is counterproductive. With that said, I'm not sure what happened or what has been done since.
Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter
#57When something negative about China is posted: "Everyone does it!"
When something negative about the US is posted: "Downfall of an empire!"
Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter
#58Which countries don’t do this? What China is doing is bad, but is this some sort of new development? Russia, Germany, France to name a few have been caught doing the same thing. Not to mention the USA. Facebook and Twitter need to handle this issue. This type of stuff is going on meanwhile they’re banning people for the stupidest most innocuous actions.
It's ultimately a gradient, some countries are more aggressive with their astroturfing effort. China's astroturfing for example has gotten so bad, that the "50 cent army" meme has become pervasive and well-known to mostly anyone that spends time online. I honestly worry that with the development around language models like GPT-3, the internet as we know it will be completely blanketed with astro-turfed content by lan…
I am very certain that within 10 years we will all fail at distinguishing bots from real people posting online. What that future holds is scary and I hope that humanity will be smart enough to not destroy democracy just because Russia, China, et cetera told them lies via those bots.
Re: Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
This too doesn't make it less true.
If a preconceived belief will make you blind to genocide, what else will it make you blind to?
Might it make you uncritically believe anything the NYT and Washington establishment media claims? Even if their primary sources are extremely dubious?