Is there a Chinese equivalent of HN (niche tech forum, not the Y combinator front)? How do we get access?
Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences
51–60 of 84 posts
Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences
#52What 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?
Not blocked, I'm able to access it fine.
Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The target audience seems to be Koreans who want to market their [whatever] in e.g. France, but neither know French nor anything at all about France. I found the link where you can buy access to the EiffelPost site you mentioned here: https://kmong.com/gig/399972
I assume you didn't check out the link earlier. Basically it's some sort of a Korean craigslist/ebay type site. The site itself is complete legit - Amazon did a case study of them here. [1] The seller/scammer, "Excelsior Partners" claims to be affiliated with governments, advertising agencies, and so on. And they guarantee publication in more than 10 "major French media outlets." They even offer to take care of translation for you, with their "direct partnership with a professional translation agency." Heh. Of course those "major media sites" are all the ones the article from this thread is talking about.
They're just trying to fill out the site with enough junk that somebody who doesn't know the language, doesn't know the locale, and is naive enough to think you can buy guaranteed article placement in multiple major Western publications for $1k, might think it's real.
Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences
#54Earlier 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…
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.
Noted. I toned it down a bit.
Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the U.S., rich people and political organizations are actually buying or setting up real newspapers in small towns so that when they post fake news on social media, they can reference a dead tree "news source" that is actually their own P.R. machine. There have been a few articles about it in the real press (NYT, etc) over the last couple of years.
This is no different from the majority of US history. Partisan/slanted news outlets have been a thing in the US going back to the Revolution, on both sides of the aisle. It's often a reason why larger cities had multiple papers. One for each side.
Well, one for each side that can field a media organization. :D
Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The target audience seems to be Koreans who want to market their [whatever] in e.g. France, but neither know French nor anything at all about France. I found the link where you can buy access to the EiffelPost site you mentioned here: https://kmong.com/gig/399972 I assume you didn't check out the link earlier. Basically it's some sort of a Korean craigslist/ebay type site. The site itself is complete legit - Amazon d…
Alright. So the CCP is even lazier and doesn't bother with creating their own sites, but buys access to these branded localized sites, and posts their content that way. Or "Excelsior Partners" is just another CCP front, and those kmong listings are a scam in itself.
Otherwise, how would you explain 24 pages of CGTN propaganda?
In either case, it's a clear link to the CCP. This is no different to what they do on social media as well. They use all established platforms to broaden their reach.
Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences
#57Putin's folks have been doing this for decades; I'm surprised China waited for so long.
Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences
#58So 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…
This is the key to many scams these days - you're not the person being scammed, you're a byproduct or accident.
E.g., all that pointless spam that doesn't even have a way to buy anything whatsoever? Spammers selling services to people who don't know what they're doing.
Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the U.S., rich people and political organizations are actually buying or setting up real newspapers in small towns so that when they post fake news on social media, they can reference a dead tree "news source" that is actually their own P.R. machine. There have been a few articles about it in the real press (NYT, etc) over the last couple of years.
This is no different from the majority of US history. Partisan/slanted news outlets have been a thing in the US going back to the Revolution, on both sides of the aisle. It's often a reason why larger cities had multiple papers. One for each side.
> This is no different from the majority of US history.
It is very different. I and many reading have been here for the time when it didn't happen this way, when the world was not drowning in disinformation.
Turning it into a binary question: 0) It doesn't exist at all, or 1) It exists, makes the question meaningless (and ironically is a common form of misinformation, and technique of disinformation). By binary reasoning, murder exists whether we have law enforcement or not, and cancer always exists so you might as well smoke cigars and work in a coal mine.
But what is the point of saying it's no different? Even if it were true, what do you conclude from that? Why make this argument?
Re: Paperwall: Chinese websites posing as local news outlets target global audiences
#60This is the time of information warfare I guess they learned something from India "Pro-Indian 'fake websites targeted decision makers in Europe'" https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-50749764
In the U.S., rich people and political organizations are actually buying or setting up real newspapers in small towns so that when they post fake news on social media, they can reference a dead tree "news source" that is actually their own P.R. machine. There have been a few articles about it in the real press (NYT, etc) over the last couple of years.
Not to mention the Sinclair Broadcast Group. Doing the same thing with Radio and local TV.