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China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

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Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#61

Post by paggle »

duguxu wrote: post #56

Just some personal observations, maybe relevant to recent misinformation topics, or maybe not. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. are all blocked in mainland China. Many people, especially those young and well-educated, use VPN to access them, have an account and follow world news and foreign celebrities sometimes. There are popular and feature-rich counterparts in mainland, and most people prefer to have their daily…

Well it’s quite in fashion these days to call any person you disagree with a “bot.” Even though my Twitter account is very old I’ve been accused of being a “Russian bot” nearly every time I post something that diverges from the political “Standard Model.” I suppose it’s easier to manage life if you think that everyone real agrees with you and everyone who disagrees with you is a Perl script running in Vladivostok.

Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#62

Post by guerrilla »

wtdata wrote: post #28
totaldude87 wrote: post #4

With all that happening in Hong Kong, i wonder why UK and US are not at all involved?

When the West intervenes in these matters they get called colonialists. When they don't intervene, people wonder why they don't do anything.

You're making the mistake of thinking that those two groups of people are the same people.

Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#63

Post by koonsolo »

duguxu wrote: post #56

Just some personal observations, maybe relevant to recent misinformation topics, or maybe not. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. are all blocked in mainland China. Many people, especially those young and well-educated, use VPN to access them, have an account and follow world news and foreign celebrities sometimes. There are popular and feature-rich counterparts in mainland, and most people prefer to have their daily…

About the "brainwashing", how do most Chinese people look at their government? What about the people of the autonomous regions?

From what I know about the soviet satellite states, most people hated the soviets, but none would be stupid enough to say it in public. I wonder how much is the same in China.

Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#64

Post by throwawaywego »

guerrilla wrote: post #59
throwawaywego wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is very meta to ask this question, and to see the replies to this question, as the trope: "The US meddles in foreign revolutions" is common for (social) media propaganda (bots). > Claim: The US is supporting and encouraging Hong Kong protests. > Verdict: Conspiracy theory without evidence. > For years, pro-Kremlin media has used the narrative about anti-government protests being funded by the US. Examples include…

It's a matter of probability. They are so often involved [1] that they get blamed even when they appear not to be involved. That's especially true when people know that they have incentives for being involved, regardless of whether or not they are actually involved. [1] https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrociti...

Stating "The US is funding the Hong Kong protests" may very well be found true later on, but right now, it is a conspiracy theory without any evidence, not a matter of probability based on arbitrary priors. This conspiracy theory is actively used in online propaganda with an aim to erode trust in the US, playing on plausible blame and prejudice. It is a distraction tactic, where two wrongs somehow make a right, or make us feel better about the dangerous road taken, because we conclude that nowhere is safe.

Really no better than: "Let's discuss: Employee China stole something from the communal fridge." "Sure, but what about Employee US? I judged him stealing last year. I assume it very probable that Employee US is stealing from Employee China right now. Maybe that's why Employee China was so hungry, he was forced to steal, because Employee US started it. Maybe Employee China did not even steal anything, just took the blame for an unredeemable thief. Let's discuss and pontificate about that hypothetical instead!"

Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#65

Post by duguxu »

koonsolo wrote: post #63
duguxu wrote: post #56

Just some personal observations, maybe relevant to recent misinformation topics, or maybe not. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. are all blocked in mainland China. Many people, especially those young and well-educated, use VPN to access them, have an account and follow world news and foreign celebrities sometimes. There are popular and feature-rich counterparts in mainland, and most people prefer to have their daily…

About the "brainwashing", how do most Chinese people look at their government? What about the people of the autonomous regions? From what I know about the soviet satellite states, most people hated the soviets, but none would be stupid enough to say it in public. I wonder how much is the same in China.

In the comments of the link in my original posts, besides condemning western hypocrisy, there are also a lot of people criticizing the firewall and information control. People express different opinions. I think it's hard to describe how they look in a few words.

Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#66

Post by nobody0 »

karl_schlagenfu wrote: post #52

The west should have just let Japan take over China in WW2. Maybe then they'd have moved in to the 21st century properly like Japan did.

You should definitely have some history and humanity lessons.

Japan was not simply taking over China, it was doing live human expriements, massive raping & killing to the civilians.

By the way, your comment shows exactly something you are probably going against (having seen some indirected reports contain ideology indication, then started to hate the target as a whole).

Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#67

Post by guerrilla »

throwawaywego wrote: post #64
guerrilla wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a matter of probability. They are so often involved [1] that they get blamed even when they appear not to be involved. That's especially true when people know that they have incentives for being involved, regardless of whether or not they are actually involved. [1] https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrociti...

Stating "The US is funding the Hong Kong protests" may very well be found true later on, but right now, it is a conspiracy theory without any evidence, not a matter of probability based on arbitrary priors. This conspiracy theory is actively used in online propaganda with an aim to erode trust in the US, playing on plausible blame and prejudice. It is a distraction tactic, where two wrongs somehow make a right, or ma…

> "The US is funding the Hong Kong protests"

This wasn't the claim, so please don't quote it as it were. That's not a quotation from anyone here.

> later on

That's not how induction works. What we're doing is making a prediction. When we observe that something happens with a certain frequency, we judge that the probability of it occuring in the future is proportional to that frequency. I'm not saying the US is involved in HK. I'm saying it's justified to conclude that the US probably is involved in HK (and to be explicit: this is not equivalent to saying that the US did or did not cause HK.) People do not wait for an object to fall before they make their prediction and that's because we have sufficient historical data as well as explanatory theories to support our expecations.

> without any evidence

The evience is the history of the US's behavior and their current incentives to do so.

> arbitrary priors

The priors are not arbitrary. They are consistent and theoretically accounted for by several branches of IR theory.

> conspiracy theory

Geopolitical neorealism, for example, is not a conspiracy theory, it's one of the leading schools of thought in IR theory at the moment.

> propaganda with an aim to erode trust in the US

What "erodes trust" in the US is the US's behavior, not pointing out facts about it.

> stealing last year.

We're not talking about one incident. We're talking about an extensively documented history amounting to a consistent pattern of behavior which is trivially explainable using mainstream IR theory.

Nobody is denying what China does. To point out additional facts is not to contradict any other facts.

Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#68

Post by Retric »

koonsolo wrote: post #63
duguxu wrote: post #56

Just some personal observations, maybe relevant to recent misinformation topics, or maybe not. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. are all blocked in mainland China. Many people, especially those young and well-educated, use VPN to access them, have an account and follow world news and foreign celebrities sometimes. There are popular and feature-rich counterparts in mainland, and most people prefer to have their daily…

About the "brainwashing", how do most Chinese people look at their government? What about the people of the autonomous regions? From what I know about the soviet satellite states, most people hated the soviets, but none would be stupid enough to say it in public. I wonder how much is the same in China.

It’s a biased sample, but most Chinese people I have had such conversations with deeply fear and hate their government. However, there is some really weird cultural interactions from a western perspective.

What’s generally overlooked is how much stability is lost in such a repressive environment. Being the 1,000th person to riot is dangerous, being the 100 millionth is not. So, things can rapidly switch from everything seeming to be ok to total chaos almost overnight.

Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#69

Post by dang »

karl_schlagenfu wrote: post #52

The west should have just let Japan take over China in WW2. Maybe then they'd have moved in to the 21st century properly like Japan did.

This sort of political and national flamebait will get you banned here. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended.

Re: China sows disinformation on Hong Kong using porn accounts on Twitter

#70

Post by LorenPechtel »

duguxu wrote: post #56

Just some personal observations, maybe relevant to recent misinformation topics, or maybe not. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc. are all blocked in mainland China. Many people, especially those young and well-educated, use VPN to access them, have an account and follow world news and foreign celebrities sometimes. There are popular and feature-rich counterparts in mainland, and most people prefer to have their daily…

Another factor here--China pushes a lot of propaganda domestically. Some of these tweets might be mindless repetition of the propaganda.

On the other hand, how many of those "ordinary people" are really part of the operation and simply complaining to create doubt?

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