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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

#71

Post by echevil » Tue, Sep 03, 2019, 4:27 PM UTC

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.

Not the same at all. Most Chinese immigrated outside China in the past two decades or so have pro-China opinions and are becoming more pro-China as they live abroad. Younger generations born after 90s living in China also have more pro-China viewpoints. You'd still hear them critisize the government a lot but what they care about is dramatically different from people in western world. In issues like Hong Kong, it's quite rare to see any mainland Chinese supporting rioters in HK, no matter where they live.

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

#72

Post by throwawaywego » Tue, Sep 03, 2019, 4:30 PM UTC

guerrilla wrote: post #67

throwawaywego wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 involv…

It is a restate of the conspiratorial claim in my first post. One is justified to say anything one pleases, but it could still be a detraction or pointless speculation: "News flash: Alice Zhang has long hair. Women frequently have long hair. But, Bobby Joe is a surfer dude, and surfer dudes like long hair and frequently have long hair too. I haven't seen Bobby yet, or saw a photo of him, but I relevantly pose that I am justified in saying -- using my a priori knowledge of surfer dudes -- that Bobby, a man, likely has long hair too. My evidence is that Bobby, being a surfer dude, has an incentive to like long hair. I am not contradicting that Alice does not have long hair, just complementing the discussion with extensively documented history of surfer dudes and the likelihood of Bobby's hair length."

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

#73

Post by guerrilla » Tue, Sep 03, 2019, 4:48 PM UTC

throwawaywego wrote: post #72

guerrilla wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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 involv…

It is a restate of the conspiratorial claim in my first post. One is justified to say anything one pleases, but it could still be a detraction or pointless speculation: "News flash: Alice Zhang has long hair. Women frequently have long hair. But, Bobby Joe is a surfer dude, and surfer dudes like long hair and frequently have long hair too. I haven't seen Bobby yet, or saw a photo of him, but I relevantly pose that I…

> One is justified to say anything one pleases

One is not justified in belieiving anything one pleases. There are things which are justified and things which are not and a coherent epistemology distinguishes between the two.

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

#74

Post by vkou » Tue, Sep 03, 2019, 4:55 PM UTC

LorenPechtel wrote: post #70

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?

Some? Given how much blatant propaganda I see in my Facebook feed, from very clearly real people, who very clearly believe the garbage they spew, I would say that the correct answer is most.

There's no shortage of people who will happily repeat the most inane, counterfactual political rhetoric. Don't assume they are paid shills, bots, or foreign spies.

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

#75

Post by cr0sh » Tue, Sep 03, 2019, 7:05 PM UTC

paggle wrote: post #61

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.

It might actually be a derisive term, like calling someone an NPC for similar reason; ie - a way of dehumanizing the other.

On the other hand, I know of one "user" on The Hill, that is a known Russian troll farm of some sort (not necessarily based in Russia entirely); I've caught it talking with itself in Russian, I've also seen it posting - simultaneously - both liberal and conservative talking points in different threads at the same moment in time. Tone, spelling, and grammar are also different - especially at different times of the day. It also goes offline every now and again. Others on the forums over there have noticed that same thing.

I've carried on multiple "conversation" threads with it, and it can be both intriguing, knowledgable, and ignorant depending on when you "catch" it (ie - whomever is typing on the other end).

I've made multiple attempts to figure it out - talking with it, at it, etc - and it has never disclaimed that it is a collective or not based in Russia. I am not sure what or who it is - some suspect some arm of the IRA, but it could be anything.

I don't call it a bot, because there are real humans behind it. I am not actually sure they are all Russian, because it's english is quite good at times, though I have seen hints of both British and American spellings, idioms, knowledge, etc. I suspect it's some kind of global operation, probably with paid actors of some sort.

I've only rarely have seen anything online in such forums or elsewhere that looks and acts like an actual "bot".

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

#76

Post by dmurray » Tue, Sep 03, 2019, 7:36 PM UTC

LorenPechtel wrote: post #70

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?

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

Sure, but some version of this goes for every country on every form of social media, with a little freedom over the "some" and the "might".

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

#77

Post by yellowapple » Tue, Sep 03, 2019, 7:40 PM UTC

throwawaywego wrote: post #53

totaldude87 wrote: post #4

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

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…

Even if the US is involved in the Hong Kong protests, at least it'd be making good on the typical mission of spreading freedom and democracy for reasons other than "y'all got oil and we want it" (unless Hong Kong's been sitting on a massive petroleum deposit all this time, but that'd be news to me).

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

#78

Post by koonsolo » Tue, Sep 03, 2019, 8:52 PM UTC

echevil wrote: post #71

koonsolo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not the same at all. Most Chinese immigrated outside China in the past two decades or so have pro-China opinions and are becoming more pro-China as they live abroad. Younger generations born after 90s living in China also have more pro-China viewpoints. You'd still hear them critisize the government a lot but what they care about is dramatically different from people in western world. In issues like Hong Kong, it's q…

Thanks for your reply, but I have a followup question.

> In issues like Hong Kong, it's quite rare to see any mainland Chinese supporting rioters in HK, no matter where they live.

It's clear that Taiwan supports the HK protesters, so I'm wondering what the other regions are really thinking, like Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, etc. Not what they are publicly saying, but what they are thinking privately. To be clear, I have no idea, that's why I'm asking.

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

#79

Post by elefanten » Tue, Sep 03, 2019, 9:26 PM UTC

guerrilla wrote: post #73

throwawaywego wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a restate of the conspiratorial claim in my first post. One is justified to say anything one pleases, but it could still be a detraction or pointless speculation: "News flash: Alice Zhang has long hair. Women frequently have long hair. But, Bobby Joe is a surfer dude, and surfer dudes like long hair and frequently have long hair too. I haven't seen Bobby yet, or saw a photo of him, but I relevantly pose that I…

> One is justified to say anything one pleases One is not justified in belieiving anything one pleases. There are things which are justified and things which are not and a coherent epistemology distinguishes between the two.

Can you describe your coherent epistemology? The one that leads you to believe a throughly context-free, slapdash list of low-quality wiki text spanning hundreds of topics over hundreds of years counts as a citable piece of evidence for... anything really?

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

#80

Post by duguxu » Wed, Sep 04, 2019, 1:26 AM UTC

LorenPechtel wrote: post #70

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?

I couldn't give concrete evidence to support nor oppose your arguments since I'm not a sociologist by any means. For any reasoning I could think up, or just observation I have to say, you might always find much more "another factors". How I wish you could speak a little Chinese so that you can investigate each pro-China account with social engineering and provide more proof on your conjecture.

However, I would like to translate a comment from that Weibo link (feel free to call it propaganda):

多个英文媒体对这次封号问题的报道反映出了西方社会及媒体对中国近几年来民意变化状态不了解的事实，也反映出了他们对中国民间广泛接受反分裂和支持政府价值观这一现象的不理解。依据他们的理论，共产主义国家的平民必然是反共的，当事实与他们深信不疑的理论相左时，他们选择发明事实来修正理论。

The coverage of this blocking issue by several English-language media reflects the fact that Western society and the media do not understand China's public opinion changes in recent years, and it also reflects their failure to understand the widespread acceptance of anti-secession and support for government values. According to their theory, the civilians in the communist countries must be anti-communist. When the facts are contrary to their belief in the theory, they choose to invent the facts to correct the theory.

And another comment:

we know them well, they know nothing about us.

But all in all, I can't make 100% sure they are not bots/brainwashed/part of the operation/mindless repetition... Any help to know the truth better instead of just speculations would be appreciated.

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