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Comment by dilemma | Hacker News Reader

Why do you get upset when someone points out that the US heavily censors the internet through public companies, like in China, and that the US is heavily invested in controlling the narrative, aka public relations aka propaganda. Your world seems extremely black and white - US good, China bad. No room for nuance at all.

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Surely there's nuance but the false equivalence here is pretty stunning. Reminds me of a conversation I had with a co-worker who is from China when he said something along the lines of, "There's censorship in America too! There's a Wikipedia article I can show you that lists all the instances!" ...uh yeah that's the point, we can both access Wikipedia directly here and nobody risks arrest or fines for having this very conversation.

Contrary to the party line China is truly an aberration when it comes to censorship for a modern, wealthy, industrialized country. Pointing out that China belongs to a tiny group of outliers compared to the entire rest of planet Earth when it comes to censorship does not equate to somehow claiming the US has no faults.

I get upset because of the binary thinking, as well as the what aboutism, but mainly the binary thinking.

It's like, the USA executes people, china executes people too, so they must be the same. Ignore the fact that china executes a hell of a lot more people than the USA (even on a per capita basis), they aren't the same at all. Likewise, the USA has corruption, so does china, but the scales of the problems are completely different. Talking about the USA's censorship problem in the context of China's is like talking about a flu in the context of terminal brain cancer. Ya, they both suck, but one sucks a lot more than the other.

You are the one with a binary mindset. Any flaw that is pointed out is "whataboutism" to you because it disturbs your black and white worldview of US good, China bad.

> Whataboutism (also known as whataboutery in British English) is a variant of tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument, which is particularly associated with Soviet and Russian propaganda.

> It's like, the USA executes people, china executes people too, so they must be the same.

On principle they are the same, just because the scales are different does not mean the US is in any position to criticize Chinese behavior on that issue.

It's pretty much the equivalent of "do as I say, not as I do" and a very easy to spot double standard.

> Ya, they both suck, but one sucks a lot more than the other.

Murder is murder, regardless of the scale, the injustice stays the same. Let's also put the scale into context [0]

"China, together with Iran, North Korea, Yemen and the US (the only G7 country to still execute people) carried out the most executions last year."

China, Iran, North Korea, Yemen, that's a list the US wants to be on too, really? From 2007 to 2012 the US executed more people than Pakistan, Yemen or North Korea did.

> Likewise, the USA has corruption, so does china, but the scales of the problems are completely different.

You realize that if you read Chinese media, you'd get exactly the opposite stories about how corrupt the US is? What does this mean? That all Chinese are constantly lying and all US Americans are always telling the truth? No, it only means countries control the narrative to make themselves shine in the most positive light possible. They do this regardless of what form of government they run, the only thing that changes are the methods they are using.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2011/mar/29/death-...

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