Hacker News Reader

Comment by chrischen | Hacker News Reader

"Dozens of social media accounts were tweeting angry things, including many death threats, at both Roy and Marriott. This seems especially odd considering Twitter itself is officially banned in China, and thus can be accessed only by residents breaking the law or by bot accounts."

Not sure why they assume that "dozens of social media accounts" of pro-China supporters is not possible. They're making some weird assumption that only people within China could possibly support the Chinese government on the issue. This paragraph makes no sense at all. The issue is actually quite controversial, and in my experience most Chinese overseas support China on the issue, as it's seen as similar to the US/Hawaii situation and an affront to China's sovereignty and management of internal affairs.

View on HN

> They're making some weird assumption that only people within China could possibly support the Chinese government on the issue.

That's not how I read it. I read it saying it's odd that a platform banned as bad by a government is so readily used by those who support the government. I won't even address the end of your post in detail because it's unrelated to governments punishing businesses for liked tweets.

That still doesn't make sense as censorship of internet and the sovereignty/right of Chinese people to stay in and govern Tibet are wholly unrelated issues.

That's like implying that people who support Chinese control of Tibet must also be government shills, or pro-government, or communist party members.

Supporting the issue of China/Chinese in Tibet != supporting the government or all government policies.

Everyone outside china sees tibet, tiawan as seperate countries half invaded by qn incompetent and opressive china.

That's not true at all.

A lot of expat Chinese are strongly patriotic.

I would also add that a lot of the pro-independence Taiwanese I know actually see Tibet as a part of China too. It's weird, I know.

Furthermore, Twitter may be banned, but the government propaganda office certainly has access if they want it.

Right, not only that but they may also actively employ people to spread pro-China messages on Western sites. Like Russia does.

Have you not heard about China's 50 cent army?

To those that are unfamiliar, the "50 cent army" is China's version of America's "Operation Earnest Voice."

It's basically "an astroturfing campaign by the US government.[1] The aim of the initiative is to use sockpuppets to spread pro-American propaganda on social networking sites based outside of the US. [1]"

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice

Relentless!

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16665563

> it's seen as similar to the US/Hawaii situation

I was wondering how someone would find a way, even in this discussion, to apply 'the U.S. does it too' comment. Personally, after reading HN for awhile I can hardly distinguish between the U.S. and China.

It's called "whataboutism".

What's the difference between "whataboutism" and perspective?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com