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Comment by tepidandroid | Hacker News Reader

Every single day, sometimes multiple times a day, there are posts on HN pushing one anti-China narrative or another. Every single day there is a barrage of anti-China armchair experts all too happy to wax poetic about the evils of communism, the CPC and authoritarianism. I have to say, it's becoming more and more of an /r/Worldnews-esque, politically polarised echo-chamber in here and it's a huge turn-off.

I know I'm not the only one who feels this way and I can only imagine the great expert commenters this board is losing because of this.

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The people whose feelings are on the opposite side say exactly the opposite about HN: that it's a hotbed of pro-China shills and whatnot. This, unfortunately for us, is how perceptions work when feelings are strong. There's actually a name for it, and associated research; it's called the Hostile Media Effect:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_media_effect

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22hostile%20media%20effect%22...

Thanks for the links. I suppose the appropriate action would have been to not perpetuate/exacerbate the cycle of negative selective recall and perception.

Although it did make for some good faith debating, I'll refrain from doing so in the future... for as long as I can, at least :)

Thanks; you've already stood out by not immediately accusing the mods of being pro- or anti-$topic. Appreciated!

So true! Anti China thinks HN is too pro China, pro China thinks HN is too anti China...

Anti/pro Americanism is mostly the same. Worse even...

Thanks for posting this; I sometimes wonder if I'm the only person who sees it. More likely, most people see it but are just not the ones who feel motivated to comment—for the same reason as the original phenomenon.

This polarization has always showed up here but in the last year or so it seems to be upticking around nationalistic questions. We may be in for rougher waters.

Or maybe China is just really horrible about human rights and there are a lot of articles about it because that is good journalism? This is a NY Times article about an important subject published today, why should this not be on HN?

I'm not the authority on what should or should not be posted on HN.

What I can say is that I preferred the version of HN where the eclectic and mind-opening topics would get voted to the top and thought provoking debate from domain experts would be left in the comments.

Increasingly it's posts directly from main-stream media pushing the main-stream media narrative, and the comments serve little to no value other than providing a place to declare one's political ideologies.

If I wanted to read main-stream media I would be reading it.

The US is arguably a worse abuser of human rights, internationally if not domestically, and yet every story about the US doesn't devolve into a big discussion about US's human rights abuses. Imagine if every article about the US talked about our hundreds of military bases, the millions dead in the middle east due to US war, the current war in Yemen, and all the dictatorships the US has installed over the years.

Did you just argue the US is a worse abuser of human rights than China?

Yes. Read my comment again. I include both domestic and foreign abuse. People seem to irrationally only pay attention to domestic abuse when discussing human rights violations.

I'm not sure the US can compete with this.[1]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution#Death_toll

If you count death tolls in the Korean war, Vietnam war, and the middle eastern excursions in the last 25 years, you are in the same order of magnitude.

Korean War? You mean the one that North Korea started with China’s backing?

How is defending South Korea a human rights violation? All those deaths are on NK and China.

I'm not sure who's worse but the case can definitely be made. There's the direct killings from questionable wars like Iraq and Guantanamo Bay but usually the US will prop up some dictator (again like Iraq) to do their dirty work for them.

I saw many anti-America news on HN as well. I would say if you care, you notice it everywhere, if you don't care, you simply ignore that. (I am also a Chinese)

People tend to find the bias they are looking for through a big serving of...selection bias.

Based on your previous comments you seem to be pro china and seem to carry long list of bad things about US, which is fine. But you will find very little support for any country which doesn't tolerate free speech. It's surprising that you don't want to see world news on HN, but your HN comments about US human rights issues are straight straight out of mainstream liberal news network.

Incorrect. I am neither pro nor anti-China. I am neither pro nor anti-US. I simply felt that a counter-narrative was necessary to break up the incessant pounding China has taken in the past few months and weeks. And every time someone tries to even out the discussion, it's met with the stonewall of "well that's whataboutism". Perhaps a little whataboutism is warranted at times for the sake of perspective.

However, I do disagree that free speech should be the end-all-be-all, ultimate supreme virtue to strive towards. That's such a naive and childish notion and I don't understand why it has become such a meme. Yes it's up there, yes it should be implemented in due time and is suitable for economically and politically stable nations but how can any rational person advocate it for all nations in all states of development?

I'm sure the vast majority of citizens in those states where freedom of speech is most advocated for would prefer censorship over living in a destabilised nation mired in endless conflict and divisive free speech.

Freedom of speech is not a meme. It's something people have given their life for, and nations have been founded on this theme.

"I Disapprove of What You Say, But I Will Defend to the Death Your Right to Say It" is a cornerstone of democracies - though of course most fall short of the ideal, but it is still an ideal to strive for.

Those who prefer censorship usually prefer it for other people, not themselves.

>I'm sure the vast majority of citizens in those states where freedom of speech is most advocated for would prefer censorship over living in a destabilised nation mired in endless conflict and divisive free speech.

The US seemed to be just fine with free speech as a tenant.

If you want a great example of a nation that has eliminated conflict by suppressing all of that pesky free speech, look no further than North Korea.

You've presented a silly false dichotomy between free speech and a stable nation when it's government censorship and oppression that eventually leads to a breaking point and genocides/revolutions.

There are hundreds of other countries around the world. People call you out for whataboutism for complaining about the US on articles about China because the article is not about the US. Why don't you say "what about Somalia" or "what about Russia"? Is it because that would seem like an distraction from the topic under discussion?

This article is not comparing China to the US, Somalia, Russia, etc.

> The US seemed to be just fine with free speech as a tenant.

I was actually referring to China in that sentence. Freedom of speech is taken for granted in the US and rarely needs to be advocated for.

> You've presented a silly false dichotomy between free speech and a stable nation when it's government censorship and oppression that eventually leads to a breaking point and genocides/revolutions.

In my opinion it is neither silly nor a false dichotomy. As much as censorship and oppression has contributed to genocides/revolutions in history, so has factious and reckless speech leading to the rise of populist demagogues and cults of personality.

Freedom of speech and the right to express all of one's most basest thoughts and impulses has never gone down well in nations where the populace is too ill educated to fully comprehend what is being said. The same goes for the infallible and shining doctrine of democracy -appropriate for an informed populace that actually knows what it is they are voting for. Inappropriate for places two decades removed from abject poverty and 3rd world status.

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