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Comment by RavlaAlvar | Hacker News Reader

I am so frustrated about how HN is now full of whataboutism on the China issues.

It is actually a real issue and not just from the tech side of things. For example, have you seen what is happening in Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam because of China? Do some searching about the infrastructure China is building, and taking over in these countries. I've seen it first hand, it is nuts. Zero care for the environment, local culture, etc... total mess.

China has a different, competing development model than us.

What is the difference between “perspective” and “whataboutism” to you?

Last time I saw this on HN it actually wasn't too bad there were some people trying to defend the CCP in a thread about Hong Kong and almost every pro CCP comment was flagged and had a response.

But in the real world it is super frustrating, was having a conversation with someone the other day that was trying to to make that exact kind of whataboutism with Apple and Huawei. They just did not see it as categorically different, no matter what you believe apple can and has done, that Huawei is essentially owned by the CCP [1]

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3372669

>people trying to defend the CCP in a thread about Hong Kong and almost every pro CCP comment was flagged

so just to play devils advocate here, say someone is Chinese and wants to post on HN and has a pro-government view of his own country, which is quite common, you're saying they don't even need to bother posting?

It's always interesting to see where the tolerance of opinion ends.

It ends where it supports behavior that eliminates the ability to enable being tolerant. This isn't difficult.

there's plenty of intolerant views that are widely held, many religious say that are part of a healthy discussion if you want to hear everyone's viewpoints. It seems a little weird to brush off the opinions of hundreds of millions of people as 'it isn't difficult'. It's really difficult.

The intensity of disregard of political opinions concerning China hasn't anything to do with the opinions themselves, because I read way stranger stuff on HN every day. It's that it's an American website that puts much higher scrutiny on opinions held by perceived US adversaries.

Biases color this judgement so it is very hard to judge where it ends.

Im about to say something to illustrate this bias please think before you react. Additionally I don't actually believe what I'm about to say.

"The Holocaust wasn't that detrimental to society. This is just my opinion, feel free to disagree with my points in a civil way."

The statement is neutral and civil but the word Holocaust ignites an incindiary bias that has no basis in logic because the logic behind why isn't even stated yet. Theoretically such a comment should not receive any downvotes based on the premise alone, yet knowing how people are, it will get voted down.

Replace Holocaust with taxes, bitcoins, or a more neutral word and the votes will shift. This is the same kind of phenomenon that is affecting comments about the CCP. Your bias prevents you from recognizing what is civil and what is not.

I don't think your example is doing the work you think it is doing. Functionally it is doing something similar to what I am accounting for with the CCP, from the other end: "it's just my opinion man" is a hedge that attempts to reduce culpability for your statements and "feel free to disagree civilly" opens up an entire channel for you do disregard criticsm and many real forms of communication, if there is no clear standard on what civility means. Surely there can be one, but are you unbiased enough that you can follow it?

It is not about civility or incivility. It is about facilitating real and valid criticsm. Supporting a state with explicit censorship policies and a track record of suppressing riots with violence as well as an active monopoly on communication and payment channels, which results in a lot of leverage on individual behavior, is antithetical to this purpose.

Where the whatsboutism ends with the United States is that the United States has (thusfar) kept most criticsm-worthy acts on the record and still has no clear monopoly on the flow of information. It allows the existence of institutions that actively work against the policies of the government. That puts it on a relatively higher moral standing compared to the CCP as long as you care about such things as having a plurality of opinions. Where tolerance stops is where you support ending the game.

The least biased comments should be from people who have lived in China for a year or more but are from the United States. There are plenty of people who have done that.

Anybody with that kind of background care to comment on whether or not china is actually an unliveable totalitarian regime where your rights are constantly trampled on, on a daily basis?

Sorry my anti-procrast was on so I couldn't reply sooner!

> say someone is Chinese and wants to post on HN and has a pro-government view of his own country, which is quite common, you're saying they don't even need to bother posting?

I don't think I am saying that and I don't think that what I described implies that.

If pro CCP comments are flagged, downvoted and responded to, that doesn't mean pro CCP commenters don't have the ability to or _shouldn't_ post a defence of their own country. In fact for people to downvote, flag or respond to pro CCP comments requires that they bother posting a defence of the CCP harvesting organs [1], beating up HK protestors [2][3][4][5], ethnically cleansing the Uyghur [6], or implementing a social credit system [7] - in the first place.

I suppose this comes down to how we define tolerance and disagreement. I think that downvotes, flags and responses are signs of disagreement rather than intolerance. While upvotes are signs of agreement.

Should a pro CCP commenter feel bothered to post a defence of their own country? If what makes them feel bothered to post is when people are likely to agree with their defence, then no. However, if what makes them feel bothered is just their belief that anti CCP comments are wrong about something, then of course they should still feel bothered to post their defence because nothing about flags, responses or downvotes stops one from holding a belief. But their posting of that belief doesn't mean we have to agree with it [8].

Though, maybe in this case the mass downvoting of a single opinion is a genuine intolerance of opinion.

If so, then where the tolerance of opinion ends is far too late.

  - [1] https://chinatribunal.com
  - [2] https://gfycat.com/slimymetallicblackfootedferret
  - [3] https://i.redd.it/rrnd6wxb9li31.gif
  - [4] https://v.redd.it/vlvuyx4n1wk31/DASH_360?source=fallback
  - [5] https://v.redd.it/xs79vkkzojh31/DASH_360?source=fallback
  - [6] https://boingboing.net/2019/09/22/sundials-are-everywhere.html
  - [7] https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/1/18246297/china-transportation-people-banned-poor-social-credit-planes-trains-2018
  - [8] https://xkcd.com/1357/

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