Hacker News Reader

Comment by krm01 | Hacker News Reader

I can't believe this isn't something people are rallying for. Nor can I believe the mainstream media is hardly talking about it. The lessons from WWII aren't stories that we should memorise as fun trivia facts.

View on HN

Well... everyone could stop buying stuff on Amazon when you know it's mostly made in China, but then again everyone wants cheap 'stuff' (and iPhones).

And than? The whole system depends on cheap supply of goods. Look what happend during the lookdown in China And it's not people want cheap stuff, most only can afford cheap stuff. Money is a finite source, the more some people have, the less have others.

We can get cheaper goods from other developing nations

Lower quality or equal worse human rights. You need a lot of man power and environmental ignorance to feed our needs.

China became a synonym of low quality, whereas Vietnam has an experience of being production hub for Nokia in a best company's years. Also, there are few countries where situation with human rights worse than in China. In India and Vietnam it is definitely better.

We buy a lot more than what we need, and typically disposable versions of that stuff.

The U.S. could follow India and adopt mandatory country of origin declaration requirements for ecommerce sellers. [1, 2]

Apple has shifted some manufacturing/assembly of iPhones to India, seemingly mostly for the local market [3] and perhaps EU [4], and AirPods to Vietnam [5].

1. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/e-commerce-sites-must...

2. https://www.thequint.com/voices/opinion/e-commerce-rules-cou...

3. https://www.macrumors.com/2020/08/24/iphone-se-assembled-in-...

4. https://www.macrumors.com/2019/07/11/apple-exporting-iphone-...

5. https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/07/22/new-2021-airpods-...

Are you rallying?

I perfectly understand why people aren’t rallying: it’s happening on the other side of the planet. What are we supposed to do?

Meanwhile, Europe was filled with BLM protests.

Systemic racism exists globally

Because it was the hip thing to do.

Does the "hipness" of an idea that motivates legions of people to actively protest depend on the perceived average age and/or culture of said legions of people?

...Is your username using “gay” as an insult? I get it is “playful”, but a playful insult is still an insult.

If so, I kindly encourage you to consider a new username. It is sad to see people slurred just based on who they are.

Well thanks for phrasing that so nicely. I know it's offensive to some people but it's also exactly my kind of stupid humor. It's been a bit of a moral conundrum for me, I don't want to be an asshole to people who haven't done anything, but I also don't want to self censor. Currently though, for any new accounts that I create, I prefer another username anyway, but for this one, inertia is winning.

Thanks for the thoughtful reply, I really appreciate it! Cheers.

What a joke, people are protesting the shitty police in the US.

Believe it or not there are black people and racism in Europe as well.

Yes because it impacted local people as well. Not as bad as in the US but it’s not like there are no racists here

Maybe because they are already rallying for BLM? Americans are too busy before the election.

BLM and US police brutality has already been replaced by the Belarusian protests, even in Wikipedia's Ongoing events.

I guess everything's fine now.

Maybe the world has shifted its gaze but BLM protests are still going strong out here

Uhh, people are marching on the capital right now

It hasn't been widely covered outside of the anti-CCP sources. It seems to be gaining a bit of traction lately. If you are interested, Epoch times, BitterWinter and others have been covering this for a long time.

Establishment media partisans aren't shy about using Nazi comparisons. Over the past year you would have been more likely to hear criticisms of US immigration policies painted in this light.

> Epoch times

Friendly reminder that The Epoch Times is not a reliable news source, it promotes far-right politics in Germany, usually publishes conspiracy theories including QAnon, and was deprecated as a source by Wikipedia in 2019 [1], which means all edits containing links to The Epoch Times will be automatically reverted.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Deprecated_sources#C...

Just because something publishes conspiracy theories, doesn't mean it's always wrong. The US spying on its citizens was considered a conspiracy theory until Edward Snowden. A paedophile ring among the global elite was considered a conspiracy theory until Jeffrey Epstein. Most people in China would consider concentration camps in Xinjiang to be a conspiracy theory.

> Just because something publishes conspiracy theories, doesn't mean it's always wrong.

Of course. So I also mentioned the decision of Wikipedia community, at least they find the signal-to-noise ratio of The Epoch Times is low enough to be banned on their platform.

> Most people in China would consider concentration camps in Xinjiang to be a conspiracy theory.

Maybe. But as someone who fits your "people in China" criteria, I can add a data point: I myself and most of my friends actually don't consider the existence of these camps (or even forced labor) a conspiracy theory. We believe it. However we consider claims like "organ harvesting" a conspiracy theory. I'm unable to provide further insight on why we would think so though, so I guess you can claim I'm brainwashed, but I can say it would be much more complicated than that :-)

Thanks for your concern. I checked the source on the Wikipedia article.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/trump-qanon-impending...

I didn't find any actual support for QANON in the article linked. After skimming it, it was simply a series of quotes from interviews with Q supporters.

https://outline.com/DYKJKK

Wikipedia has become politically charged. If you know of any other sources covering breaking news about the CCP's abuses and intrigues, I would be happy to hear about them.

Everyone has a bias. Adults should be capable of consuming information without gatekeepers deciding what is acceptable.

In the article you linked, you can find mentions of QAnon near the end:

> One such show is "Edge of Wonder," a verified YouTube channel that releases new NTD-produced videos twice every week and now has more than 33 million views. In addition to claims that alien abductions are real and the drug epidemic was engineered by the “deep state,” the channel pushes the QAnon conspiracy theory, which falsely posits that the same “Spygate” cabal is a front for a global pedophile ring being taken down by Trump.

> One QAnon video, titled “#QANON - 7 facts the MEDIA (MSM) Won’t Admit” has almost 1 million views on YouTube. Other videos in the channel’s QAnon playlist, which include videos about 9/11 conspiracy theories and one titled “13 BLOODLINES & their Diabolical End Game,” gained hundreds of thousands of views each.

> Travis View, a researcher and podcaster who studies the QAnon movement, said The Epoch Times has sanitized the conspiracy theory by pushing Spygate, which drops the wildest and more prurient details of QAnon while retaining its conspiratorial elements.

Note that links between this Youtube channel and The Epoch Times is not obvious, but the article you linked already covered that.

I've tried to verify the video [1], it seems to be taken down, but searching the link on Google resulted in various cross references on the Internet.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3KGT_YboSA

This is a technique I often see from the fact-checking sources. A claim such as Spygate will be conflated with something more ridiculous like Q. The ridiculous is used to ridicule the first claim.

In fairness, Spygate is currently being investigated by the DOJ.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/us/politics/kevin-clinesm...

Attributing Spygate to Q is a convenient way to discredit it. Regardless, coverage of Spygate is not equivalent to propagating Q theories.

The entire discussion digresses from the topic at hand.

Russiagate is a conspiracy theory as well

> Epoch times ... I'm amazed by how brainwashed one has to be to regard Epoch times as a reliable outlet worthy of attention.

What's happening with me is that I don't trust USA news sources on this topic. It is possible something is horrible is happening but there is so much propaganda people who might normally be concerned with this suspect it's a misdirection or scapegoating because of the US's catastrophic response to COVID19

It's the same reason a lot of right wing people who wouldn't be in favour of police brutalizing don't speak up - we become cynical and come to be believe we're being manipulated by selective reporting so when we should stand up for our values we don't because it looks like ceding ground to the enemy.

Now my account will probably shadowbanned because of emotional HN users but I don't think I'm mistaken about why there is apathy.

Are they our values if we don’t stand up for them?

Values! Let's talk about what is happening this minute. Somebody just talked to me and then disappeared. All sorts of people with political opinions are self editing and deleting their own comments - or being banned or shadowbanned because their opinions don't fit consensus.

It is difficult for anybody to stand for their values in these conditions. China does not pretend to be a politically free society - but I believe I'd have a better shot freely talking about Western politics on a Chinese service than an American internet service today.

People with my opinions are not a threat to the CCP - so I would be left alone. The number of times I've been banned for speaking simple opinions that just don't conform to the consensus of the hour is more than I can count. All from American web services. Even Sam Altman - who owns some of those services has said the same. It's the synchronization that is causing all the overreactions and underreactions to events.

There's a big difference between government censorship and internet company censorship. Both are problematic but other than that they aren't in the same league.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_websites_blocked_in_...

Why a difference? Internet company censorship is at scale and often works to further censorship by other organizations - some of them are even governments.

Ignoring governments - who can have valid political and strategic reasons to be censors - the social media censorship is more serious because it is operating at the social layer - all those capillaries. Social consensus enforcement touches more people in everyday life.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com