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Comment by snicky | Hacker News Reader

I didn't want to say that, but for a long time I already have a feeling that there are users here in the HN community whose sole purpose is to deny any kind of criticism against China or putting it in a bad light. Almost like paid trolls, I would say. I expect lots of this kind of comments in this thread too.

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This comment breaks the site guidelines. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html? They include: "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data."

This is an extremely well-discussed and repetitive issue. If you want explanation about why this is not allowed and why your interpretation is inaccurate, take a look at these past comments:

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a...

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

If, after taking a look, you (or anyone) still have a question that's not answered there, I'd like to know what it is.

I often comment against anti China comments, because they are so remarkably ill informed. Name calling is not sufficient in these times. Evidence exists of the problems in China, there is no need to fantasise about it. (I do not accuse you, I am speaking generically to my motivations)

Many industrial espionage things done by china, and in late times by soviet Russia were entirely rational reactions to trade sanctions. They were illegal but not irrational. Simply declaiming "but its spying" or "but its trade war" isn't informative.

I feel like there are more comments here complaining about chinese astroturfing, than there are actual comments that are pro-china.

Sure there's quite a bit of anti-usa, but given what trump has done for America's reputation abroad, i don't think that has anything to do with being pro-china.

Indeed, I wonder how many of these people complaining about chinese astroturfing actually get their information only from US-aligned sources.

It's really polarizing: they appear to me as mindlessly spouting propaganda, and in the meanwhile they probably dismiss any critical comment, from me or others, as just coming from chinese wumao (which is amusing, since I don't have any ties to China, and my only tie to the US is via my employer... )

I recently wrote some comments that are contrarian in respect to this topic.

Frankly, my perspective is that the HN hive mind just downvotes anything that does not toes the US line (there are also upvotes obviously, but other topics don't elicit such knee jerk reactions).

It's really stifling discourse. I wouldn't mind it that much, if the current cold/trade war wouldn't have real world effects (and obviously, I hope it won't degenerate into a different kind of war)

This perspective, that HN "always" does $unlikeable-thing, is a function of the notice-dislike bias: since we're all much more likely to notice (and weight more heavily) the things that rub us the wrong way, people on different sides of an argument will derive completely different generalizations from exactly the same comment set.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

You're right, of course.

I still think that the trend is there (in this thread, the comments aren't very nuanced and before I commented, the ratio of "against:non-against China" was 3:1, but now the ratio is much more even)

Without getting numbers for it, not much can be done to understand/address the situation

3 years ago that would have been me you were describing. Between HK and minorities and coronavirus (and 8 other things) its time to take action now.

I have seen a number of China-related thread reach HN's frontpage, with lots of comments, only to sink 10 pages within minutes. I believe that some users are gaming the auto-moderation tools by engaging in a downvote war in these threads to have them marked as flamebait and downranked. It doesn't have to be only paid trolls, just enough people unaware of the Tien An Men massacre and Mao's crimes.

Sadly this makes it look like HN is soft-censoring China-related threads...If I were a mod (and if I'm not wrong) I'd be very curious of the downvoting patterns in these cases.

I'm a mod, we've looked closely at the downvoting patterns, and the conclusion is that the community is simply divided. Users have different views because of their different backgrounds. That simple explanation is more than adequate to explain what we see here.

Unfortunately, when people encounter opposing views, they don't think of this simple explanation. Instead, they think nobody could possibly hold that opposing view in good faith, and therefore they must be an astroturfer, a shill, a Communist agent, a manipulator, a spy.

There is a great deal of previous discussion on this topic. If you want further explanation see these links:

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&type=comment&dateRange=a...

If you take a look and still have a question that isn't answered there, let me know what it is.

dang, I think I and a lot of other HN users would appreciate it if you actually posted the results of this investigation somewhere so we have real data to look at. It's pretty clear that it at least seems like it's more than just different views at work here. When you say repeatedly that you've spent countless hours looking at the data and didn't find anything, but then don't share that data it gets really frustrating for users.

We can't. It would be a huge privacy violation, and it would give anyone who actually did want to manipulate this site a handbook on how to do it.

But there are deeper reasons. I wrote about this the other day: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24356496.

I completely understand that, but I also hope you understand how it looks from the HN user perspective. There's a sentiment that feels legitimate, but 1) it's not possible for users to prove or disprove because the data is impossible to obtain, 2) the mods tell us it's unfounded because data, but the data can't be shared, and 3) the mods also tell us if we think the concern is legitimate, prove it, except that because of (1) it's not possible to prove without basically doxxing other users.

I think you addressed it well in the link you provided, especially with the SSM argument, but I have two soft suggestions for consideration:

1) I would personally like to see a HN rule implemented that requires you to post a reply to a comment before you can downvote or flag it. It's probably naive of me to think this would help stop brigading, but it seems like a logical extension of the current downvote setup.

2) I'd like to see equal treatment in terms of flagging both pro and anti- country/political platform comments. If politically charged posts are consistently turning into flame wars in the comments, which seems to be the case, the only way to address the issue without pissing off one set of people or another is to pretty much ban such comments in both directions. I know, easier said than done.

In any case, I think you're doing a great job and I appreciate how tough it is to moderate HN with the level of egos and strong opinions (mine included) on here. Thanks for keeping HN civil.

Yeah I hear you about the frustration. Btw I just came back here to add that there is a way to get at least some partial satisfaction: if you see some specific case that you're worried about you can email hn@ycombinator.com. We always look into it, and we're usually able to say something without giving away the store. Just be aware that the HN inbox is brutal, so if something requires time to look into or properly reply to, you may have to wait a while. We look at most emails as they come in, though, in case there's something that needs taking care of immediately.

---

The idea of requiring a reply for downvotes or flags comes up a lot and I'm sorry to disappoint, but we're not going to do it, because all of our experience is that it would just lead to a lot of low-quality replies.

In terms of equal treatment of flagging: flags are almost all done by users and we can't control what they do, so this is beyond our power. When we do intervene, we definitely try to do it in an even handed way [1], so if you see an unfairly-unbalanced situation, emailing hn@ycombinator.com is also an option.

[1] Anyone who bothers to slog through https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... will see, for example, that we moderate all varieties of nationalistic attack and don't play favorites.

Ive noticed this too. And its not just Hacker News. On any forum where the subject of China comes up you'll see a flood of pro-China comments regardless of the content. If they can't argue their case convincingly they'll confuse, divert and deflect to derail the conversations as a fallback. Something along the lines discussed here:-

https://safenetforum.org/t/the-gentleperson-s-guide-to-forum...

Im almost certain that all forums of any size are monitored and email notifications go out so the ideological warriors can go to work.

You guys are simply failing to take into account that the population in these threads is much, much more diverse than you assume it is.

That basic fact easily explains nearly everything that you're seeing. People have opposing opinions because of their divergent backgrounds and experiences. On all sides, they feel extremely strongly about it, and so when they encounter each other online, they argue ferociously and draw extreme conclusions about each other.

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