Buying Influence: How China manipulates Facebook and Twitter
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
The "mob" are people that are probably finding little meaning in life. Their "match" is probably feeling like they have something to fight for instead of their grueling 9-5 soul sucking work to pay debt in order to enrich just a few.
It's easy for humans to also externalize pain. They might be angry for very valid reasons, but which they feel powerless to change, and that anger is still in their body, needing, indeed a match to escape. Repressed anger causes disease (cf. Gabor Mate). It's a natural instinct to act out and let out misdirected anger.
Talking about "mob" is like talking about "witches" 400 years ago(pharmaceuts) or "hysteric women" 100 years ago (women with BPD or PTSD). It's dehumanizing and misses the point, and in a few years people will look back at comments like this like we look at witch burning and the stone age practices of psychiatry a few years ago.
One of the startup growth-hackers gave us a decent talk on some basic social media manipulation
It is so easy to create entirely false narratives and / or manipulate online discussion, that at this point I would be surprised if any major group of people with access to half decent budget is not doing it.
From twitter to amazon reviews to comment sections on BBC and other websites, who knows how many are fake, the well has been poisoned.
Edit - expanded the post.
Ask yourself this: who wants you to believe that everything is astroturfing? Who does that serve?
(For the US in fact social media astroturfing doesn't even have to be covert: as the social media belong to domestic companies, they by default promote the national party line and foreign interests - it's only bad when someone else does it).
Ironically, I think the accusations of astroturfing (whether true or not) more directly serve the meta goal of decreasing the public's ability and willingness to engage in debate, and accusations are much more amplification / outrage friendly.
So articles and discussion like this, but not "Chinese|American shill" in a thread about something else.
Assuming anything on social media is "untainted" is pretty naive, it seems.
It's effectively impossible to prove (or refute), so why waste thought and text on it?
Obviously no media outlet is perfect, but yes, corporate media is subject to the influence of monied interests almost by definition. That said, with how easy it is to run ads and hire influencer shills for whatever agenda, social media seems even more malleable if you're willing to spend money. Or, put another way, the financial barrier for creating propaganda is far lower on Facebook than in traditional media.
I would not say NYT publishes propaganda. They just truly believe their own opinion based on some ideology framework but confused their opinions with solid facts. So they see anything not align with their belief as a propaganda. In other words they seem to be against propaganda.
It's a meta-dishonest which is worse than dishonest which is a form of honest dishonest because many people trust meta-dishonest journalist. There are a lot of such kind of MSM journalists. Don Lemon for example.
Same how it's ok when the US does it globally, but not when foreign powers do it.
online, offline just in general. democratic societies formed knowing this, but there is a will to power among certain people who will at any cost affordable to them will try and become the center focus of attention.
you see this in mega corporations eating up smaller companies in order to centralized power and indirectly control the market.
in the same way, actors use money to pump into traditional and social media in order to influence the masses or part of the masses to sway towards their agenda. which may or may not benefit society.
media is very powerful especially if the transmission is consistent in messaging, and broad as well. meaning coming from many angles to achieve said goal or agenda.
it can be very intoxicating once the scale tips towards the agenda, then social pressure or peer pressure to fit in takes control. it's a very odd thing to observe herd mentality from an outside perspective and almost instantly hammered down and framed as a negative thing to those who are entrenched within conditioning.
i believe transparency is the only way we can subvert mental coups, if we know who is funding what then we can consciously ask why and then maybe, just maybe we will become enlightened of an atrocity before it is too late.
Nit: UNlimited
https://www.youtube.com/c/laowhy86
It explains many of the issues with China nowadays.
What would would make for far less tedious reading would be a piece on what is (or isn't) being done to solve the problem.
If you know what I mean.
Here's a Harvard paper that covers this topic more in depth, though it's about domestic propaganda: https://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/50c.pdf
Well, most people generally shouldn't be doing that in the first place (it's against the HN guidelines in particular and bad form in general, with the exception of blatant repeated bad-faith low-effort posts).
Even so, using "is this propaganda a distraction or direct engagement" as a heuristic for "is this post propaganda" is also not a great thing to do. Any large organization engaging in propaganda will have multiple large sub-orgs, stakeholders, and inconsistencies due to misaligned incentives, miscommunications, and the squishiness that comes along with propaganda.
I'm mostly reminding them for when they post on Reddit, where I occasionally get accused for taking a Realpolitik stance of China issues. Even here, someone mentioned the pervasiveness of the "50 cent meme" as evidence of China's state sponsored propaganda.
>Even so, using "is this propaganda a distraction or direct engagement" as a heuristic for "is this post propaganda" is also not a great thing to do.
I agree it's not a perfect heuristic, but I don't think it matters in practice. A spammer is a spammer regardless of whether they're working for the CCP, and should be treated as such. There's no need to make a spicier accusation that you have no evidence for.
For reference, the initial W doesn't represent a sound, so this would be "an wumao". (Same for Wuhan.)
The more I think about this, the less I understand what you were trying to say.
The first problem is of course that a(n) is an English word. But more than that, every sentence of English must apply the rules of English to every part of itself. If instead of "scare" we used the Chinese loanword xia, we would say things like "you xiaed me". We would not say "you xia me" with the past tense present but unmarked, nor would we say "you xiale me".
But it is undefined. English doesn't have strong dialects like Chinese does. Southerners are more likely not to pronounce the "w" in wu, so they might say "an wugui" (since they are more likely to say oogway like in Kungfu Panda) while a northerner will say "a wugui", since they are more familiar with saying the w sound. This is only if they are very familiar with English also, otherwise they will completely ignore the distinction between a and an.
So...dialects make the question hard to answer.
The second part is a more interesting claim. But broadly speaking, for any two Chinese dialects you could probably identify two languages, one being a variety of English, that stand at a similar distance from each other. The second language might or might not be called "English"; it might be called Scots, or Dutch.
Whether to pronounce a(n) with the /n/ realized is not undefined, but it is specific to the speaker. This is a case where variation within languages named "English" is more than enough to show disparities, as witness the confused Americans who copy the phrase "an historic occasion" from British usage.
I took the position, in my original comment, that I was responding to someone who didn't speak Chinese (and therefore didn't know how to pronounce "wumao") but did speak English (and therefore did know how to pronounce "an"). I didn't think I was speaking to someone who knew the pronunciation of "wumao" but wasn't sure how to use an article with it.
I don't think regional variation in pronunciation in China can explain an English speaker pronouncing wumao or Wuhan with an initial w-. The citation form of the syllable has no initial consonant, and all sources are explicit about this. Chinese broadcast media, in running speech, still doesn't produce anything an English speaker would recognize as an initial w-. (I'm having to rely, for this claim, on the television programs I found on youtube, linked elsewhere.) There just isn't a source that would provide an English speaker outside China with an example of using w-. So I assume what's happening is that people pronounce w- because they see the spelling.
(Also, I don't see many English speakers pronouncing it Taivan instead of Taiwan.)
I find it very plausible that regional variation exists, though, because I know the Shanghainese (吴 dialect) pronunciation of 勿 is -- using a pinyin-like spelling -- "ve" with an initial /v/-like sound.
> The form an is used before words starting with a vowel sound, regardless of whether the word begins with a vowel letter. This avoids the glottal stop (momentary silent pause) that would otherwise be required between a and a following vowel sound. Where the next word begins with a consonant sound, a is used. Examples: a box; an apple; an SSO (pronounced "es-es-oh"); an MP3 (pronounced "em-pee-three"); a HEPA filter (here, HEPA is an acronym, a series of letters pronounced as a word rather than as individual letters); an hour (the h is silent); a one-armed bandit (pronounced "won..."); an heir (pronounced "air"); an herb in American English (where the h is silent), but a herb in British English; "a unionized worker" but "an ionized particle".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_articles#Distinction_b...
For example, "womb" starts with the same sound as "wumao", but we say "a womb" instead of "an womb". For the same reason, we say "a wumao" instead of "an wumao".
Yes, that's what I'm saying.
> For example, "womb" starts with the same sound as "wumao"
No, it doesn't. "Oops" starts with the same sound as "wumao". "Womb" has a /w/ sound before that. There is no /w/ in 五毛.
What did you think I meant by saying "the initial W doesn't represent a sound"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2eLP3FuuEVs
I think there is a lot of irony in this subthread, since it is responding to a comment about derailing the discussion by distracting from the main topic as a strategy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29655271. Intentional or not, this subthread shows just how effective this strategy can be.
Edit: another poster has some more examples of there not being a "w" sound at all in "wu": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29657822
Yes there is. You can argue it's not as strong as an English 'w', but it's there.
> This is a really common misconception/mispronunciation caused by pinyin as it needs the "w" for disambiguation purposes (see also the use of apostrophes, xian vs. xi'an).
That may have been the case in the past, but the 'w' is definitely pronounced now, just like all the other 'w' sounds in Pinyin.
Maybe some regional accents overemphasize a W sound? I've never heard one, though.
I'm curious how you think a video with an edited audio track could have any value as evidence. If you're willing to truncate and splice your recorded audio, you can easily transmute some sounds into other sounds.
> I think there is a lot of irony in this subthread
Yes, we talk about the things we think are interesting, often even when there are other people whose opinions differ.
Compare "han wudi de muzang" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9TeG6MdbmY#t=117
Or "wuhan de yi tian" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWw6emkxmos#t=82
Or "yi zuo shi da wuhan" here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWw6emkxmos#t=66 (same video as above, earlier timestamp)
Additionally, English spelling rules are complete insanity, and if an English speaker sees "uhan" they'd probably pronounce the 'u' as [ju:].
Pinyin w + ang is ∅ + uang. Either way there's a w sound in there.
Correct.
> Wuhan starts with the same (or at least something very similar and indistinguishable to me) semivowel as the English word west.
Nope. This one is ∅ + u.
You can listen to the name of Wuhan here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWw6emkxmos#t=82
No?
> Don't 我 and 武 start with the same sound?
You could make that argument. But 武 never transitions out of it. That transition is how you get a glide (or semivowel) as opposed to a vowel. 我 is /wo/, with a brief /w/. 武 is /u/, and that vowel persists through the entire syllable. If you wanted to call it /w/ instead of /u/, you'd have a syllable with an onset and no rime, and your /w/ would last much too long to be called a semivowel.
> Do 窝 and 喔 sound the same to you?
I can't really speak to this, but I'll assume by 喔 you mean something that is like 窝 without the w- onset. Something like 哦?
They don't sound the same. This actually raises an interesting question...
> I know how Wuhan sounds like and I clearly hear a w sound in there
Am I right that you're a native Mandarin speaker? Mandarin doesn't distinguish between /wu/ and /u/, or at least no minimal pair exists that would prove the distinction is drawn. (Granted, the sequence /wu/ is not at all common in English, but we do have a minimal pair -- woo / ooh -- as long as you're willing to accept "ooh" as a word.) The lack of a distinction in Mandarin leaves the judgment of a Mandarin speaker open to question.
seanmcdirmid mentioned 服务 - do you also clearly hear a W sound there?
- You cannot travel abroad (no passport for average citizens, except for those that study/work abroad)
- You cannot go beyond China's intranet
- You cannot transfer money out of country legally, pretty soon can't invest in other countries's stocks
- You cannot watch Spiderman, BTS, squid games, porn and many many more things legally
- You have very little rights as LGBT
- You have to work 9-9-6. Which is why many citizens are lying flat
- You are constantly watched, monitored, "invited" to police station for tea, banned for posts that contain any words that are on the growing banned list
- You should not get rich (1/3 of billionaires have died or disappeared)
- You have little recourse as a woman who is abused by men in power
- You are constantly subjugated to random mass testing
- Oh and there's the yearly flood + crashing economy + crashing real estate + aging workforce + factory jobs leaving + dictatorship
终究怀揣的不安，是愈来愈近的丧钟声
Then I had a flight transfer through China and decided to take a couple days there just to see how bad it was. Ended up realizing most internet comments and news articles are posted by people who are absolutely obsessed with China and only get their information through seventh-hand sources--it's that insanely distorted.
Left loving the country because everything was so contrary to my conditioned expectations and went back for a few more trips.
Pushing a super hard anti-anything narrative in this age is bound to backfire, because finding information contrary to it isn't hard.
You can flourish there, relatively, if you follow the rules. But if you get on the government's bad side you will be quashed.
Right because a couple of days (I'll presume in a city) would also give you a real insight to how things really are.
It's weird how people come out and complain about this with only one specific country. Nobody gets angry when they say a trip to somewhere else was enough to make them enjoy a place.
A few days seeing the sights is pretty irrelevant at best in this context.
The country has problems. But it's not a prison camp of 1.4 billion like the internet would make you think. Most people are pretty happy living there, even people who've been to other countries.
It's definitely not a good place to be a political or religious activist. Most countries outside of the EU aren't and China is definitely on the worse end when it comes to that issue, but it's pretty nice for most people.
I've actually worked with some Chinese for years and it wasn't until I went out on a dinner that some really ugly stuff about why Han people in the past have been treated badly and that being the justification for the treatment of Uighur people, then I listened to an hour about why Muslim people are a problem and all the horror stories they'd read about them in the paper (it was clearly propaganda). Scarier for me one of their best friends at the time, who just missed the dinner, was Muslim. That wouldn't be an isolated case I'm sure.
This is not to single out Chinese by the way, I'm just reinforcing my point that it seems naive to just say, "I stopped by, looked pretty good, I'd go back, seems like a good place."
However: you seem to be telling a native Chinese person that they’re wrong about their impressions of their own country. Do you want to maybe add some nuance to that?
I don't read forgotmyoldname's comment as telling chunghuaming that they are wrong about their impressions of China. It's more about forgotmyoldname's own impressions, and his/her assessment of people in general who comment online about China.
In follow up comments, forgotmyoldname also provides first and second hand supporting experiences. Do you have any of yours that would contradict theirs?
You visited a few times huh? I was born and lived there for 30 years.
But good luck with that issue, dude. Maybe you should try visiting countries sometime. Anyone can claim to have lived in a country for 30 years. :)
Maybe you should visit the country. Anyone can make a claim they stayed there for a few days and only visited the elite, rich parts of the country.
But people on the internet are way too into the Red Scare Part II and think literally anything against their personal opinion is someone paid by a state actor specifically to attack them on the internet. It's, quite frankly, nuts, and an unhealthy way of looking at the world and seeding visible increases in racism.
That happened to a lot of people.
Really? What accounts for all the Chinese tourists visiting Europe/UK/USA? I have a friend who runs a hostel in Edinburgh and the majority of her guests are Chinese so much so that they have had to print signs in Mandarin asking people to abide by certain rules.
>You cannot transfer money out of country legally, pretty soon can't invest in other countries's stocks
This must not be enforced that severely given how much capital has flowed into other countries real estate market. In fact this is a common loophole used to get US citizenship. (invest 500k and you can get a green card).
1. China requires extremely long quarantines when entering the country. 14 days in a quarantine hotel + 7 days at home is standard. Some jurisdictions go as high as 28 + 28.
2. China has recently restricted issuances of new and renewed passports. This is being done locally, so enforcement is inconsistent, but generally one needs a strong reason ("studying abroad", "international business") to get a passport issued now.
China allows transfer out of the country for the purpose of buying homes, but cash transfers are restricted to a certain annual limit. The restrictions on transferring currency out of China and on exchanging currency are a huge problem for expats leaving the country. Until this year, the recommendation for expats leaving the country was to use bitcoin.
This has been masked over the last 2 years by the pandemic, but it started a few years before.
https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3012312/c...
Things like banning porn simply don't work unless substituted. People have already turned to amateur recordings instead. That's things the elderly rulers don't want to or can't understand. Ultimate control is not possible with human beings, especially in the 21st century.
How did that happen? Iirc, according to Hurun Report 10 years ago, some 80% of the upper class Chinese had an escape plan ready. You'd think, as a billionaire they have a plane waiting for them 24/7 to get out of the country.
> You cannot travel abroad
In the border with Vietnam, at night you can cross the border for 5 yuan on one of the smuggler boats.
> You have little recourse as a woman who is abused by men in power
Only country in the world with more female suicides than male suicides.
Also, no recourse if CCP thugs steal your stuff. Guy I knew had his Ferrari stolen. Couldn't do anything because the thief was a local party functionary's son.
I guess disappeared could mean they are on a beach somewhere under an alias, but I don't think we can assume that for all of them
> - You cannot travel abroad (no passport for average citizens, except for those that study/work abroad)
This is of course because of China's CVOID policy, which is 0 tolerance. That's a rational decision of China's high-density population, and manufacturing-based economy. I do not think it's inherent anti-human-rights, as the death count is fractional to open-co-existence policy. Life itself is a human right, and probably the most precious one.
> - You cannot go beyond China's intranet
VPNs are legal in China. You just need to be technically-sophisticated enough to find the correct VPNs, and make sure it falls in the boundary of Chinese law.
> - You cannot transfer money out of country legally, pretty soon can't invest in other countries's stocks
This is just not true... You can use various services to transfer money out. The only issue is that they are subject to certain limitations, which are far more restrictive than US. But again, US dominates world financial system, there is a view that financial imperialism is a key part of US capitalist exploiting Chinese workers. Thus the financial limitation. I doubt that anyone other than the rob-barrons are affected by this. I personally know a lot of Crypto super riches, trust me, they are absolutely a net negative force in society.
> - You cannot watch Spiderman, BTS, squid games, porn and many many more things legally
You can. VPN to netflix. And a lot of pirated content. They were just not allowed to go through the official channel. Of course, CCP is wrong here. But let's not paint a picture that Chinese people are sheeps.
> - You have very little rights as LGBT
Not sure what you are talking about. LGBT is not discriminated officially in any form in the CHinese society. Society still holds stigma over these people. One primary reason is that these groups are associated with higher chance of sexually-transmitted diseases.
And dont assume me a CCP associate, I have a good friend who is gay. He is my college friend. He is pretty happy.
> - You have to work 9-9-6. Which is why many citizens are lying flat
This is probably what forced upon by the private firms. These are punished heavily by CCP recently. Jack Ma and Alibaba are the defender of 996...
> - You are constantly watched, monitored, "invited" to police station for tea, banned for posts that contain any words that are on the growing banned list
This is not true. I have several wechat groups discussing serious political issues in China. None of the 50 people ever had any sign of being bothered. I mean, there is no way that one is constantly watched in China. If that's true, China either already have an AGI, or what we bought everyone are not actually made in China, because there are simply not enough cheap labor to produce them in the first place, and most of them are employed in watching others.
> - You should not get rich (1/3 of billionaires have died or disappeared)
1/3 of billionaires have died or disappeared...
First, the number of billionaires are unknown. Chinese society had a tradition of the rich become victims during the terminal phase of the dynasty. So the rich is very well aware of this fact, and they hide. Do you know that Mr. Deng Xiaoping's son is astronomically rich, but you'll never see anywhere his net worth is published?
Second, please give a citation... To engage this discussion is putting legitimacy on this ridiculous claim...
> - You have little recourse as a woman who is abused by men in power
Come on... This becomes ridiculous... Gender equality in China is pretty high. Ranked 38th out of 157 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_inequality_in_China I mean it's not spectacular, but your statement is just outlandish...
> - You are constantly subjugated to idiotic mass testing/lockdown
What do you mean? I said a lot of bad words about CCP. I was not distant by my family or friends...
> - Oh and there's the yearly flood + crashing economy + crashing real estate + aging workforce + factory jobs leaving + dictatorship
If you read western media, then these are what they said. But these are not true according to what I hear from my friends and family.
> Life itself is a human right, and probably the most precious one.
How can welding front gates shut be protecting human life? How can anyone survive after being cut off from food, medicine, supplies, contact, income? Don't pretend zero-tolerance policy is about protecting people, it is to protect Xi JingPing who has staked his personal political standing on the zero tolerance policy[1].
Some regions have been under continual lock-down for the better part of this year. Do you know how many people have died from lock-down? Does anyone know? Does CCP permit anyone to count? For that matter, how many people died in Wuhan two years ago? Why is CCP killing a citizen journalist for writing about Wuhan outbreak[2]? Is her life not human?
>VPNs are legal in China. You just need to be technically-sophisticated enough to find the correct VPNs, and make sure it falls in the boundary of Chinese law.
Pray tell which VPNs are legal in China? Which one can I use to visit HN legally in China? What is stopping an enterprising person to make your "correct" VPNs user friendly to the mass? I will you, because it does not exist!
> I have several wechat groups discussing serious political issues in China.
Why don't you post to your WeChat groups "佟丽娅嫁给中宣部副部长," reputed marriage of an actress to the vice minister of Propaganda Ministry and take a screenshot? You cannot even search it in Baidu, and you have the gall to say the Internet in China is constantly watched.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/xi-jinpings-leadership-style-mi... [2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/china/reporter-zhang-zhan-riske...
No this is not.
But it's neither protecting human life by calling "Chiense virus" "Kunflu". Enough said.
> VPN
> Why don't you post to your WeChat groups "佟丽娅嫁给中宣部副部长," reputed marriage of an actress to the vice minister of Propaganda Ministry and take a screenshot? You cannot even search it in Baidu, and you have the gall to say the Internet in China is constantly watched.
Dude, what is this thing? I have no idea what's going on with this "佟丽娅嫁给中宣部副部长,"?
You say you are born in China, so presumably you can read Chinese. Then you can head over to [1] and read all about oversea Chinese making fun of CCP censoring salacious rumors about an actress and vice minister of Propaganda. The most powerful police apparatus and most sprawling internet censorship machinery working in overdrive to suppress tabloid, not because the rumor may or may not be false but because the Party knows the people believe it true in their heart.
[1] https://forums.huaren.us/showtopic.html?topicid=2761503&fid=...
But I suppose it's OK to respect people's privacy?
You can only go so far down the rabbit hole of research before you're wasting time. It's a lot like signal detection theory: Where do you strike the balance between effort and accuracy in research?
Maybe you do, but do you discuss how millions of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province were (are?) detained in concentration camps [0] and forced to provide quarter to government agents in their own homes under a dehumanizing “big brother” program [1]? Or how the CCP forced Uighurs to surgically implant IUDs and undergo forced abortion and sterilization procedures [2]? That would probably get you on the CCP’s radar.
Don’t pretend like there’s any semblance of open discussion about truly controversial issues.
> I mean, there is no way that one is constantly watched in China.
The “constantly watched” bit is a total strawman. Nobody is implying that all Chinese citizens are constantly watched by CCP thugs. All that is needed is a search engine on top of indexed WeChat message contents to help direct a limited number of investigations against political dissidents who may threaten the CCP’s grip on power - or as they refer to it, “stability”.
[0]: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1270014
Selected quote: “Every former camp detainee Amnesty interviewed in the report recounted cruel and degrading treatment, including torture. The report, released Thursday, is based on interviews with 108 people, including 55 camp survivors and several government cadres who worked in the camps.”
Yes, it happened. Your most recent comment as of right now attempts to cast doubt on this fact.
[1]: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/05/08/asia/china-xinjiang-ethni...
Selected quote: “Her four "guests" are Chinese government cadres who lived in her home for 10 days every month for two years before her family fled, she said.”
Think about what that would be like. It’s as horrible as it is effective, and it’s partly why the Third Amendment to the US Constitution exists.
[2]: https://apnews.com/article/ap-top-news-international-news-we...
Selected quote: “But while equal on paper, in practice Han Chinese are largely spared the abortions, sterilizations, IUD insertions and detentions for having too many children that are forced on Xinjiang’s other ethnicities, interviews and data show.”
Think about what it would be like for your government to show up at your door, handcuff you, take you to a hospital, anesthetize you, and surgically remove your ability to procreate. That’s what the CCP does to its own people.
We discuss that. That was viewed as a western media propaganda. I.e., no hard proof from any reputable organizations (UN for example).
> All that is needed is a search engine on top of indexed WeChat message
I know far worse things the local government did using their information monopoly. You don't need to educate me on that.
What I replied is that the OP wanted to paint a picture of a dystopian monitoring in China, that's not what happens.
> Your most recent comment as of right now attempts to cast doubt on this fact.
These are reports, not facts. I dont believe these reports, because these media shows some incredible buntant manipulation. I simply cannot trust people like these. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS8EceIa1MQ&t=115s
> Her four "guests" are Chinese government cadres who lived in her home for 10 days every month for two years before her family fled, she said.
Well, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eS8EceIa1MQ&t=115s, this certainly could be true, but I just cannot fully trust media photoshops trees to extend a narrative.\
> But while equal on paper, in practice Han Chinese are largely spared the abortions, sterilizations, IUD insertions and detentions for having too many children that are forced on Xinjiang’s other ethnicities, interviews and data show.
LMAO
My mother, a Han people, was subject to forced abortion. I was born in a different city than my hometown to evade that.
Stop painting racial conflicts, when there is none.
The lies can go on for a while, but they cannot last forever...
United Nations statement titled "China: UN experts deeply concerned by alleged detention, forced labour of Uyghurs" https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?N...
Statement from 43 countries presented at UN "Joint statement on human rights situation in Xinjiang at 47th Session of UN Human Rights Council" https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/international_re...
Amnesty International says "China: Draconian repression of Muslims in Xinjiang amounts to crimes against humanity" https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/06/china-draconi...
Human Rights Watch article "China’s Weak Excuse to Block Investigations in Xinjiang" https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/03/25/chinas-weak-excuse-block...
Another report titled "First independent report into Xinjiang genocide allegations claims evidence of Beijing's 'intent to destroy' Uyghur people" https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/09/asia/china-uyghurs-xinjiang-g...
>The lies can go on for a while, but they cannot last forever...
Indeed.
> You should not get rich (1/3 of billionaires have died or disappeared) Also not true. FuErDais are praise on TV, movies, etc... Crazy Rich Asians , the movie , was a huge hit in China for example, etc... Money and superficiality have always being huge in China (even to get married, you need to buy a house , a car, and give the girl's family money (CaiLi)). > You have to work 9-9-6. Which is why many citizens are lying flat Highly depends on where you work. But is not standarized, and there have been recently a huge push back from the goverment about this. > You cannot go beyond China's intranet Literally that's what VPNs are for, many chinese companies offer VPN services to mainland users, etc.
All other points are more or less right. Also, p*rn is illegal in most places. I wouldn't live there, but posting lies here wont help anyone.
True. It used to be 50k limit per year. Now because many bureaucratic procedures by banks, it might as well as be zero since you have go to the bank 10+ times. You're talking from a view of a foreigner. I'm talking from a view of native citizen.
> Money and superficiality have always being huge in China
Not so right now which is what I mentioned.
China bars celebrities from showing off wealth and 'extravagant pleasure' on social media
https://www.businessinsider.com/china-bans-celebs-from-showi...
> there have been recently a huge push back from the goverment about this.
Doesn't mean anything has changed. Just lip service.
> You cannot go beyond China's intranet
Of course I know about VPN. However, The official stance of the Chinese government is that the use of VPNs is prohibited except in strictly defined cases. https://review42.com/resources/are-vpns-legal-in-china/
Not true, I (and my wife) use our personal accounts to send money back and forth almost every week, so the thousands of chinese students, workers, etc...
Still, that map lends credence to my initial gut feeling, that defending China’s porn ban to someone with a seemingly Western perspective by saying it’s banned in a lot of other places too probably isn’t very effective - they most likely feel the same about these laws where they exist in the rest of Asia, Eastern Europe and in Africa, too. Presumably they’re comparing China to Western Europe and the US here.
https://hongkongfp.com/2021/12/23/breaking-fears-for-condemn...
Print it out again and reassemble?
What on Earth are you talking about?
Then think about all the "Culture War" problems we are dealing with in American for the past ~10 years.
Please let me know if this is wrong, but I think this is the argument:
1. The US is a better leader than China because it is a significantly better place. Notable US problems that cause lots of suffering are significantly less severe than notable Chinese problems.
2. As a result, the US government should put a lot of effort into making sure that China doesn't become too powerful. It is ok for the US to publish articles that are less reliable than those on Iraq WMDs because if China becomes too powerful, the world will be far worse. In particular, China should not become powerful enough to project its values on other countries as much as the US does. China also should not be able to non-democratically reform international, democratically-decided rules such as International Maritime Law.
For most people in the US, it would take heaps of evidence and learning could to even make them doubt that US might not be a significantly better place than China (Note that I'm not arguing that the US is not far better). On the other hand, many people in China doubt that the US is significantly better as China because of how much better they see their life compared to the past. So, they don't understand why people in the US are confident about their conflict against China.
I personally can't buy into this argument though because I lack the confidence in my personal philosophy to know what a "better life" truly is. However, many people in the US have a more stable philosophical foundation and could never be convinced that the US is not a significantly better place than China.
Believe it or not, Western ideals used to have a good amount of traction in China. I suggest this translated firsthand account of how American values lost their luster: https://mp-weixin-qq-com.translate.goog/s/erCJHZVLEtnZ4wWbkg...
Furthermore, people that think they can convince US citizens that they should not escalate the conflict are focusing on a lost cause. This does not mean no discourse should happen, but people should understand that differences in opinions are due to very big differences in values.
I did not look much into why a Chinese citizen would support China escalating the conflict against the US nor have I done much research on how China builds up anti-US sentiment.
Are you refering to military conflict? My guess would be that the Chinese people are very misled about the military prowess of their country. It seems like a weekly occurrence that a PRC military propaganda video is shown to actually use footage of foreign military exercises.
On the other hand, the US military (one might argue government as a whole) seems to be slipping in basic competencies. The navy has had three very public ship navigation errors in four years, and continues to be absolutely clueless about drones. ("UFOs") The air force has a new fighter which is still not functioning at design capabilities, and the withdrawl from Afghanistan was less organized than the 1970s withdrawl from Saigon. At least in the US the failures are public and might inspire change.
1. Hedonism is "fairly correct". In a well-fed and low-violence society, the pleasure/pain axis explains >40% of what every human cares about, especially chronic pleasure/pain.
- 1a. Both the US and China are low-violence and well-fed.
2. Obesity is responsible for a high amount of pain. Furthermore, there are few things in society that don't kill you which are worse that obesity.
- 2a. People don't die that much in societies like China.
3. Modern entertainment is a good painkiller. However, obese people that consume it still experience great amounts of pain throughout the day. Entertainment that distracts people from fixing the chronic pain they feel is a negative to society.
With these assumptions, the US doesn't look like a significantly better place than China. In theory, the freedom enabled by the US allows people to do well on the pain/pleasure axis. In practice, the US enables companies to do things that lead people into greater chronic pain.
Note that I think that Taiwan could be a significantly better place than China by this logic.
Every country can do better. The US should do better at a lot of things and poverty, inequality, and racism are for sure big drivers of things like childbirth death rate, lack of education and more!
But to OP's comment, there is no way in hell you can convince me or even a significant minority of Americans that China is better on the whole or even on a minor slice.
Lol even life expectancy and health seems like a lot of people here don't care about and are perfectly happy to guzzle cola and sit in front of a tv lmfao.
In terms of do better, China's list is ginormous and some of the things on it - like not building interment and forced 'integration' for millions of their citizens - are so extremely opposite of the values most here hold that it far outweighs any good weights on this 'better than' scale. It feels farcical to say otherwise.
I commented an open ended question in the first place is because these one off comments similar to OP feel to me exactly like what the article shows are active campaigns to interact on social networks like HN. But pointing that out without proof (impossible for me to get) is against HN ethics. I'm guilting of doing it though this is a moral and emotional issue for me.
Plus we americans are pretty self confident and often beligerantly arrogant. Makes it hard to convince people anything beyond american exceptionalism even on obviously nice things. Like that historical pamphlet comparing French lifestyle during the war that was posted here a long time ago. Yes they can value family and well being over working, that's horrible and un american ;) !
Imagine living somewhere in the West, and not liking Facebook.
> A giant human spirit grinder
Yes, you could call it that.
Why should anyone care about "man on the street" interviews on some Youtube channel? I mean, it's not like someone in a repressive country is going to open up with all their complaints about their repressive government to some rando with a camera.
Plus, Youtube is easy to manipulate (in some ways) if you have the resources of a government: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/12/13/technology/ch....
Also Asian Boss is a channel run from outside China that does similar interviews in a range of different countries.
How so? Even if a quiet dissident won't open up to some obnoxious youtuber creating content, they may express their true feelings in other ways. My main point is you have to be pretty careful with what you "learn" from Youtube, and "have you seen this rando youtuber" (with the implication they should change your mind) is not a very strong response.
What is the largest country in South America? ... Africa
Can you name a book? ... ummmmmmm
How many stars on the American flag? ... 32
The remaining minority is unfortunately a big problem, and higher up on the status ladder the bigger. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/china-s-president-...
Such people come with real delusions. Either delusions of grandeur, or delusions of being so smart that they think they will trick communists, people who grew giving their whole lives to intrigue, and insane political culture which makes GOP look like kindergarteners.
The worst kind are ones who come there with genuine believe, and gravity towards fascism. A foul wish for "an orderly society" where they think they will be made into elites https://beyondinfinity.com.au/project-dragonfly-is-google-he...
I call both types "ones stupid enough to survive." Were they not, they would've been crushed long ago.
Please don't do that here.
It's cutthroat, it's one sided, and is exactly as boringly simple as the history textbook tells. I lived in communist hellholes for 18 years of my life, and I will not be entertaining a wish of people wanting to rewrite these textbooks to say that black is white.
It's a bad tendency I see more, and more: people drawing nuance when there is none, for a want of being "nuanced," "sophisticated," "succinct"
I would rather they starve due to lack of revenue at this point so they actually do something competitive
Says right in their about page they are under a govt. mandate. The local language pages also have this information.
> Radio Free Asia operates under a Congressional mandate to deliver uncensored, domestic news and information to China, Tibet, North Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, and Burma, among other places in Asia with poor media environments and few, if any, free speech protections. All broadcasts are solely in local languages and dialects, which include Mandarin, Tibetan, Cantonese, Uyghur, Vietnamese, Lao, Khmer, Burmese, and Korean.
Edit: A discussion like this wouldn't even happen inside China.
> On May 21, a branch of the Shanghai police posted a notice online seeking bids from private contractors for what is known among Chinese officialdom as public opinion management.
In Russia RF's news outlets were the ones who resisted the foreign funded media explicit labeling regulations the most and were the slowest to comply and start labeling their content explicitly.
What I mean is their degree of transparency is quite debatable and raises some red flags.
Actually, it's almost always the opposite.
CCP requiring Chinese companies to hand over all user data unencrypted > USG occasionally sending NSLs to specific companies for information on specific persons.
CCP stealing IP from the US, EU, Japan, and other countries > ???.
CCP Operation Fox Hunt[1] > ???.
CCP police threatening the family of a student in the US speaking about Tianamen Square[2] > ???.
CCP hiring massive numbers of 50c posters to write hundreds of millions of social media posts under false aliases > USG operating Free Radio Asia with the explicit notice that it's controlled by the government.
CCP restricting children to three hours of video games a week > USG preventing those under age 21 from smoking or drinking.
CCP massacring unarmed students in Tiananmen Square with tanks > ???.
CCP censoring all information about Tiananmen Square inside the Great Firewall > USG asking newspapers not to publish classified information.
CCP operating a concentration camp in Xinjing with about a million people indefinitely in it for no reason other than their religion > USG holding a few thousand refugees in cages for a limited time until they can be returned to their country because they crossed the border illegally.
CCP blackmailing various companies for stating that Taiwan is a separate country > ???.
CCP invading Taiwan for holding the former rulers of the country that fled after a bunch of murderous revolutionaries overthrew the government and killed millions of people > USG invading Afghanistan to find a terrorist group that flew planes into our buildings and killed thousands. (note that in the first case, the perpetrators (or associates thereof) are doing the invasion, while in the second case, it's the victims).
In almost every single case that China is doing something bad, America's equivalent is either far less bad or nonexistent.
Even beyond that - no country is perfect (especially not the US), but when the USG (or governments of most other countries) does something bad, the citizens usually get angry about it, and the officials responsible either try to hide or eventually reverse course. With the CCP, the citizens defend it, and the officials claim that they're actually doing the right thing, deny that it exists at all (e.g. the Uyghur concentration camps), or counter with misinformation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Fox_Hunt
[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/Purdue/comments/ri95tp/in_response_...
Comparing how different agents deal with similar problems is not a thoughtcrime, you know. It is quite a healthy way of understanding how such problems arise and how to deal with them.
If you do in fact steal the apples then no. It is calling you a hypocrite and having little moral standing to talk about the subject because you lack the integrity.
If you were genuinely concerned about the fact of stealing the apples you should be working toward the easiest way of reducing said theft. Namely stop doing it yourself and then start worry about Bob.
Not every "let's look at what other countries do" is whataboutism. One-line "X does Y" almost always is. (Longer posts can also be, but the one-liner is a heavy signal.)
Whataboutism is often used to generalize the subject, which isn’t a fallacy.
When something negative about the US is posted: "Downfall of an empire!"
I think for most of HN's readership, China is the current Big Bad. There will be exceptions, like there always are for anything, but in general this will be true.
The US is something to be criticized because many HN readers either live in the US or interact with US companies/tech. Critiquing what one knows is to be expected. But they do not consistently describe every action of an American company, business or initiative as some sort of lie or conspiracy to suppress dissent. Some companies, they do; but many they do not. What would be HN's readership instinctive reaction to a mainland Chinese company that claimed to be like YC?
I think the parent comment was referring to this comment section. If you scroll down and read the grayed-out comments, there are indeed quite a few people trying to argue that "everybody does it" as a way of downplaying this.
The rise of King Xi should demonstrate that culturally China is still hundreds of years behind the West.
It's sort of the same with politics. You expect more from countries you see as sharing most of our cultural values. That's one of the reasons Israel for example is criticized much more than worst human rights offenders.
I conjecture that they'd prefer if somebody (i.e. them) had preferential access
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
> the Committee found ample evidence to suggest that the Russian government was developing and implementing capabilities to interfere in the 2016 elections, including undermining confidence in U.S. democratic institutions and voting processes.
Calling it hysteria is counterproductive. With that said, I'm not sure what happened or what has been done since.
Also, weaponising facts is not a good way to increase public confidence in a democratic process.
Or is this supposed to be one part of a larger effort, tasked to work on stories that are actually of global concern, having nothing to do with Shanghai?
Of course it's important for the CCP to shape opinion abroad, it's seeking to supplant the US as a global power and needs the soft-influence that the US has.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/07/houston-rockets-gm-morey-del...
The has the power it does because, aside from being very rich, before the 20th century they made extremely reasonable foreign policy decisions.
The US has been losing influence for some decades already.
International relations are indeed law of the jungle though, if that's what you mean.
The authorities used a phrase common among China’s internet police that refers to tracking down the actual person behind a social media account: “touching the ground.” With growing frequency, the country’s internet police have hunted down and threatened internet users who voice their opinions. At first, its agents focused on local social media platforms. In 2018, they began a new campaign to detain users of Twitter inside China — account owners who had found ways around the government’s blocks — and force them to delete their accounts.
Now, the campaign has extended to Chinese citizens who live outside of China. The document spells out how the Shanghai police want to discover the identities of people behind certain accounts and to trace their users’ connections to the mainland. Its officers can then threaten family members in China or detain the account holders when they return to the country in order to compel online critics to delete posts or even entire accounts.
The supplier should publish designated content on overseas forums. They should increase the number of views of the post and ensure that the post appears at the top of the forum. The service should be provided at least 10 times per month. Page 14 of the bidding document detailing what services the police required.
Where are those proof-of-biological-existence services to counter this? And are they lacking because the platform owners are disincentivized for some reason?
The Republicans influence FoxNews.
The Democrats influence CNN.
Why wouldn't China also influence some outlets?
It's a free market, you don't like a media source, you are free to use one suitable to your bias.
There are laws and rules designed to safeguard open and free exchange of information and opinions, and covert influence is regularly forbidden.
The big difference is that domestic influence is much easier to (eventually) unveil (see Watergate, Snowden, panama papers etc.). Foreign influence is harder to detect if it comes from a country that executes its whistleblowers and disappears its critics.
Advertising, lobbying, PR, think tanks, ... are all legal. They are all in the market for manipulation.
When a think tank expert comes on TV and talks in favor of (or against) building an oil pipeline, they will briefly announce that "X is from the Open House think tank", but not mention "a know oil company defender".
Covert manipulation is mostly sanctioned through platform TOS and laws.
When Ford pays money to product place one of it's cars in a movie, that might be declared and invoiced in some contract, but you as a film watcher will never know it (unless they make a point of announcing it). So please explain how movie product placement is not covert.
The same with PR, think tanks, and a lot of advertising.
As usual, they represent a spectrum of desirability, harm, regulation and sanctions. Complete transparency to the public is of course an utopian goal.
The key here is that political influence is handled very differently from commercial influence. Regulation of un-branded advertisements vary by country with some being more lenient and others more strict.
But political content is frequently held to higher standards, and should be.
Product placing a Ford truck and guns versus a Tesla car and rainbow t-shirts.
This is akin to FoxNews or CNN presenting a poll where they just made up fake data.
This is akin to FoxNews or CNN interviewing someone and saying that they're "an independent voter" when they're actually a paid spokesperson for a political party.
If comments and votes/likes/etc. come in without someone saying that they're paid-for views, it's very different.
China can certainly influence media outlets in ways that one would consider fair. They can push CNN to have a Chinese Government Spokesperson interviewed. They would say a pro-China message, but viewers would be aware that they're a paid spokesperson.
In the US, the FTC requires that paid promotion be disclosed because there's a difference between someone pushing a product because they're getting paid for it and someone talking about something they like. Similarly, there's a certain moral duty to disclose when you're being paid to push certain views/agendas.
Likewise, we all hate fake reviews on products. This process is basically getting lots of fake social media accounts to give you "fake reviews" along with the impression of many people (who are actually fake) validating those fake reviews as real.
We see it here on HN. People writing from mostly anonymous accounts will say things like, "full disclosure, I work at X, but not on anything related to Y." The reason why is that we feel we should be honest. We're (hopefully) not pushing agendas on here for money. We're just saying things that we think.
I think China should be able to tweet things from government-labeled accounts to try and influence people. But what the article describes is basically a fake review problem. Shady companies hire people with fake accounts to post positive reviews. There's a reason people hate that.
> It's a free market
It is not a free market. The US govt. can't influence popular media inside China.
Facebook and Twitter need to handle this issue. This type of stuff is going on meanwhile they’re banning people for the stupidest most innocuous actions.
China's astroturfing for example has gotten so bad, that the "50 cent army" meme has become pervasive and well-known to mostly anyone that spends time online.
I honestly worry that with the development around language models like GPT-3, the internet as we know it will be completely blanketed with astro-turfed content by language models and low-paid contractors.
And generic troll posts are nothing new and the comment sections under most news articles not worth reading as of today already.
And if wars could be started because of shitposting bots - then there is something very wrong with the decision making of when to start wars.
It's actually not. In global politics actors rarely engage in things their peers don't. It seems to me that this is rather ultimately something more like finding the most wildly looking thing about how other culture manages information flows and PR and focusing optics on it.
> I honestly worry that with the development around language models like GPT-3, the internet as we know it will be completely blanketed with astro-turfed content by language models and low-paid contractors.
Tbh I think that we had already passed this point, with all the low-grade SEO and myriads of copy-paste clickbait internet-tabloids. The internet has already drowned in low-grade media-content and language models would hardly change anything fundamentally in that matter.
Basically. Western reporting trying to overindex PRC influence campaigns as part of manufacturing consent has gotten so bad that useful idiots in the west start to reflexively accuse 50C everywhere. And brainwashed enough to genuinely believe it. Official 50C operates domestically, not abroad. Even then, 50c posting is characterized by spamming low effort platitudes instead of high effort engagement. PRC isn't wasting valuable human capita with English proficiency to argue/troll on platforms like HN or Reddit. Millions sympathetic to PRC opinions like diaspora / VPN users do that on their own free time. To date, PRC influence campaigns are limited to a hundreds / low thousands of accounts boosting discourse of official accounts on Twitter and Facebook. So far, they've been low effort campaigns with poor reach. But repetitive headlines tries to insinuate otherwise.
PRC will probably harness GPT-3 to exploit asymmetry in censorship ability. They just haven't yet.
Just because a meme got popular on the internet doesn't make it true.
In the case of 50 cent army, it got popular because it's the easiest way to shut down pro-China argument without refuting their points.
There are many platform reports on state-sponsored influence, and they routinely do not name Germany and France.
Instead, the overall picture of perpetrators is that of authoritarian regimes.
Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms regularly publish (and in some countries are required by law to publish) reports on coordinated inauthentic behavior.
Example: https://about.fb.com/news/2021/07/june-2021-coordinated-inau...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Threat_Research_Intellig...
> Campaigns operated by JTRIG have broadly fallen into two categories; cyber attacks and propaganda efforts. The propaganda efforts (named "Online Covert Action"[3] utilize "mass messaging" and the "pushing [of] stories" via the medium of Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and YouTube.[2] Online "false flag" operations are also used by JTRIG against targets.[2]
I's pretty clear to me that every country does this, and it's only the countries without any political sway over Facebook, et al that end up in the 'inauthentic behavior' reports.
>The Shanghai police are looking to create hundreds of fake accounts on Twitter, Facebook and other major social media platforms. The police department emphasizes that the task is time sensitive, suggesting that it wants to be ready to unleash the accounts quickly to steer discussion.
I'm not arguing in favor of Facebook at all, shut them down and lock up Zuck, but I'm simply saying "careful what you wish for".
So block chain has been touted as an advanced tech by Xi, you'll notice that it's adoption is never free. The line that crossing would result into hard to predict consequences is itself intractable.