https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If you want further explanation, there's many years' worth at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... and you'll find other links there that go deeply into the matter.
I guess what I'm asking is, how do you guys deal with second hand shilling and PR?
When feelings are running high, of course, it can often be too hard to do that. In that case, there's a plan B: chalk it up to someone being wrong on the internet, let go, and walk away. When hot under the collar, wait to cool down before posting (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). The internet is mostly wrong about most things anyhow.
People sometimes object to this answer: isn't that just giving in to manipulation, or at least the effects of manipulation? There's a thought experiment that I find helpful here: imagine a Sufficiently Smart Manipulator (SSM) who is disingenuous and totally sinister, but also clever enough to reliably evade detection [2]. I think most people can agree that either SSMs already exist (and by definition, we're not clever enough to catch them), or soon will exist. So we're either facing this situation already, or had better get ready for it. What should we do in that case?
The answer is that we should do what we ought to be doing anyway: answering bad arguments with better ones, bad information with better information, etc., while remaining in good connection with each other. It's in the interest of SSMs to divide and polarize the community, and it's in the community's interest not to let that happen, and instead to pool our energies to figure out the truth together [3]. The answer to the Sufficiently Smart Manipulator is the sufficiently healthy community [4].
The value of the SSM thought experiment is that it directs attention away from the question of detecting manipulators, which is notoriously unreliable (people succumb to all sorts of fantasies about this, and the evidence nearly always points the other way [4, 5]), and toward the question of what positive things we can do to build up a sort of immune system. There's no way to know whether it will work, but in the long run, and maybe the short run too, I don't see what other option we have.
[1] The reason for that last bit is that it introduces a human, relational element into the argument, which makes it much easier for people to do curious, reflective conversation instead of reacting reflexively and hardening into battle mode (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23959679).
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
[3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398725
[5] https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
>well over 99.9% of internet complaints about astroturfing and shillage are demonstrably unfounded, and also full of poison that we don't want here).
This is firmly in the 0.1%. https://twitter.com/honglilai
There is a reason why I post these things on my public handle: to make the point that I'm not just a random bot. Unlike some other people, who post anonymously out of fear of being socially ostricized, and who have been wrongly called "bots" or "shills" merely for having a different opinion, I choose not to be afraid and not to be silenced.
You should just accept that my opinions are my own, are genuine, and are independently constructed without anyone instructing me. And that merely having a different opinion than the one you want to accept, doesn't make that person a shill.
On a topic like this one, the cumulative effect of such (unintentional) poison is literally to hound users off the site for ethnic/racial/nationalistic reasons [1]. That's definitely not the community any of us wants to have here. Yet it has happened here more than once. If you read through some of the links at https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... you'll find the history. Here's one example of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358.
Also, I compiled this list of past moderation explanations a while ago for a different user who was worried about this stuff on HN. Perhaps it will be helpful to others who are worried: https://news.ycombinator.com/chinamod
FooBarWidget is definitely breaking the site guidelines by having posted almost nothing but arguments about China for the last couple of years. We don't allow that, for reasons I just explained elsewhere (and many times previously): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29717102. But that's a separate issue. Someone breaking the site guidelines in that way is not evidence of bad faith, let alone being a shill or foreign agent. It is far more likely to be evidence that they feel strongly about a topic for legitimate reasons, such as family background.
All of which is to say: you broke the site guidelines badly here, so please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and please don't do that again.
You realized yourself that this guy is talking nonstop about china for the past years, did you bother to read for a second what this guy is actually regurgitating? They are certified CCP talking points white washing and justifying ethnic cleansing, are you that stuck up and confused to be blind to that?
You criticize people who call out dangerous and manipulative narratives, but protect those who are demonstrably and with certainty propagandists, citing guidelines which they are also clearly breaking to begin with.
Instead of copy pasting those guidelines try reading them yourself once in a while. You probably would even classify a holocaust denier as someone who has 'just strong opinions'. Go touch some grass Dang, this forum has completely melted your brain and spare people your self righteous stuck up babble.
You either have some severe conflict of interest in this discussion or extremely naive and out of touch or straight up evil. My bet is on all three.
My GP comment links to cases where users were abused and even hounded off this site by ethnic/national mob behaviors. Those users were innocent—the evidence for this was overwhelming. It was the mobs who were at fault. I think that's shameful. Like most HN users, I sympathize with underdogs, and seeing people get ganged up on gets my dander up. I'm confident that the vast majority of the community here would agree with me about that—at least when their own passions (and fears) aren't activated. None of us want to be that sort of community, but it can easily end up that way by default, so we need to take conscious care to avoid it.
I've asked FooBarWidget to stop posting exclusively in China-related arguments, because that's against the site guidelines in its own right, but that's hardly proof of, or even an iota of evidence for, the cloak-and-dagger fantasies that internet users love to sling at people in minority positions. Those accusations are against the HN guidelines for deep and good reasons. Therefore you can't post like this here, and I've banned the account.
One sign of how foolish these fantasies are is the certainty with which internet warriors declaim them. They never weigh evidence or consider other possibilities. It's always "demonstrably and with certainty"! What good fortune to be surrounded by enemies who are so evil, yet so dumb as to give themselves away at every turn. It's the best of all worlds: a chicken in every pot, a communist under every bed, and a spy (or three) in every internet thread.
What's poignant is that the users who get abused so dramatically in Western forums like this are often the very ones trying to defend and articulate the West to their communities back home—where they no doubt encounter similarly xenophobic feelings on the other side. They're in an impossible position. You don't have to agree with them, but you do have to drop the Boris and Natasha routine if you want to post to this forum. It is cartoonish and incurious, and would be silly if not for its malicious effects.
Just because people and outlets have a different opinion than you doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong, or "propagandists". Some people just have a different opinion, out of their own free will and independent thought, all right?
The problem with what you cite is not (only) with the outlet (CGTN), but with the source (BCI Shanghai), and also with using a red herring.