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Comment by pseudocomposer | Hacker News Reader

What was pro-China about the comment you responded to exactly? It was anti-multinational-corporation, for sure. But it literally put China in the same category as those corporations.

I’m not that your post is suspicious; I’m saying outright that you are either a CIA/corporate spook or being manipulated by them. Any criticism of the companies that have dismantled American unions, healthcare, education, childcare, elder care, and more, for the sake of shareholder profits, seems to be unjustifiably labeled “pro-China” or “terrorist” or some other label by some anonymous person who hasn’t really contributed anything to the community otherwise.

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You need to pretend you are playing Civ III.

The implied reason is that it is bad for "player A" to not be able to fool their subjects, while it is good for "player B" that "player A" can't.

Thus pro- or anti- A or B.

No universiality or like philosophic morality reasoning at all involved. Just silly reductionism.

> The implied reason is that it is bad for "player A" to not be able to fool their subjects, while it is good for "player B" that "player A" can't.

That was essentially the response after the most impactful example of Russian interference: when Russian hackers leaked DNC emails proving collusion against Sanders by the DNC and the Clinton campaign. The Democrats deflected by blaming Russia for exposing the truth. Many people argued that it was unfair that only DNC emails were leaked.

We could fairly reduce the DNC's defense to: it is bad for "player A" (the DNC) to not be able to fool their subjects, while it is good for "player B" (Trump and Russia) that "player A" can't.

The DNC even doubled down by suing Trump and others, as well as Russia, over the leaks. The lawsuit was dismissed with prejudice because

> The judge said the other defendants [Trump, Wikileaks, and others] "did not participate in any wrongdoing in obtaining the materials in the first place" and were therefore within the law in publishing the information. He also said that the DNC's argument was "entirely divorced from the facts"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Commi...

> What was pro-China about the comment you responded to exactly?

The subject article advances the view that China is attempting to influence the US election. The comment I responded to downplays and undermines this sentiment (i.e. "don't worry about China. Look at this other issue.") If I were a state actor, this would be a prime signal to amplify. It's a real opinion, it's not easy to refute, it could legitimately be seen as an up voted comment, and it conveniently serves the state's interests. Hacker News has no shortage of contrarian views, which I like. This particular type of contrarian hot take is just one that I've noticed to fit a pattern that I've seen in other threads with topics critical to China.

"Everyone who disagrees with me is a Russian Bot"

Freedom of Speech means foreign propaganda should be as welcome as domestic propaganda. Tolerated by government, and taken no more seriously by the public than any other advertising (Red bull will not give you wings, for example).

I'm consistently contrarian and ornery about how much of the media is propaganda from whichever source. "They're bad because they're propaganda" from an outlet that assured us vaccines and lock-downs would work; Hunter's laptop was "Russian disinformation", That Snowden is a traitor and the Russians also stole an election from Hillary ... its the pot calling the kettle black.

I neither said I agreed or disagreed with your post, and I absolutely agree that you ought to be able to post it. Normally I wouldn't bother calling out how I think the signal's being exploited, but it's actually the exact on-topic conversation for this thread. Maybe you're fine with it, but even if you ignore the political incentives, it still degrades the quality of discussion for sites subject to it. I think many people put it into a similar class as spam. Very few defend its protection. Sites like FB, X, and HN have that reason alone to address it when they're being exploited this way.

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