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Agreed. My point is kind of that China has been poisoning the well for years by employing paid commenters and schills to parrot the exact same arguments. And th

Agreed. My point is kind of that China has been poisoning the well for years by employing paid commenters and schills to parrot the exact same arguments. And then when anyone points this out, they're accused of poisoning the debate :) This guy is entitled to his opinions, but unfortunately the entire pro-China position is untrustworthy because of this (ref my previous comment).

krapp 10y ago
>And then when anyone points this out, they're accused of poisoning the debate :) Because they do. If you're wrong, you're doing their work for them by sowing discord and mistrust in the community. If you're right, you're doing their work for them by distracting from the subject and making the thread about the threat of the enemy within. The one thing you probably won't accomplish is getting them to stop. The only way to win the game is not to play by their rules, and to not make it personal. If you really believe someone is a shill, report it to the admins, they claim to take this sort of thing seriously.
- xnull2guest 10y ago
  Please report this to the moderators (I looked but don't know how), as I would like to be vindicated. There's a downvote brigade on my posts right now and anything I want to contribute gets detailed into accusations of my being some kind of agent.
justicezyx 10y ago
> has been poisoning the well for years by employing paid commenters and schills to parrot the exact same arguments. What do you mean? Are you saying Chinese government paid people in US to do propaganda for the sake of Chinese leaders? I do not think that's any surprising. You should expect any country to do something to influence their competitors or enemies alike. But you seem imply that the poster you accused was connected with Chinese government. You should not automatically link the government activity with personal behavior on HN. If there is an factual link between the poster's comments and government sponsorship, then go for it, expose the facts. The tactic of someone behaving pro-China, is certainly a "wu mao", is nothing better than claiming one is a traitor on the ground that he accused US govenment's any wrongdoing. Could you elaborate?
- westiseast 10y ago
  Sure. Sorry for length of this then... In my head at least, I'm not accusing this guy specifically of being a paid commenter or operative or agent. I have no evidence of that. I feel like its actually irrelevant whether he's paid or genuine. I'm saying that the content of his comments, the tone of the answers and the rhetorical techniques are basically the same as those seen in hundreds of threads about China where genuine discussion gets derailed by pro-CCP commenters. IMO, genuine discussion about China is difficult/impossible unless there's a recognition and backlash against the poor quality of pro-CCP comments. Eg: He brings up the USA immediately and repeatedly on a post about China (whataboutism). The underlying message is consistently 'the USA is worse. The USA is the same. If the USA does it, why are you attacking China instead of looking after your own problems?' He immediately claims the original article is blatant propaganda rather than discussing it earnestly. Similarly, he claims everyone else is living in a media bubble and their sources are not trustworthy (Economist, NYT, 'western media'). He doesn't really mention any news sources of his own that might indicate his own 'media bubble'. He writes fairly frequent outright lies ("[China] are in and have not been in wars, are leaders of the UN peacekeeping forces, and do not militarily interfere in other countries' affairs") which can be fairly easily destroyed if you can use Google. To my eyes, a thread about China has pretty quickly become a quagmire of multiple complex and subjective situations related to China, where mud and suspicion is being thrown on everyone, and any opinion anyone projects that might be anti-China is cast as subjective, biased, unresearched etc. Generally speaking, anywhere you go on the internet where people discuss China-related issues publicly end up like this. Same goes for a lot of Russia related issues discussed in English. I'm sure if you are reading the Arabic internet and bump into issues that the US paid-commenting/auto-commenting systems are interested in, it's the same thing. It's a specific goal of government-sponsored commenting campaigns that you don't try to win arguments; you just muddy the waters, make everyone sound unreliable, destroy reasonable debate. It's a sticky situation. To my mind, the comments that user posted were immediate red flags. I don't think a single one of his comments added to the substantive debate about the original article. Mine didn't either; it was a stupid response to the poor quality of his comments. Oh well...

krapp 10y ago

>And then when anyone points this out, they're accused of poisoning the debate :) Because they do. If you're wrong, you're doing their work for them by sowing discord and mistrust in the community. If you're right, you're doing their work for them by distracting from the subject and making the thread about the threat of the enemy within. The one thing you probably won't accomplish is getting them to stop. The only way to win the game is not to play by their rules, and to not make it personal. If you really believe someone is a shill, report it to the admins, they claim to take this sort of thing seriously.

xnull2guest 10y ago
Please report this to the moderators (I looked but don't know how), as I would like to be vindicated. There's a downvote brigade on my posts right now and anything I want to contribute gets detailed into accusations of my being some kind of agent.

justicezyx 10y ago

> has been poisoning the well for years by employing paid commenters and schills to parrot the exact same arguments. What do you mean? Are you saying Chinese government paid people in US to do propaganda for the sake of Chinese leaders? I do not think that's any surprising. You should expect any country to do something to influence their competitors or enemies alike. But you seem imply that the poster you accused was connected with Chinese government. You should not automatically link the government activity with personal behavior on HN. If there is an factual link between the poster's comments and government sponsorship, then go for it, expose the facts. The tactic of someone behaving pro-China, is certainly a "wu mao", is nothing better than claiming one is a traitor on the ground that he accused US govenment's any wrongdoing. Could you elaborate?

westiseast 10y ago
Sure. Sorry for length of this then... In my head at least, I'm not accusing this guy specifically of being a paid commenter or operative or agent. I have no evidence of that. I feel like its actually irrelevant whether he's paid or genuine. I'm saying that the content of his comments, the tone of the answers and the rhetorical techniques are basically the same as those seen in hundreds of threads about China where genuine discussion gets derailed by pro-CCP commenters. IMO, genuine discussion about China is difficult/impossible unless there's a recognition and backlash against the poor quality of pro-CCP comments. Eg: He brings up the USA immediately and repeatedly on a post about China (whataboutism). The underlying message is consistently 'the USA is worse. The USA is the same. If the USA does it, why are you attacking China instead of looking after your own problems?' He immediately claims the original article is blatant propaganda rather than discussing it earnestly. Similarly, he claims everyone else is living in a media bubble and their sources are not trustworthy (Economist, NYT, 'western media'). He doesn't really mention any news sources of his own that might indicate his own 'media bubble'. He writes fairly frequent outright lies ("[China] are in and have not been in wars, are leaders of the UN peacekeeping forces, and do not militarily interfere in other countries' affairs") which can be fairly easily destroyed if you can use Google. To my eyes, a thread about China has pretty quickly become a quagmire of multiple complex and subjective situations related to China, where mud and suspicion is being thrown on everyone, and any opinion anyone projects that might be anti-China is cast as subjective, biased, unresearched etc. Generally speaking, anywhere you go on the internet where people discuss China-related issues publicly end up like this. Same goes for a lot of Russia related issues discussed in English. I'm sure if you are reading the Arabic internet and bump into issues that the US paid-commenting/auto-commenting systems are interested in, it's the same thing. It's a specific goal of government-sponsored commenting campaigns that you don't try to win arguments; you just muddy the waters, make everyone sound unreliable, destroy reasonable debate. It's a sticky situation. To my mind, the comments that user posted were immediate red flags. I don't think a single one of his comments added to the substantive debate about the original article. Mine didn't either; it was a stupid response to the poor quality of his comments. Oh well...