8 ms·

China launches platform to stamp out 'online rumours'

76 points by ytNumbers 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
liftbigweights 8y ago
And the dream and hope of a free and open internet suffers a death by a thousand cuts. It seems like the powerful around the world are competing with each other to see who can censor and control the internet the most. And of course they all, to the last man, claim it is for the benefit of the people.
- snaky 8y ago
  That's not exactly "powerful around the world" who are routinely vote for more censorship in democratic countries. There is no strict difference between "hate speech", "fake news" and "online rumours".
  - Bizarro 8y ago
    And many in the HN community regularly call for censorship - under the guise of "regulation".
    - mc32 8y ago
      That’s because people want freedom of speech but only their interpretation of free speech, which is why freedom of spreech, with very narrow exceptions, is crucial.
    - i_am_nomad 8y ago
      To be fair, I have never seen this on HN. You may still be right, I've just never seen it. (Maybe those calls for censorship are themselves getting censored?)
      - creaghpatr 8y ago
        Plenty of people on HN take the position that private companies should deny their platform to unsavory voices, and this position has its own spectrum of views about where those lines can/should be drawn.
      - bittcto 8y ago
        HN has a long history of censoring particular groups of people based on identity. That’s why it’s become such a monoculture (a monoculture of people generally convinced than HN is diverse, however.) Down voting things you disagree with despite being well articulated (in fact because they are well articulated) is a form of censorship here. But of course it goes much further when shadowbanning is deployed to enforce the narrow and rigid views of the moderation team. Yes, I know pointing this out means it will now happen to me. Nothing a censor hates more than thwarting the narrative they are trying to enforce. But that’s why you think it doesn’t happen here. This is the most harshly and hypocritically cultivated walled garden on the Net. (Moderators violate their own rules regularly with impunity.) Alas, I cannot abide not pointing out these abuses.
        com2kid 8y ago
        Click a checkbox in your profile and you can see those shadowbanned posts just fine. Very rarely are they well written or polite. I have yet to see well presented, civil, arguments censored. I have however seen entire threads criticizing HN and YCombinator staff, by name, be left alone.
        existencebox 8y ago
        A "third" perspective; I think there's at least some self-censorship (In certain dimensions, don't let me paint this as some universal or even majority thing) from people who tend to write civil, well presented arguments. You can read my post history if you want, and I've _certainly_ had some of my posts get greyed with rapidity (Obviously I selfishly found them to be innocuous but others clearly disagree, I find in situations where the status quo is _aggressively_ in one direction, even expressing moderation is caught in the blast radius), so I avoid the really hot subjects with a ten foot pole; you learn that it just doesn't end well, especially for those of us who have associated our professional lives with this site. You can notice this more obviously if you watch new, that certain topics reach and get to the front page VERY RAPIDLY and stay there, while others are flagged or fall off with prejudice. I'm not sure I'd call it a huge problem, and the parent post is probably a bit hyperbolic, (Certainly I give the mods benefit of the doubt, even though I've gently disagreed with dang via comment prior) but it's definitely present.
  - blacksmith_tb 8y ago
    Clearly that's an overstatement - I take it you mean that they are all cases of people calling for limits to speech, but 'hate speech' has clear legal definitions in many jurisdictions. We shouldn't omit 'libel' and 'slander' which are restrictions on free speech as well, though they rarely seem to cause too much outrage.
    - CompanionCuuube 8y ago
      The reason is the standards for "libel" and "slander" are strict enough that it is hard to falsely bring that charge, unlike "fake news".
- protoster 8y ago
  Should the internet behind the great firewall be considered a part of the global network, considering how isolated it is? I don't really consider what happens in China to be indicative of global trends. There may be similarities, for sure, but the scale is very different.
- e40 8y ago
  A free and open internet is a great equalizer. Powerful people don't like that because it can cause them to lose power. I think it is actually that simple.
- bittcto 8y ago
  Tyranny, in all its shapes and sizes, comes wrapped in claims that it is for the common good. In fact a good way to think critically about things you hear is to ask “how is the politician profiting from this law?” And noting what new powers the law gives government. If government “needs” more power with the justification of “helping people”, it may be the case that helping people is just the excuse. Government power is easy to monetize: threaten industry with worse regulations but forget the idea when you get campaign contributions, etc.
OedipusRex 8y ago
"The platform operates under the guidance of 27 government departments..." China loves bureaucracy.
eximius 8y ago
I bet Trump praises this by the end of next week.
paradite 8y ago
In 2016, before the US election, I posted this comment on problem of rumours in China and the thread turned pretty nasty: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11405320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11405320 Now with the revelation of fake news and dis-information, Western countries are scrambling to tackle this problem through fact checking. But who is the authoritative source? The west seems to believe that government should be the last candidate, but maybe China can prove it wrong and demonstrate having trust between citizens and their government. Edit: I just want to have a discussion on the trust relationship between citizens and the government, but if people feel this is going into an ideological battle, feel free to flag this comment.
- pertymcpert 8y ago
  The most likely truth is one which is sourced from multiple, non-associated entities, or ones which don't have incentive to co-operate. This would rule out the government model because they are a single source and they have a vested interest in pushing a single "truth", not to say that they're always wrong. Much like wikipedia, if you source from a diverse enough base of information and providers, you are more likely to land on the truth than not.
  - paradite 8y ago
    I don't think Wikipedia is a good example. It has suffered from vandalism and edit wars (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Edit_warring https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Edit_warring). It will only get worse when more people rely on it and more people have incentives to vandalize it. Also, it is not a source of truth, it is merely an aggregation service. So it doesn't effectively solve the problem where two sources claim the opposite and the reader doesn't know who to trust.
    - pertymcpert 8y ago
      Yes, but most of the time you will have more than two sources.
- jacknews 8y ago
dqpb 8y ago
How will this platform handle facts that are inconvenient for the moderating authority?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- protoster 8y ago
  They'll consider those facts rumors and remove them. The function of this "platform" is so vague that I don't think anyone is under any illusions that this isn't another way for the government to control public discussion.
- creaghpatr 8y ago
  They will dismiss them as dangerous conspiracy theories, just like Facebook does in America.
chroem- 8y ago
This is precisely why it is dangerous to let someone other than yourself decide what meets the criteria for "fake news." It gives the decider an opportunity to manipulate public discourse.
- umvi 8y ago
  Or "hate speech" for that matter.
  - gcb0 8y ago
    let's not start stretching things too much now.
    - bittcto 8y ago
      “Hate speech” is actually a great example. I’m a fan of the fact trans people are getting better treatment in today’s society, but if some obnoxious jerk says “there are only two genders” or “Chelsea Manning is a dude”, that may make him an asshole but it’s not a crime, it’s not aggresssion or violence. Yet “hate speech” is literally a phrase created to justify oppression against people for having opinions you don’t like. I may choose not to associate with a jerk like in my example, but the perpetrators of “hate speech” concept want to deny him basic human rights, and often do violence against him. Ironically for the “crime” of being different. Basic human rights s are rights for everyone. Genuine liberals used to advocate for the right of the KKK to march. The ACLU even filed a lawsuit Withings the past ten years defending their right to make white robes fools of themselves. When “liberals” stopped defending human rights, you lost the plot and the whole point of being liberal.
      - blt 8y ago
        Many leftists are now coming to different conclusions about free speech: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
        deleted 8y ago
gonmf 8y ago
The attack on "fake news", by any other name...
evancox100 8y ago
From the video promoting the platform: "Rumours violate individual rights; rumours create social panic; rumours cause fluctuations in the stock markets; rumours impact normal business operations; rumours blatantly attack revolutionary martyrs" One of these is not like the others... You'd think that "attacking revolutionary martyrs" would be in the government's list of pros about rumors, not cons. Or at least so I've heard
- jakebasile 8y ago
  Many communist governments consider themselves "revolutionaries", so that is likely referring to people "martyred for communism".
  - evancox100 8y ago
    Ya, I eventually figured out they were referring to people like Mao. But is Mao a typical rumor topic?? Honest question
    - jakebasile 8y ago
      No clue, I just wanted to point out what they meant by using the "revolutionary" rhetoric.
  - echevil 8y ago
    Just replace that with "national heroes" and you're all good
logfromblammo 8y ago
Sinopes.com, the Chinese Snopes.com? Dang, it's already taken.

76 points by ytNumbers 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

And the dream and hope of a free and open internet suffers a death by a thousand cuts. It seems like the powerful around the world are competing with each other to see who can censor and control the internet the most. And of course they all, to the last man, claim it is for the benefit of the people.

snaky 8y ago
That's not exactly "powerful around the world" who are routinely vote for more censorship in democratic countries. There is no strict difference between "hate speech", "fake news" and "online rumours".
- Bizarro 8y ago
  And many in the HN community regularly call for censorship - under the guise of "regulation".
  - mc32 8y ago
    That’s because people want freedom of speech but only their interpretation of free speech, which is why freedom of spreech, with very narrow exceptions, is crucial.
  - i_am_nomad 8y ago
    To be fair, I have never seen this on HN. You may still be right, I've just never seen it. (Maybe those calls for censorship are themselves getting censored?)
    - creaghpatr 8y ago
      Plenty of people on HN take the position that private companies should deny their platform to unsavory voices, and this position has its own spectrum of views about where those lines can/should be drawn.
    - bittcto 8y ago
      HN has a long history of censoring particular groups of people based on identity. That’s why it’s become such a monoculture (a monoculture of people generally convinced than HN is diverse, however.) Down voting things you disagree with despite being well articulated (in fact because they are well articulated) is a form of censorship here. But of course it goes much further when shadowbanning is deployed to enforce the narrow and rigid views of the moderation team. Yes, I know pointing this out means it will now happen to me. Nothing a censor hates more than thwarting the narrative they are trying to enforce. But that’s why you think it doesn’t happen here. This is the most harshly and hypocritically cultivated walled garden on the Net. (Moderators violate their own rules regularly with impunity.) Alas, I cannot abide not pointing out these abuses.
      - com2kid 8y ago
        Click a checkbox in your profile and you can see those shadowbanned posts just fine. Very rarely are they well written or polite. I have yet to see well presented, civil, arguments censored. I have however seen entire threads criticizing HN and YCombinator staff, by name, be left alone.
        existencebox 8y ago
        A "third" perspective; I think there's at least some self-censorship (In certain dimensions, don't let me paint this as some universal or even majority thing) from people who tend to write civil, well presented arguments. You can read my post history if you want, and I've _certainly_ had some of my posts get greyed with rapidity (Obviously I selfishly found them to be innocuous but others clearly disagree, I find in situations where the status quo is _aggressively_ in one direction, even expressing moderation is caught in the blast radius), so I avoid the really hot subjects with a ten foot pole; you learn that it just doesn't end well, especially for those of us who have associated our professional lives with this site. You can notice this more obviously if you watch new, that certain topics reach and get to the front page VERY RAPIDLY and stay there, while others are flagged or fall off with prejudice. I'm not sure I'd call it a huge problem, and the parent post is probably a bit hyperbolic, (Certainly I give the mods benefit of the doubt, even though I've gently disagreed with dang via comment prior) but it's definitely present.
- blacksmith_tb 8y ago
  Clearly that's an overstatement - I take it you mean that they are all cases of people calling for limits to speech, but 'hate speech' has clear legal definitions in many jurisdictions. We shouldn't omit 'libel' and 'slander' which are restrictions on free speech as well, though they rarely seem to cause too much outrage.
  - CompanionCuuube 8y ago
    The reason is the standards for "libel" and "slander" are strict enough that it is hard to falsely bring that charge, unlike "fake news".
protoster 8y ago
Should the internet behind the great firewall be considered a part of the global network, considering how isolated it is? I don't really consider what happens in China to be indicative of global trends. There may be similarities, for sure, but the scale is very different.
e40 8y ago
A free and open internet is a great equalizer. Powerful people don't like that because it can cause them to lose power. I think it is actually that simple.
bittcto 8y ago
Tyranny, in all its shapes and sizes, comes wrapped in claims that it is for the common good. In fact a good way to think critically about things you hear is to ask “how is the politician profiting from this law?” And noting what new powers the law gives government. If government “needs” more power with the justification of “helping people”, it may be the case that helping people is just the excuse. Government power is easy to monetize: threaten industry with worse regulations but forget the idea when you get campaign contributions, etc.

OedipusRex 8y ago

"The platform operates under the guidance of 27 government departments..." China loves bureaucracy.

eximius 8y ago

I bet Trump praises this by the end of next week.

paradite 8y ago

In 2016, before the US election, I posted this comment on problem of rumours in China and the thread turned pretty nasty: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11405320 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11405320 Now with the revelation of fake news and dis-information, Western countries are scrambling to tackle this problem through fact checking. But who is the authoritative source? The west seems to believe that government should be the last candidate, but maybe China can prove it wrong and demonstrate having trust between citizens and their government. Edit: I just want to have a discussion on the trust relationship between citizens and the government, but if people feel this is going into an ideological battle, feel free to flag this comment.

pertymcpert 8y ago
The most likely truth is one which is sourced from multiple, non-associated entities, or ones which don't have incentive to co-operate. This would rule out the government model because they are a single source and they have a vested interest in pushing a single "truth", not to say that they're always wrong. Much like wikipedia, if you source from a diverse enough base of information and providers, you are more likely to land on the truth than not.
- paradite 8y ago
  I don't think Wikipedia is a good example. It has suffered from vandalism and edit wars (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Edit_warring https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Edit_warring). It will only get worse when more people rely on it and more people have incentives to vandalize it. Also, it is not a source of truth, it is merely an aggregation service. So it doesn't effectively solve the problem where two sources claim the opposite and the reader doesn't know who to trust.
  - pertymcpert 8y ago
    Yes, but most of the time you will have more than two sources.
jacknews 8y ago

dqpb 8y ago

How will this platform handle facts that are inconvenient for the moderating authority?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
protoster 8y ago
They'll consider those facts rumors and remove them. The function of this "platform" is so vague that I don't think anyone is under any illusions that this isn't another way for the government to control public discussion.
creaghpatr 8y ago
They will dismiss them as dangerous conspiracy theories, just like Facebook does in America.

chroem- 8y ago

This is precisely why it is dangerous to let someone other than yourself decide what meets the criteria for "fake news." It gives the decider an opportunity to manipulate public discourse.

umvi 8y ago
Or "hate speech" for that matter.
- gcb0 8y ago
  let's not start stretching things too much now.
  - bittcto 8y ago
    “Hate speech” is actually a great example. I’m a fan of the fact trans people are getting better treatment in today’s society, but if some obnoxious jerk says “there are only two genders” or “Chelsea Manning is a dude”, that may make him an asshole but it’s not a crime, it’s not aggresssion or violence. Yet “hate speech” is literally a phrase created to justify oppression against people for having opinions you don’t like. I may choose not to associate with a jerk like in my example, but the perpetrators of “hate speech” concept want to deny him basic human rights, and often do violence against him. Ironically for the “crime” of being different. Basic human rights s are rights for everyone. Genuine liberals used to advocate for the right of the KKK to march. The ACLU even filed a lawsuit Withings the past ten years defending their right to make white robes fools of themselves. When “liberals” stopped defending human rights, you lost the plot and the whole point of being liberal.
    - blt 8y ago
      Many leftists are now coming to different conclusions about free speech: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
      - deleted 8y ago

gonmf 8y ago

The attack on "fake news", by any other name...

evancox100 8y ago

From the video promoting the platform: "Rumours violate individual rights; rumours create social panic; rumours cause fluctuations in the stock markets; rumours impact normal business operations; rumours blatantly attack revolutionary martyrs" One of these is not like the others... You'd think that "attacking revolutionary martyrs" would be in the government's list of pros about rumors, not cons. Or at least so I've heard

jakebasile 8y ago
Many communist governments consider themselves "revolutionaries", so that is likely referring to people "martyred for communism".
- evancox100 8y ago
  Ya, I eventually figured out they were referring to people like Mao. But is Mao a typical rumor topic?? Honest question
  - jakebasile 8y ago
    No clue, I just wanted to point out what they meant by using the "revolutionary" rhetoric.
- echevil 8y ago
  Just replace that with "national heroes" and you're all good

logfromblammo 8y ago

Sinopes.com, the Chinese Snopes.com? Dang, it's already taken.