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Throwaway because my real account can be easily linked to my real name. Being a Chinese living in the US, thoughts: 1) Kudos for doing this experiment - one o

Throwaway because my real account can be easily linked to my real name. Being a Chinese living in the US, thoughts: 1) Kudos for doing this experiment - one of the authors works at Peking University and I imagine there must have been at least some pushback for him. I hope this indicates a greater trend where academics gets free passes from censorship but maybe not. That being said... 2) Maybe things have changed but a few years ago the GFW wasn't really a hinderance for me browsing YouTube or Wikipedia or anything. If asked in a survey "have you ever tried to get past the GFW" of course I would have answered no. Of course I am a computer person, but I wonder how valid the findings are given my anecdotal evidence. 3) There are fake news everywhere, both on pro and on anti Chinese government news sources. One thing I have observed is that in China at least among the educated population there's a lower level of trust in pro government news when compared to the trust level in anti Chinese government news in the US educated population (assuming HN is a somewhat representative subset of said population). 4) Chinese media quality is low at least IMHO. Gossips always win over important news, international news are not shown prominently. I would rather read NYT or WSJ or WaPo. 5) Side comment, a lot of the comments on HN are anti Chinese government and sometimes anti Chinese. I don't care about the former, but Chinese people are people and anti Chinese is not cool.

codezero 7y ago
Thanks for your comment, it's super informative! 3) I think (I have no data! :() that HN has a larger majority of Chinese and Indian users than American ones at this point, I base this on what appears to be a larger investment in technical education by those two countries in the past few decades, and the attraction of those folks to the SV tech scene. I could be way off, but would love to see coarse geo-IP data from HN visitors :) 5) Agreed. I am all for being critical of governments behaving badly, not just China's, and it's a bummer when folks couple people to their governments. It's a sure-fire way to make those people support their governments.
- throwaway_9cc8 7y ago
  Thank you, that means a lot! Alexa and SimilarWeb both agreed US is still by a large margin where the most traffic come from, with India being in the top five. Can't attest to the accuracy but at least it's data. Consider the fact that English is a (required in school but still) foreign language in China, it's probably not super popular (back) there, although I could be (happily) incorrect.
  - codezero 7y ago
    This is much more likely to be accurate than I am. Thanks and sorry for doing real work :) My only challenge which is just as pointless as the previous is that I believe these tools rely on data gathered from browser plugins and ISPs which might bid them to US audiences. With that said the English speaking fact is very strong. India’s tech literate population is dominated by English so I’ll stand behind that assumption but you are almost certainly right that this would put Chinese visitors in a bit of a minority. Thanks so much for engaging. HN needs more of this good faith back and forth, as does the Internet in general.
d0100 7y ago
My comments regarding China are always anti-goverment. But considering how the Chinese people have no say whatsoever in their government, it's hard to look at China-the-people as having any amount of agency. Of course, that a wrong view to have, but it is the first impression. Even more so when you consider the culture and history of CHina.
- ataturk 7y ago
  Mine too. I can't get past totalitarians, sorry. It's a virus that must be cured for humanity to progress.
ilamont 7y ago
a lot of the comments on HN are anti Chinese government and sometimes anti Chinese. It's not just an HN problem. I think there's a real danger of anti-Chinese Communist Party sentiment fanning anti-Han Chinese people sentiment.
anon45707 7y ago
Could you give some examples of what you consider "anti-Chinese"? As a Westerner I'm somewhat confused by this. I have a Chinese friend who moved to the west in his early teens. We were discussing an article that was critical of Chinese trade practices and I was surprised that he perceived the article as "anti-Chinese". He seemed to take personal offense. I was kind of perplexed by this reaction. I mean, in any sense that the author of the article was "anti-Chinese", they would presumably be "pro-Hong Kongese" or "pro-Taiwanese". So it's clearly not an ethnic/racial thing. Or is it not that clear? I think the conventional Western stance is that the citizens of China are being oppressed by their authoritarian government and that they, as a whole, would prefer to live in an open democracy like we do. You say you "don't care" about criticism of the Chinese government. As a Westerner, I don't understand why you're (only) indifferent about it. I mean, there were a couple million people on the streets of Hong Kong this weekend that are presumably more than indifferent about the Chinese government. So help me understand your point of view. Like for example, how do you feel about the U.S. actions against Huawei (in terms of being "anti-Chinese")?
- throwaway_9cc8 7y ago
  Good point - I shouldn't have said "don't care" about the criticisms - "don't mind" is a lot better. The Chinese government need more reasonable criticisms. As for "anti-Chinese" vs. pro something else - if I may, that's a false dichotomy. There are a lot more commonalities among people from mainland Chinese/Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macau than differences (practically none if/when the human race rises above this nationality bullshit). Ethnically speaking >90% of the population from those places are Han (there is an uncomfortable undercurrent of (at times reverse) Han chauvinism that I won't go into). I couldn't find (after searching through a couple recent HN threads) positively voted comments that are anti-Chinese so people and mods are doing a great job. OTOH, even downvoted and flagged posts are still representing opinions, unpopular as the content might be. Or maybe I am overly sensitive. As for Huawei, I don't have love for any Crony capitalism or Plutocracy. They are doing some good research work though, and people working there are still people.
- est 7y ago
  > critical of Chinese trade practices and I was surprised that he perceived the article as "anti-Chinese". For many Chinese, "learning" is semantically equal to "emulating". e.g. Learning to walk, learning to write, learning everything else. It's natural that the most advanced technological countries should influence the rest, like the rich is supposed to fund the poor and the strong should help the weak. And "learning" fast should be praised, like in schools. It's like a teacher shows off its skills and told students it's forbidden for follow? Tons of Chinese can not get the hang of this. One more reason many Chinese people lost hope for the US during this trade war, is because it's argued that China does not practice "rule of the law", then Rubio introduced a bill that would nullity all Huawei patents registered in the US. So for many people, the US laws are as manipulative as China's. This is explosive WTF.

codezero 7y ago

Thanks for your comment, it's super informative! 3) I think (I have no data! :() that HN has a larger majority of Chinese and Indian users than American ones at this point, I base this on what appears to be a larger investment in technical education by those two countries in the past few decades, and the attraction of those folks to the SV tech scene. I could be way off, but would love to see coarse geo-IP data from HN visitors :) 5) Agreed. I am all for being critical of governments behaving badly, not just China's, and it's a bummer when folks couple people to their governments. It's a sure-fire way to make those people support their governments.

throwaway_9cc8 7y ago
Thank you, that means a lot! Alexa and SimilarWeb both agreed US is still by a large margin where the most traffic come from, with India being in the top five. Can't attest to the accuracy but at least it's data. Consider the fact that English is a (required in school but still) foreign language in China, it's probably not super popular (back) there, although I could be (happily) incorrect.
- codezero 7y ago
  This is much more likely to be accurate than I am. Thanks and sorry for doing real work :) My only challenge which is just as pointless as the previous is that I believe these tools rely on data gathered from browser plugins and ISPs which might bid them to US audiences. With that said the English speaking fact is very strong. India’s tech literate population is dominated by English so I’ll stand behind that assumption but you are almost certainly right that this would put Chinese visitors in a bit of a minority. Thanks so much for engaging. HN needs more of this good faith back and forth, as does the Internet in general.

d0100 7y ago

My comments regarding China are always anti-goverment. But considering how the Chinese people have no say whatsoever in their government, it's hard to look at China-the-people as having any amount of agency. Of course, that a wrong view to have, but it is the first impression. Even more so when you consider the culture and history of CHina.

ataturk 7y ago
Mine too. I can't get past totalitarians, sorry. It's a virus that must be cured for humanity to progress.

ilamont 7y ago

a lot of the comments on HN are anti Chinese government and sometimes anti Chinese. It's not just an HN problem. I think there's a real danger of anti-Chinese Communist Party sentiment fanning anti-Han Chinese people sentiment.

anon45707 7y ago

Could you give some examples of what you consider "anti-Chinese"? As a Westerner I'm somewhat confused by this. I have a Chinese friend who moved to the west in his early teens. We were discussing an article that was critical of Chinese trade practices and I was surprised that he perceived the article as "anti-Chinese". He seemed to take personal offense. I was kind of perplexed by this reaction. I mean, in any sense that the author of the article was "anti-Chinese", they would presumably be "pro-Hong Kongese" or "pro-Taiwanese". So it's clearly not an ethnic/racial thing. Or is it not that clear? I think the conventional Western stance is that the citizens of China are being oppressed by their authoritarian government and that they, as a whole, would prefer to live in an open democracy like we do. You say you "don't care" about criticism of the Chinese government. As a Westerner, I don't understand why you're (only) indifferent about it. I mean, there were a couple million people on the streets of Hong Kong this weekend that are presumably more than indifferent about the Chinese government. So help me understand your point of view. Like for example, how do you feel about the U.S. actions against Huawei (in terms of being "anti-Chinese")?

throwaway_9cc8 7y ago
Good point - I shouldn't have said "don't care" about the criticisms - "don't mind" is a lot better. The Chinese government need more reasonable criticisms. As for "anti-Chinese" vs. pro something else - if I may, that's a false dichotomy. There are a lot more commonalities among people from mainland Chinese/Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macau than differences (practically none if/when the human race rises above this nationality bullshit). Ethnically speaking >90% of the population from those places are Han (there is an uncomfortable undercurrent of (at times reverse) Han chauvinism that I won't go into). I couldn't find (after searching through a couple recent HN threads) positively voted comments that are anti-Chinese so people and mods are doing a great job. OTOH, even downvoted and flagged posts are still representing opinions, unpopular as the content might be. Or maybe I am overly sensitive. As for Huawei, I don't have love for any Crony capitalism or Plutocracy. They are doing some good research work though, and people working there are still people.
est 7y ago
> critical of Chinese trade practices and I was surprised that he perceived the article as "anti-Chinese". For many Chinese, "learning" is semantically equal to "emulating". e.g. Learning to walk, learning to write, learning everything else. It's natural that the most advanced technological countries should influence the rest, like the rich is supposed to fund the poor and the strong should help the weak. And "learning" fast should be praised, like in schools. It's like a teacher shows off its skills and told students it's forbidden for follow? Tons of Chinese can not get the hang of this. One more reason many Chinese people lost hope for the US during this trade war, is because it's argued that China does not practice "rule of the law", then Rubio introduced a bill that would nullity all Huawei patents registered in the US. So for many people, the US laws are as manipulative as China's. This is explosive WTF.