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The whole comment mentions China. I believe this is another one of those fake news campaign running across Hong Kong as mentioned in news. HN is not fake news

The whole comment mentions China. I believe this is another one of those fake news campaign running across Hong Kong as mentioned in news. HN is not fake news medium but is being made to generate fake news with conflated facts. Been on HN since it's birth, not fake accounts like yours or people downvoting critical comments with facts. Hopefully some moderator on HN reviews these comments for facts not conflated facts.

aldoushuxley001 7y ago
I like how this fake/troll account accuses its parent comment of being a fake when called out. It’s the proverbial ‘no u’. I can’t help but read this as China about to do some terrible things to Hong Kong and pre emptively launching their online troll army to try and whitewash what’s about to go down.
- Zenbit_UX 7y ago
  I was suspicious of the same when calling out the parent, although the account is quite old and has posted about other things. It's possible it has been compromised or was constructed from the beginning to seem legitimate and recently "activated" to pre-empt and soften something horrible that may be about to happen. My comment is now greyed out even though I tried to be as respectful as possible when asking them about their recent posting habits. However their hostile reaction to my inquiry further adds to their suspicion.
  - dang 7y ago
    Your comment was downvoted by users who haven't posted in this thread, probably because groundless speculating about whether another account was "compromised or was constructed from the beginning to seem legitimate" is a soft form of the insinuation the site guidelines ask you not to do here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. I very much appreciate the charitability in your first paragraph, but that later part is unfortunately still poison.
- dragonsh 7y ago
  Based on the question raised without facts it seems a fake. I am mostly interested in technology, but living in HK before 1997 and after it, being a beneficiary of closed China to make my first fortune. Since my family is from Hong Kong it pains me that instead of actual facts people are fighting and protesting over worthless fake news and issues. Singapore is a great example, it's laws and rules are similar to China with focus on health, education and housing. Laws regarding protest in Singapore are very severe. Still ask any sane Hong Kong person given a choice will they like to live in Singapore which is same as China when it comes to rules and most will want to.
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't break the site guidelines yourself, regardless of how badly other commenters are behaving. It's egregiously against the rules to post like this here. Once users start slinging these wild accusations at each other, HN is dead and we might as well shut it down. If you're really concerned about this, you should have emailed us at hn@ycombinator.com as the guidelines ask. If you're really concerned about the truth, you could have established it for yourself in a minute. A fake/troll account would not have been posting about haproxy clusters (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20407690 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20407690), distributed version control (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11093397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11093397), and Go vs. Python (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9972355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9972355) for years. What's actually going on with this frenzy of astroturfing allegations is humans finding it hard to tolerate how far apart their views are. It seems the only possibility one can imagine when the other person seems so obviously wrong is that they must be a liar, a spy, or otherwise illegitimate. We all need to stretch beyond this, uncomfortable as that is to do. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - aldoushuxley001 7y ago
    Fair, my apologies. Thank you for the considered reply.
    - dang 7y ago
      Appreciated!
reissbaker 7y ago
In case anyone is confused by this shill, the protests in HK aren't about HK wanting a closer relationship with the mainland. Quite the opposite in fact. Parent commenter is trying to spread propaganda while claiming "fake news" on the other side. Source: friends who live in Hong Kong and are eyewitnesses at the protests.
- dragonsh 7y ago
  No one doubt this protest is about losing relevance of Hong Kong resulting in house, education and health problems. I am the one saying the original title and Twitter is fake news. Indeed it is conflating the facts to foment protest. If there is a protest in New York and national guards are having something in Philadelphia, anyone can conflate the facts to make it national guards summoned to end violent protest in NY.
  - reissbaker 7y ago
    The "five demands" of the protest are: * Withdraw the extradition bill * Carrie Lam resigns * Protests are not categorized as riots * Full independent inquiry into the police * Release of imprisoned protestors Nothing to do with housing or any of your other claims. And it is hard to believe the army being summoned to Shenzhen (just across the HK border) or "leaking" videos of training to use force against people dressed as HK protestors is a random accident.
    - dragonsh 7y ago
      This is what is visible symptoms. Not the underlying root cause. When solving a bug in technology, it needs a root-cause analysis to fix. The root problem of all these protests in HK are house, education and health issues faced by over 40% of population. I have been a part in past of peaceful protest in Hong Kong without masks and anti-riot gears. Walked from Victoria park in Causeway bay to central offices. I do understand its difficult to follow fearless strategy like Gandhi's non-violence by most. But I am a believer of non-violence and follower of its principles. A protest or cause lose its relevance when there is a violence in it, however small. Gandhi never defended violent protest nor asked for release of violent protestor, the demand itself is in contravention of the non-violent protests.
donaldknuth123 7y ago
Very high chance this guy is a Chinese astroturfer. Posts like these need to be called out for what they are, state sponsored propaganda.
dang 7y ago
I believe that you hold your views in good faith, but the way you've presented them in this thread—calling the views you disagree with "fake news" and accusing others of having "fake accounts"—are against the site guidelines. The provocative rhetoric you've used in places, such as "prison cells" in referring to HK, is also against the site guidelines because it's flamebait. If your posts include provocations like this, they're guaranteed to start a flamewar, and that's just what we're trying to avoid here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Your account had also been breaking the site guidelines by using HN primarily for political and national arguments. That's against the rules, but I see you've already begun correcting it with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20686964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20686964, which is good. For more about how we apply this test, see https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=by:dang%20primarily%20test https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... and https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=by:dang%20political%20overlap https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... if interested. I appreciate the difficulty you face, and that anyone faces, when presenting a minority view on a highly charged topic. HN's population, though international, is largely Western, and that inevitably determines the majority view on China/Hong Kong. You clearly have a different perspective, which I assume is because your experiences are different from those of HN's mostly Western readers. That means you have value to add here, as anyone with a diverse experience does. But it also puts you in a tough position, because even a slight provocation is going to trigger an avalanche of frustration from others, leading to a destructive flamewar. People find it exceedingly difficult to receive information that falls, let's say, more than one standard deviation from their perspective. Outlying information creates discomfort which is difficult to contain. It doesn't matter that it's true; if anything, that makes it harder to contain. Uncontained discomfort boils over into counter-provocation and accusations of bad faith. We all have this problem. That puts you in a tough position on HN. Your options are: not to comment, to comment in frustration and provoke a flamewar, or to comment neutrally and resist the temptation to lash out at the majority. Only the latter is able to communicate the value of what you have to share, but it's not easy. It takes patience and inner calm. Yes, this means there is a greater burden on one who holds a minority or counterintuitive view. This isn't fair. But it's the way that mass communication works. If the goal is to communicate—to learn, rather than do battle—then the one who knows more, who has a truth others don't have, has a greater responsibility. If you don't rise to that responsibility, you end up discrediting that truth in the eyes of the majority, which makes the situation worse, even though lashing out provides a little temporary relief. I've written about this principle over the years because most of us find it counterintuitive. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14460989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14460989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10368209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10368209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14634368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14634368 https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20discredit&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

aldoushuxley001 7y ago

I like how this fake/troll account accuses its parent comment of being a fake when called out. It’s the proverbial ‘no u’. I can’t help but read this as China about to do some terrible things to Hong Kong and pre emptively launching their online troll army to try and whitewash what’s about to go down.

Zenbit_UX 7y ago
I was suspicious of the same when calling out the parent, although the account is quite old and has posted about other things. It's possible it has been compromised or was constructed from the beginning to seem legitimate and recently "activated" to pre-empt and soften something horrible that may be about to happen. My comment is now greyed out even though I tried to be as respectful as possible when asking them about their recent posting habits. However their hostile reaction to my inquiry further adds to their suspicion.
- dang 7y ago
  Your comment was downvoted by users who haven't posted in this thread, probably because groundless speculating about whether another account was "compromised or was constructed from the beginning to seem legitimate" is a soft form of the insinuation the site guidelines ask you not to do here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. I very much appreciate the charitability in your first paragraph, but that later part is unfortunately still poison.
dragonsh 7y ago
Based on the question raised without facts it seems a fake. I am mostly interested in technology, but living in HK before 1997 and after it, being a beneficiary of closed China to make my first fortune. Since my family is from Hong Kong it pains me that instead of actual facts people are fighting and protesting over worthless fake news and issues. Singapore is a great example, it's laws and rules are similar to China with focus on health, education and housing. Laws regarding protest in Singapore are very severe. Still ask any sane Hong Kong person given a choice will they like to live in Singapore which is same as China when it comes to rules and most will want to.
dang 7y ago
Please don't break the site guidelines yourself, regardless of how badly other commenters are behaving. It's egregiously against the rules to post like this here. Once users start slinging these wild accusations at each other, HN is dead and we might as well shut it down. If you're really concerned about this, you should have emailed us at hn@ycombinator.com as the guidelines ask. If you're really concerned about the truth, you could have established it for yourself in a minute. A fake/troll account would not have been posting about haproxy clusters (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20407690 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20407690), distributed version control (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11093397 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11093397), and Go vs. Python (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9972355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9972355) for years. What's actually going on with this frenzy of astroturfing allegations is humans finding it hard to tolerate how far apart their views are. It seems the only possibility one can imagine when the other person seems so obviously wrong is that they must be a liar, a spy, or otherwise illegitimate. We all need to stretch beyond this, uncomfortable as that is to do. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- aldoushuxley001 7y ago
  Fair, my apologies. Thank you for the considered reply.
  - dang 7y ago
    Appreciated!

reissbaker 7y ago

In case anyone is confused by this shill, the protests in HK aren't about HK wanting a closer relationship with the mainland. Quite the opposite in fact. Parent commenter is trying to spread propaganda while claiming "fake news" on the other side. Source: friends who live in Hong Kong and are eyewitnesses at the protests.

dragonsh 7y ago
No one doubt this protest is about losing relevance of Hong Kong resulting in house, education and health problems. I am the one saying the original title and Twitter is fake news. Indeed it is conflating the facts to foment protest. If there is a protest in New York and national guards are having something in Philadelphia, anyone can conflate the facts to make it national guards summoned to end violent protest in NY.
- reissbaker 7y ago
  The "five demands" of the protest are: * Withdraw the extradition bill * Carrie Lam resigns * Protests are not categorized as riots * Full independent inquiry into the police * Release of imprisoned protestors Nothing to do with housing or any of your other claims. And it is hard to believe the army being summoned to Shenzhen (just across the HK border) or "leaking" videos of training to use force against people dressed as HK protestors is a random accident.
  - dragonsh 7y ago
    This is what is visible symptoms. Not the underlying root cause. When solving a bug in technology, it needs a root-cause analysis to fix. The root problem of all these protests in HK are house, education and health issues faced by over 40% of population. I have been a part in past of peaceful protest in Hong Kong without masks and anti-riot gears. Walked from Victoria park in Causeway bay to central offices. I do understand its difficult to follow fearless strategy like Gandhi's non-violence by most. But I am a believer of non-violence and follower of its principles. A protest or cause lose its relevance when there is a violence in it, however small. Gandhi never defended violent protest nor asked for release of violent protestor, the demand itself is in contravention of the non-violent protests.

donaldknuth123 7y ago

Very high chance this guy is a Chinese astroturfer. Posts like these need to be called out for what they are, state sponsored propaganda.

dang 7y ago

I believe that you hold your views in good faith, but the way you've presented them in this thread—calling the views you disagree with "fake news" and accusing others of having "fake accounts"—are against the site guidelines. The provocative rhetoric you've used in places, such as "prison cells" in referring to HK, is also against the site guidelines because it's flamebait. If your posts include provocations like this, they're guaranteed to start a flamewar, and that's just what we're trying to avoid here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Your account had also been breaking the site guidelines by using HN primarily for political and national arguments. That's against the rules, but I see you've already begun correcting it with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20686964 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20686964, which is good. For more about how we apply this test, see https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=by:dang%20primarily%20test https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... and https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=by:dang%20political%20overlap https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme... if interested. I appreciate the difficulty you face, and that anyone faces, when presenting a minority view on a highly charged topic. HN's population, though international, is largely Western, and that inevitably determines the majority view on China/Hong Kong. You clearly have a different perspective, which I assume is because your experiences are different from those of HN's mostly Western readers. That means you have value to add here, as anyone with a diverse experience does. But it also puts you in a tough position, because even a slight provocation is going to trigger an avalanche of frustration from others, leading to a destructive flamewar. People find it exceedingly difficult to receive information that falls, let's say, more than one standard deviation from their perspective. Outlying information creates discomfort which is difficult to contain. It doesn't matter that it's true; if anything, that makes it harder to contain. Uncontained discomfort boils over into counter-provocation and accusations of bad faith. We all have this problem. That puts you in a tough position on HN. Your options are: not to comment, to comment in frustration and provoke a flamewar, or to comment neutrally and resist the temptation to lash out at the majority. Only the latter is able to communicate the value of what you have to share, but it's not easy. It takes patience and inner calm. Yes, this means there is a greater burden on one who holds a minority or counterintuitive view. This isn't fair. But it's the way that mass communication works. If the goal is to communicate—to learn, rather than do battle—then the one who knows more, who has a truth others don't have, has a greater responsibility. If you don't rise to that responsibility, you end up discrediting that truth in the eyes of the majority, which makes the situation worse, even though lashing out provides a little temporary relief. I've written about this principle over the years because most of us find it counterintuitive. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14460989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14460989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10368209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10368209 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14634368 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14634368 https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20discredit&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...