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Even here on Hacker News, a week or so ago I saw someone being chided for “breaking the HN guidelines” by calling out a sock puppet. When I looked at the commen

by woah 7y ago

Even here on Hacker News, a week or so ago I saw someone being chided for “breaking the HN guidelines” by calling out a sock puppet. When I looked at the comment history of the account doing the chiding, all of its comments were on China related articles, taking a pro-China view.

dang 7y ago
There are two site guidelines that apply to this. First, it's not ok to use HN primarily for political, ideological, or national battle. If a commenter is posting as you describe, we ask them to stop. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20727426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20727426. But by no means does it follow that a commenter behaving that way must be a sockpuppet, astroturfer, shill, spy, foreign agent, etc. That's where the second guideline comes in: the one that asks users not to insinuate these things in HN threads, but rather to email us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can look for actual evidence. Accusing others without evidence is a serious breach of the rules, and a personal attack. When people do that, we ask them to stop as well. Example, from the same thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20727420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20727420. Does that mean that abuse doesn't exist, or that we don't take it seriously? No—it does and we do. But the way we take it seriously is by looking for evidence. So far, such evidence as we've found on HN nearly always indicates that the commenter is legit—they just hold a view that some other commenters find so wrong that they can't believe it's sincere. (Corporate astroturfing is a different can of worms, btw, and I'm not talking about that here.) Here's the most remarkable case we've seen of a mass influx of new accounts angrily defending "pro-China" views: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20236444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20236444. Most users who are inclined to perceive astroturfing would have declared this an obvious case of manipulation. The only reason we didn't get an inundation of such accusations is that the wave of new accounts only showed up a day or two later, after most readers had stopped looking at the thread. But even this case, when we followed up on the evidence, turned out to be something quite different. I emailed every one of those commenters who had left an email address in their profile, and many responded. It turned out that the study under discussion had gone viral in China, someone had posted a link to the HN thread to the Chinese Quora-equivalent, and the new accounts were people who had found their way to HN from there and created accounts to speak their minds. I also posted in the thread asking the new accounts to explain how they'd come to HN, and several replied with the same story. Does that prove they weren't communist agents? No, nothing would prove that. But the null hypothesis—that people hold their views sincerely—was amply supported by the evidence. This was an extreme case, but over and over, the story we see is like that. Ornate machinations add zero explanatory power, but invoking them poisons the community; therefore we ask users not to invoke them. Most people hold the views that they do because of their background. HN is a large, international community, orders of magnitude larger than your or my circle of acquaintances. What are the odds that in a group this large, quite a few people will have different backgrounds than you or I, and thus hold different views? The odds are basically 1. That means you're going to hear some "pro-China" views here, because there are users whose background connects them to China—by birthplace, family, education, work history, you name it—in ways that HN's Western audience mostly doesn't share. Because this is happening, we have to decide what kind of community HN should be. Should we ban accounts, or allow them to be persecuted, for "pro-X" views where X is outside, say, a standard deviation of what most people here take for granted? Or do we want to be a pluralistic community that is strong enough to hold space for such views, and such people, even when most of us disagree? It's unclear which way HN is going to go about this—sctb and I can't control HN, only try to persuade—but I know that I'm only interested in participating in the latter. The other way leads to a community in which it's ok to smear others (such as a nation or ethnicity) and have mob attacks on innocent individuals: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358 for one example that turned out ok; unfortunately there have been others which didn't, and users have been run out of town. I don't believe anyone here wants those things, but the tragedy of the commons will take us there if we don't all consciously resist it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- samstave 7y ago
  >First, it's not ok to use HN primarily for political, ideological, or national battle. You need to up the Karma req for downvotes. @Dang, Look at my current comment hist... I provide a valuable perspective. Even if others disagree with me. YC as a greater community is greater than the sum of its (unicorn) parts. Stop fucking censoring people for some lame idealogical moral standard which you dont even meet yourselves. We are here to learn, to teach, to expand one fucking thing "KNOWLEDGE" stop knowBlocking (just coined that haha)
  - youeseh 7y ago
    Maybe it isn't what you're saying but how you say it that gets you downvoted. It is much more difficult to ask someone to stop doing something than to encourage them to do an alternative thing. Suggest how the alternative activity would bring them greater success. While they may still disagree, at least they'll see that you're on the same team.
    - samstave 7y ago
      :-) Ona lighter note. I made some amazing flower arrangements today. And I appreciate your comment and you. Thank you.
- kmonsen 7y ago
  I think what is missing in most the the China and HN discussions is that HN is not blocked by the great firewall, so it is much easier for regular people living in China to participate. They will naturally have more pro-China views. Just like residents of every country will have more positive views of that country. And when that country is criticized they will be even more defensive and reflectively pro what is criticized. All this without having to be paid to do so, although that is possible as well.
  - dang 7y ago
    As far as I can tell, that is only a small minority of the commenters with such views. Far more are people in Western countries who have personal, familial, educational, or work ties to China, or who had experiences in China that gave them a different perspective. In a way, though, we're talking about the same thing, because most of this follows from human loyalties—to family, tribe, country, etc.—that all of us have. It's true that some commenters are ideologically motivated, but even that is a second-order version of the same thing, since ideological commitment itself comes out of such loyalties.
BubRoss 7y ago
I was assured that this never happens on hacker news and that the evidence that I and others pointed out was both poisonous and imagined. I would actually love to be wrong, but the explanation given was just that it has been looked into, not anything in depth or addressing the patterns being brought up. Similar disinformation and fast bulk downvoting against the general trend happens when talking about reddit's /r/bitcoin and the company Blockstream that runs it. At least there is a dialog here and everyone generally wants the same thing (actual opinions and explanations from reasonable people with no astroturfing).
olalonde 7y ago
I saw the comment you are referring to and it was most likely wrong. The majority of Chinese people are genuinely "pro-China" and there are vastly more regular Chinese people than professional sockpuppets. That being said, I do agree with keeping politics off HN and wish it was enforced a bit more strictly.
- pstuart 7y ago
  Information warfare is both political and technological. It's happening all about and is worth discussing in a mindful manner.
  - cbluth 7y ago
    I agree. Let's not silence ourselves.
  - luckylion 7y ago
    There is a difference between discussing information warfare and being a soldier on the battlefield though. "Keeping the politics out", to me at least, means "let's not make this place the battleground". I'd welcome that as well.
- adamsea 7y ago
  Intentionally or not, I believe not talking about politics is politics, because not talking about something strengthens whatever the status quo - good or bad - at that time is. I’m not advocating for constant political discussions on hacker news. But to pretend that technology can be separated from politics is to hold a false belief about reality. Politics is fundamentally about social groups, power, and the ethical beliefs and norms of groups of people. I believe that cultivating civility, genuine listening, and self-doubt in our hacker news community would ultimately be more constructive than pretending that our action or inaction - especially as technologists in this day and age - has no effect on our fellow human beings.
  - olalonde 7y ago
    > Intentionally or not, I believe not talking about X is X [...] That's extremist talk. HN is just one of many online communities, many of which encourage political debate. Technology can often be separated from politics as demonstrated by the majority of submissions here.
powerapple 7y ago
I mostly only comment on China related articles, with a pro-China view. Sometimes I find it necessary to comment because it is rare to see pro-China comment here. I am definitely not state-sponsored, I might be brainwashed in your opinion, but definitely not getting paid for those comments, and those comments are from the bottom of my heart :) I don't really like to read political posts on Hacker News, I am mostly interested in technology, but those posts with China in their title are just a click bait for me because I knew they are probably biased. Edit: yeah, a downvote when I am just expressing myself. you want me to shut up and leave, right?
- dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
  I have a question from you. How, as a pro-China person, do you view the Dalai Lama? Because I see a certain inconsistency that nobody can explain to me: the DL insists he doesn't care about the complete autonomy or independence [0] of Tibet, just faving a bit more freedom so that people can practice their religion and cultivate their culture. This, in my opinion, is a moderate view, and in no way a threat to the integrity of China. But somehow the Chinese freak out whenever the DL is mentioned. Why is that? If anything, I'd say the DL could help in keeping peace in Tibet. Seems absurd to me. And I'm wondering what is the official Chinese opinion about this. [0] https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/past-is-past-tibet-not-seeking-independence-from-china-dalai-lama-1779200 https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/past-is-past-tibet-not-seeki... > "The past is past. We now have to look into the future," he said. > "We are not seeking independence... We want to stay with China. We want more development," the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people said.
  - powerapple 7y ago
    I don't care so much about Dalai Lama to be honest. I think religion has its place, but shouldn't be the center of stage. In my view, if you don't allow kids to vote before 18, why pushing religious view to them when they are young? I think that's more important to a person than political views. On personal level, I find religion is fundamentally exclusive (where you believe something is the ultimate truth), I think it shouldn't reform and develop with society and should eventually disappear. New religion should come out and replace old ones. Now religion is just trying to modernize and it shows it doesn't hold the ultimate truth, only want to win as many people as possible, like a pop band

by woah 7y ago

dang 7y ago

There are two site guidelines that apply to this. First, it's not ok to use HN primarily for political, ideological, or national battle. If a commenter is posting as you describe, we ask them to stop. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20727426 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20727426. But by no means does it follow that a commenter behaving that way must be a sockpuppet, astroturfer, shill, spy, foreign agent, etc. That's where the second guideline comes in: the one that asks users not to insinuate these things in HN threads, but rather to email us at hn@ycombinator.com so we can look for actual evidence. Accusing others without evidence is a serious breach of the rules, and a personal attack. When people do that, we ask them to stop as well. Example, from the same thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20727420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20727420. Does that mean that abuse doesn't exist, or that we don't take it seriously? No—it does and we do. But the way we take it seriously is by looking for evidence. So far, such evidence as we've found on HN nearly always indicates that the commenter is legit—they just hold a view that some other commenters find so wrong that they can't believe it's sincere. (Corporate astroturfing is a different can of worms, btw, and I'm not talking about that here.) Here's the most remarkable case we've seen of a mass influx of new accounts angrily defending "pro-China" views: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20236444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20236444. Most users who are inclined to perceive astroturfing would have declared this an obvious case of manipulation. The only reason we didn't get an inundation of such accusations is that the wave of new accounts only showed up a day or two later, after most readers had stopped looking at the thread. But even this case, when we followed up on the evidence, turned out to be something quite different. I emailed every one of those commenters who had left an email address in their profile, and many responded. It turned out that the study under discussion had gone viral in China, someone had posted a link to the HN thread to the Chinese Quora-equivalent, and the new accounts were people who had found their way to HN from there and created accounts to speak their minds. I also posted in the thread asking the new accounts to explain how they'd come to HN, and several replied with the same story. Does that prove they weren't communist agents? No, nothing would prove that. But the null hypothesis—that people hold their views sincerely—was amply supported by the evidence. This was an extreme case, but over and over, the story we see is like that. Ornate machinations add zero explanatory power, but invoking them poisons the community; therefore we ask users not to invoke them. Most people hold the views that they do because of their background. HN is a large, international community, orders of magnitude larger than your or my circle of acquaintances. What are the odds that in a group this large, quite a few people will have different backgrounds than you or I, and thus hold different views? The odds are basically 1. That means you're going to hear some "pro-China" views here, because there are users whose background connects them to China—by birthplace, family, education, work history, you name it—in ways that HN's Western audience mostly doesn't share. Because this is happening, we have to decide what kind of community HN should be. Should we ban accounts, or allow them to be persecuted, for "pro-X" views where X is outside, say, a standard deviation of what most people here take for granted? Or do we want to be a pluralistic community that is strong enough to hold space for such views, and such people, even when most of us disagree? It's unclear which way HN is going to go about this—sctb and I can't control HN, only try to persuade—but I know that I'm only interested in participating in the latter. The other way leads to a community in which it's ok to smear others (such as a nation or ethnicity) and have mob attacks on innocent individuals: see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358 for one example that turned out ok; unfortunately there have been others which didn't, and users have been run out of town. I don't believe anyone here wants those things, but the tragedy of the commons will take us there if we don't all consciously resist it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

samstave 7y ago
>First, it's not ok to use HN primarily for political, ideological, or national battle. You need to up the Karma req for downvotes. @Dang, Look at my current comment hist... I provide a valuable perspective. Even if others disagree with me. YC as a greater community is greater than the sum of its (unicorn) parts. Stop fucking censoring people for some lame idealogical moral standard which you dont even meet yourselves. We are here to learn, to teach, to expand one fucking thing "KNOWLEDGE" stop knowBlocking (just coined that haha)
- youeseh 7y ago
  Maybe it isn't what you're saying but how you say it that gets you downvoted. It is much more difficult to ask someone to stop doing something than to encourage them to do an alternative thing. Suggest how the alternative activity would bring them greater success. While they may still disagree, at least they'll see that you're on the same team.
  - samstave 7y ago
    :-) Ona lighter note. I made some amazing flower arrangements today. And I appreciate your comment and you. Thank you.
kmonsen 7y ago
I think what is missing in most the the China and HN discussions is that HN is not blocked by the great firewall, so it is much easier for regular people living in China to participate. They will naturally have more pro-China views. Just like residents of every country will have more positive views of that country. And when that country is criticized they will be even more defensive and reflectively pro what is criticized. All this without having to be paid to do so, although that is possible as well.
- dang 7y ago
  As far as I can tell, that is only a small minority of the commenters with such views. Far more are people in Western countries who have personal, familial, educational, or work ties to China, or who had experiences in China that gave them a different perspective. In a way, though, we're talking about the same thing, because most of this follows from human loyalties—to family, tribe, country, etc.—that all of us have. It's true that some commenters are ideologically motivated, but even that is a second-order version of the same thing, since ideological commitment itself comes out of such loyalties.

BubRoss 7y ago

I was assured that this never happens on hacker news and that the evidence that I and others pointed out was both poisonous and imagined. I would actually love to be wrong, but the explanation given was just that it has been looked into, not anything in depth or addressing the patterns being brought up. Similar disinformation and fast bulk downvoting against the general trend happens when talking about reddit's /r/bitcoin and the company Blockstream that runs it. At least there is a dialog here and everyone generally wants the same thing (actual opinions and explanations from reasonable people with no astroturfing).

olalonde 7y ago

I saw the comment you are referring to and it was most likely wrong. The majority of Chinese people are genuinely "pro-China" and there are vastly more regular Chinese people than professional sockpuppets. That being said, I do agree with keeping politics off HN and wish it was enforced a bit more strictly.

pstuart 7y ago
Information warfare is both political and technological. It's happening all about and is worth discussing in a mindful manner.
- cbluth 7y ago
  I agree. Let's not silence ourselves.
- luckylion 7y ago
  There is a difference between discussing information warfare and being a soldier on the battlefield though. "Keeping the politics out", to me at least, means "let's not make this place the battleground". I'd welcome that as well.
adamsea 7y ago
Intentionally or not, I believe not talking about politics is politics, because not talking about something strengthens whatever the status quo - good or bad - at that time is. I’m not advocating for constant political discussions on hacker news. But to pretend that technology can be separated from politics is to hold a false belief about reality. Politics is fundamentally about social groups, power, and the ethical beliefs and norms of groups of people. I believe that cultivating civility, genuine listening, and self-doubt in our hacker news community would ultimately be more constructive than pretending that our action or inaction - especially as technologists in this day and age - has no effect on our fellow human beings.
- olalonde 7y ago
  > Intentionally or not, I believe not talking about X is X [...] That's extremist talk. HN is just one of many online communities, many of which encourage political debate. Technology can often be separated from politics as demonstrated by the majority of submissions here.

powerapple 7y ago

I mostly only comment on China related articles, with a pro-China view. Sometimes I find it necessary to comment because it is rare to see pro-China comment here. I am definitely not state-sponsored, I might be brainwashed in your opinion, but definitely not getting paid for those comments, and those comments are from the bottom of my heart :) I don't really like to read political posts on Hacker News, I am mostly interested in technology, but those posts with China in their title are just a click bait for me because I knew they are probably biased. Edit: yeah, a downvote when I am just expressing myself. you want me to shut up and leave, right?

dvfjsdhgfv 7y ago
I have a question from you. How, as a pro-China person, do you view the Dalai Lama? Because I see a certain inconsistency that nobody can explain to me: the DL insists he doesn't care about the complete autonomy or independence [0] of Tibet, just faving a bit more freedom so that people can practice their religion and cultivate their culture. This, in my opinion, is a moderate view, and in no way a threat to the integrity of China. But somehow the Chinese freak out whenever the DL is mentioned. Why is that? If anything, I'd say the DL could help in keeping peace in Tibet. Seems absurd to me. And I'm wondering what is the official Chinese opinion about this. [0] https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/past-is-past-tibet-not-seeking-independence-from-china-dalai-lama-1779200 https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/past-is-past-tibet-not-seeki... > "The past is past. We now have to look into the future," he said. > "We are not seeking independence... We want to stay with China. We want more development," the spiritual leader of the Tibetan people said.
- powerapple 7y ago
  I don't care so much about Dalai Lama to be honest. I think religion has its place, but shouldn't be the center of stage. In my view, if you don't allow kids to vote before 18, why pushing religious view to them when they are young? I think that's more important to a person than political views. On personal level, I find religion is fundamentally exclusive (where you believe something is the ultimate truth), I think it shouldn't reform and develop with society and should eventually disappear. New religion should come out and replace old ones. Now religion is just trying to modernize and it shows it doesn't hold the ultimate truth, only want to win as many people as possible, like a pop band