4 ms·

Recently the Chinese government ran a full-page ad in a national newspaper explaining "their view" of "the Hong Kong situation." The newspaper got a lot of flac

Recently the Chinese government ran a full-page ad in a national newspaper explaining "their view" of "the Hong Kong situation." The newspaper got a lot of flack for publishing the ad, but I think neither they nor the Chinese government did anything wrong. Because the sender of the ad was clearly identified people could judge for themselves. While the ad was propaganda it wasn't manipulative or underhanded. But what is going on these days is that governments are engaging in propaganda where the identity of the sender is shrouded. For example Twitter accounts controlled by the Chinese state pretending to be common citizens. I think such propaganda is not ok and also that it is not only China and Russia doing it but also Western states and states that are supposed to be friendly to the West.

xvector 7y ago
> the sender of the ad was clearly identified people could judge for themselves. If they aware enough of how horrible their government is that they can ignore what it says and assume it's all a lie, sure. If the Chinese government has done anything to make citizens trust its authority, such as censorship etc, then the ad is manipulative. > While the ad was propaganda it wasn't manipulative or underhanded. Perhaps not in itself, but taking the very example you give, it is manipulative. Use news stories to paint the "official" picture and use astroturfing to provide a counterpart to the "official" picture. Both as parts in a larger underhanded play.
input_sh 7y ago
> For example Twitter accounts controlled by the Chinese state pretending to be common citizens. Problem is that they are real citizens. In China, they're referred to as 50 Cent Army (or 50 Cent Party), because that's how much they're believed to be paid for every pro-government post. Their engagements are usually not. There are botnets upvoting/downvoting/liking/retweeting stuff, but each and every post is written by an actual human, and there are guidelines as to how they need to respond to different stories. It's not like there's one human in charge of posting to 100s of accounts.
- nyolfen 7y ago
  there are also many, many sincere chinese nationalists, some of whom use twitter. people forget that the number of chinese people on the internet is substantially larger than the entire US population, even if most don’t hang out in the same places
  - navigatesol 7y ago
    People on the internet seem regularly shocked to learn that there are real-life individuals who support Trump, are pro-CCP and don't consider every interaction with a Russian national to be treason.
- quotz 7y ago
  They are real humans in the sense of that they're made of flesh, but their actions and opinions are clearly fabricated. Combine that with the fake engagement so that it looks legit to the average Joe and boom you have the perfect robot army.
- bjourne 7y ago
  Yeah, that is a problem. The situation sounds similar to how the Act.IL app works, an app to counter criticism towards Israel online. The app publishes links to "hot pages" where users are supposed to post comments supportive of Israel and/or do the equivalent of down voting comments negative to it. The app itself is funded and, I believe, run by some Israeli government agency but the users who use it to coordinate are not affiliated with the Israeli state in any way. Just "normal" people who happen to be very pro-Israel, I guess. So is that underhanded or not? It is not completely different from Amnesty who occasionally sends out emails asking you to sign some list of signatures or to send complaint letters to some third world despot. There are very few rules in this area so it is hard to say what is fair and what isn't. Even if there were, there's no way the rules will be enforced. I'm pretty sure that all these "scandals" are just the tip of the iceberg. The dumb ones are getting caught. More refined state actors (not Russia or China) already have way better methods that Twitter and Facebook can't (or wont!) detect.
  - 7y ago

xvector 7y ago

> the sender of the ad was clearly identified people could judge for themselves. If they aware enough of how horrible their government is that they can ignore what it says and assume it's all a lie, sure. If the Chinese government has done anything to make citizens trust its authority, such as censorship etc, then the ad is manipulative. > While the ad was propaganda it wasn't manipulative or underhanded. Perhaps not in itself, but taking the very example you give, it is manipulative. Use news stories to paint the "official" picture and use astroturfing to provide a counterpart to the "official" picture. Both as parts in a larger underhanded play.

input_sh 7y ago

> For example Twitter accounts controlled by the Chinese state pretending to be common citizens. Problem is that they are real citizens. In China, they're referred to as 50 Cent Army (or 50 Cent Party), because that's how much they're believed to be paid for every pro-government post. Their engagements are usually not. There are botnets upvoting/downvoting/liking/retweeting stuff, but each and every post is written by an actual human, and there are guidelines as to how they need to respond to different stories. It's not like there's one human in charge of posting to 100s of accounts.

nyolfen 7y ago
there are also many, many sincere chinese nationalists, some of whom use twitter. people forget that the number of chinese people on the internet is substantially larger than the entire US population, even if most don’t hang out in the same places
- navigatesol 7y ago
  People on the internet seem regularly shocked to learn that there are real-life individuals who support Trump, are pro-CCP and don't consider every interaction with a Russian national to be treason.
quotz 7y ago
They are real humans in the sense of that they're made of flesh, but their actions and opinions are clearly fabricated. Combine that with the fake engagement so that it looks legit to the average Joe and boom you have the perfect robot army.
bjourne 7y ago
Yeah, that is a problem. The situation sounds similar to how the Act.IL app works, an app to counter criticism towards Israel online. The app publishes links to "hot pages" where users are supposed to post comments supportive of Israel and/or do the equivalent of down voting comments negative to it. The app itself is funded and, I believe, run by some Israeli government agency but the users who use it to coordinate are not affiliated with the Israeli state in any way. Just "normal" people who happen to be very pro-Israel, I guess. So is that underhanded or not? It is not completely different from Amnesty who occasionally sends out emails asking you to sign some list of signatures or to send complaint letters to some third world despot. There are very few rules in this area so it is hard to say what is fair and what isn't. Even if there were, there's no way the rules will be enforced. I'm pretty sure that all these "scandals" are just the tip of the iceberg. The dumb ones are getting caught. More refined state actors (not Russia or China) already have way better methods that Twitter and Facebook can't (or wont!) detect.
- 7y ago