6 ms·

The pro-china movement on HN is extremely strong. It's fun to look at all the pro-China commenters, and then look through the account history for how long their

by grecy 7y ago

The pro-china movement on HN is extremely strong. It's fun to look at all the pro-China commenters, and then look through the account history for how long their account has existed, the kind of articles they submit and their comments. It couldn't be more obvious.

bbdksl 7y ago
Playing the devils advocate, maybe they are using an alt account because they don’t want people like you finding them in real life.
- TheRealPomax 7y ago
  That's not what playing devil's advocate means in the slightest.
- michannne 7y ago
  You're making the argument that pro-China activists have more to fear in their online presence than Hong Kong activists? Could you point to some data that backs this up, because it overwhelmingly appears to be the opposite.
- PavlovsCat 7y ago
  That's not playing devil's advocate, it's just projection, i.e. those who pay attention to the stifling of resistance against violence and murder are the real dangerous people, projecting what they resist on them.
dosy 7y ago
Translation: "Let me dismiss and trivialize that which I'm too scared to admit might be true." Good luck keeping on pretending the opinions of a large chunk of the world don't exist, don't make sense or don't matter. Or maybe it's you who needs to expand your mind, show a bit of empathy and try to understand the other side? Sure, I guess it's easier to pretend the other side doesn't really exist, than to come to understand it. Keep arrogant and ignorant at your own peril. But I guess it's easier to close your mind and feel better by pretending it's wrong, than to try to know the rest of the world?
- grecy 7y ago
  Thanks for proving my point so succinctly! For the record I'm not complaining about "genuine" Chinese people expressing their opinions. As you said, it's important they have a voice, and we should listen. What I'm pointing out is the increasing number of accounts that are very, very obviously paid or otherwise government controlled to influence opinions on HN (and obviously elsewhere on the internet)
  - dmix 7y ago
    Do you have some examples? It'd be good if we could keep a list and screenshots of this sort of thing, with some research into the usernames. I hear people on Reddit talk about 'Russian bots' constantly and I've always wanted to see some examples on a site like HN/Reddit. The above person lists his Github account and AFAIK he's not a paid shill, just a political contrarian or provocateur for political ends. Which IMO is an important difference if we're going to accuse everyone of being bots and "paid shills". A green name with a single comment being downvoted immediately isn't influencing opinions here, they can't even downvote. But it'd be interesting to measure their frequency as well for a research project.
    - grecy 7y ago
      Right. I'd love to see something like this done for HN. https://twitter.com/AirMovingDevice/status/1181120601643073536?s=20 https://twitter.com/AirMovingDevice/status/11811206016430735...
    - xfs 7y ago
      At the risk of being labeled one myself... there are no examples. I've seen dang respond to complaints like this many times and every time it was real people with real profiles being accused of shills, trolls etc. Also, if you look it up it's almost all politics threads wrt China this year on HN with overwhelming anti-China sentiment, yet here we are, arguing about pro-China influence being too strong. Then the question is no longer about how many shills are objectively out there that can be quantifiably measured, because this fact is obviously not what people have been basing their accusations on, but what results in the very question of shills being raised in the first place. The only theory I can think of would be Chomsky's fifth filter, that is, a common external enemy that helps maintain consensus and divert ideological stress from internal antagonism, be it terrorists, Russian trolls, Chinese shills. This is compounded by the universalist belief that it is impossible to hold "genuine" political thoughts other than the End of History liberal democracy project, which is in itself beset on all sides already, making it all more intense.
decoyworker 7y ago
Look at it this way- they basically are not allowed to say anything else. I pity them but at the same time I hope things improve for them.
- therealdrag0 7y ago
  If it's voluntary, they could voluntarily say nothing instead.
  - loceng 7y ago
    "Voluntary" under pressure or fear for safety, repercussions, of course is not voluntary.
  - decoyworker 7y ago
    All your peers are doing it and improving their social credit scores. Do you want to fall behind your peers?
- loceng 7y ago
  Agreed. It's important to understand such things - to have compassion. It's why I also try to explain the circumstances in detail - in hopes that it may reduce the indoctrination, help them develop critical thinking further; building secret allies within the tyrant's machine.
duxup 7y ago
I've run into it on Reddit over a period of time last year as well. The key identifier for me was what seemed to be either a certain level of intellectual dishonestly, or a real language barrier as sometimes their responses felt like a misunderstanding ... and then the real kicker were the identical links to US news sources that inevitably involved some US college professor (they like those stories) but also didn't quite say what they thought the story said. If it was a real language barrier it was kinda sad as it was clear they couldn't understand what I was saying in English and their response was sometimes equally baffling to me.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
dang 7y ago
Your comments here and below have broken the site guidelines badly. Please read and follow them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Note this one: Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data. No one who reads these threads remotely objectively would say "The pro-china movement on HN is extremely strong". Accounts that argue that side are a tiny minority, and frequently get barraged with accusations of bad faith, which is a form of internet bullying. It's true that people sometimes create throwaway accounts to argue the other side. But it's easy to understand why—like I just said, they get barraged. When we look into such cases, we nearly always find—to the extent that we find anything—that these commenters are people in Western countries who are either of Chinese background, have experience in China, or are Chinese expats. Sometimes they are Westerners living in China. Overwhelmingly, the evidence is that they are good faith users just like you are, who have different backgrounds and experiences from you, which lead them to see the same situations differently than you do. What that calls for is not accusation and suppression but tolerance. As a seasoned HN user, someone who has shared many of your own wide-ranging experiences over the years, you ought to be practicing and modeling that for others. Could they be spies or shills or foreign agents? Sure they could; so could you. What can we do other than look for evidence? Some evidence of something—anything. You have zero evidence for making these dramatic sinister claims, which poison discussion and destroy community. Just imagine if someone accused you of being a paid propagandist or spy when you were simply posting in good faith. This is a mob behavior. It's not welcome on HN, which is why we have that guideline. (No, not because we're pro-Chinese or secret communists.) How you leap from zero evidence to "it couldn't be more obvious" or (downthread) "the increasing number of accounts that are very, very obviously paid or otherwise government controlled to influence opinions on HN" is really shocking to me. You're far from the only user doing this—it's rampant—but it's utterly dismaying to see a longstanding and good HN contributor pouring this poison in here by the bucket. By the way, when we find accounts that are using HN primarily for political battle, including nationalistic battle, we either ban them or ask them to stop. We do that regardless of what they happen to be battling for—it's against the site guidelines either way. But I can tell you from the heart, as the person responsible for keeping the peace here, that pro-China accounts doing such things are barely a blip of an issue compared to comments like the ones you posted here. They exist, but they're impotent. It's comments like yours, which manifest the real shadow of this community, that have me scared and worried for HN.

by grecy 7y ago

bbdksl 7y ago

Playing the devils advocate, maybe they are using an alt account because they don’t want people like you finding them in real life.

TheRealPomax 7y ago
That's not what playing devil's advocate means in the slightest.
michannne 7y ago
You're making the argument that pro-China activists have more to fear in their online presence than Hong Kong activists? Could you point to some data that backs this up, because it overwhelmingly appears to be the opposite.
PavlovsCat 7y ago
That's not playing devil's advocate, it's just projection, i.e. those who pay attention to the stifling of resistance against violence and murder are the real dangerous people, projecting what they resist on them.

dosy 7y ago

Translation: "Let me dismiss and trivialize that which I'm too scared to admit might be true." Good luck keeping on pretending the opinions of a large chunk of the world don't exist, don't make sense or don't matter. Or maybe it's you who needs to expand your mind, show a bit of empathy and try to understand the other side? Sure, I guess it's easier to pretend the other side doesn't really exist, than to come to understand it. Keep arrogant and ignorant at your own peril. But I guess it's easier to close your mind and feel better by pretending it's wrong, than to try to know the rest of the world?

grecy 7y ago
Thanks for proving my point so succinctly! For the record I'm not complaining about "genuine" Chinese people expressing their opinions. As you said, it's important they have a voice, and we should listen. What I'm pointing out is the increasing number of accounts that are very, very obviously paid or otherwise government controlled to influence opinions on HN (and obviously elsewhere on the internet)
- dmix 7y ago
  Do you have some examples? It'd be good if we could keep a list and screenshots of this sort of thing, with some research into the usernames. I hear people on Reddit talk about 'Russian bots' constantly and I've always wanted to see some examples on a site like HN/Reddit. The above person lists his Github account and AFAIK he's not a paid shill, just a political contrarian or provocateur for political ends. Which IMO is an important difference if we're going to accuse everyone of being bots and "paid shills". A green name with a single comment being downvoted immediately isn't influencing opinions here, they can't even downvote. But it'd be interesting to measure their frequency as well for a research project.
  - grecy 7y ago
    Right. I'd love to see something like this done for HN. https://twitter.com/AirMovingDevice/status/1181120601643073536?s=20 https://twitter.com/AirMovingDevice/status/11811206016430735...
  - xfs 7y ago
    At the risk of being labeled one myself... there are no examples. I've seen dang respond to complaints like this many times and every time it was real people with real profiles being accused of shills, trolls etc. Also, if you look it up it's almost all politics threads wrt China this year on HN with overwhelming anti-China sentiment, yet here we are, arguing about pro-China influence being too strong. Then the question is no longer about how many shills are objectively out there that can be quantifiably measured, because this fact is obviously not what people have been basing their accusations on, but what results in the very question of shills being raised in the first place. The only theory I can think of would be Chomsky's fifth filter, that is, a common external enemy that helps maintain consensus and divert ideological stress from internal antagonism, be it terrorists, Russian trolls, Chinese shills. This is compounded by the universalist belief that it is impossible to hold "genuine" political thoughts other than the End of History liberal democracy project, which is in itself beset on all sides already, making it all more intense.

decoyworker 7y ago

Look at it this way- they basically are not allowed to say anything else. I pity them but at the same time I hope things improve for them.

therealdrag0 7y ago
If it's voluntary, they could voluntarily say nothing instead.
- loceng 7y ago
  "Voluntary" under pressure or fear for safety, repercussions, of course is not voluntary.
- decoyworker 7y ago
  All your peers are doing it and improving their social credit scores. Do you want to fall behind your peers?
loceng 7y ago
Agreed. It's important to understand such things - to have compassion. It's why I also try to explain the circumstances in detail - in hopes that it may reduce the indoctrination, help them develop critical thinking further; building secret allies within the tyrant's machine.

duxup 7y ago

I've run into it on Reddit over a period of time last year as well. The key identifier for me was what seemed to be either a certain level of intellectual dishonestly, or a real language barrier as sometimes their responses felt like a misunderstanding ... and then the real kicker were the identical links to US news sources that inevitably involved some US college professor (they like those stories) but also didn't quite say what they thought the story said. If it was a real language barrier it was kinda sad as it was clear they couldn't understand what I was saying in English and their response was sometimes equally baffling to me.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

dang 7y ago

Your comments here and below have broken the site guidelines badly. Please read and follow them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Note this one: Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data. No one who reads these threads remotely objectively would say "The pro-china movement on HN is extremely strong". Accounts that argue that side are a tiny minority, and frequently get barraged with accusations of bad faith, which is a form of internet bullying. It's true that people sometimes create throwaway accounts to argue the other side. But it's easy to understand why—like I just said, they get barraged. When we look into such cases, we nearly always find—to the extent that we find anything—that these commenters are people in Western countries who are either of Chinese background, have experience in China, or are Chinese expats. Sometimes they are Westerners living in China. Overwhelmingly, the evidence is that they are good faith users just like you are, who have different backgrounds and experiences from you, which lead them to see the same situations differently than you do. What that calls for is not accusation and suppression but tolerance. As a seasoned HN user, someone who has shared many of your own wide-ranging experiences over the years, you ought to be practicing and modeling that for others. Could they be spies or shills or foreign agents? Sure they could; so could you. What can we do other than look for evidence? Some evidence of something—anything. You have zero evidence for making these dramatic sinister claims, which poison discussion and destroy community. Just imagine if someone accused you of being a paid propagandist or spy when you were simply posting in good faith. This is a mob behavior. It's not welcome on HN, which is why we have that guideline. (No, not because we're pro-Chinese or secret communists.) How you leap from zero evidence to "it couldn't be more obvious" or (downthread) "the increasing number of accounts that are very, very obviously paid or otherwise government controlled to influence opinions on HN" is really shocking to me. You're far from the only user doing this—it's rampant—but it's utterly dismaying to see a longstanding and good HN contributor pouring this poison in here by the bucket. By the way, when we find accounts that are using HN primarily for political battle, including nationalistic battle, we either ban them or ask them to stop. We do that regardless of what they happen to be battling for—it's against the site guidelines either way. But I can tell you from the heart, as the person responsible for keeping the peace here, that pro-China accounts doing such things are barely a blip of an issue compared to comments like the ones you posted here. They exist, but they're impotent. It's comments like yours, which manifest the real shadow of this community, that have me scared and worried for HN.