16 ms·

Interesting how an incidence in gaming garner more eye balls on the topic of Hong Kong politics than whole month combined. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=al

by a_c 7y ago

Interesting how an incidence in gaming garner more eye balls on the topic of Hong Kong politics than whole month combined. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=hong%20kong&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... Good for the people of Hong Kong. The topic of Hong Kong didn't struck me as sensational/desperate as it deserves until a Hong Kong friend send me this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yXTHODE24Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yXTHODE24Q Am moved by the clip, especially for the first 50s. It is english sub-ed. Would recommend anyone interested in the topic give it a look

Timpy 7y ago
The Taiwan Flag Emoji topic got a lot of attention too. I think that's a fair spread. Censorship, Unicode standards, and Blizzard is kind of the expected overlap of interest topics for Hacker News.
- a_c 7y ago
  I realised the Emoji topic https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182705 after posting my comments. Blizzard, emoji, Hong Kong, and in part NBA too[1], once again shows how unpredictable viral-ness can be. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21176976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21176976
  - LeoNatan25 7y ago
    Don’t forget the well placed South Park episode to pour more gas on the fire.
- ehsankia 7y ago
  Right, general politics is not really in the wheelhouse for HN, but these two specific cases encroached on tech, which is why they got much more attention. Other acts of technological censorship from China also often reach the front page. I don't think there's anything nefarious, it's that those other topics aren't really relevant to HN.
  - joelx 7y ago
    We should all boycott Blizzard and the NBA.
    - ergothus 7y ago
      After bnetd I boycotted Blizzard for years. The only tangible result was that I missed out on Warcraft 3. After the 1-click patent, I boycotted Amazon for years. They didn't appear to have missed my money. I'm all for collective action, but I'm not sure if boycotts are reliable. I've seen companies respond to social pressures, but like net neutrality, when they can make money they just try again more subtilely, and that presumes the original pressure was successful. I'm not saying we SHOULDN'T boycott Blizzard and the NBA...but do we have other options as well? Governmental action to be backing, companies with clear "good" positions we should promote, etc? I don't have ideas, I just have a pile of bitterness and hopelessness, and issues like Hong Kong feel a lot more important than 1 click.
      - closetohome 7y ago
        I feel like there are different levels here. The Bnetd thing was unfortunate, but still an exceptionally first-world problem. People being beaten to death in the streets may warrant a bit wider reaction.
        echelon 7y ago
        The parent poster isn't claiming that certain issues are more or less pressing than others. Rather, we, as ordinary citizens, have zero control. Individual acts of protest are not working and do not change these companies' behaviors.
        closetohome 7y ago
        And my point was that this has a better chance of success because the cause is more widely understandable and sympathetic than a lawsuit over IP.
- iamaelephant 7y ago
  The emoji topic has nothing to do with Unicode standards and everything to do with Apple capitulating to China.
dgzl 7y ago
People generally only care about things they care about. I know far more hearthstone players than anything related to Hong Kong.
blhack 7y ago
I had no idea that that second video would have the effect on me that it did. I'm sitting in my office here crying.
- mzzter 7y ago
  Same, the pain in the voices got to me.
- bonestamp2 7y ago
  Same. I've seen a few of the videos that are used in that video and some of those videos (in longer form) are very powerful too. For example, that short clip of the blindfolded prisoners on the ground in handcuffs is a drone video that is believed to show religious prisoners being taken to "re-education" camps. Of course, the Hong Kong protesters fear they will also be subject to "re-education" when the Chinese state regains control of Hong Kong as this transition period winds down: https://observers.france24.com/en/20190925-drone-video-shows-mass-displacement-prisoners-china-xinjiang-uyghur-region https://observers.france24.com/en/20190925-drone-video-shows... Also, here is the longer version of the "give me liberty" speech that they used. May be NSFW (coarse language): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLY9BQsd_As https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLY9BQsd_As
- mistermann 7y ago
  > I am willing to die for this. Why? Because this is our home. Why won't you fight for your home? As simple as that. We are trying to do our best to fight for at least two or three decades. Do you see the students around here? When 2047 comes, they will all be slaves. When 2047 comes, the students will all become middle-aged, and they will all be slaves, we will all be slaves. If we don't fight now, we don't have another chance. I can't help but think of the similar scene from LOTR: > The power of the enemy is growing. Sauron will use his puppet Saruman to destroy the people of Rohan. Isengard has been unleashed. The Eye of Sauron now turns to Gondor, the last free kingdom of Men. His war on this country will come swiftly. He senses the Ring is close. The strength of the Ringbearer is failing. In his heart, Frodo begins to understand. The quest will claim his life. You know this... you have foreseen it. It is the risk we all took. In the gathering dark, the will of the Ring grows strong. It works hard now to find its way back into the hands of Men. Men, who are so easily seduced by its power. The young Captain of Gondor has but to extend his hands, take the Ring for his own and the world will fall. It is close now, so close to achieving its goal. For Sauron will have dominion of all life on this Earth, even unto the ending of the world. The time of the Elves is over. Do we leave Middle-earth to its fate? Do we let them stand alone? It's fun to think about how this metaphorically applies to modern day planet earth. For example, "The Ring" could be, say, unrivaled permanent global superpower status, "China" could be Sauron, Hong Kong could be Middle Earth, and "the West" could be the elves. One significant difference however is that unlike the elves, we don't have a Valinor to flee to. And we might not have to wait until 2047 before we see this all unfold. Now of course it's easy to chuckle at this as silly speculation and hyperbole, but really, is it literally not possible? Look at how quickly China has risen, and not only utterly unopposed by anyone, but aided by the West to the very, very best of their ability, with no end in sight (for the rise, or the aid). But wait, am I implying that we should be fearful because Chinese people are bad, and I am simply demonstrating the fearful, small-minded thinking of your typical racist white person? This is indeed one possibility. Another simultaneous possibility is that what I actually fear is tyranny, except as a result of things I allude to in another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21194097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21194097), many modern educated Western people seem to have become unable to think clearly about topics that have a racial component. Due to multiple decades of righteous and well-intentioned anti-racism indoctrination, hyper-reinforced over the last few years by various forms of propaganda and excessive public consumption of not-actually-consistent-with-objetive-reality social media content, our heuristics seem to have become hyperactive to the degree that we can no longer think rationally on certain topics. Most everyone can appreciate the risk of tyranny faced under the Nazis, and many seem able (if not enthusiastic!) to envision something similar returning under someone like Trump, but simply add a different color of skin into the equation and the ability to simply even envision such things not only disappears, but is replaced with an extremely passionate denial that such a thing is even possible! This is the power of heuristics in the human mind, they can render us literally unable to think clearly, even highly intelligent people who have full knowledge of the existence of heuristics. And I suppose for the above stated reasons it needs to be pointed out: these comments are largely of a speculative nature. I fully realize that LOTR is a movie, that we are not in fact elves, that China is not guaranteed to take over the world, if they do it does not necessarily have to be tyranny (I can even envision it could very well result in finally having worldwide peace and harmony), and so forth and so on. I am simply saying that reality is actually rather complex (as you might notice from a brief perusal of history), the ideas that each of us consume and hold in our brains are not always 100% accurate, and now and then things don't always trend towards improvement, as recent memes making the rounds would have us believe, based on "the facts". As history well demonstrates, occasionally there are times that it would have been prudent to manage risk, even if the risk happens to seems to partially correlate with race. The reality of reality is: despite what we're often lead to believe, anything can happen.
hendrix23234 7y ago
In the video at mark 01:16 https://youtu.be/0yXTHODE24Q?t=84 https://youtu.be/0yXTHODE24Q?t=84 there is a quote about "non-believers". Does the chinese government have anything against atheists in their policies ? To my knowledge chinese government does not interfere in personal religious beliefs.
- stretchwithme 7y ago
  Yeah, it's not like they've been harvesting organs of Falun Gong members.
- throwawaypolicy 7y ago
  I interpreted "non believers" to be "not believing in the party" not "not believing in religion". "the Chinese government doesn't interfere in personal religious beliefs" is quite the claim though, considering they literally have concentration camps full of Muslims.
- cat199 7y ago
  CCP is officially atheist.
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  > To my knowledge chinese government does not interfere in personal religious beliefs. ... The Chinese government spent 1966 to 1976 violently destroying churches and holy sites of all religions and imprisoning, torturing, and killing priests and worshipers. Since then they've officially embraced freedom of religion, especially traditional Chinese religion that emphasizes submission to authority, but in the last decade they've been "waging the most severe systematic suppression of Christianity in the country since religious freedom was written into the Chinese constitution in 1982," including "destroying crosses, burning bibles, shutting churches and ordering followers to sign papers renouncing their faith." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_China#People's_Republic_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_China#People's_Rep... EDIT: "Account created: 3 hours ago"
curo 7y ago
I don't understand why that YouTube video requires age verification. As far as I know that prevents it from being played to anyone not logged in, including embeds, and severely limits people from seeing it. Social media flagging is censorship. More and more people are calling on videos to be flagged, taken down, etc — then we run into instances like this one where we wish the mechanism wasn't in place at all. I hope HK brings to world back to a recognition of the important of free speech and that the world brings attention back to HK.
- ivanbozic 7y ago
  I believe the age verification kicks in because there are scenes of violence in the video itself, not because of the topic.
- shrimp_emoji 7y ago
  >I don't understand why that YouTube video requires age verification. As far as I know that prevents it from being played to anyone not logged in, including embeds, and severely limits people from seeing it. Yep. Usually, they play when changing from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yXTHODE24Q to https://www.youtube.com/embed/0yXTHODE24Q but not this. But youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yXTHODE24Q works. :D https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Youtube-dl https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Youtube-dl
  - Ajedi32 7y ago
    Thanks. It's really obnoxious that they make you sign-in to verify your age, rather than just enter your birth date like some other sites. Especially since AFAIK it's impossible to create a Google account these days without giving them your phone number (thus exposing your identity). For politically sensitive videos such as this, such restrictions seem like a particularly bad idea.
    - SirLotsaLocks 7y ago
      I'm pretty sure you can, but if you're creating a lot of the mat once they begin to require it.
mrosett 7y ago
That second video is really something. Wow.
- lawnchair_larry 7y ago
  A few comments refer to a second video, but the parent only has 1 video link. What are you referring to?
  - blhack 7y ago
    The second link in the comment. I made this mistake two in my comment.
legohead 7y ago
Iraq needs some attention... Protests have been going on for a week now, 100+ protesters have been killed, thousands hurt.
- qnsi 7y ago
  Where can I follow these protests? r/HongKong is a great place to follow HK protests
- nerfhammer 7y ago
  there's also big protests in Haiti and Ecuador that are getting even less attention
TeMPOraL 7y ago
> Interesting how an incidence in gaming garner more eye balls on the topic of Hong Kong politics than whole month combined. That's crap. There's a Hong Kong-related story on the front page every couple days for a while now. Perhaps you didn't notice the pagination buttons at the bottom when sorting by date? https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=hong%20kong&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
phy6 7y ago
Thanks for sharing both links.
theseadroid 7y ago
Sorry for not entirely related to the main thread, but since it seems there are many people in this thread knowledgable on what's going on in Hong Kong, I'd like to ask 2 questions. I'm not siding with CCP, but my issue is I'm not sure I can side with the protestors either. Because 1. Does the protestors representing the majority of citizens? If yes at this stage why the working class in Hong Kong hasn't started long term strike yet? I would imagine that the most effective non violence method of protesting by citizens would be stop working. That would for one stop the tax flow to the government. 2. Is it necessary for protestors to be violent against pro-China civilians/properties? I'm aware that the protestors have been subject to violence from both police and mobs alike, but fighting for democracy should be a higher cause than revenge? Aren't they fight for freedom of speech among others? Or it's just freedom for themselves and violence and totalitarianism for who else disagrees? [1] Again I love freedom to the point I've spent many years fighting it for myself and helped a few people. I support Taiwan to be an independent country. But we all know many bad things have been committed under the name of freedom as well. Now I'm not sure if the Hong Kong protestors are fighting under the name of freedom to actually express their hatred toward mainlanders? Thanks for reading and hope my questions would not offend anyone. Just would like to understand the situation better. Edit: some explanations on the downvotes would be nice. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-GR88q8pIw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-GR88q8pIw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPYuGYLesx0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPYuGYLesx0 (the planting of CCP flag near the end is really distasteful for me) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NFb2chXt9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NFb2chXt9k https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3031906.. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3031906.... (trashing trains while passengers still inside) (Toby Guu is a Canadian software developer) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Jgp7-tXfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Jgp7-tXfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFwGqF3QlVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFwGqF3QlVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcw7lcZA7SE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcw7lcZA7SE
- stedaniels 7y ago
  1. Any short or long-term strike action would hurt the protestors more than the government due to lack of food and welfare. 2. Violence against Pro government folk is bad. However there has also been a lot of documented instances of Pro government forces being dressed as protestors and sparking violence. From what I've seen it all started remarkably peaceful and had since been escalated to a position where the government has free rein. Not something the protestors wanted.
nbardy 7y ago
Labeling this as "an incidence of gaming" is a framing that misses the main conflict of the situation. This real incidence here is an American company practicing censorship on behalf of the CCP.
dang 7y ago
> an incidence in gaming garner more eye balls on the topic of Hong Kong politics than whole month combined That's definitely not true. Hong Kong has been discussed a great deal here, and China even more. These are probably the most-discussed topics of the last month; if not, I can't think of what would be. Perhaps climate change. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=hong%20kong%20comments%3E10&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=china%20comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
- PavlovsCat 7y ago
  > hong kong comments > 10 Just as interesting are all the instances where stories gained dozens of upvotes but very few comments, because they disappeared from the front page within a few hours after rising to the first spot. It's very easy to see even from the outside, if you simply filter for stories that are ranked lower than other stories that have a lower score, are older, and have more comments. Try this on for size: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=hong%20kong%20comments%3C20%20points%3E50&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... That even gets a few results of you increase the score to 100, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20304526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20304526 I remember seeing that just go poof back then. One moment it's at the top, then it quickly sinks, then it's on page 7824. Just about any subject is discussed a great deal here, because "a great deal" is no hard qualifier at all. But I know few subjects so consistently suppressed and messed with here as Chinese totalitarianism. You could convince me otherwise with a database dump, by making votes and flags public, but not just with mere claims and saying you didn't notice anything. Maybe you didn't, but that really just proves you didn't notice it.
  - dang 7y ago
    For sure, there are submissions on that topic at every level of points, comments, and front page time. It's that way for all the hottest topics; if we replace Hong Kong with climate change in your query the result is similar: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=climate%20comments%3C20%20points%3E50&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... The hottest topics are both the most discussed and the most "consistently suppressed", as you put it. That sounds like an oxymoron, but it's just what happens when you have 10x more submissions than front page slots. Frontpage space is the scarcest resource on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20scarce&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Because of this scarcity, everyone who feels strongly about a story feels that their story is being unfairly suppressed on HN, no matter how much coverage it's actually receiving relative to other topics. You seem to feel that Chinese political stories are being unfairly suppressed for who knows what reason—but there are at least as many users (probably many more) who feel that those stories are overrepresented and that HN is going downhill because of it. There's an email in the inbox right now saying so. The actual moderation principles we use about all this are simple and have been the same for many years. Here they are: HN is a site for intellectual curiosity, so follow-up stories that don't add new information are mostly off topic, as are riler-uppers that don't gratify curiosity so much as stir up indignation and flamewar. When there have been a lot of stories about X lately, the bar for X stories gets raised; HN readers don't like it when the front page has a lot of stuff they've seen already. That's about it. The execution has a lot of subtleties, of course, but those principles fully explain what you're observing.
jefftk 7y ago
Here's a better search link: top stories this month mentioning HK: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=true&query=hong%20kong&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr... This one is the top story, but "Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong", "Hong Kong protest safety app banned from iOS store", "Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests", and others all got substantial attention.
PhasmaFelis 7y ago
> Interesting how an incidence in gaming garner more eye balls on the topic of Hong Kong politics than whole month combined. That's not correct, if you search over the past month and sort by Most Popular. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=true&query=hong%20kong&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr... This story is #1, but #2 and #3 combined outstrip it by themselves. And they're both also about American companies censoring themselves and their users on behalf of China. For better or worse, it's that in particular that gets HN's attention.

by a_c 7y ago

Timpy 7y ago

The Taiwan Flag Emoji topic got a lot of attention too. I think that's a fair spread. Censorship, Unicode standards, and Blizzard is kind of the expected overlap of interest topics for Hacker News.

a_c 7y ago
I realised the Emoji topic https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182705 after posting my comments. Blizzard, emoji, Hong Kong, and in part NBA too[1], once again shows how unpredictable viral-ness can be. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21176976 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21176976
- LeoNatan25 7y ago
  Don’t forget the well placed South Park episode to pour more gas on the fire.
ehsankia 7y ago
Right, general politics is not really in the wheelhouse for HN, but these two specific cases encroached on tech, which is why they got much more attention. Other acts of technological censorship from China also often reach the front page. I don't think there's anything nefarious, it's that those other topics aren't really relevant to HN.
- joelx 7y ago
  We should all boycott Blizzard and the NBA.
  - ergothus 7y ago
    After bnetd I boycotted Blizzard for years. The only tangible result was that I missed out on Warcraft 3. After the 1-click patent, I boycotted Amazon for years. They didn't appear to have missed my money. I'm all for collective action, but I'm not sure if boycotts are reliable. I've seen companies respond to social pressures, but like net neutrality, when they can make money they just try again more subtilely, and that presumes the original pressure was successful. I'm not saying we SHOULDN'T boycott Blizzard and the NBA...but do we have other options as well? Governmental action to be backing, companies with clear "good" positions we should promote, etc? I don't have ideas, I just have a pile of bitterness and hopelessness, and issues like Hong Kong feel a lot more important than 1 click.
    - closetohome 7y ago
      I feel like there are different levels here. The Bnetd thing was unfortunate, but still an exceptionally first-world problem. People being beaten to death in the streets may warrant a bit wider reaction.
      - echelon 7y ago
        The parent poster isn't claiming that certain issues are more or less pressing than others. Rather, we, as ordinary citizens, have zero control. Individual acts of protest are not working and do not change these companies' behaviors.
        closetohome 7y ago
        And my point was that this has a better chance of success because the cause is more widely understandable and sympathetic than a lawsuit over IP.
iamaelephant 7y ago
The emoji topic has nothing to do with Unicode standards and everything to do with Apple capitulating to China.

dgzl 7y ago

People generally only care about things they care about. I know far more hearthstone players than anything related to Hong Kong.

blhack 7y ago

I had no idea that that second video would have the effect on me that it did. I'm sitting in my office here crying.

mzzter 7y ago
Same, the pain in the voices got to me.
bonestamp2 7y ago
Same. I've seen a few of the videos that are used in that video and some of those videos (in longer form) are very powerful too. For example, that short clip of the blindfolded prisoners on the ground in handcuffs is a drone video that is believed to show religious prisoners being taken to "re-education" camps. Of course, the Hong Kong protesters fear they will also be subject to "re-education" when the Chinese state regains control of Hong Kong as this transition period winds down: https://observers.france24.com/en/20190925-drone-video-shows-mass-displacement-prisoners-china-xinjiang-uyghur-region https://observers.france24.com/en/20190925-drone-video-shows... Also, here is the longer version of the "give me liberty" speech that they used. May be NSFW (coarse language): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLY9BQsd_As https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLY9BQsd_As
mistermann 7y ago
> I am willing to die for this. Why? Because this is our home. Why won't you fight for your home? As simple as that. We are trying to do our best to fight for at least two or three decades. Do you see the students around here? When 2047 comes, they will all be slaves. When 2047 comes, the students will all become middle-aged, and they will all be slaves, we will all be slaves. If we don't fight now, we don't have another chance. I can't help but think of the similar scene from LOTR: > The power of the enemy is growing. Sauron will use his puppet Saruman to destroy the people of Rohan. Isengard has been unleashed. The Eye of Sauron now turns to Gondor, the last free kingdom of Men. His war on this country will come swiftly. He senses the Ring is close. The strength of the Ringbearer is failing. In his heart, Frodo begins to understand. The quest will claim his life. You know this... you have foreseen it. It is the risk we all took. In the gathering dark, the will of the Ring grows strong. It works hard now to find its way back into the hands of Men. Men, who are so easily seduced by its power. The young Captain of Gondor has but to extend his hands, take the Ring for his own and the world will fall. It is close now, so close to achieving its goal. For Sauron will have dominion of all life on this Earth, even unto the ending of the world. The time of the Elves is over. Do we leave Middle-earth to its fate? Do we let them stand alone? It's fun to think about how this metaphorically applies to modern day planet earth. For example, "The Ring" could be, say, unrivaled permanent global superpower status, "China" could be Sauron, Hong Kong could be Middle Earth, and "the West" could be the elves. One significant difference however is that unlike the elves, we don't have a Valinor to flee to. And we might not have to wait until 2047 before we see this all unfold. Now of course it's easy to chuckle at this as silly speculation and hyperbole, but really, is it literally not possible? Look at how quickly China has risen, and not only utterly unopposed by anyone, but aided by the West to the very, very best of their ability, with no end in sight (for the rise, or the aid). But wait, am I implying that we should be fearful because Chinese people are bad, and I am simply demonstrating the fearful, small-minded thinking of your typical racist white person? This is indeed one possibility. Another simultaneous possibility is that what I actually fear is tyranny, except as a result of things I allude to in another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21194097 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21194097), many modern educated Western people seem to have become unable to think clearly about topics that have a racial component. Due to multiple decades of righteous and well-intentioned anti-racism indoctrination, hyper-reinforced over the last few years by various forms of propaganda and excessive public consumption of not-actually-consistent-with-objetive-reality social media content, our heuristics seem to have become hyperactive to the degree that we can no longer think rationally on certain topics. Most everyone can appreciate the risk of tyranny faced under the Nazis, and many seem able (if not enthusiastic!) to envision something similar returning under someone like Trump, but simply add a different color of skin into the equation and the ability to simply even envision such things not only disappears, but is replaced with an extremely passionate denial that such a thing is even possible! This is the power of heuristics in the human mind, they can render us literally unable to think clearly, even highly intelligent people who have full knowledge of the existence of heuristics. And I suppose for the above stated reasons it needs to be pointed out: these comments are largely of a speculative nature. I fully realize that LOTR is a movie, that we are not in fact elves, that China is not guaranteed to take over the world, if they do it does not necessarily have to be tyranny (I can even envision it could very well result in finally having worldwide peace and harmony), and so forth and so on. I am simply saying that reality is actually rather complex (as you might notice from a brief perusal of history), the ideas that each of us consume and hold in our brains are not always 100% accurate, and now and then things don't always trend towards improvement, as recent memes making the rounds would have us believe, based on "the facts". As history well demonstrates, occasionally there are times that it would have been prudent to manage risk, even if the risk happens to seems to partially correlate with race. The reality of reality is: despite what we're often lead to believe, anything can happen.

hendrix23234 7y ago

In the video at mark 01:16 https://youtu.be/0yXTHODE24Q?t=84 https://youtu.be/0yXTHODE24Q?t=84 there is a quote about "non-believers". Does the chinese government have anything against atheists in their policies ? To my knowledge chinese government does not interfere in personal religious beliefs.

stretchwithme 7y ago
Yeah, it's not like they've been harvesting organs of Falun Gong members.
throwawaypolicy 7y ago
I interpreted "non believers" to be "not believing in the party" not "not believing in religion". "the Chinese government doesn't interfere in personal religious beliefs" is quite the claim though, considering they literally have concentration camps full of Muslims.
cat199 7y ago
CCP is officially atheist.
PhasmaFelis 7y ago
> To my knowledge chinese government does not interfere in personal religious beliefs. ... The Chinese government spent 1966 to 1976 violently destroying churches and holy sites of all religions and imprisoning, torturing, and killing priests and worshipers. Since then they've officially embraced freedom of religion, especially traditional Chinese religion that emphasizes submission to authority, but in the last decade they've been "waging the most severe systematic suppression of Christianity in the country since religious freedom was written into the Chinese constitution in 1982," including "destroying crosses, burning bibles, shutting churches and ordering followers to sign papers renouncing their faith." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_China#People's_Republic_of_China https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_China#People's_Rep... EDIT: "Account created: 3 hours ago"

curo 7y ago

I don't understand why that YouTube video requires age verification. As far as I know that prevents it from being played to anyone not logged in, including embeds, and severely limits people from seeing it. Social media flagging is censorship. More and more people are calling on videos to be flagged, taken down, etc — then we run into instances like this one where we wish the mechanism wasn't in place at all. I hope HK brings to world back to a recognition of the important of free speech and that the world brings attention back to HK.

ivanbozic 7y ago
I believe the age verification kicks in because there are scenes of violence in the video itself, not because of the topic.
shrimp_emoji 7y ago
>I don't understand why that YouTube video requires age verification. As far as I know that prevents it from being played to anyone not logged in, including embeds, and severely limits people from seeing it. Yep. Usually, they play when changing from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yXTHODE24Q to https://www.youtube.com/embed/0yXTHODE24Q but not this. But youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0yXTHODE24Q works. :D https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Youtube-dl https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Youtube-dl
- Ajedi32 7y ago
  Thanks. It's really obnoxious that they make you sign-in to verify your age, rather than just enter your birth date like some other sites. Especially since AFAIK it's impossible to create a Google account these days without giving them your phone number (thus exposing your identity). For politically sensitive videos such as this, such restrictions seem like a particularly bad idea.
  - SirLotsaLocks 7y ago
    I'm pretty sure you can, but if you're creating a lot of the mat once they begin to require it.

mrosett 7y ago

That second video is really something. Wow.

lawnchair_larry 7y ago
A few comments refer to a second video, but the parent only has 1 video link. What are you referring to?
- blhack 7y ago
  The second link in the comment. I made this mistake two in my comment.

legohead 7y ago

Iraq needs some attention... Protests have been going on for a week now, 100+ protesters have been killed, thousands hurt.

qnsi 7y ago
Where can I follow these protests? r/HongKong is a great place to follow HK protests
nerfhammer 7y ago
there's also big protests in Haiti and Ecuador that are getting even less attention

TeMPOraL 7y ago

> Interesting how an incidence in gaming garner more eye balls on the topic of Hong Kong politics than whole month combined. That's crap. There's a Hong Kong-related story on the front page every couple days for a while now. Perhaps you didn't notice the pagination buttons at the bottom when sorting by date? https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=hong%20kong&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

phy6 7y ago

Thanks for sharing both links.

theseadroid 7y ago

Sorry for not entirely related to the main thread, but since it seems there are many people in this thread knowledgable on what's going on in Hong Kong, I'd like to ask 2 questions. I'm not siding with CCP, but my issue is I'm not sure I can side with the protestors either. Because 1. Does the protestors representing the majority of citizens? If yes at this stage why the working class in Hong Kong hasn't started long term strike yet? I would imagine that the most effective non violence method of protesting by citizens would be stop working. That would for one stop the tax flow to the government. 2. Is it necessary for protestors to be violent against pro-China civilians/properties? I'm aware that the protestors have been subject to violence from both police and mobs alike, but fighting for democracy should be a higher cause than revenge? Aren't they fight for freedom of speech among others? Or it's just freedom for themselves and violence and totalitarianism for who else disagrees? [1] Again I love freedom to the point I've spent many years fighting it for myself and helped a few people. I support Taiwan to be an independent country. But we all know many bad things have been committed under the name of freedom as well. Now I'm not sure if the Hong Kong protestors are fighting under the name of freedom to actually express their hatred toward mainlanders? Thanks for reading and hope my questions would not offend anyone. Just would like to understand the situation better. Edit: some explanations on the downvotes would be nice. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-GR88q8pIw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-GR88q8pIw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPYuGYLesx0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPYuGYLesx0 (the planting of CCP flag near the end is really distasteful for me) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NFb2chXt9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NFb2chXt9k https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3031906.. https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/politics/article/3031906.... (trashing trains while passengers still inside) (Toby Guu is a Canadian software developer) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Jgp7-tXfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Jgp7-tXfc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFwGqF3QlVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFwGqF3QlVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcw7lcZA7SE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcw7lcZA7SE

stedaniels 7y ago
1. Any short or long-term strike action would hurt the protestors more than the government due to lack of food and welfare. 2. Violence against Pro government folk is bad. However there has also been a lot of documented instances of Pro government forces being dressed as protestors and sparking violence. From what I've seen it all started remarkably peaceful and had since been escalated to a position where the government has free rein. Not something the protestors wanted.

nbardy 7y ago

Labeling this as "an incidence of gaming" is a framing that misses the main conflict of the situation. This real incidence here is an American company practicing censorship on behalf of the CCP.

dang 7y ago

> an incidence in gaming garner more eye balls on the topic of Hong Kong politics than whole month combined That's definitely not true. Hong Kong has been discussed a great deal here, and China even more. These are probably the most-discussed topics of the last month; if not, I can't think of what would be. Perhaps climate change. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=hong%20kong%20comments%3E10&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=china%20comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

PavlovsCat 7y ago
> hong kong comments > 10 Just as interesting are all the instances where stories gained dozens of upvotes but very few comments, because they disappeared from the front page within a few hours after rising to the first spot. It's very easy to see even from the outside, if you simply filter for stories that are ranked lower than other stories that have a lower score, are older, and have more comments. Try this on for size: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=hong%20kong%20comments%3C20%20points%3E50&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... That even gets a few results of you increase the score to 100, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20304526 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20304526 I remember seeing that just go poof back then. One moment it's at the top, then it quickly sinks, then it's on page 7824. Just about any subject is discussed a great deal here, because "a great deal" is no hard qualifier at all. But I know few subjects so consistently suppressed and messed with here as Chinese totalitarianism. You could convince me otherwise with a database dump, by making votes and flags public, but not just with mere claims and saying you didn't notice anything. Maybe you didn't, but that really just proves you didn't notice it.
- dang 7y ago
  For sure, there are submissions on that topic at every level of points, comments, and front page time. It's that way for all the hottest topics; if we replace Hong Kong with climate change in your query the result is similar: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=climate%20comments%3C20%20points%3E50&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... The hottest topics are both the most discussed and the most "consistently suppressed", as you put it. That sounds like an oxymoron, but it's just what happens when you have 10x more submissions than front page slots. Frontpage space is the scarcest resource on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20scarce&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... Because of this scarcity, everyone who feels strongly about a story feels that their story is being unfairly suppressed on HN, no matter how much coverage it's actually receiving relative to other topics. You seem to feel that Chinese political stories are being unfairly suppressed for who knows what reason—but there are at least as many users (probably many more) who feel that those stories are overrepresented and that HN is going downhill because of it. There's an email in the inbox right now saying so. The actual moderation principles we use about all this are simple and have been the same for many years. Here they are: HN is a site for intellectual curiosity, so follow-up stories that don't add new information are mostly off topic, as are riler-uppers that don't gratify curiosity so much as stir up indignation and flamewar. When there have been a lot of stories about X lately, the bar for X stories gets raised; HN readers don't like it when the front page has a lot of stuff they've seen already. That's about it. The execution has a lot of subtleties, of course, but those principles fully explain what you're observing.

jefftk 7y ago

Here's a better search link: top stories this month mentioning HK: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=true&query=hong%20kong&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr... This one is the top story, but "Apple Hides Taiwan Flag in Hong Kong", "Hong Kong protest safety app banned from iOS store", "Protester shot in chest by live police round during Hong Kong protests", and others all got substantial attention.

PhasmaFelis 7y ago

> Interesting how an incidence in gaming garner more eye balls on the topic of Hong Kong politics than whole month combined. That's not correct, if you search over the past month and sort by Most Popular. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=true&query=hong%20kong&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=tr... This story is #1, but #2 and #3 combined outstrip it by themselves. And they're both also about American companies censoring themselves and their users on behalf of China. For better or worse, it's that in particular that gets HN's attention.