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Aight, conspiracy theory time. I'm becoming concerned about PRC influence in my country (USA). From my perspective the PRC (government) is blatantly evil, and

Aight, conspiracy theory time. I'm becoming concerned about PRC influence in my country (USA). From my perspective the PRC (government) is blatantly evil, and happily engaging in cultural warfare, and nobody seems to be fighting back. I see absurd astroturfing and shilling on social media here (Reddit, Twitter, Facebook). It's always obvious - whereas a genuine criticizer of the Hong Kong protestors might ask about violence, the shills will always use the word "ISIS" somewhere in their message. It's everywhere and we don't seem to be fighting back. I browse Chinese social media and while my Mandarin isn't great I'm not seeing any level of AstroTurfing at all. So am I just a crazy conspiracy person? Is the PRC astroturfing not a big deal? Maybe my concerns are valid but that doesn't justify further concern about the influx of PRC messaging vectors to the USA, i.e. tiktok? When I worked in the PRC I got to see first hand the strong-arm of the Party. Every business involved in communication had a government official whose entire job was to ensure the company "protected the social wellbeing of the people of the PRC" or similar. I can only assume tiktok has the same and I can only assume it's a matter of time before the Party starts directing the company to leverage their access to a massive US audience in a way that benefits the "social wellbeing," i.e. by disseminating PRC propaganda.

pcroh 7y ago
Exactly the way I feel about American influence in Europe. It's not too bad, you'll get used to it.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  What are the issues that America is trying to push in Europe?
  - mgbmtl 7y ago
    As a Canadian, random examples: Indifference to violence, hypocrisy on nudity, monetizing privacy (no respect for privacy), monetizing medical care. (I don't mean to start a flame war, but they are topics where EU and Canada tend to disagree with major US trends)
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - whatshisface 7y ago
      Major US trends, but are people shilling on Reddit to support them? That's an honest question, I don't really read Reddit. I know there are a lot of people in the US who honestly believe in, say, private healthcare, so a lot of the comments in support of it could be explained as coming from Americans expressing their opinions, as opposed to government or corporate agents pushing an agenda.
      - mgbmtl 7y ago
        I guess there can be a lot of influence in a discussion based on how comments are upvoted, how algorithms will favour one type of content over another? (especially when advertising is guiding it all, and lobbies are big advertisers) I enjoyed this article: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a9335/upvotes-downvotes-and-the-science-of-the-reddit-hivemind-15784871/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a9335/upvote... I also rarely visit Reddit, but for Facebook and Twitter, I guess there has been plenty of research on how people can manipulate public opinion by sharing/voting, and also the impact of their respective algorithms for promoting content? Of course, Tik Tok is no different, and we should be worried. They do the same thing, only it's not 'our' lobbies and we have little control on them.
    - hervature 7y ago
      As a fellow Canadian can you expand on this? Canada has been involved in every war that the US has been in my lifetime (born in 1993). Don't know what you mean on hypocrisy on nudity, but I only became comfortable with it when I visited Scandinavia when I was 22; seems like Canada has a similar issue. I'll maybe give you medical care, but this is an incredibly complex topic. To think that public health care isn't monetized is a naïve point of view. Somehow, the only thing that the Canadian government has done differently than the US is that it has convinced its people that it is not the US. That's my honest opinion.
      - 7y ago
  - the-dude 7y ago
    The occasional war comes to mind.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- 9dl 7y ago
  I don't think someone should even consider to get used to commie influence Or in 5-10 years that someone will be in situation worse than HK now
- oarabbus_ 7y ago
  You mean to, in supposed good faith, suggest that USA influence in Europe is similar and/or equivalent to Chinese influence and interference in the USA?
  - pcroh 7y ago
    Yes. Are you familiar with the NATO?
    - oarabbus_ 7y ago
      Quite. I think I'll stop responding to this thread because we're not going to see eye-to-eye here. Despite the current US President's love for despots and totalitarianism, that doesn't describe the USA.
    - 9dl 7y ago
      Did you mean that old organisation which defend world from soviet invasion?
      - aabbccdd_a 7y ago
        hi
        aabbccdd_a 7y ago
        hii
        aabbccdd_a 7y ago
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        aabbccdd_a 7y ago
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- deleted 7y ago
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- dang 7y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar. The results below are hand-wringingly wretched. I know you're sincere but sincerely burning this place down is still destructive. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
9dl 7y ago
I don't think that "people" are interested in USA CCP - yes
m_ke 7y ago
It will be interesting to see how all of these silly videos recorded by kids will be used against them in 10-20 years. Everything that they do and say will be indexed and accessible for blackmail.
- cm2187 7y ago
  All one need is a black face/not black face AI. Or whatever will be taboo in 20 years.
- chrisjc 7y ago
  Not to mention all the ask-reddits such as "what serious crime did you commit and get away with?" or "what is your definition of torture? [SERIOUS]".
- kazagistar 7y ago
  I keep hoping that society will become more actively forgiving of things people actually regret in the future. Blackmail isn't possible if no one cares about your edgy phase that you got over.
  - hombre_fatal 7y ago
    Yeah, we seem to be able to rightfully forgive people who commit actual crimes once they atone in prison. But cancel culture seems to give you zero ways back despite the most genuine heart-felt apology you can muster for a faux pas you uttered a decade ago.
  - wccrawford 7y ago
    I think it will, but not before the current generation's white knights get hoisted on their own petards. The stuff they say and do today is going to come back and bite them, and then they'll realize the value of forgiveness and start preaching it. The next generation will see it as they grow up, so it'll be smoother for them.
- response777 7y ago
  Exactly what I thought when I first saw Facebook and Instagram. And it turns out that I am the idiot.
logicchains 7y ago
The way I see it, the Chinese government doesn't care what you do as long as you don't challenge it. The US on the other hand seems intent on enforcing its whims everywhere on the globe it can. War on terror, war on drugs, war on encryption, war on financial privacy, war on intellectual property infringement. To quote CS Lewis: "It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
- kp98 7y ago
  You are wrong: I am familiar with the CS Lewis quote 1) In this case the nation working behind the scenes is China. American imperialism I concede is bad. However, the Chinese have quietly been breaking over 50 international regulations and laws from the WTO and universal declaration of human rights. 2) The Chinese do care what you do. Just last week the Swedish government was going to give an award to an activist in Sweden, and the CCP threatened the entire country - pathetic. The Australians said they do not agree with Chinese human rights violations, so they were denied entry (clearly they care). I also question how one can determine what is "challenging" the CCP when it is a mercantilist nation with hands in every basket. 3) Enforcing the war on drugs all over the world? Like asking China not to ship fentanyl? Sure. 4) America is pushing the war on financial privacy? Hello, have you seen Alipay and Wechat before? Do you realize cash is still a major way that some people get paid in America? Perhaps in swift you could argue undue transparency, but wire transfers are a different subject. 5) American intellectual property infringement? ...do you mean like the Chinese forced intellectual property transfer? Lastly, on the CS Lewis quote. America is constantly at odds with its conscience. Half the country is constantly calling out the other half. In China if you don't tow the imperial / mercantilist line your social credit goes down and your freedoms are limited.
  - yourbandsucks 7y ago
    It's been like a week since the last US-backed Latin American coup.
oarabbus_ 7y ago
Reddit is overrun with pro-PRC shills and trolls, it's pretty eye-opening on any thread about Uyghur genocide, Hong Kong protests, or throwbacks to Tiananmen Square. edit: And HN too, apparently. Like clockwork, downvotes galore. I'm willing to hear someone on the other side out on the Uyghur genocide if they'd like to offer their perspective on it.
- pingyong 7y ago
  I honestly wonder how people get this perception when both reddit and HN are so overwhelmingly pro-HK and anti-China. The only way you would ever see a pro-China comment on reddit is by explicitly searching for it, either by sorting by controversial on China-related topics, or by searching for pro-China subs (which are super small compared to reddit, or even just r/HongKong).
  - dang 7y ago
    I believe it's because painful experiences are more memorable than pleasurable ones and make deeper impressions. Running into hostile comments and opposing views is painful: they are like verbal smacks in the face. We remember these more, and they quickly accrete into our overall impression of a site. It doesn't matter how infrequent the comments we dislike are relative to the whole. What matters is the absolute number of them that an individual reader encounters. If it's more than some threshold value N, they will conclude that the entire place is hostile, even if the hostile comments are a tiny minority. At a psychological and even a biological level, that makes sense: once a place has generated N painful experiences, it's dangerous. Percentage of the total is irrelevant. Indeed, it makes a place even more dangerous if most experiences there are pleasurable, since one will be inclined to stay—exposing oneself to future smacks—and to let one's guard down, making the next smack even more painful. We all have a version of this, and though N may vary per person, I bet it's lower than most of us would predict. This phenomenon has some interesting consequences. One is that it enables you to guess with high confidence what someone's views on a topic are, based on how strongly they believe HN (or whatever forum) is biased against them. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but the feeling that it is shows what they find painful and therefore what they disagree with. Also, the intensity of the belief in bias grows with the intensity of their view on the topic. That is, the more passionately you believe X, the more pain an anti-X comment causes, the more strongly you will believe that the forum is anti-X. Another consequence is that the closer a forum gets to being unbiased, the more all sides will believe that it's actually hostile to their views. That seems weird in the wild, but it's simple: the more diverse the comment stream is, the more likely all sides are to notice disagreeable comments and thus receive painful impressions. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20painful%20impression&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22hostile%20media%20effect%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
themagician 7y ago
Why is the PRC evil?
- kazagistar 7y ago
  Comparisons dont matter. It's easier to fight a one front war against your own countries evil then to also have to deal with another empire waiting to swoop in and make things worse.
- komali2 7y ago
  Because it refuses to acknowledge the sovereignty of Taiwan, it sent troops to enforce violence against what was originally peaceful protestors in Hong Kong, it is forcefully imprisoning Uighur Muslims in concentration camps, it is forcing citizens to install spyware on their phones, it doesn't have rule of law, it arbitrarily locks up human rights activists and lawyers, it will target people for their religion, etc. Note that these complaints of mine are against the Party, not the people of China as a whole. Xi Jinping and his cronies are a fresh brand of evil.
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't take HN threads on flamewar tangents. Nothing good can come of this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
kp98 7y ago
The level of infiltration of the 50 cent army on YouTube is absurd. I don't know if you can post links in comments, but try this video on decoupling and read the comments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSbAZGd_Dj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSbAZGd_Dj0 some comments from pro CCP: ``` decoupling is good, US collapses faster. ``` ``` Why accuse China of nationalism? In the past they said "Good Christians" and today they say "Patriots". It's the same old trick ``` ``` The US started this trade war, and now it's starting to hurt the US economy. Can economists foresee the dark future that lies in store for the USA, if it should continue down this path of confrontation? ``` ``` I want can see as top dog by any other country except evil US empire. ``` My friend and I have been analyzing this trend for a long time. You can spot the 50 cent army on youtube on any video that has US and China in the title. The three go to arguments are 1) American imperialism in the middle east, as a counter to belt and road, hostile debt traps, or human rights violations 2) American prison population, as a counter to human rights violations 3) Referring to the past ie "china was the biggest economy for 2000 years" to explain why it will dominate America
- dirtyid 7y ago
  >My friend and I have been analyzing this trend for a long time. You can spot the 50 cent army on youtube on any video that has US and China in the title. The three go to arguments are There's actual reputable and recent research about 50c Army abroad - they don't exist. Beyond Hybrid War: How China Exploits Social Media to Sway American Opinion https://www.recordedfuture.com/china-social-media-operations/ https://www.recordedfuture.com/china-social-media-operations... >While researchers have demonstrated that China does want to present a positive image of the state and Communist Party domestically, the techniques of censorship, filtering, astroturfing, and comment flooding are not viable abroad. We discovered no English language equivalent to the 50 Cent Party in Western social media. 50c also don't engage in political arguments like the comments you're concerned with: How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, not Engaged Argument https://datasociety.net/events/databite-no-94-jennifer-pan/ https://datasociety.net/events/databite-no-94-jennifer-pan/ >In contrast to prior claims, her research shows that the Chinese regime’s strategy is to avoid arguing with skeptics of the party and the government, and to not even discuss controversial issues. Her work infers that the goal of this massive secretive operation is instead to regularly distract the public and change the subject, as most of the these posts involve cheerleading for China, the revolutionary history of the Communist Party, or other symbols of the regime Anti Chinese bots however do - this one is particularly ironic since the researchers went out looking for pro CPC bots only the find the opposite. Chinese computational propaganda: automation, algorithms and the manipulation of information about Chinese politics on Twitter and Weibo. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1476576?journalCode=rics20& https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2018.14... >In line with previous research, little evidence of automation was found on Weibo. In contrast, a large amount of automation was found on Twitter. However, contrary to expectations and previous news reports, no evidence was found of pro-Chinese-state automation on Twitter. Automation on Twitter was associated with anti-Chinese-state perspectives and published in simplified Mandarin, presumably aimed at diasporic Chinese and mainland users who ‘jump the wall’ to access blocked platforms. The only somewhat legitimate claims of Chinese bot on western MSM was the Twitter release with zero method or attribution. Independent analysis show the scope of activity is trivial. https://www.aspi.org.au/report/tweeting-through-great-firewall https://www.aspi.org.au/report/tweeting-through-great-firewa... >The amount of content directly targeting the Hong Kong protests makes up only a relatively small fraction of the total dataset released by Twitter, comprising just 112 accounts and approximately 1600 tweets, of which the vast majority are in Chinese with a much smaller number in English. People are too paranoid over pro-China voices, there's plenty of Chinese diaspora out there willing to call out US hypocrisy. There's also billions of people in non western aligned countries who feel the same way. US has more skeptics than just China, especially after the last few years. Instead of viewing people as Pro-China, consider many people are just not anti-China. Alternatively, people aren't so much as Pro-China as anti-US. There are non Sinophobic bubbles out there. The most parsimonious explanation is just people with different opinions.
z9e 7y ago
I have the same concerns and it's very important to be skeptical. Social media is now the perfect way for governments to control how people perceive something and brings us much closer to an Orwellian world. I think that every government (including the US) is engaging in this disinformation campaigning & psychological warfare, and it's ruining the vision I think most of us had of what the internet would become back in the 90s. Amusingly, when you look at the comments to yours here in this thread, they try to shift the conversation to "Look at what US does in <region>" without actually talking about what you specifically are bringing up. I see this pattern a lot now, whenever you bring up any thoughts such as yours in this realm involving China, a lot of whataboutism in reply happens. Sad to see this happening on HN.
liquid153 7y ago
You’re right
simmanian 7y ago
I had been worried about the Chinese influence in America for a while in the past, but recently came to the conclusion that the American value system is not at risk of being taken over by the Chinese value system. The American system pushes forward individual freedom, humanism, liberalism, capitalism -- things that transcend the boundaries of race, borders, etc. I would argue these values were quickly adopted by many cultures because they provide a lot of value in today's market driven world. In comparison, what the PRC offers is very specific to China. The government wants to see China grow strong and lead the world. They may or may not get there, but these values offer little value to the rest of the world, especially those that have already adopted the liberal values.
- dawg- 7y ago
  >The American system pushes forward individual freedom, humanism, liberalism, capitalism I agree with you, but a lot of people seem to think these values are automatically parts of America - a "system" as you described it - instead of things we all have to actively achieve every single day. It's a "use it or lose it" kind of thing in my opinion. We have some of the worst voting rates in the developed world. We have illiberal values and behavior creeping into both sides of the political spectrum. On the left we have the language police, cancel culture, and a general attitude that no part of American life can take place outside of the government's sphere of influence. On the right we have blatant xenophobia, voter suppression, and a refusal to deal honestly with our country's legacy of racial oppression. Those values you listed are not magic totems that we can summon to fend off the specter of Chinese totalitarianism without any real work on our part. If we don't actively pursue them, defend them, and set examples for our children, they will die off.
  - simmanian 7y ago
    I totally agree with you that we need to cherish these values because they really are precious. And I also very much agree that we have these issues creeping up, not just in America, but in many places around the world. On the other hand, I still think that there are progresses that cannot be easily undone because they simply change the way we live entirely. The Scientific Revolution is an example that comes to my mind. Regarding all the problems you listed: I think the reason we see these issues come up nowadays is in large due to the fact that the "modern" way of life that currently dominates the world -- the system that encourages individualism, consumerism, and duality, has simply met its end of life. We cannot solve the problems you listed from a dualistic viewpoint. Heck, we can't even get people to help save the environment. In that sense, I do see that we will see a huge shift toward the more Eastern values (especially the notion of interdependence) in the near future, but certainly not the ones pushed by the PRC.
vernie 7y ago
My favorite brand of recent propaganda has been the cooking videos from the idyllic Chinese countryside.
uranusjr 7y ago
> I browse Chinese social media and while my Mandarin isn't great I'm not seeing any level of AstroTurfing at all. So am I just a crazy conspiracy person? Is the PRC astroturfing not a big deal? Wait what? Chinese social media is astroturfing at its best (worst?) and it’s not even close, it’s not even possible to say something without a Wumao[1] matching you post to post with total BS. It’s much more blatant than English forums IMO (but maybe that’s just me being a native Chinese speaker in a reverse situation) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
- komali2 7y ago
  Apologies, I meant that I don't see anti PRC shilling on Baidu etc.
  - uranusjr 7y ago
    Ah that makes sense. Well in that case it’s likely because of censorship, you don’t see those comments since they are either blocked or deleted.
sebow 7y ago
There's no conspiracy in critical thinking like that. The actual conspiracy would be to believe this is NOT happening at all. Countries have their own propaganda,espionage and information warfare campaigns, it would be really naive to never think about connections like these in the internet sphere. Obviously engaging in such thinking can very quickly push you down "the rabbit hole", but that's why people need to discuss topics both online & IRL about things out of their control, because only then you can try to eliminate as much bias as possible and filter out all the "BS".
euix 7y ago
I think the fundamental misunderstanding that westerns have is that propaganda is separate from personal opinion, that posts supporting the CCP or astroturfing for China is part of a larger structure, there is a centralized intelligence and that people somehow contain hidden sympathy for western ideas but are afraid to voice them or mask it under the party line. That may be so in some cases, but my experience is that the propaganda is a reflection of the zeitgeist of Chinese people. Propaganda works because it taps into fundamental beliefs and grievances of the masses. It may distort or channel it into certain directions but it is actually quite aligned with prevailing schools of thought in China and Chinese historiography. Some of these include: - The west is hypocritical, the goal of western human rights and democratization is to weaken or subvert China's rise with the goal of ultimately replacing a strong centralized Chinese state that encompasses its present borders for several independent states along ethnic lines and geographic lines that would be easier to manage from a western perspective. - The fundamental strength of the west up to now is due to superiority capacity for warfare, subjugation of foreign lands through brutal colonialism and exploitation of their natural resources. Now the west in criticizing China in Africa and one belt and road initiatives is simply a cynical maneuver to kick down the ladder after one has already climbed up it. I could go on, but from these two points stem all subsequent arguments and I think they provide the fundamental rationale for argument over all points of conflict between China and the west.
Aunche 7y ago
> It's everywhere and we don't seem to be fighting back. I browse Chinese social media and while my Mandarin isn't great I'm not seeing any level of AstroTurfing at all. Well one benefit of a censorship state, is that it's easy to censor all the astroturfers.
devmunchies 7y ago
I'm more concerned about AIPAC, which has much more influence than PRC.
tristanlange 7y ago
The PRC surprisingly thin-skinned when it comes to any criticism. Harassing foreign nationals in foreign lands is a new diplomacy fail though, which I think will end up biting them in the a.
throw964563 7y ago
Think of it this way, go to any movie theater in China and almost half the movies are Hollywood movies. Or if you go to any high end department store, more than half the models in ads are not Chinese. The models present a luxurious, enviable lifestyle. Any random Chinese person can name at least 10 Hollywood celebrities and hum 10 American songs. This type of “influence” is much more powerful than what China is currently capable of. And until Americans are like that, I’m not worried at all about “Chinese influence.” Now if you are strictly talking about government sponsored astroturfing, then look up Operation Earnest Voice and Project Mockingbird. I also recommend Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent. Throwaway account since I don’t dare discuss some topics with my real account
- rhinoceraptor 7y ago
  > Hollywood movies There is plenty of evidence showing China's propogandistic influence on Hollywood movies. References to Tibet, Taiwan, etc. are often removed.
Aperocky 7y ago
How do you suggest doing this? Fighting censorship with censorship? Banning pro China voices because they must be shills and have to be working for CCP in someway or the other? Establish an Committee of Un-American activity in Congress?
dang 7y ago
Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar, especially not off-topic rants about astroturfing for which there is no externally verifiable evidence. I've spent countless hours looking at this problem in HN data, which admittedly may not be representative of the internet at large, but is the most relevant here. By far the overwhelming finding is that users are massively prone to leap to "astroturfing" (or "shill", "troll", "bot", or "spy") based solely on hearing something they dislike on a charged topic. This is plainly a psychological bias—probably one we all share—and it dominates all discussion on the topic by at least 99% if not 99.9. The phenomenon is so universal, and conforms so closely to what I see on other platforms even though I can't study their data, that I have to believe it's the same everywhere. The parsimonious explanation for comments expressing strongly opposing points of view is that humans are the same on both sides of any divisive topic: emotionally charged and primed for reflexive, predictable responses. That's why these arguments are all the same (in the case of China v. US: "but imperialism", "but totalitarianism", etc.) and also why they are off topic on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20predictab&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... This was the top subthread before I marked it off topic. That's mostly because of upvoters, but the reason we ask people not to post this sort of flamebait is that upvoters simply can't resist it. When it comes to indignation, upvotes are a statistical cloud of fruit flies showing up near a decaying banana. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- komali2 7y ago
  99% of the time I'm with you 100%. This is the 1% so perhaps I can steal a bit more of your time to understand how to better have the conversation I wanted to have around the subject (and if the answer is "somewhere other than HN" that is fair and fine). I definitely wasn't trying to start a flamewar, let alone a nationalistic one - I do see an aggressive amount of pro-PRC posts (on other platforms), I have no proof that they're PRC agents other than the fact that they're posting things that one would consider "pro-PRC." I have no proof that similar isn't happening against the PRC on baidu, other than that I don't see it. So is the issue that my post was on too tenuous a thread, based on your data on HN? I certainly didn't mean to imply the presence of shills on HN - I almost never see pro-PRC posts. I specifically called out facebook, twitter, and reddit to avoid that implication. Perhaps it would have been better to construct my post without mentioning shills at all? I am concerned about the PRC gov's role in communication applications and technology, and I am curious what others (HN crowd particularly because they're almost universally more knowledgeable than me) have to say on the subject. If the answer to all my ramblings is "don't pin random conspiracy theory shit on the PRC here" that's totally acceptable as well.

pcroh 7y ago

Exactly the way I feel about American influence in Europe. It's not too bad, you'll get used to it.

whatshisface 7y ago
What are the issues that America is trying to push in Europe?
- mgbmtl 7y ago
  As a Canadian, random examples: Indifference to violence, hypocrisy on nudity, monetizing privacy (no respect for privacy), monetizing medical care. (I don't mean to start a flame war, but they are topics where EU and Canada tend to disagree with major US trends)
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    Major US trends, but are people shilling on Reddit to support them? That's an honest question, I don't really read Reddit. I know there are a lot of people in the US who honestly believe in, say, private healthcare, so a lot of the comments in support of it could be explained as coming from Americans expressing their opinions, as opposed to government or corporate agents pushing an agenda.
    - mgbmtl 7y ago
      I guess there can be a lot of influence in a discussion based on how comments are upvoted, how algorithms will favour one type of content over another? (especially when advertising is guiding it all, and lobbies are big advertisers) I enjoyed this article: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a9335/upvotes-downvotes-and-the-science-of-the-reddit-hivemind-15784871/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a9335/upvote... I also rarely visit Reddit, but for Facebook and Twitter, I guess there has been plenty of research on how people can manipulate public opinion by sharing/voting, and also the impact of their respective algorithms for promoting content? Of course, Tik Tok is no different, and we should be worried. They do the same thing, only it's not 'our' lobbies and we have little control on them.
  - hervature 7y ago
    As a fellow Canadian can you expand on this? Canada has been involved in every war that the US has been in my lifetime (born in 1993). Don't know what you mean on hypocrisy on nudity, but I only became comfortable with it when I visited Scandinavia when I was 22; seems like Canada has a similar issue. I'll maybe give you medical care, but this is an incredibly complex topic. To think that public health care isn't monetized is a naïve point of view. Somehow, the only thing that the Canadian government has done differently than the US is that it has convinced its people that it is not the US. That's my honest opinion.
    - 7y ago
- the-dude 7y ago
  The occasional war comes to mind.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
9dl 7y ago
I don't think someone should even consider to get used to commie influence Or in 5-10 years that someone will be in situation worse than HK now
oarabbus_ 7y ago
You mean to, in supposed good faith, suggest that USA influence in Europe is similar and/or equivalent to Chinese influence and interference in the USA?
- pcroh 7y ago
  Yes. Are you familiar with the NATO?
  - oarabbus_ 7y ago
    Quite. I think I'll stop responding to this thread because we're not going to see eye-to-eye here. Despite the current US President's love for despots and totalitarianism, that doesn't describe the USA.
  - 9dl 7y ago
    Did you mean that old organisation which defend world from soviet invasion?
    - aabbccdd_a 7y ago
      hi
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        hii
        aabbccdd_a 7y ago
        hiii
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deleted 7y ago
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dang 7y ago
Please don't take HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar. The results below are hand-wringingly wretched. I know you're sincere but sincerely burning this place down is still destructive. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

9dl 7y ago

I don't think that "people" are interested in USA CCP - yes

m_ke 7y ago

It will be interesting to see how all of these silly videos recorded by kids will be used against them in 10-20 years. Everything that they do and say will be indexed and accessible for blackmail.

cm2187 7y ago
All one need is a black face/not black face AI. Or whatever will be taboo in 20 years.
chrisjc 7y ago
Not to mention all the ask-reddits such as "what serious crime did you commit and get away with?" or "what is your definition of torture? [SERIOUS]".
kazagistar 7y ago
I keep hoping that society will become more actively forgiving of things people actually regret in the future. Blackmail isn't possible if no one cares about your edgy phase that you got over.
- hombre_fatal 7y ago
  Yeah, we seem to be able to rightfully forgive people who commit actual crimes once they atone in prison. But cancel culture seems to give you zero ways back despite the most genuine heart-felt apology you can muster for a faux pas you uttered a decade ago.
- wccrawford 7y ago
  I think it will, but not before the current generation's white knights get hoisted on their own petards. The stuff they say and do today is going to come back and bite them, and then they'll realize the value of forgiveness and start preaching it. The next generation will see it as they grow up, so it'll be smoother for them.
response777 7y ago
Exactly what I thought when I first saw Facebook and Instagram. And it turns out that I am the idiot.

logicchains 7y ago

The way I see it, the Chinese government doesn't care what you do as long as you don't challenge it. The US on the other hand seems intent on enforcing its whims everywhere on the globe it can. War on terror, war on drugs, war on encryption, war on financial privacy, war on intellectual property infringement. To quote CS Lewis: "It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

kp98 7y ago
You are wrong: I am familiar with the CS Lewis quote 1) In this case the nation working behind the scenes is China. American imperialism I concede is bad. However, the Chinese have quietly been breaking over 50 international regulations and laws from the WTO and universal declaration of human rights. 2) The Chinese do care what you do. Just last week the Swedish government was going to give an award to an activist in Sweden, and the CCP threatened the entire country - pathetic. The Australians said they do not agree with Chinese human rights violations, so they were denied entry (clearly they care). I also question how one can determine what is "challenging" the CCP when it is a mercantilist nation with hands in every basket. 3) Enforcing the war on drugs all over the world? Like asking China not to ship fentanyl? Sure. 4) America is pushing the war on financial privacy? Hello, have you seen Alipay and Wechat before? Do you realize cash is still a major way that some people get paid in America? Perhaps in swift you could argue undue transparency, but wire transfers are a different subject. 5) American intellectual property infringement? ...do you mean like the Chinese forced intellectual property transfer? Lastly, on the CS Lewis quote. America is constantly at odds with its conscience. Half the country is constantly calling out the other half. In China if you don't tow the imperial / mercantilist line your social credit goes down and your freedoms are limited.
- yourbandsucks 7y ago
  It's been like a week since the last US-backed Latin American coup.

oarabbus_ 7y ago

Reddit is overrun with pro-PRC shills and trolls, it's pretty eye-opening on any thread about Uyghur genocide, Hong Kong protests, or throwbacks to Tiananmen Square. edit: And HN too, apparently. Like clockwork, downvotes galore. I'm willing to hear someone on the other side out on the Uyghur genocide if they'd like to offer their perspective on it.

pingyong 7y ago
I honestly wonder how people get this perception when both reddit and HN are so overwhelmingly pro-HK and anti-China. The only way you would ever see a pro-China comment on reddit is by explicitly searching for it, either by sorting by controversial on China-related topics, or by searching for pro-China subs (which are super small compared to reddit, or even just r/HongKong).
- dang 7y ago
  I believe it's because painful experiences are more memorable than pleasurable ones and make deeper impressions. Running into hostile comments and opposing views is painful: they are like verbal smacks in the face. We remember these more, and they quickly accrete into our overall impression of a site. It doesn't matter how infrequent the comments we dislike are relative to the whole. What matters is the absolute number of them that an individual reader encounters. If it's more than some threshold value N, they will conclude that the entire place is hostile, even if the hostile comments are a tiny minority. At a psychological and even a biological level, that makes sense: once a place has generated N painful experiences, it's dangerous. Percentage of the total is irrelevant. Indeed, it makes a place even more dangerous if most experiences there are pleasurable, since one will be inclined to stay—exposing oneself to future smacks—and to let one's guard down, making the next smack even more painful. We all have a version of this, and though N may vary per person, I bet it's lower than most of us would predict. This phenomenon has some interesting consequences. One is that it enables you to guess with high confidence what someone's views on a topic are, based on how strongly they believe HN (or whatever forum) is biased against them. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but the feeling that it is shows what they find painful and therefore what they disagree with. Also, the intensity of the belief in bias grows with the intensity of their view on the topic. That is, the more passionately you believe X, the more pain an anti-X comment causes, the more strongly you will believe that the forum is anti-X. Another consequence is that the closer a forum gets to being unbiased, the more all sides will believe that it's actually hostile to their views. That seems weird in the wild, but it's simple: the more diverse the comment stream is, the more likely all sides are to notice disagreeable comments and thus receive painful impressions. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20painful%20impression&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=%22hostile%20media%20effect%22&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

themagician 7y ago

Why is the PRC evil?

kazagistar 7y ago
Comparisons dont matter. It's easier to fight a one front war against your own countries evil then to also have to deal with another empire waiting to swoop in and make things worse.
komali2 7y ago
Because it refuses to acknowledge the sovereignty of Taiwan, it sent troops to enforce violence against what was originally peaceful protestors in Hong Kong, it is forcefully imprisoning Uighur Muslims in concentration camps, it is forcing citizens to install spyware on their phones, it doesn't have rule of law, it arbitrarily locks up human rights activists and lawyers, it will target people for their religion, etc. Note that these complaints of mine are against the Party, not the people of China as a whole. Xi Jinping and his cronies are a fresh brand of evil.
dang 7y ago
Please don't take HN threads on flamewar tangents. Nothing good can come of this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

kp98 7y ago

The level of infiltration of the 50 cent army on YouTube is absurd. I don't know if you can post links in comments, but try this video on decoupling and read the comments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSbAZGd_Dj0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSbAZGd_Dj0 some comments from pro CCP: ``` decoupling is good, US collapses faster. ``` ``` Why accuse China of nationalism? In the past they said "Good Christians" and today they say "Patriots". It's the same old trick ``` ``` The US started this trade war, and now it's starting to hurt the US economy. Can economists foresee the dark future that lies in store for the USA, if it should continue down this path of confrontation? ``` ``` I want can see as top dog by any other country except evil US empire. ``` My friend and I have been analyzing this trend for a long time. You can spot the 50 cent army on youtube on any video that has US and China in the title. The three go to arguments are 1) American imperialism in the middle east, as a counter to belt and road, hostile debt traps, or human rights violations 2) American prison population, as a counter to human rights violations 3) Referring to the past ie "china was the biggest economy for 2000 years" to explain why it will dominate America

dirtyid 7y ago
>My friend and I have been analyzing this trend for a long time. You can spot the 50 cent army on youtube on any video that has US and China in the title. The three go to arguments are There's actual reputable and recent research about 50c Army abroad - they don't exist. Beyond Hybrid War: How China Exploits Social Media to Sway American Opinion https://www.recordedfuture.com/china-social-media-operations/ https://www.recordedfuture.com/china-social-media-operations... >While researchers have demonstrated that China does want to present a positive image of the state and Communist Party domestically, the techniques of censorship, filtering, astroturfing, and comment flooding are not viable abroad. We discovered no English language equivalent to the 50 Cent Party in Western social media. 50c also don't engage in political arguments like the comments you're concerned with: How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, not Engaged Argument https://datasociety.net/events/databite-no-94-jennifer-pan/ https://datasociety.net/events/databite-no-94-jennifer-pan/ >In contrast to prior claims, her research shows that the Chinese regime’s strategy is to avoid arguing with skeptics of the party and the government, and to not even discuss controversial issues. Her work infers that the goal of this massive secretive operation is instead to regularly distract the public and change the subject, as most of the these posts involve cheerleading for China, the revolutionary history of the Communist Party, or other symbols of the regime Anti Chinese bots however do - this one is particularly ironic since the researchers went out looking for pro CPC bots only the find the opposite. Chinese computational propaganda: automation, algorithms and the manipulation of information about Chinese politics on Twitter and Weibo. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1476576?journalCode=rics20& https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2018.14... >In line with previous research, little evidence of automation was found on Weibo. In contrast, a large amount of automation was found on Twitter. However, contrary to expectations and previous news reports, no evidence was found of pro-Chinese-state automation on Twitter. Automation on Twitter was associated with anti-Chinese-state perspectives and published in simplified Mandarin, presumably aimed at diasporic Chinese and mainland users who ‘jump the wall’ to access blocked platforms. The only somewhat legitimate claims of Chinese bot on western MSM was the Twitter release with zero method or attribution. Independent analysis show the scope of activity is trivial. https://www.aspi.org.au/report/tweeting-through-great-firewall https://www.aspi.org.au/report/tweeting-through-great-firewa... >The amount of content directly targeting the Hong Kong protests makes up only a relatively small fraction of the total dataset released by Twitter, comprising just 112 accounts and approximately 1600 tweets, of which the vast majority are in Chinese with a much smaller number in English. People are too paranoid over pro-China voices, there's plenty of Chinese diaspora out there willing to call out US hypocrisy. There's also billions of people in non western aligned countries who feel the same way. US has more skeptics than just China, especially after the last few years. Instead of viewing people as Pro-China, consider many people are just not anti-China. Alternatively, people aren't so much as Pro-China as anti-US. There are non Sinophobic bubbles out there. The most parsimonious explanation is just people with different opinions.

z9e 7y ago

I have the same concerns and it's very important to be skeptical. Social media is now the perfect way for governments to control how people perceive something and brings us much closer to an Orwellian world. I think that every government (including the US) is engaging in this disinformation campaigning & psychological warfare, and it's ruining the vision I think most of us had of what the internet would become back in the 90s. Amusingly, when you look at the comments to yours here in this thread, they try to shift the conversation to "Look at what US does in <region>" without actually talking about what you specifically are bringing up. I see this pattern a lot now, whenever you bring up any thoughts such as yours in this realm involving China, a lot of whataboutism in reply happens. Sad to see this happening on HN.

liquid153 7y ago

You’re right

simmanian 7y ago

I had been worried about the Chinese influence in America for a while in the past, but recently came to the conclusion that the American value system is not at risk of being taken over by the Chinese value system. The American system pushes forward individual freedom, humanism, liberalism, capitalism -- things that transcend the boundaries of race, borders, etc. I would argue these values were quickly adopted by many cultures because they provide a lot of value in today's market driven world. In comparison, what the PRC offers is very specific to China. The government wants to see China grow strong and lead the world. They may or may not get there, but these values offer little value to the rest of the world, especially those that have already adopted the liberal values.

dawg- 7y ago
>The American system pushes forward individual freedom, humanism, liberalism, capitalism I agree with you, but a lot of people seem to think these values are automatically parts of America - a "system" as you described it - instead of things we all have to actively achieve every single day. It's a "use it or lose it" kind of thing in my opinion. We have some of the worst voting rates in the developed world. We have illiberal values and behavior creeping into both sides of the political spectrum. On the left we have the language police, cancel culture, and a general attitude that no part of American life can take place outside of the government's sphere of influence. On the right we have blatant xenophobia, voter suppression, and a refusal to deal honestly with our country's legacy of racial oppression. Those values you listed are not magic totems that we can summon to fend off the specter of Chinese totalitarianism without any real work on our part. If we don't actively pursue them, defend them, and set examples for our children, they will die off.
- simmanian 7y ago
  I totally agree with you that we need to cherish these values because they really are precious. And I also very much agree that we have these issues creeping up, not just in America, but in many places around the world. On the other hand, I still think that there are progresses that cannot be easily undone because they simply change the way we live entirely. The Scientific Revolution is an example that comes to my mind. Regarding all the problems you listed: I think the reason we see these issues come up nowadays is in large due to the fact that the "modern" way of life that currently dominates the world -- the system that encourages individualism, consumerism, and duality, has simply met its end of life. We cannot solve the problems you listed from a dualistic viewpoint. Heck, we can't even get people to help save the environment. In that sense, I do see that we will see a huge shift toward the more Eastern values (especially the notion of interdependence) in the near future, but certainly not the ones pushed by the PRC.

vernie 7y ago

My favorite brand of recent propaganda has been the cooking videos from the idyllic Chinese countryside.

uranusjr 7y ago

> I browse Chinese social media and while my Mandarin isn't great I'm not seeing any level of AstroTurfing at all. So am I just a crazy conspiracy person? Is the PRC astroturfing not a big deal? Wait what? Chinese social media is astroturfing at its best (worst?) and it’s not even close, it’s not even possible to say something without a Wumao[1] matching you post to post with total BS. It’s much more blatant than English forums IMO (but maybe that’s just me being a native Chinese speaker in a reverse situation) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

komali2 7y ago
Apologies, I meant that I don't see anti PRC shilling on Baidu etc.
- uranusjr 7y ago
  Ah that makes sense. Well in that case it’s likely because of censorship, you don’t see those comments since they are either blocked or deleted.

sebow 7y ago

There's no conspiracy in critical thinking like that. The actual conspiracy would be to believe this is NOT happening at all. Countries have their own propaganda,espionage and information warfare campaigns, it would be really naive to never think about connections like these in the internet sphere. Obviously engaging in such thinking can very quickly push you down "the rabbit hole", but that's why people need to discuss topics both online & IRL about things out of their control, because only then you can try to eliminate as much bias as possible and filter out all the "BS".

euix 7y ago

I think the fundamental misunderstanding that westerns have is that propaganda is separate from personal opinion, that posts supporting the CCP or astroturfing for China is part of a larger structure, there is a centralized intelligence and that people somehow contain hidden sympathy for western ideas but are afraid to voice them or mask it under the party line. That may be so in some cases, but my experience is that the propaganda is a reflection of the zeitgeist of Chinese people. Propaganda works because it taps into fundamental beliefs and grievances of the masses. It may distort or channel it into certain directions but it is actually quite aligned with prevailing schools of thought in China and Chinese historiography. Some of these include: - The west is hypocritical, the goal of western human rights and democratization is to weaken or subvert China's rise with the goal of ultimately replacing a strong centralized Chinese state that encompasses its present borders for several independent states along ethnic lines and geographic lines that would be easier to manage from a western perspective. - The fundamental strength of the west up to now is due to superiority capacity for warfare, subjugation of foreign lands through brutal colonialism and exploitation of their natural resources. Now the west in criticizing China in Africa and one belt and road initiatives is simply a cynical maneuver to kick down the ladder after one has already climbed up it. I could go on, but from these two points stem all subsequent arguments and I think they provide the fundamental rationale for argument over all points of conflict between China and the west.

Aunche 7y ago

> It's everywhere and we don't seem to be fighting back. I browse Chinese social media and while my Mandarin isn't great I'm not seeing any level of AstroTurfing at all. Well one benefit of a censorship state, is that it's easy to censor all the astroturfers.

devmunchies 7y ago

I'm more concerned about AIPAC, which has much more influence than PRC.

tristanlange 7y ago

The PRC surprisingly thin-skinned when it comes to any criticism. Harassing foreign nationals in foreign lands is a new diplomacy fail though, which I think will end up biting them in the a.

throw964563 7y ago

Think of it this way, go to any movie theater in China and almost half the movies are Hollywood movies. Or if you go to any high end department store, more than half the models in ads are not Chinese. The models present a luxurious, enviable lifestyle. Any random Chinese person can name at least 10 Hollywood celebrities and hum 10 American songs. This type of “influence” is much more powerful than what China is currently capable of. And until Americans are like that, I’m not worried at all about “Chinese influence.” Now if you are strictly talking about government sponsored astroturfing, then look up Operation Earnest Voice and Project Mockingbird. I also recommend Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent. Throwaway account since I don’t dare discuss some topics with my real account

rhinoceraptor 7y ago
> Hollywood movies There is plenty of evidence showing China's propogandistic influence on Hollywood movies. References to Tibet, Taiwan, etc. are often removed.

Aperocky 7y ago

How do you suggest doing this? Fighting censorship with censorship? Banning pro China voices because they must be shills and have to be working for CCP in someway or the other? Establish an Committee of Un-American activity in Congress?

dang 7y ago

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar, especially not off-topic rants about astroturfing for which there is no externally verifiable evidence. I've spent countless hours looking at this problem in HN data, which admittedly may not be representative of the internet at large, but is the most relevant here. By far the overwhelming finding is that users are massively prone to leap to "astroturfing" (or "shill", "troll", "bot", or "spy") based solely on hearing something they dislike on a charged topic. This is plainly a psychological bias—probably one we all share—and it dominates all discussion on the topic by at least 99% if not 99.9. The phenomenon is so universal, and conforms so closely to what I see on other platforms even though I can't study their data, that I have to believe it's the same everywhere. The parsimonious explanation for comments expressing strongly opposing points of view is that humans are the same on both sides of any divisive topic: emotionally charged and primed for reflexive, predictable responses. That's why these arguments are all the same (in the case of China v. US: "but imperialism", "but totalitarianism", etc.) and also why they are off topic on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20predictab&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... This was the top subthread before I marked it off topic. That's mostly because of upvoters, but the reason we ask people not to post this sort of flamebait is that upvoters simply can't resist it. When it comes to indignation, upvotes are a statistical cloud of fruit flies showing up near a decaying banana. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

komali2 7y ago
99% of the time I'm with you 100%. This is the 1% so perhaps I can steal a bit more of your time to understand how to better have the conversation I wanted to have around the subject (and if the answer is "somewhere other than HN" that is fair and fine). I definitely wasn't trying to start a flamewar, let alone a nationalistic one - I do see an aggressive amount of pro-PRC posts (on other platforms), I have no proof that they're PRC agents other than the fact that they're posting things that one would consider "pro-PRC." I have no proof that similar isn't happening against the PRC on baidu, other than that I don't see it. So is the issue that my post was on too tenuous a thread, based on your data on HN? I certainly didn't mean to imply the presence of shills on HN - I almost never see pro-PRC posts. I specifically called out facebook, twitter, and reddit to avoid that implication. Perhaps it would have been better to construct my post without mentioning shills at all? I am concerned about the PRC gov's role in communication applications and technology, and I am curious what others (HN crowd particularly because they're almost universally more knowledgeable than me) have to say on the subject. If the answer to all my ramblings is "don't pin random conspiracy theory shit on the PRC here" that's totally acceptable as well.