4 ms·

I don't think you're a real person so I'm unsure as to how to respond to the accusation of an ad hominem attack. The actions of a new participant in an online

I don't think you're a real person so I'm unsure as to how to respond to the accusation of an ad hominem attack. The actions of a new participant in an online community can often be judged by what new information they contribute and whether their comments are are comprehensive and covers the entirety of the issue or whether they selectively concentrate on distractions and unimportant trivia. If you have knowledge then share it. If you have links then share them. If you're just here to say that there is no evidence other than the videos that we've seen then you'll probably be judged as a troll.

dang 7y ago
I only just saw this thread, unfortunately, but need to respond to this and your upthread post at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21720243 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21720243. I'm afraid you violated HN's guidelines egregiously. They include the following, for extremely good reason: "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html An account that happens to be new and happens to disagree with your view doesn't come anywhere close to clearing the bar for evidence that they are not "a real person" or are abusing HN. Internet users are far, far too quick to jump to bad-faith conclusions and then take their own imagination as a basis for attacking others. That's not cool and not allowed on HN. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com, as the guidelines ask, so we can investigate. What you can't do is jump to smear other users. I know it's a popular internet blood sport in lots of places, but it's possibly the single most toxic thing that users do on HN, leading to flamewars, extremely low-quality 'discussion', and outright harm to others (see the examples below). Please don't do it again. Real abuse by sockpuppets and so on exists, but on political topics we've seen extremely little of it on HN (basically zero, in fact), and I've personally spent countless hours investigating these things. Overwhelmingly the more common abuse is users posting accusations and insinuations to poison the discussion against someone whose comments they dislike. This is harmful. Innocent people, unfortunately, have been hounded out of this community this way, and some Chinese users have been treated shamefully here. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358. Another example, which fortunately didn't have the effect of driving the user away: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21194472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21194472 I'm sure that's not who you want to be or the kind of community you want to be part of. In order to prevent HN from succumbing to that ugliness, we need every user to be mindful of the difference between imagination and evidence, and not allow our strong feelings on a topic to confuse the one for the other. It's perfectly common and legitimate for a reader who hasn't posted to HN before, to create an account when they run across a topic to which they're personally connected. All evidence is that this was the case with battleangle. HN is a highly international community, and people across the world have very different perspectives on any issue, China-related or not. If we can't receive their contributions thoughtfully, and instead drive them out of town, we've not only done a shameful thing to another human being—we've deprived ourselves of an external perspective that we could have learned from. Let's not allow our strongly-felt views, which were formed in our own very specific personal and cultural and political context, to make us intolerant to people who simply have a very different background than we do. There's plenty of previous explanation at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....

dang 7y ago

I only just saw this thread, unfortunately, but need to respond to this and your upthread post at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21720243 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21720243. I'm afraid you violated HN's guidelines egregiously. They include the following, for extremely good reason: "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email us and we'll look at the data." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html An account that happens to be new and happens to disagree with your view doesn't come anywhere close to clearing the bar for evidence that they are not "a real person" or are abusing HN. Internet users are far, far too quick to jump to bad-faith conclusions and then take their own imagination as a basis for attacking others. That's not cool and not allowed on HN. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com, as the guidelines ask, so we can investigate. What you can't do is jump to smear other users. I know it's a popular internet blood sport in lots of places, but it's possibly the single most toxic thing that users do on HN, leading to flamewars, extremely low-quality 'discussion', and outright harm to others (see the examples below). Please don't do it again. Real abuse by sockpuppets and so on exists, but on political topics we've seen extremely little of it on HN (basically zero, in fact), and I've personally spent countless hours investigating these things. Overwhelmingly the more common abuse is users posting accusations and insinuations to poison the discussion against someone whose comments they dislike. This is harmful. Innocent people, unfortunately, have been hounded out of this community this way, and some Chinese users have been treated shamefully here. Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19403358. Another example, which fortunately didn't have the effect of driving the user away: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21194472 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21194472 I'm sure that's not who you want to be or the kind of community you want to be part of. In order to prevent HN from succumbing to that ugliness, we need every user to be mindful of the difference between imagination and evidence, and not allow our strong feelings on a topic to confuse the one for the other. It's perfectly common and legitimate for a reader who hasn't posted to HN before, to create an account when they run across a topic to which they're personally connected. All evidence is that this was the case with battleangle. HN is a highly international community, and people across the world have very different perspectives on any issue, China-related or not. If we can't receive their contributions thoughtfully, and instead drive them out of town, we've not only done a shameful thing to another human being—we've deprived ourselves of an external perspective that we could have learned from. Let's not allow our strongly-felt views, which were formed in our own very specific personal and cultural and political context, to make us intolerant to people who simply have a very different background than we do. There's plenty of previous explanation at https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....