6 ms·

"Lures"? If this was a SV company it would be "empowering consumers" lmao

yorwba 7y ago
"Lure" is a nice short word for "attract with incentives" and most past headlines using the word don't attach any particular connotation: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=lures&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... (including when it refers to SV companies)
- humaniania 7y ago
  I think that it is interesting how from a fishing perspective a lure is also a trap in one sense.
  - TomMarius 7y ago
    Is it? A lure is what gets you to the trap, as I understand it (not a native speaker so I might be bringing that over from my native language)
    - austhrow743 7y ago
      A lure is a fake fish/bug/food with hooks on it. It's designed to make fish want to bite it and then the hooks dig in to them. Trapping them.
- TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
  Probably just headlinese, like these words: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headlinese#Commonly_used_short_words https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headlinese#Commonly_used_short...
- s1k3b8 7y ago
  > "Lure" is a nice short word for "attract with incentives" In american english, lure has negative connotations - like pedophiles luring children with candy or human traffickers luring vulnerable people with the false hope of a better life elsewhere. I don't think people who read the headline came away with a positive view of Ant's $7 Credit Limit.
  - yorwba 7y ago
    Do you think the headlines below leave the reader with a negative impression? "FedEx lures sellers with two-day air shipping after Amazon contract ends" "Cloudflare goes big on serverless with new CLI, lures devs with free tier" "Shopping for nostalgia: Toys R Us lures Michigan fans to Canada" "A ‘Honking Big’ Cave in Canada Lures Geologists to Its Mouth" "North of Netherlands Lures Elon Musk with Billboards" Is two-day air shipping bad for sellers? Is signing up for Cloudflare's free tier a mistake? Is Canada a dangerous country full of toys and geologist-swallowing caves? Will visiting the north of the Netherlands be the end of Elon Musk?
EsssM7QVMehFPAs 7y ago
They are basically pushing a credit line in-app to half a billion users. That's the wet dream of western credit card companies. Sure in some perspective getting people not used to debt at all to easily overspend might be called empowering from a twisted neoliberal point of view.
- jacob019 7y ago
  neoliberal - had to look that up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
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- msla 7y ago
  "Neoliberal" is effectively a snarl term now.
  - antielectronite 7y ago
    It's such an imprecise word that it has become a way of showing distaste for something without offering specific criticism. Like in this instance-- what does a CCP backed company offering small, zero interest loans to its citizens have to do with Western left-of-center politics? I can't think of anything less "neoliberal", if anything it's communist. Seeing everything from a US-centric view really not make sense here, since nothing comparable to this exists in America, and because microloans like this are a lot more meaningful to people in other parts of the world.
    - 7y ago
liberalkut 7y ago
Ant Financial is owned by Alibaba and Jack Ma. Alibaba is founded and owned by various communist party members. Jack Ma is a communist party member. Ant Financial is essentially co-owned by the Chinese Communist Party. In order to encourage a failing economy, trap more consumers in debt (China has an outrageous 400%+ total debt to gdp) and prevent unrest, CCP is giving a $7 credit limit to its 700M people in poverty. Whether it works or not is debatable, as Chinese consumers are already neck deep in debt and hurting from rising inflation
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
  There are close to 100 million CCP members, and virtually every successful businessman in China is a member. Alleging that this app is some deep conspiracy by CCP top brass is both unlikely and unhelpful, especially given that the Party has been clamping down on loans elsewhere.
  - antielectronite 7y ago
    You think that it's a coincidence that every successful businessman in China is a CCP member?
    - 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
      No, I'm just saying membership is a logical step to take for every Chinese businessman, and doesn't imply very much about their actual ideology or the degree to which their actions are dictated by the party.
    - dragonelite 7y ago
      Or maybe successful businessmen just want to buy influence in what ever system they are operating. In a democracy you donate or lobby parliament, in a one party system you become part of the party to get closer to the people in power. Seems pretty smart of businessmen if you ask me, not saying i'm condoning that behavior. But then again im not a successful businessman.
teej 7y ago
> The microlender is called Huabei, which means “just spend.”
freyr 7y ago
Right, because we're living in such a pro-SV, pro-tech climate right now.
s1k3b8 7y ago
That's par for the course when it comes to propaganda. It's even worse when it comes to international news. How many times has china "conquered the middle east" or "colonized africa"? A lot more than you think if you follow the news. "China's latest conquest: Middle East power broker - commentary" https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/28/chinas-latest-conquest-middle-east-power-broker---commentary.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/28/chinas-latest-conquest-middl... China is "colonizing" africa. "China raises fears of 'new colonialism' with $60 billion..." https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/09/03/china-invest-60-billion-across-continent-raising-fears-new-colonialism/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/09/03/china-invest-60-... When we actually invade and conquer the middle east, the media portrays it as "bringing freedom". When we actually colonize africa, the media portrays it as "aid". Of course it isn't just the west spreading propaganda, china does it also. It's why it comes to geopolitical or controversial events, you need a wide variety propaganda to get as honest an assessment as possible because every side lies about something and is honest about other things.
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- throwaway1997 7y ago
  The author of the article is called Yifan Xie. I don't think it's anti-china propaganda.
  - sdrothrock 7y ago
    I don't have anything to say about whether or not the article is anti-China propaganda, but I just wanted to address this comment because there's some underlying assumptions being made here about names and ethnicity. In this day and age, I don't think a name is guaranteed to tell you much about a person. It's a bit fallacious to say "she has a Chinese name, so she's probably not against China." She could be from Taiwan or Hong Kong, both of which have plenty of reasons not to like China. She could also have been born and raised by Chinese, Taiwanese, or Hong Kong parents in any other country. I have an incredibly "white" name, but I'm ethnically Korean. I know I'm an outlier, but it gives me first-hand knowledge that using names to assume things about people's ethnicity (and from that, their beliefs) is not a good tactic.

"Lure" is a nice short word for "attract with incentives" and most past headlines using the word don't attach any particular connotation: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=lures&sort=byDate&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... (including when it refers to SV companies)

humaniania 7y ago
I think that it is interesting how from a fishing perspective a lure is also a trap in one sense.
- TomMarius 7y ago
  Is it? A lure is what gets you to the trap, as I understand it (not a native speaker so I might be bringing that over from my native language)
  - austhrow743 7y ago
    A lure is a fake fish/bug/food with hooks on it. It's designed to make fish want to bite it and then the hooks dig in to them. Trapping them.
TazeTSchnitzel 7y ago
Probably just headlinese, like these words: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headlinese#Commonly_used_short_words https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headlinese#Commonly_used_short...
s1k3b8 7y ago
> "Lure" is a nice short word for "attract with incentives" In american english, lure has negative connotations - like pedophiles luring children with candy or human traffickers luring vulnerable people with the false hope of a better life elsewhere. I don't think people who read the headline came away with a positive view of Ant's $7 Credit Limit.
- yorwba 7y ago
  Do you think the headlines below leave the reader with a negative impression? "FedEx lures sellers with two-day air shipping after Amazon contract ends" "Cloudflare goes big on serverless with new CLI, lures devs with free tier" "Shopping for nostalgia: Toys R Us lures Michigan fans to Canada" "A ‘Honking Big’ Cave in Canada Lures Geologists to Its Mouth" "North of Netherlands Lures Elon Musk with Billboards" Is two-day air shipping bad for sellers? Is signing up for Cloudflare's free tier a mistake? Is Canada a dangerous country full of toys and geologist-swallowing caves? Will visiting the north of the Netherlands be the end of Elon Musk?

EsssM7QVMehFPAs 7y ago

They are basically pushing a credit line in-app to half a billion users. That's the wet dream of western credit card companies. Sure in some perspective getting people not used to debt at all to easily overspend might be called empowering from a twisted neoliberal point of view.

jacob019 7y ago
neoliberal - had to look that up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
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msla 7y ago
"Neoliberal" is effectively a snarl term now.
- antielectronite 7y ago
  It's such an imprecise word that it has become a way of showing distaste for something without offering specific criticism. Like in this instance-- what does a CCP backed company offering small, zero interest loans to its citizens have to do with Western left-of-center politics? I can't think of anything less "neoliberal", if anything it's communist. Seeing everything from a US-centric view really not make sense here, since nothing comparable to this exists in America, and because microloans like this are a lot more meaningful to people in other parts of the world.
  - 7y ago

liberalkut 7y ago

Ant Financial is owned by Alibaba and Jack Ma. Alibaba is founded and owned by various communist party members. Jack Ma is a communist party member. Ant Financial is essentially co-owned by the Chinese Communist Party. In order to encourage a failing economy, trap more consumers in debt (China has an outrageous 400%+ total debt to gdp) and prevent unrest, CCP is giving a $7 credit limit to its 700M people in poverty. Whether it works or not is debatable, as Chinese consumers are already neck deep in debt and hurting from rising inflation

9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
There are close to 100 million CCP members, and virtually every successful businessman in China is a member. Alleging that this app is some deep conspiracy by CCP top brass is both unlikely and unhelpful, especially given that the Party has been clamping down on loans elsewhere.
- antielectronite 7y ago
  You think that it's a coincidence that every successful businessman in China is a CCP member?
  - 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
    No, I'm just saying membership is a logical step to take for every Chinese businessman, and doesn't imply very much about their actual ideology or the degree to which their actions are dictated by the party.
  - dragonelite 7y ago
    Or maybe successful businessmen just want to buy influence in what ever system they are operating. In a democracy you donate or lobby parliament, in a one party system you become part of the party to get closer to the people in power. Seems pretty smart of businessmen if you ask me, not saying i'm condoning that behavior. But then again im not a successful businessman.

teej 7y ago

> The microlender is called Huabei, which means “just spend.”

freyr 7y ago

Right, because we're living in such a pro-SV, pro-tech climate right now.

s1k3b8 7y ago

That's par for the course when it comes to propaganda. It's even worse when it comes to international news. How many times has china "conquered the middle east" or "colonized africa"? A lot more than you think if you follow the news. "China's latest conquest: Middle East power broker - commentary" https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/28/chinas-latest-conquest-middle-east-power-broker---commentary.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/28/chinas-latest-conquest-middl... China is "colonizing" africa. "China raises fears of 'new colonialism' with $60 billion..." https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/09/03/china-invest-60-billion-across-continent-raising-fears-new-colonialism/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/09/03/china-invest-60-... When we actually invade and conquer the middle east, the media portrays it as "bringing freedom". When we actually colonize africa, the media portrays it as "aid". Of course it isn't just the west spreading propaganda, china does it also. It's why it comes to geopolitical or controversial events, you need a wide variety propaganda to get as honest an assessment as possible because every side lies about something and is honest about other things.

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throwaway1997 7y ago
The author of the article is called Yifan Xie. I don't think it's anti-china propaganda.
- sdrothrock 7y ago
  I don't have anything to say about whether or not the article is anti-China propaganda, but I just wanted to address this comment because there's some underlying assumptions being made here about names and ethnicity. In this day and age, I don't think a name is guaranteed to tell you much about a person. It's a bit fallacious to say "she has a Chinese name, so she's probably not against China." She could be from Taiwan or Hong Kong, both of which have plenty of reasons not to like China. She could also have been born and raised by Chinese, Taiwanese, or Hong Kong parents in any other country. I have an incredibly "white" name, but I'm ethnically Korean. I know I'm an outlier, but it gives me first-hand knowledge that using names to assume things about people's ethnicity (and from that, their beliefs) is not a good tactic.