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It is ironic how the western public generally frowns upon the silencing of dissident throught in China, and at the same time welcomes precisely the same behavio

It is ironic how the western public generally frowns upon the silencing of dissident throught in China, and at the same time welcomes precisely the same behavior for "sensitive topics" back home.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ciarannolan 6y ago
> Whataboutism, also known as whataboutery, is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
- jlawson 6y ago
  Not applicable because no attempt was made to "discredit an opponent's position". GP is clearly not saying that "... therefore, Chinese oppression is okay." My takeaway would be that we have work to do with China, and that in observing the flaws in their society from without, we can gain perspective on what's going wrong here as well and work on that too.
- john_moscow 6y ago
  Just to get it straight, I don't like what China is doing to public speech, and I don't like what the West is doing either. I grew up in a country (Soviet Union) that took it to the extreme, and I don't like where this road is going. I strongly believe that the key to building a long-term stable society is a culture where people of opposing beliefs are still able to peacefully debate with each other, and respect the other's opinion even if they don't agree with it. Just like the professional boxers that would let out their worst at the ring, but would find it inconceivable to try and hurt their opponent's private life or family.
- dang 6y ago
  Please keep this and other canned arguments off HN. They're typically used as reflexes to try to stop discussion, which isn't in the spirit of intellectual curiosity. If a comment is bad, explain specifically what's bad about it, or downvote/flag as appropriate. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20canned&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... "Whataboutism" is a strange case because the name is catchy and sounds convincing, but it's a fallacy. Comparables are relevant. Humans evaluate things by comparing them. Pointing out inconsistencies is also relevant because it adds context to an argument. The same thing can appear completely different depending on the context it's surrounded by. Negotiating context (what's included vs. excluded) is a critical aspect of debate, not something that can be shut down with just a word. Adding information can be perfectly legitimate, or it can be distracting or misleading. In the latter case the proper response is to explain specifically why, not play a wild card like "whataboutism" which basically says "I determine the context and you're not allowed to change it." That amounts to power to control an entire discussion. Previous explanations at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20338307 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20338307 and links back from there. I particularly like the analogy to programming languages, because it illustrates the issue in a non-political context (though static vs. dynamic is about as intense a flamewar topic is it gets in programming discussions). https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20whataboutism&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
jedberg 6y ago
There is a vast difference between letting the government suppress speech, which is what China does, and letting private companies suppress speech, which is what happens in America. When the government does it, you can't express that idea anywhere. When private companies do it, you can still express those ideas somewhere else.
- enriquto 6y ago
  Lol, no; it is exactly the same thing. Anyhow, this is about a private company suppressing speech, so I guess you are OK with that?
- john_moscow 6y ago
  I would agree if there were multiple competing private companies with comparable market shares, representing the opinions of different social groups. This way, if certain companies started applying censorship that wouldn't reflect the interests of the users, they would lose the market share and would have to listen more to what people want. Instead, we have an effective monopoly on online search, monopoly on content monetization and a monopoly on social media. These monopolies are sustained through network effects and lack the feedback loop. Edit: I would even say, they have a wrong type of feedback loop, since they are directly incentivized to censor the opinions that go against the vocal social groups, since that could result in decreasing profits. China could technically spin off their censorship functions to a privately owned company that would wholly depend on the state-issued license to operate and would keep doing exactly the same thing. Would it make them more democratic or change anything for the end users? I think, the distinction between private and government is a technicality. What is more important, is how many independent parties are making the censorship decisions, and whether they report to a single vs. distributed source of power. From that angle, the government-dominated Chinese web is very similar to Silicon Valley-dominated western web.
  - jedberg 6y ago
    > China could technically spin off their censorship functions to a privately owned company that would wholly depend on the state-issued license to operate and would keep doing exactly the same thing. If the private company requires a state-issued license, and that license is dependent on the content on the site, then it's still government censorship. In America, you can still start a competing private company and allow any opinion you want. In China you can't do that.
duxup 6y ago
> the same behavior for "sensitive topics" back home I'm not aware of any government action regarding speech and sensitive topics like we see in China, or other dramatically less free countries.
axguscbklp 6y ago
>It is ironic how the western public Only part of the US public, to be fair. That said, the US public does certainly seem to be mostly apathetic about the giant US government surveillance system, even though that system, if the right sort of political will appeared, could be rapidly turned into a system of social control rivaling what China has.
unethical_ban 6y ago
It isn't, because you are wrong. Do not compare (I assume) the warnings around Trump's lies to be comparable to blocking human rights activists from a platform outright.
- YarickR2 6y ago
  So Trump is not a human rights activist ? Do you want to say Trump is anti human rights ?
  - a1369209993 6y ago
    > Do you want to say Trump is anti human rights ? TBF, that is actually true, just not that much more so than the median politician (who votes in favor of things like the patriot act, as evidenced by it having passed).
a1369209993 6y ago
I don't know if "ironic" is quite the right word there; I'd go with "hypocritical" or "completely expected".
TechBro8615 6y ago
Seriously. Just a week ago, Facebook employees went on strike because FB refused to censor Trump’s messaging. NYT reporters forced the opinion editor to resign for allowing a Republican senator to publish an op-ed. Meanwhile, I’ll bet many of those same people consider censorship of Tiananmen Square to be wrong. Apparently, there is good censorship, and bad censorship. What’s frustrating is that the proponents of “good censorship” do not even realize this irony, or at least they call it a false equivalence when you point it out to them. To address that “false equivalence” criticism, I would be curious to hear from someone who thinks Facebook or Twitter should annotate Trump’s posts. Do you also think that they should annotate posts about Tiananmen square to include links to the Chinese government’s narrative that actually, there was no massacre and it was a CIA-instigated riot? Who decides which posts to annotate and what to annotate them with? It’s not just the CCP who believes the Tiananmen square massacre didn’t happen; there are millions of Chinese citizens who agree with them, just like there are millions of Americans who disagree with Trump. So is there a difference between a mob of Americans asking to annotate a Trump post about a BLM protest with a CNN article, and a mob of Chinese people asking to annotate an Ai Weiwei post about Tiananmen Square with a People’s Daily article?
- mindfulhack 6y ago
  People's primal need to 'kill the bad thing' is completely dysfunctional in our modern world, and on the Internet, hopelessly unrealistic. (There's always Tor. You can't completely get rid of something...not if it has enough interest.) I even feel bad for the platforms due to this push and pull, with them always in the middle. Always being pressured one way or another: 'Allow this content, you're censoring us!' or 'Take down this content, it's abhorrent!' Since the companies are the organisational equivalent of sociopaths anyway, surely they can make the hard decisions. Why not just have filters? If users don't want racist, terrible content, then just tick a box in their settings that will tune their personal algorithm to not show it! Then it's their fault they're only siloing themselves further into their own echo chamber - not the platforms'.
- couchand 6y ago
  > NYT reporters forced the opinion editor to resign for allowing a Republican senator to publish an op-ed. That is quite a naive interpretation. It's not like the Times Opinion pages have never seen a Republican op-ed. The issue is that the op-ed in question advocated for violence against American citizens based on factual errors and flimsy premises.

It is ironic how the western public generally frowns upon the silencing of dissident throught in China, and at the same time welcomes precisely the same behavior for "sensitive topics" back home.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ciarannolan 6y ago

> Whataboutism, also known as whataboutery, is a variant of the tu quoque logical fallacy that attempts to discredit an opponent's position by charging them with hypocrisy without directly refuting or disproving their argument. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

jlawson 6y ago
Not applicable because no attempt was made to "discredit an opponent's position". GP is clearly not saying that "... therefore, Chinese oppression is okay." My takeaway would be that we have work to do with China, and that in observing the flaws in their society from without, we can gain perspective on what's going wrong here as well and work on that too.
john_moscow 6y ago
Just to get it straight, I don't like what China is doing to public speech, and I don't like what the West is doing either. I grew up in a country (Soviet Union) that took it to the extreme, and I don't like where this road is going. I strongly believe that the key to building a long-term stable society is a culture where people of opposing beliefs are still able to peacefully debate with each other, and respect the other's opinion even if they don't agree with it. Just like the professional boxers that would let out their worst at the ring, but would find it inconceivable to try and hurt their opponent's private life or family.
dang 6y ago
Please keep this and other canned arguments off HN. They're typically used as reflexes to try to stop discussion, which isn't in the spirit of intellectual curiosity. If a comment is bad, explain specifically what's bad about it, or downvote/flag as appropriate. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20canned&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... "Whataboutism" is a strange case because the name is catchy and sounds convincing, but it's a fallacy. Comparables are relevant. Humans evaluate things by comparing them. Pointing out inconsistencies is also relevant because it adds context to an argument. The same thing can appear completely different depending on the context it's surrounded by. Negotiating context (what's included vs. excluded) is a critical aspect of debate, not something that can be shut down with just a word. Adding information can be perfectly legitimate, or it can be distracting or misleading. In the latter case the proper response is to explain specifically why, not play a wild card like "whataboutism" which basically says "I determine the context and you're not allowed to change it." That amounts to power to control an entire discussion. Previous explanations at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20338307 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20338307 and links back from there. I particularly like the analogy to programming languages, because it illustrates the issue in a non-political context (though static vs. dynamic is about as intense a flamewar topic is it gets in programming discussions). https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20whataboutism&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

jedberg 6y ago

There is a vast difference between letting the government suppress speech, which is what China does, and letting private companies suppress speech, which is what happens in America. When the government does it, you can't express that idea anywhere. When private companies do it, you can still express those ideas somewhere else.

enriquto 6y ago
Lol, no; it is exactly the same thing. Anyhow, this is about a private company suppressing speech, so I guess you are OK with that?
john_moscow 6y ago
I would agree if there were multiple competing private companies with comparable market shares, representing the opinions of different social groups. This way, if certain companies started applying censorship that wouldn't reflect the interests of the users, they would lose the market share and would have to listen more to what people want. Instead, we have an effective monopoly on online search, monopoly on content monetization and a monopoly on social media. These monopolies are sustained through network effects and lack the feedback loop. Edit: I would even say, they have a wrong type of feedback loop, since they are directly incentivized to censor the opinions that go against the vocal social groups, since that could result in decreasing profits. China could technically spin off their censorship functions to a privately owned company that would wholly depend on the state-issued license to operate and would keep doing exactly the same thing. Would it make them more democratic or change anything for the end users? I think, the distinction between private and government is a technicality. What is more important, is how many independent parties are making the censorship decisions, and whether they report to a single vs. distributed source of power. From that angle, the government-dominated Chinese web is very similar to Silicon Valley-dominated western web.
- jedberg 6y ago
  > China could technically spin off their censorship functions to a privately owned company that would wholly depend on the state-issued license to operate and would keep doing exactly the same thing. If the private company requires a state-issued license, and that license is dependent on the content on the site, then it's still government censorship. In America, you can still start a competing private company and allow any opinion you want. In China you can't do that.

duxup 6y ago

> the same behavior for "sensitive topics" back home I'm not aware of any government action regarding speech and sensitive topics like we see in China, or other dramatically less free countries.

axguscbklp 6y ago

>It is ironic how the western public Only part of the US public, to be fair. That said, the US public does certainly seem to be mostly apathetic about the giant US government surveillance system, even though that system, if the right sort of political will appeared, could be rapidly turned into a system of social control rivaling what China has.

unethical_ban 6y ago

It isn't, because you are wrong. Do not compare (I assume) the warnings around Trump's lies to be comparable to blocking human rights activists from a platform outright.

YarickR2 6y ago
So Trump is not a human rights activist ? Do you want to say Trump is anti human rights ?
- a1369209993 6y ago
  > Do you want to say Trump is anti human rights ? TBF, that is actually true, just not that much more so than the median politician (who votes in favor of things like the patriot act, as evidenced by it having passed).

a1369209993 6y ago

I don't know if "ironic" is quite the right word there; I'd go with "hypocritical" or "completely expected".

TechBro8615 6y ago

Seriously. Just a week ago, Facebook employees went on strike because FB refused to censor Trump’s messaging. NYT reporters forced the opinion editor to resign for allowing a Republican senator to publish an op-ed. Meanwhile, I’ll bet many of those same people consider censorship of Tiananmen Square to be wrong. Apparently, there is good censorship, and bad censorship. What’s frustrating is that the proponents of “good censorship” do not even realize this irony, or at least they call it a false equivalence when you point it out to them. To address that “false equivalence” criticism, I would be curious to hear from someone who thinks Facebook or Twitter should annotate Trump’s posts. Do you also think that they should annotate posts about Tiananmen square to include links to the Chinese government’s narrative that actually, there was no massacre and it was a CIA-instigated riot? Who decides which posts to annotate and what to annotate them with? It’s not just the CCP who believes the Tiananmen square massacre didn’t happen; there are millions of Chinese citizens who agree with them, just like there are millions of Americans who disagree with Trump. So is there a difference between a mob of Americans asking to annotate a Trump post about a BLM protest with a CNN article, and a mob of Chinese people asking to annotate an Ai Weiwei post about Tiananmen Square with a People’s Daily article?

mindfulhack 6y ago
People's primal need to 'kill the bad thing' is completely dysfunctional in our modern world, and on the Internet, hopelessly unrealistic. (There's always Tor. You can't completely get rid of something...not if it has enough interest.) I even feel bad for the platforms due to this push and pull, with them always in the middle. Always being pressured one way or another: 'Allow this content, you're censoring us!' or 'Take down this content, it's abhorrent!' Since the companies are the organisational equivalent of sociopaths anyway, surely they can make the hard decisions. Why not just have filters? If users don't want racist, terrible content, then just tick a box in their settings that will tune their personal algorithm to not show it! Then it's their fault they're only siloing themselves further into their own echo chamber - not the platforms'.
couchand 6y ago
> NYT reporters forced the opinion editor to resign for allowing a Republican senator to publish an op-ed. That is quite a naive interpretation. It's not like the Times Opinion pages have never seen a Republican op-ed. The issue is that the op-ed in question advocated for violence against American citizens based on factual errors and flimsy premises.