7 ms·

Drone footage of Reddit's major investor rounding up people for religious belief

127 points by missosoup 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
saagarjha 6y ago
(It’s Tencent; the title is awful.)
- ardy42 6y ago
  Is this from Xinjiang? Are they just conflating Tencent with the CCP, or does Tencent have some involvement with the camps there? IIRC, the Chinese government is attaching private business operations (e.g. factories) to the camps to use the prisoners as labor. Is there any authoritative source for this footage? I trust reddit accounts about as far as I can throw them, and given they're just incorporeal information, I can't actually throw them at all.
  - falcolas 6y ago
    If I understand it correctly, it's the CCP, which holds the same power over Tencent as it does every other company that operates in China.
- missosoup 6y ago
  Sorry about the title, I tried to keep it as faithful as possible to the source as per guidelines.
  - floatingatoll 6y ago
    If you feel the source is misrepresenting the content in order to 'clickbait', such as saying 'a funder of Reddit' rather than 'Tencent' in order to generate extra outrage, then it's appropriate to make the edit. You can email the mods and ask them to make that edit for you if it's too late to do so yourself on the submission.
    - missosoup 6y ago
      This post has already been nuked. And I'm pretty sure it wasn't because the mods had an issue with the title, otherwise they'd have edited it themselves as they usually do with bad titles. So no point reaching out now. There seems to be a pattern with HN and China specifically. Not Russia, not any other major state actor, just China. Whether that's due to the userbase, external influence, or the admins, we'll never really know. Dang sure as shit will never openly comment on this issue even though reddit ended up admitting that they were heavily manipulated by China after a year of denying it any banning anyone bringing it to light. I've seen enough china-themed discussions that are otherwise on par with HN submissions get nuked to know that something's going on.
      - dang 6y ago
        I've been commenting as openly as I possibly can on this for years now. The issue isn't that we're hiding the truth (as far as we know what it is) from anyone. The issue is that people's perceptions are so conditioned by their passions that it doesn't matter much what the truth actually is. Many people on both sides of this issue perceive every post they agree with as being flagged and removed, and every post they disagree with as being upvoted to the top every time. That's not an exaggeration. As I said to someone yesterday: if evidence were needed here, they could just look at HN itself. It's wrong to say this hasn't come up about any other country than China. Before the China wave, there was the Russia wave, and passionate users were saying things like: "YCombinator is in the Kremlin's pocket. Wow. I fully expect this to be downvoted to oblivion. But wow." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15631095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15631095) and "Russian money might be making this very site possible" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15630920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15630920). These perceptions were just as wrong, and by just the same mechanism.
      - floatingatoll 6y ago
        Blaming this one on the content of the material posted misses the forest for the trees, and denies your responsibility to post content of sufficient quality. Newsworthy is not sufficient if it’s filled with outrage and has a clickbait headline. I flagged it, because I considered the linked headline and writeup to be of excessively poor construction and quality. The material itself was interesting once I grasped it behind the layers of distraction and outrage-rabblerousing, but I can’t endorse that presentation style here and so I absolutely flagged it. If you had written up a blog post about this event, linked to supporting material such as the Reddit post, and offered some background on why this is new and terrifying — then I might have upvoted it instead of flagging it.
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
Look, I'm very much against China here, but this kind of clickbaity rhetoric doesn't help. Maybe Reddit should divest, I think there's a strong argument for that, but their investors at Tencent are not themselves doing the genocide.
- rriepe 6y ago
  Centralized government, centralized blame.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  The nature of Chinese security law means that there is no meaningful distinction between Tencent and the Government or China when it comes to security matters.
curiousgal 6y ago
This kind of genocides is why the yearly Holocaust remembrance posts on the internet are moot. What's the point of never forgetting a genocide if we're just going to sit by and watch others take place.
skdjsjkhfkdsjh 6y ago
This was on the front page then went poof from the front page without slipping to the 2nd or 3rd page and was not flagged. Why did that happen?
- ve55 6y ago
  I saw it as flagged to death. The title definitely needs work, and it's also much more political than is generally allowed, but I do think it's important to be aware of.
- rriepe 6y ago
  It's not just Tencent. Plenty of people here have jobs or companies partially owned by China. Don't expect everyone to just be on the side of the people in the trains.
  - apta 6y ago
    That's the unfortunate truth. Money matters more than people's lives.
- dang 6y ago
  Users flagged it. That's the usual reason. More at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23849682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23849682
tw04 6y ago
I expect this to get deleted as HN has apparently decided that pointing out the CCP is heavily invested in Chinese Tech and directing their actions is a flaggable offense. I'm sure the next time an NSA scandal is exposed that'll get taken down immediately too... right?
- entropea 6y ago
  I think they get deleted because it becomes a flaming shit war real fast and is very unproductive. I personally don't think this title or video are relevant in the slightest on HN, and despite Reddit thinking China controls the website, there are regularly 200,000+ upvoted anti-China messages and theories on the very front page that immediately disprove their argument that China has any pull on Reddit.
  - tw04 6y ago
    I just watched another thread that was in no way a flame war get deleted in the tik-tok topic. They have taken to deleting ANYTHING that mentions the CCPs investment in Chinese Tech, regardless of whether it's a cordial discussion or not. When people are asking "why would the US be concerned about a stupid app like Tik-Tok" and the response is: because the CCP is heavily invested which is concerning - that shouldn't be deleted. The fact it was brings into question the motivations of the moderators...
    - entropea 6y ago
      https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditMinusMods/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditMinusMods/ This must all be China. Your theory is no more than conspiracy.
- pwillia7 6y ago
  Well no -- They don't fund all our operations. I think this may be the end of the American experiment. How can you have mostly open organic institutions that anyone can influence and keep out bad actors, especially when one of those actors is another enormous state with the ability to plan and execute plans over decades? I feel like pre-internet and the current level of globalization this would make some sense, but why would the end result here not be a corruption of open institutions by powerful bad actors?
doublesCs 6y ago
I don't have access. Could someone kindly clarify what this is about?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- DevKoala 6y ago
  https://gfycat.com/oddballfairgerbil https://gfycat.com/oddballfairgerbil
  - doublesCs 6y ago
    wtf... :-( EDIT: any idea why this also got flagged on HN?
    - DevKoala 6y ago
      It happens to my posts here every now and then whenever I say something that doesn’t make the CCP look good. To be honest, I think the Chinese people are awesome and have a great culture that has given the world a lot. I am just extremely concerned about some of the crimes against humanity that the CCP does which are being normalized. Nevertheless, the USA is in the same boat, but when I am critical of our state my comments don’t get flagged.
      - Jommi 6y ago
        I flagged this because the title is clickbait, and not news whicj in my opinion goes against the spirit of hacker news. If this would be just a direct link to tencent investing in Reddit, or how Reddit has not taken any strong stance against HKs new data privacy law, then I think it would fit here.
        6y ago
draw_down 6y ago
I can’t actually understand what this is, what’s happening, or who’s doing it (I don’t know who reddits investors are, why would I know their cap table??)
DevKoala 6y ago
Tencent is owned by the CCP: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2019/03/28/commentary/world-commentary/worried-huawei-take-closer-look-tencent/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2019/03/28/commentary/w... However, this isn't specifically Tencent. I don't know why the title doesn't highlight this is specifically the CCP.
non-entity 6y ago
In surprised that someone was able to get done footage of this. You would that a drone around an area like that would be taken down asap.
- missosoup 6y ago
  It's a mavic 2, it's rather small and inaudible above 50 meters or so. Which seems to be roughly where it's hovering based on the footage. It has a camera with optical zoom. Ironically, it's made by the Chinese company DJI. Also, wild speculation, but maybe it did get taken down. The footage shown is a recording of the live telemetry feed streamed to the base station, not the much higher quality video stored on the SD card on board the drone itself.
cartoonfoxes 6y ago
As a descendant of Polish Jews that got out in time, god damn this is disturbing. Why was this flagged? Chinese state behavior is absolutely relevant given their involvement in western tech.
- bassman9000 6y ago
  CCP money Ironically, $$$
- saagarjha 6y ago
  > Why was this flagged? Likely because it attracts unsubstantive comments.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
- foogazi 6y ago
  Whatabout what the US did to people in Iran?
rv-de 6y ago
Could somebody explain what is going on here? How is this related to reddit and how is it clear that people are rounded up for religious belief? I just see something that could as well be regular prisoners being transferred.
- mikequinlan 6y ago
  A Chinese company invested $150 million in Reddit. https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/11/18216134/reddit-tencent-investment-deal-memes-amount-winnie-the-pooh-tank-man-china https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/11/18216134/reddit-tencent-i...
  - rv-de 6y ago
    Anything else? I mean taking money from Chinese corps is probably ethically problematic but that's about it. We don't know who got rounded up why and if Tencent is related to that beyond being a Chinese company, right?

127 points by missosoup 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

saagarjha 6y ago

(It’s Tencent; the title is awful.)

ardy42 6y ago
Is this from Xinjiang? Are they just conflating Tencent with the CCP, or does Tencent have some involvement with the camps there? IIRC, the Chinese government is attaching private business operations (e.g. factories) to the camps to use the prisoners as labor. Is there any authoritative source for this footage? I trust reddit accounts about as far as I can throw them, and given they're just incorporeal information, I can't actually throw them at all.
- falcolas 6y ago
  If I understand it correctly, it's the CCP, which holds the same power over Tencent as it does every other company that operates in China.
missosoup 6y ago
Sorry about the title, I tried to keep it as faithful as possible to the source as per guidelines.
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  If you feel the source is misrepresenting the content in order to 'clickbait', such as saying 'a funder of Reddit' rather than 'Tencent' in order to generate extra outrage, then it's appropriate to make the edit. You can email the mods and ask them to make that edit for you if it's too late to do so yourself on the submission.
  - missosoup 6y ago
    This post has already been nuked. And I'm pretty sure it wasn't because the mods had an issue with the title, otherwise they'd have edited it themselves as they usually do with bad titles. So no point reaching out now. There seems to be a pattern with HN and China specifically. Not Russia, not any other major state actor, just China. Whether that's due to the userbase, external influence, or the admins, we'll never really know. Dang sure as shit will never openly comment on this issue even though reddit ended up admitting that they were heavily manipulated by China after a year of denying it any banning anyone bringing it to light. I've seen enough china-themed discussions that are otherwise on par with HN submissions get nuked to know that something's going on.
    - dang 6y ago
      I've been commenting as openly as I possibly can on this for years now. The issue isn't that we're hiding the truth (as far as we know what it is) from anyone. The issue is that people's perceptions are so conditioned by their passions that it doesn't matter much what the truth actually is. Many people on both sides of this issue perceive every post they agree with as being flagged and removed, and every post they disagree with as being upvoted to the top every time. That's not an exaggeration. As I said to someone yesterday: if evidence were needed here, they could just look at HN itself. It's wrong to say this hasn't come up about any other country than China. Before the China wave, there was the Russia wave, and passionate users were saying things like: "YCombinator is in the Kremlin's pocket. Wow. I fully expect this to be downvoted to oblivion. But wow." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15631095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15631095) and "Russian money might be making this very site possible" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15630920 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15630920). These perceptions were just as wrong, and by just the same mechanism.
    - floatingatoll 6y ago
      Blaming this one on the content of the material posted misses the forest for the trees, and denies your responsibility to post content of sufficient quality. Newsworthy is not sufficient if it’s filled with outrage and has a clickbait headline. I flagged it, because I considered the linked headline and writeup to be of excessively poor construction and quality. The material itself was interesting once I grasped it behind the layers of distraction and outrage-rabblerousing, but I can’t endorse that presentation style here and so I absolutely flagged it. If you had written up a blog post about this event, linked to supporting material such as the Reddit post, and offered some background on why this is new and terrifying — then I might have upvoted it instead of flagging it.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

Look, I'm very much against China here, but this kind of clickbaity rhetoric doesn't help. Maybe Reddit should divest, I think there's a strong argument for that, but their investors at Tencent are not themselves doing the genocide.

rriepe 6y ago
Centralized government, centralized blame.
MattGaiser 6y ago
The nature of Chinese security law means that there is no meaningful distinction between Tencent and the Government or China when it comes to security matters.

curiousgal 6y ago

This kind of genocides is why the yearly Holocaust remembrance posts on the internet are moot. What's the point of never forgetting a genocide if we're just going to sit by and watch others take place.

skdjsjkhfkdsjh 6y ago

This was on the front page then went poof from the front page without slipping to the 2nd or 3rd page and was not flagged. Why did that happen?

ve55 6y ago
I saw it as flagged to death. The title definitely needs work, and it's also much more political than is generally allowed, but I do think it's important to be aware of.
rriepe 6y ago
It's not just Tencent. Plenty of people here have jobs or companies partially owned by China. Don't expect everyone to just be on the side of the people in the trains.
- apta 6y ago
  That's the unfortunate truth. Money matters more than people's lives.
dang 6y ago
Users flagged it. That's the usual reason. More at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23849682 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23849682

tw04 6y ago

I expect this to get deleted as HN has apparently decided that pointing out the CCP is heavily invested in Chinese Tech and directing their actions is a flaggable offense. I'm sure the next time an NSA scandal is exposed that'll get taken down immediately too... right?

entropea 6y ago
I think they get deleted because it becomes a flaming shit war real fast and is very unproductive. I personally don't think this title or video are relevant in the slightest on HN, and despite Reddit thinking China controls the website, there are regularly 200,000+ upvoted anti-China messages and theories on the very front page that immediately disprove their argument that China has any pull on Reddit.
- tw04 6y ago
  I just watched another thread that was in no way a flame war get deleted in the tik-tok topic. They have taken to deleting ANYTHING that mentions the CCPs investment in Chinese Tech, regardless of whether it's a cordial discussion or not. When people are asking "why would the US be concerned about a stupid app like Tik-Tok" and the response is: because the CCP is heavily invested which is concerning - that shouldn't be deleted. The fact it was brings into question the motivations of the moderators...
  - entropea 6y ago
    https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditMinusMods/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditMinusMods/ This must all be China. Your theory is no more than conspiracy.
pwillia7 6y ago
Well no -- They don't fund all our operations. I think this may be the end of the American experiment. How can you have mostly open organic institutions that anyone can influence and keep out bad actors, especially when one of those actors is another enormous state with the ability to plan and execute plans over decades? I feel like pre-internet and the current level of globalization this would make some sense, but why would the end result here not be a corruption of open institutions by powerful bad actors?

doublesCs 6y ago

I don't have access. Could someone kindly clarify what this is about?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
DevKoala 6y ago
https://gfycat.com/oddballfairgerbil https://gfycat.com/oddballfairgerbil
- doublesCs 6y ago
  wtf... :-( EDIT: any idea why this also got flagged on HN?
  - DevKoala 6y ago
    It happens to my posts here every now and then whenever I say something that doesn’t make the CCP look good. To be honest, I think the Chinese people are awesome and have a great culture that has given the world a lot. I am just extremely concerned about some of the crimes against humanity that the CCP does which are being normalized. Nevertheless, the USA is in the same boat, but when I am critical of our state my comments don’t get flagged.
    - Jommi 6y ago
      I flagged this because the title is clickbait, and not news whicj in my opinion goes against the spirit of hacker news. If this would be just a direct link to tencent investing in Reddit, or how Reddit has not taken any strong stance against HKs new data privacy law, then I think it would fit here.
      - 6y ago

draw_down 6y ago

I can’t actually understand what this is, what’s happening, or who’s doing it (I don’t know who reddits investors are, why would I know their cap table??)

DevKoala 6y ago

Tencent is owned by the CCP: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2019/03/28/commentary/world-commentary/worried-huawei-take-closer-look-tencent/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2019/03/28/commentary/w... However, this isn't specifically Tencent. I don't know why the title doesn't highlight this is specifically the CCP.

non-entity 6y ago

In surprised that someone was able to get done footage of this. You would that a drone around an area like that would be taken down asap.

missosoup 6y ago
It's a mavic 2, it's rather small and inaudible above 50 meters or so. Which seems to be roughly where it's hovering based on the footage. It has a camera with optical zoom. Ironically, it's made by the Chinese company DJI. Also, wild speculation, but maybe it did get taken down. The footage shown is a recording of the live telemetry feed streamed to the base station, not the much higher quality video stored on the SD card on board the drone itself.

cartoonfoxes 6y ago

As a descendant of Polish Jews that got out in time, god damn this is disturbing. Why was this flagged? Chinese state behavior is absolutely relevant given their involvement in western tech.

bassman9000 6y ago
CCP money Ironically, $$$
saagarjha 6y ago
> Why was this flagged? Likely because it attracts unsubstantive comments.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

foogazi 6y ago
Whatabout what the US did to people in Iran?

rv-de 6y ago

Could somebody explain what is going on here? How is this related to reddit and how is it clear that people are rounded up for religious belief? I just see something that could as well be regular prisoners being transferred.

mikequinlan 6y ago
A Chinese company invested $150 million in Reddit. https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/11/18216134/reddit-tencent-investment-deal-memes-amount-winnie-the-pooh-tank-man-china https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/11/18216134/reddit-tencent-i...
- rv-de 6y ago
  Anything else? I mean taking money from Chinese corps is probably ethically problematic but that's about it. We don't know who got rounded up why and if Tencent is related to that beyond being a Chinese company, right?