7 ms·

China is the greatest enemy to freedom – US intelligence chief

50 points by DarkContinent 6y ago

cjbenedikt 6y ago
Sick and tired of constant war mongering. First it was Russia, then "war on terror", now China. Does the US always need an enemy to pick a fight with to feel " validated"? Everything China is being accused of is and has been done by the US as well. Does it make anyone feel better if one can accuse someone else of the same actions?
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- bordercases 6y ago
  > Everything China is being accused of is and has been done by the US as well. Is that a confession?
- gruez 6y ago
  >Everything China is being accused of is and has been done by the US as well. Alright I'll bite. What is the US equivalent of the panopticon that is in xinjiang? edit: by "the panopticon in xinjiang", I'm referring to articles like https://www.engadget.com/2018-02-22-china-xinjiang-surveillance-tech-spread.html https://www.engadget.com/2018-02-22-china-xinjiang-surveilla... https://www.vice.com/en/article/7xgame/at-chinese-border-tourists-forced-to-install-a-text-stealing-piece-of-malware https://www.vice.com/en/article/7xgame/at-chinese-border-tou...
  - bordercases 6y ago
    Credit scores + Facebook and ad networks but they're under checks and balances by Congress depending on the administration while funded and siphoned by CIA, together making things muddy.
    - gruez 6y ago
      >Credit scores ...which is based on your credit report, which in turn is mostly a record of what lines of credit you have taken out (credit cards, car/student loans, mortgages) and whether you have repaid them. meanwhile in china, they track that and also various subversive behavior like "spreading false rumors" and "walking a dog without a leash"[1]. >Facebook and ad networks You can opt out of all of those. Unless the DHS is forcing visitors to install facebook (or similar surveillance app), it's not really comparable to what they have in xinjiang[2] [1] https://apnews.com/article/9d43f4b74260411797043ddd391c13d8 https://apnews.com/article/9d43f4b74260411797043ddd391c13d8 [2] https://www.vice.com/en/article/7xgame/at-chinese-border-tourists-forced-to-install-a-text-stealing-piece-of-malware https://www.vice.com/en/article/7xgame/at-chinese-border-tou...
      - yorwba 6y ago
        Amusingly, most reporting on the Chinese "social credit system" is based on uncritically repeating Chinese government propaganda about how capable it's going to be. It was originally planned to launch in 2020, but that hasn't happened so far. If it ever does launch, you shouldn't be surprised if it is not nearly as powerful as people have claimed it to be.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    The NSA's worldwide surveillance collection used by the CIA to kill someone without any approval from any other organization and without concern for civilian casualties.
  - nzmsv 6y ago
    The US doesn't have an active separatist movement within its borders. The last time an ethnic group of US residents was suspected of disloyalty (without any terrorist acts actually being committed) they were all arrested on the basis of ethnicity alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...
    - smt88 6y ago
      > The US doesn't have an active separatist movement within its borders. This is absolutely wrong[1]. In fact, we have ethnic variety in our separatist movements: neo-Confederate/white supremacist, African American, and Native American. All of these groups are allowed to organize peaceful public rallies against the US and will be protected by police if they choose to do so[2]. > The last time an ethnic group of US residents was suspected of disloyalty (without any terrorist acts actually being committed) they were all arrested on the basis of ethnicity alone. You can find great evil in the history of any country. That's an apples-to-oranges comparison, and you had to go back to a World War to find it. The relevant question is whether the CCP is currently a greater threat to human rights than the US is. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_separatist_movements_in_North_America#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_separatist_move... 2. https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/10/17/league-south-calls-backup-confederate-protest https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/10/17/league-south-...
      - boomboomsubban 6y ago
        >All of these groups are allowed to organize peaceful public rallies against the US and will be protected by police if they choose to do so Which means separatists are free to discuss leaving, but any actual attempt would require government approval or no longer be considered peaceful making it illegal.
        smt88 6y ago
        You're moving the goalposts. This was about the CCP disallowing separatist speech and punishing it by death.
  - porpoise 6y ago
    The closest equivalent is probably the War on Terror, insofar as both purport to be a reaction to actual terrorist attacks and to be aimed at preventing future terrorism. We may then compare them in terms of (crudely) total actual suffering caused (less crudely, we need to take into account total potential suffering prevented - recall how Hiroshima was justified - but evaluating counterfactuals is a tricky matter so I will set that aside here). Even assuming the worst version of what's said to be happening in Xinjiang, there is no equivalence (in terms of actual suffering caused) with the War on Terror, which is estimated in 2009 to have resulted in 3.1 million direct or indirect deaths [1]. From a crude utilitarian point of view, there is simply no comparison: any clear-headed utilitarian given the choice to prevent exactly one of two will not feel that there is even a decision to be made. Of course a natural reaction is to say that the Uyghurs have a legitimate cause, and the 911 attackers didn't. However, the official US theory of the motives behind the 911 attacks is "they hated us for our freedom". [2] According to this theory (as I understand it), the terrorists saw how free Americans were, saw how unfree they themselves were, became jealous, and attacked us. Now, there is no doubt that IF this theory is true, then the attackers indeed had no legitimate cause. But the theory (as I trust you will agree) is hardly believable, as it simply does not accord with our ordinary conception of how the human mind works. A more plausible theory of the motives is needed in order to make any assessment of whether the terrorists had a legitimate cause. [1] https://www.democracynow.org/2019/11/15/headlines/analysis_finds_us_led_wars_since_9_11_killed_801_000_at_a_cost_of_64_trillion https://www.democracynow.org/2019/11/15/headlines/analysis_f... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motives_for_the_September_11_attacks https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motives_for_the_September_11...
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- smitty1e 6y ago
  The current U.S. President has been doing a lot of peace mongering. Maybe that helps explain the demand for ejection.
  - LatteLazy 6y ago
    He did try pretty hard to start a war with Iran.
    - phobosanomaly 6y ago
      And he seemed to be gunning for one with North Korea there for a while.
- smt88 6y ago
  > Does the US always need an enemy to pick a fight with to feel " validated"? So what exactly are you asking for? Do you want the US to be totally apathetic? Never to comment on the erosion of democracy in China and Russia? The US certainly doesn't have moral high-ground on many issues, but I still want our officials to recognize and speak out against human rights abuses and authoritarianism. If there are always authoritarians in power, then, yes, the US should always have an enemy regime to speak out against. > Everything China is being accused of is and has been done by the US as well I'm so sick of this "both sides are equally guilty" nonsense. It's not always easy to say one country's regime has done worse things than another, but this isn't one of those times. It is absolutely inarguable that US has never done the worst things that Xi has been credibly accused of. The CCP's treatment of Uyghur's is, even at its mildest, much worse than anything the US has done since slavery ended in 1865. Even the Vietnam War is unlikely to have killed more innocent civilians than China's Uyghur concentration camps are likely to have killed.
  - ardit33 6y ago
    Why is this comment being downvoted? @dang do we have CCP bots here doing mass downvoting?
mam2 6y ago
Dont worry biden will stand up to them.
- OneGuy123 6y ago
  You forgot /s
- ASalazarMX 6y ago
  Yeah, he will surely increase tariffs and steal them mobile apps, that will teach 'em commies!
OneGuy123 6y ago
There is a difference between war mongering and legit concerns. The "russia, russia" thingy really seems to have been just media warmongering. But China seems to be more proactive, there are many stories of Chinese briberies. The WHO seems to be owned by China: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlCYFh8U2xM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlCYFh8U2xM Also regarding US 2020 elections voting systems: "SEC filings: The parent company of Dominion Voting Systems received $400 million from an Investment Bank in Switzerland that is 75% owned by the Chinese government. UBS Securities is a Swiss investment bank which owns 24.99% of UBS Securities Co LTD, a Chinese Investment Bank. The remaining 75% of UBS Securities CO LTD is owned by the Chinese government,” states the report."
- ciarannolan 6y ago
  > "SEC filings: The parent company of Dominion Voting Systems received $400 million from an Investment Bank in Switzerland that is 75% owned by the Chinese government. UBS Securities is a Swiss investment bank which owns 24.99% of UBS Securities Co LTD, a Chinese Investment Bank. The remaining 75% of UBS Securities CO LTD is owned by the Chinese government,” states the report." Instead of making vague insinuations, why not just make the accusation that you're alluding to?
  - OneGuy123 6y ago
    I'll let the SEC filings do the talking, you can then decide if China owning voting machines are "vague insinuations".
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > I'll let the SEC filings do the talking, The SEC filings said that State Street Capital sold $400 million securities, for which sale they paid UBS Securities (the Swiss bank) some money. UBS Securities also owns ~25% of a Chinese bank with a similar name, whose other owners are Chinese firms which (lets just assume for the sake of argument) are state- and state-controlled enterprises. And State Street Capital co-owns, with Dominion's own management team, Dominion Voting Solutions. So, what you have is the private equity firm that (among many other things) has an ownership role in Dominion paying some money to a Swiss bank connected to a sale of securities, and the Swiss bank involved also owns a minority interest in a Chinese bank in which Chinese government firms own a controlling interest. How that even approximately equates to "China owning voting machine" is something of a mystery.
Animats 6y ago
Beijing was preparing for confrontation with the US and intended to dominate the world "economically, militarily and technologically". Well, yes. China has 4x the population of the US, just passed the US in GDP, is way ahead in manufacturing output, and has a far higher growth rate. Of course they're going to dominate the world.
- testesttest 6y ago
  Passed US in GDP? Where did you find those numbers?
  - Animats 6y ago
    Sorry, I'd heard that, but apparently not yet. US US$21 trillion, China US$14 trillion.
  - samspenc 6y ago
    I think OP meant in terms of GDP by PPP (Purchasing Power Parity), not nominal (the actual current value). But I agree it's confusing without that clarification.
- bordercases 6y ago
  The final competition is going to be naval power which is where your "of course" has to be qualified. Naval power is what backs the dollar and lets US act as the hegemon which the world can rotate around. Challenging that is a highly destabilizing act. US is in the process of becoming a true empire which can only be gimped by international institutions like the IMF which would reduce its currency-based influence as well as otherwise monopolizing decision-making power in channels of aide and diplomacy. But if the US can recover its political will then it still has more hard power than China can clamor for, and most of its allies which were on the fence are reorienting back to US partnerships. No one should want this kind of engagement to be enacted. It can get hot and messy in the worst way. But here we are. You lie in the graves you dig.
- ASalazarMX 6y ago
  The only GDP metric China has surpassed USA on is in purchase parity power (since 2014), which is no small feat btw. https://mgmresearch.com/china-vs-united-states-a-gdp-comparison/ https://mgmresearch.com/china-vs-united-states-a-gdp-compari...
op03 6y ago
Freedom is over rated.
- testesttest 6y ago
  Definitely
apta 6y ago
One good thing that Trump did is that he stood up to the bully CCP. Let's hope the upcoming administration will continue to do so.
3131s 6y ago
Another example of a discussion that should have been had, but was instead killed by gatekeepers with their supercharged "flag" button. HN needs to nerf flagging or get rid of it entirely.
- dang 6y ago
  People have different views on what belongs here, but I think it's easy to see why users flagged this article. It's generic nationalistic flamebait, reporting on a statement by a political official, with no significant new information (SNI). https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22significant%20new%20information%22%20by%3Adang&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22significant%20new%20informa... Flagging is a critical part of the immune system. Without it HN would die a quick and horrible death, so I'm afraid there won't be any nerfing.
  - 3131s 6y ago
    > *People have different views on what belongs here, but I think it's easy to see why users flagged this article. It's generic nationalistic flamebait, reporting on a statement by a political official, with no significant new information This is reality, not "generic, nationalistic flamebait". It does not matter if the article is from the BBC, or that the statement comes from this particular Trumpist DNI John Ratcliffe, because the sentiment of "China is a threat" is much broader than one person and one article, and that's what people want to talk about -- various ideas tangential to the reporting and this particular story itself. Of course for some topics you mods will dig up a "better" source and manipulate the rankings manually, but for others it's straight to flagging black hole... If you can't see what's "interesting" or "noteworthy" about these political topics from a hacker's perspective, that is your lack of imagination and the fault is not mine. Flagging allows the old guard here to plug their ears whenever an uncomfortable topic comes up. I sincerely think this platform would be better if topics that get tons of votes could not be killed so quickly. Also if anyone really cares about the quality of discussion here, perhaps HN should actually achieve a sane technological solution for displaying a page with more than a few hundred comments. The platform itself is just flat out bad for in-depth discussions. Or give us some ways to sort, like by upvotes only (so I can complain about flagging less). Or actually comply with the GDPR, instead of sinking more time into your shadowy mod tooling.

50 points by DarkContinent 6y ago

Sick and tired of constant war mongering. First it was Russia, then "war on terror", now China. Does the US always need an enemy to pick a fight with to feel " validated"? Everything China is being accused of is and has been done by the US as well. Does it make anyone feel better if one can accuse someone else of the same actions?

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
bordercases 6y ago
> Everything China is being accused of is and has been done by the US as well. Is that a confession?
gruez 6y ago
>Everything China is being accused of is and has been done by the US as well. Alright I'll bite. What is the US equivalent of the panopticon that is in xinjiang? edit: by "the panopticon in xinjiang", I'm referring to articles like https://www.engadget.com/2018-02-22-china-xinjiang-surveillance-tech-spread.html https://www.engadget.com/2018-02-22-china-xinjiang-surveilla... https://www.vice.com/en/article/7xgame/at-chinese-border-tourists-forced-to-install-a-text-stealing-piece-of-malware https://www.vice.com/en/article/7xgame/at-chinese-border-tou...
- bordercases 6y ago
  Credit scores + Facebook and ad networks but they're under checks and balances by Congress depending on the administration while funded and siphoned by CIA, together making things muddy.
  - gruez 6y ago
    >Credit scores ...which is based on your credit report, which in turn is mostly a record of what lines of credit you have taken out (credit cards, car/student loans, mortgages) and whether you have repaid them. meanwhile in china, they track that and also various subversive behavior like "spreading false rumors" and "walking a dog without a leash"[1]. >Facebook and ad networks You can opt out of all of those. Unless the DHS is forcing visitors to install facebook (or similar surveillance app), it's not really comparable to what they have in xinjiang[2] [1] https://apnews.com/article/9d43f4b74260411797043ddd391c13d8 https://apnews.com/article/9d43f4b74260411797043ddd391c13d8 [2] https://www.vice.com/en/article/7xgame/at-chinese-border-tourists-forced-to-install-a-text-stealing-piece-of-malware https://www.vice.com/en/article/7xgame/at-chinese-border-tou...
    - yorwba 6y ago
      Amusingly, most reporting on the Chinese "social credit system" is based on uncritically repeating Chinese government propaganda about how capable it's going to be. It was originally planned to launch in 2020, but that hasn't happened so far. If it ever does launch, you shouldn't be surprised if it is not nearly as powerful as people have claimed it to be.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  The NSA's worldwide surveillance collection used by the CIA to kill someone without any approval from any other organization and without concern for civilian casualties.
- nzmsv 6y ago
  The US doesn't have an active separatist movement within its borders. The last time an ethnic group of US residents was suspected of disloyalty (without any terrorist acts actually being committed) they were all arrested on the basis of ethnicity alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...
  - smt88 6y ago
    > The US doesn't have an active separatist movement within its borders. This is absolutely wrong[1]. In fact, we have ethnic variety in our separatist movements: neo-Confederate/white supremacist, African American, and Native American. All of these groups are allowed to organize peaceful public rallies against the US and will be protected by police if they choose to do so[2]. > The last time an ethnic group of US residents was suspected of disloyalty (without any terrorist acts actually being committed) they were all arrested on the basis of ethnicity alone. You can find great evil in the history of any country. That's an apples-to-oranges comparison, and you had to go back to a World War to find it. The relevant question is whether the CCP is currently a greater threat to human rights than the US is. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_separatist_movements_in_North_America#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_separatist_move... 2. https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/10/17/league-south-calls-backup-confederate-protest https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/10/17/league-south-...
    - boomboomsubban 6y ago
      >All of these groups are allowed to organize peaceful public rallies against the US and will be protected by police if they choose to do so Which means separatists are free to discuss leaving, but any actual attempt would require government approval or no longer be considered peaceful making it illegal.
      - smt88 6y ago
        You're moving the goalposts. This was about the CCP disallowing separatist speech and punishing it by death.
- porpoise 6y ago
  The closest equivalent is probably the War on Terror, insofar as both purport to be a reaction to actual terrorist attacks and to be aimed at preventing future terrorism. We may then compare them in terms of (crudely) total actual suffering caused (less crudely, we need to take into account total potential suffering prevented - recall how Hiroshima was justified - but evaluating counterfactuals is a tricky matter so I will set that aside here). Even assuming the worst version of what's said to be happening in Xinjiang, there is no equivalence (in terms of actual suffering caused) with the War on Terror, which is estimated in 2009 to have resulted in 3.1 million direct or indirect deaths [1]. From a crude utilitarian point of view, there is simply no comparison: any clear-headed utilitarian given the choice to prevent exactly one of two will not feel that there is even a decision to be made. Of course a natural reaction is to say that the Uyghurs have a legitimate cause, and the 911 attackers didn't. However, the official US theory of the motives behind the 911 attacks is "they hated us for our freedom". [2] According to this theory (as I understand it), the terrorists saw how free Americans were, saw how unfree they themselves were, became jealous, and attacked us. Now, there is no doubt that IF this theory is true, then the attackers indeed had no legitimate cause. But the theory (as I trust you will agree) is hardly believable, as it simply does not accord with our ordinary conception of how the human mind works. A more plausible theory of the motives is needed in order to make any assessment of whether the terrorists had a legitimate cause. [1] https://www.democracynow.org/2019/11/15/headlines/analysis_finds_us_led_wars_since_9_11_killed_801_000_at_a_cost_of_64_trillion https://www.democracynow.org/2019/11/15/headlines/analysis_f... [2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motives_for_the_September_11_attacks https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motives_for_the_September_11...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
smitty1e 6y ago
The current U.S. President has been doing a lot of peace mongering. Maybe that helps explain the demand for ejection.
- LatteLazy 6y ago
  He did try pretty hard to start a war with Iran.
  - phobosanomaly 6y ago
    And he seemed to be gunning for one with North Korea there for a while.
smt88 6y ago
> Does the US always need an enemy to pick a fight with to feel " validated"? So what exactly are you asking for? Do you want the US to be totally apathetic? Never to comment on the erosion of democracy in China and Russia? The US certainly doesn't have moral high-ground on many issues, but I still want our officials to recognize and speak out against human rights abuses and authoritarianism. If there are always authoritarians in power, then, yes, the US should always have an enemy regime to speak out against. > Everything China is being accused of is and has been done by the US as well I'm so sick of this "both sides are equally guilty" nonsense. It's not always easy to say one country's regime has done worse things than another, but this isn't one of those times. It is absolutely inarguable that US has never done the worst things that Xi has been credibly accused of. The CCP's treatment of Uyghur's is, even at its mildest, much worse than anything the US has done since slavery ended in 1865. Even the Vietnam War is unlikely to have killed more innocent civilians than China's Uyghur concentration camps are likely to have killed.
- ardit33 6y ago
  Why is this comment being downvoted? @dang do we have CCP bots here doing mass downvoting?

mam2 6y ago

Dont worry biden will stand up to them.

OneGuy123 6y ago
You forgot /s
ASalazarMX 6y ago
Yeah, he will surely increase tariffs and steal them mobile apps, that will teach 'em commies!

OneGuy123 6y ago

There is a difference between war mongering and legit concerns. The "russia, russia" thingy really seems to have been just media warmongering. But China seems to be more proactive, there are many stories of Chinese briberies. The WHO seems to be owned by China: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlCYFh8U2xM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlCYFh8U2xM Also regarding US 2020 elections voting systems: "SEC filings: The parent company of Dominion Voting Systems received $400 million from an Investment Bank in Switzerland that is 75% owned by the Chinese government. UBS Securities is a Swiss investment bank which owns 24.99% of UBS Securities Co LTD, a Chinese Investment Bank. The remaining 75% of UBS Securities CO LTD is owned by the Chinese government,” states the report."

ciarannolan 6y ago
> "SEC filings: The parent company of Dominion Voting Systems received $400 million from an Investment Bank in Switzerland that is 75% owned by the Chinese government. UBS Securities is a Swiss investment bank which owns 24.99% of UBS Securities Co LTD, a Chinese Investment Bank. The remaining 75% of UBS Securities CO LTD is owned by the Chinese government,” states the report." Instead of making vague insinuations, why not just make the accusation that you're alluding to?
- OneGuy123 6y ago
  I'll let the SEC filings do the talking, you can then decide if China owning voting machines are "vague insinuations".
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > I'll let the SEC filings do the talking, The SEC filings said that State Street Capital sold $400 million securities, for which sale they paid UBS Securities (the Swiss bank) some money. UBS Securities also owns ~25% of a Chinese bank with a similar name, whose other owners are Chinese firms which (lets just assume for the sake of argument) are state- and state-controlled enterprises. And State Street Capital co-owns, with Dominion's own management team, Dominion Voting Solutions. So, what you have is the private equity firm that (among many other things) has an ownership role in Dominion paying some money to a Swiss bank connected to a sale of securities, and the Swiss bank involved also owns a minority interest in a Chinese bank in which Chinese government firms own a controlling interest. How that even approximately equates to "China owning voting machine" is something of a mystery.

Animats 6y ago

Beijing was preparing for confrontation with the US and intended to dominate the world "economically, militarily and technologically". Well, yes. China has 4x the population of the US, just passed the US in GDP, is way ahead in manufacturing output, and has a far higher growth rate. Of course they're going to dominate the world.

testesttest 6y ago
Passed US in GDP? Where did you find those numbers?
- Animats 6y ago
  Sorry, I'd heard that, but apparently not yet. US US$21 trillion, China US$14 trillion.
- samspenc 6y ago
  I think OP meant in terms of GDP by PPP (Purchasing Power Parity), not nominal (the actual current value). But I agree it's confusing without that clarification.
bordercases 6y ago
The final competition is going to be naval power which is where your "of course" has to be qualified. Naval power is what backs the dollar and lets US act as the hegemon which the world can rotate around. Challenging that is a highly destabilizing act. US is in the process of becoming a true empire which can only be gimped by international institutions like the IMF which would reduce its currency-based influence as well as otherwise monopolizing decision-making power in channels of aide and diplomacy. But if the US can recover its political will then it still has more hard power than China can clamor for, and most of its allies which were on the fence are reorienting back to US partnerships. No one should want this kind of engagement to be enacted. It can get hot and messy in the worst way. But here we are. You lie in the graves you dig.
ASalazarMX 6y ago
The only GDP metric China has surpassed USA on is in purchase parity power (since 2014), which is no small feat btw. https://mgmresearch.com/china-vs-united-states-a-gdp-comparison/ https://mgmresearch.com/china-vs-united-states-a-gdp-compari...

op03 6y ago

Freedom is over rated.

testesttest 6y ago
Definitely

apta 6y ago

One good thing that Trump did is that he stood up to the bully CCP. Let's hope the upcoming administration will continue to do so.

3131s 6y ago

Another example of a discussion that should have been had, but was instead killed by gatekeepers with their supercharged "flag" button. HN needs to nerf flagging or get rid of it entirely.

dang 6y ago
People have different views on what belongs here, but I think it's easy to see why users flagged this article. It's generic nationalistic flamebait, reporting on a statement by a political official, with no significant new information (SNI). https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22significant%20new%20information%22%20by%3Adang&dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?query=%22significant%20new%20informa... Flagging is a critical part of the immune system. Without it HN would die a quick and horrible death, so I'm afraid there won't be any nerfing.
- 3131s 6y ago
  > *People have different views on what belongs here, but I think it's easy to see why users flagged this article. It's generic nationalistic flamebait, reporting on a statement by a political official, with no significant new information This is reality, not "generic, nationalistic flamebait". It does not matter if the article is from the BBC, or that the statement comes from this particular Trumpist DNI John Ratcliffe, because the sentiment of "China is a threat" is much broader than one person and one article, and that's what people want to talk about -- various ideas tangential to the reporting and this particular story itself. Of course for some topics you mods will dig up a "better" source and manipulate the rankings manually, but for others it's straight to flagging black hole... If you can't see what's "interesting" or "noteworthy" about these political topics from a hacker's perspective, that is your lack of imagination and the fault is not mine. Flagging allows the old guard here to plug their ears whenever an uncomfortable topic comes up. I sincerely think this platform would be better if topics that get tons of votes could not be killed so quickly. Also if anyone really cares about the quality of discussion here, perhaps HN should actually achieve a sane technological solution for displaying a page with more than a few hundred comments. The platform itself is just flat out bad for in-depth discussions. Or give us some ways to sort, like by upvotes only (so I can complain about flagging less). Or actually comply with the GDPR, instead of sinking more time into your shadowy mod tooling.