11 ms·

BBC: The cost of speaking up against China (Uyghurs)

frongpik 6y ago
Tbh, the article doesn't tell anything unusual. CCP rules by fear and a necessary part of such systems are labor camps. They aren't 731/nazi level evil, but they are still fairly cruel.
- olliej 6y ago
  They have concentration camps, that means they are at nazi level. Nazi Concentration camps were called essentially the same euphemisms by the German gov.
  - WeniTheElder 6y ago
    Harvesting hair and organs for profit. I guess they can meet this level.
- MichaelMoser123 6y ago
  i am afraid that they are the future: a significant part of the world is moving towards a more authoritarian model of government. (for example much of eastern Europe and Turkey has authoritarian rulers, also see all these censorship rules on twitter and faceboook). Maybe COVID is just a trigger that will cause a larger shift towards this abyss. i personally have come to see cryptocurrencies as a means to escape this trend; here you have a tool that escapes that big machinery of government - never mind the electricity that is wasted along the way; i think that the altenative of a GULAG is much worse, in terms of trade-offs.
  - sofixa 6y ago
    > for example much of eastern Europe and Turkey has authoritarian rulers, also see all these censorship rules on twitter and faceboook Hungary is usually considered Central Europe, and they're the only ones i can think of besides Poland and Belarus. Maybe Serbia if you're being generous? That's far from "much of Eastern Europe ( there are 10 countries in the Balkans only).
    - MichaelMoser123 6y ago
      Poland and Hungary are into this trend, so is Russia. These are the countries that host the majority of the people in the eastern part of Europe.
      - sofixa 6y ago
        No, Hungary is in Central Europe, and has barely 10 million people, less than Romania at 20, Ukraine at 44. Russia and Poland are indeed in Eastern Europe ( Russia partially), and Poland is indeed one of the biggest countries (37 million) in that part of Europe, but still has less inhabitants than the Balkans or Ukraine which certainly lack traditional autocratic governments.
        MichaelMoser123 6y ago
        the population of Russia is about 150 millions; I still think that Russia is part of Europe - in terms of its culture. Europe would have looked very different, if it weren't for the sacrifice of the Russian people during world war II. I think that would make up for any discrepancies.
TeeMassive 6y ago
> The UK Foreign Office told the BBC it was "closely monitoring reports that members of the Uyghur diaspora in the UK have been harassed by the Chinese authorities", and that it had "raised our concerns directly with the Chinese embassy in London". I've always wondered, how is it not against the law to act on a foreign government's orders to harass citizens? We know that certain academics are getting arrested, but mainly for spying, IP theft and lying, at least in the US. But I've never seen reports of arrests made on those grounds. It's a well known fact that "students" will show up at universities to check on other Chinese citizens and dissidents. Yet nothing happens.
- adventured 6y ago
  Primarily because very light harrassment isn't generally illegal and won't typically get you arrested. You'll be hard-pressed to get someone to care about that. The Beijing reps are surely careful about the extent of it, about not going too far, in most cases. Since the target likely knows who they represent, they don't have to press too far, they just have to make their presence known and it's enough to terrify without any specific act of violence or threat occurring (which limits what the police & co. can or will do). And last but not least, does the target want to ramp things up further with Beijing by pursuing it criminally, trying to get a restraining order, and so on. If the target succeeds, Beijing can just send more. It's lose, lose, lose, every direction you turn when a superpower has marked you and you lack any consequential power. Much like the IRS trying to battle the Church of Scientology, they have an army of followers willing to sacrifice themselves for the cause. How do you fight that, other than for the Feds to get involved and start removing these people from the US by the hundreds. It wouldn't surprise me if the Feds just follow & watch on purpose for intel acquisition purposes.
- thereare5lights 6y ago
  > how is it not against the law to act on a foreign government's orders to harass citizens? When you consider that until very recently, it was legal for NYPD officers to have sex with people in their custody, and indeed, in many places it is still legal for police to coerce sex from people in their custody, you'll realize that law is reactionary and until it becomes a problem that catches a politician's eye, it won't be illegal.
Leary 6y ago
H&M has a store in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. I'm curious, who were they selling to? The Uyghurs that are being genocided or the Han Chinese doing the genociding?
- quantstats 6y ago
  I’m curious: looking at your posting history, are you at least being paid to astroturf pro-CCP propaganda, or do you do it for free? Could you give us some insight into how it works?
  - unityByFreedom 6y ago
    I'm betting free, and that gives me hope there is actual fact finding going on even if we don't see the result. It may not just be trolling.
  - Mountain_Skies 6y ago
    Social Credit points perhaps?
    - seppin 6y ago
      ethnonationalism is a helluva drug
  - blackrock 6y ago
    Why can’t he or anyone, present an alternative question to elicit a conversation about it? Otherwise, we will have mob rule.
  - dang 6y ago
    You've seriously broken the HN guidelines. We ban accounts that do this. Please read the rules and stick to them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. If you'd like more explanation, there is plenty at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26652363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26652363 and the links back from there.
- 6y ago
causality0 6y ago
Frankly I don't think anyone in power particularly cares if the Chinese exterminate a few million people as long as they do it inside their own borders. One does well to remember that the Western world wouldn't have done anything about the Nazi Holocaust if Germany hadn't invaded Poland and France.
- hetspookjee 6y ago
  How do you know that? I'm genuinely curious
  - causality0 6y ago
    Look up almost any genocide or mass killing of the 20th century, even the late 20th century, and see how nobody outside the area gave a damn. Pre-WW2, you've got millions exterminated in the Congo Free State. The Ottoman Empire killed a million Armenians, 500,000 Greeks, 400,000 Assyrians. The British starved five million Indians to death in 1900 and two million Bengalis in 1943 and nobody gave a single solitary shit. Post WW2 it gets worse. Two million people in Cambodia, 700,000 people in Indonesia, 550,000 in Rwanda, 500,000 in Angola, millions in China during the Cultural Revolution, 225,000 in Bosnia, 300,000 in Uganda, a million Bangladeshis in 1971. The list goes on and on and on and the fraction that prompted any kind of forceful international response is pathetically small.
    - mrjin 6y ago
      I'm just wondering what kind of genocide can make Uyghur population in Xinjiang grow from 5M to 25M?
      - blackrock 6y ago
        LOL. It looks like you got downvoted for pointing out an inconvenient truth.
      - TeeMassive 6y ago
        The measures that are making the news now didn't really reach their peak until Xi was in power. Also, the Chinese are known to flood with ethnic Han people recalcitrant territories they conquered.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Klwohu 6y ago
Wow somebody came in and downvoted EVERYBODY in this thread. Five cent army, assemble!
- guram11 6y ago
  first time on HN? lol
- __turbobrew__ 6y ago
  *5 fen army
  - AussieWog93 6y ago
    (To be pedantic, it's actually 5 jiao/mao (hence the phrase "wumao") - 50 fen in total.)
    - __turbobrew__ 6y ago
      A cent is 1/100th of a dollar and a fen is 1/100th of a yuan?
      - AussieWog93 6y ago
        Yep, and one mao is 10 fen. So 5 mao (wumao) is 50 fen.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- tammerk 6y ago
  > Five cent army, assemble! Quick link : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party They also flag posts to take down from the first page. Just look how many votes do this post have but barely on the first page, about to fall down.
  - meibo 6y ago
c0nducktr 6y ago
Anyone care to say what they believe should be done, or is this just another mad about things thread? Anyone have ideas? What is the solution?
- yumraj 6y ago
  Economic sanctions. Will the West do it? Not for Uyghurs. They didn’t do it for Tibetans nor for Hong Kong, they’re not going to do it for Uyghurs. However, given the increasing brazenness of China, I won’t be surprised if we see some actions within 3-5 years. Edit: 2 downvotes. Cool, China just spent $1 on me or is it 10 cents. What’s the going rate?
  - wait_a_minute 6y ago
    The Biden administration levied sanctions on a couple CCP officials a few days ago.
  - boomboomsubban 6y ago
    It's very likely that economic sanctions will cause more harm to the Chinese than the harm done to the Uyghurs, and has a poor record of it's intended regime change. They are not a solution to a humanitarian crisis.
    - pas 6y ago
      It's intention is not regime change. It's directly making slave labor unprofitable. Sure it's a whack-a-mole of sorts, but it at least makes things clear for everyone involved. So usually Joe Rando does not care when he is shopping, but at least he can't and doesn't fund more labor camps indirectly.
      - yorwba 6y ago
        > It's directly making slave labor unprofitable. That only works if sanctions apply to slave labor, but not to comparable non-slave-labor. Sanctions based on geographic region ("Made in China"/"Made in Xinjiang") ethnicity ("Made by Uyghurs") or product category (cotton) can't achieve that, because they don't apply differential pressure that allows non-enslaving businesses to outcompete enslaving ones (and then hire former slaves as free workers), they affect both equally. To make differential pressure work, the first step is knowing who you're dealing with, which means having dedicated inspection teams working their way down supply chains to record labor conditions on the ground. Once you do have that information, highly targeted sanctions can be used to force change.
riteme 6y ago
> According to UN estimates, China has detained more than a million Uyghurs and other Muslims in camps in Xinjiang. The Chinese state has been accused of an array of abuses there including forced labour, sterilisation, torture, rape, and genocide. I'm interested in how CCP managed to arrest and put more than 1 million uyghurs into reeducation camp. I found that population of Xinjiang is only 25 millions. It is unbelievable that 4% of people were put into something like a jail.
EEmory 6y ago
Doing business with China in 2021 will look like doing business with Germany in 1938. Profits were more important than Tibet, Hong Kong and the Uyghurs - profits will be more important than Taiwan. Maybe we’ll stop doing business with genocidal communists if they attack Japan? One can hope.
- arcanon 6y ago
  No. Taiwan is the backstop
arcanon 6y ago
I wonder if the CCP will similarly re-educate the people of Taiwan. Dont they have a 9 year timeline to invade it? We should look for a new place to build our chip fabs...
- Paradigma11 6y ago
  No, you just found a new place to build your missile bases.
  - arcanon 6y ago
    CCP has an entire branch of their military dedicated to missles! Also their shipyard build rate is exceeding US rightnow.
dang 6y ago
All: these threads have all become the same hellish flamewar, endlessly repeated. Anything this flamey and/or repetitive is off topic here. HN is for thoughtful, curious conversation, not smiting enemies: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Please see these recent explanations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26637365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26637365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26630159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26630159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26643703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26643703 If you want more, there's 7 years' worth at these links: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20-recycling%20chin&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... 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... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=generic%20ideolog%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... Mini-FAQ: Q: But isn't this an important world situation? A: Sure—more important than most of what's on HN. That doesn't mean that HN's rules stop applying or that flamewar becomes ok. Also, people angrily yelling on the internet has nothing to do with helping oppressed peoples. It is about activated tribal emotion, and in that sense belongs to the problem rather than any step toward solution. Q: Are you secretly a spy, Chinese agent, communist, astroturfer, racist, or sympathizer thereof? A: No; see step 4 of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26637365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26637365. We're just trying to have an internet forum that doesn't suck. The idea of HN has always [1] been to avoid becoming scorched earth [2] or at least to stave off that fate for a while longer [3]. Scorched earth is not interesting, and threads like these are unfortunately a fast road to hell. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20scorched%20earth&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... [3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=stave%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
- BrandoElFollito 6y ago
  I am genuinely curious (even though this may not be the best place to ask) : are you the only mod running around trying to keep HN in one piece or are there more (also because you often say "we" (banned, warned,etc.)) In any case, great work.

Tbh, the article doesn't tell anything unusual. CCP rules by fear and a necessary part of such systems are labor camps. They aren't 731/nazi level evil, but they are still fairly cruel.

olliej 6y ago
They have concentration camps, that means they are at nazi level. Nazi Concentration camps were called essentially the same euphemisms by the German gov.
- WeniTheElder 6y ago
  Harvesting hair and organs for profit. I guess they can meet this level.
MichaelMoser123 6y ago
i am afraid that they are the future: a significant part of the world is moving towards a more authoritarian model of government. (for example much of eastern Europe and Turkey has authoritarian rulers, also see all these censorship rules on twitter and faceboook). Maybe COVID is just a trigger that will cause a larger shift towards this abyss. i personally have come to see cryptocurrencies as a means to escape this trend; here you have a tool that escapes that big machinery of government - never mind the electricity that is wasted along the way; i think that the altenative of a GULAG is much worse, in terms of trade-offs.
- sofixa 6y ago
  > for example much of eastern Europe and Turkey has authoritarian rulers, also see all these censorship rules on twitter and faceboook Hungary is usually considered Central Europe, and they're the only ones i can think of besides Poland and Belarus. Maybe Serbia if you're being generous? That's far from "much of Eastern Europe ( there are 10 countries in the Balkans only).
  - MichaelMoser123 6y ago
    Poland and Hungary are into this trend, so is Russia. These are the countries that host the majority of the people in the eastern part of Europe.
    - sofixa 6y ago
      No, Hungary is in Central Europe, and has barely 10 million people, less than Romania at 20, Ukraine at 44. Russia and Poland are indeed in Eastern Europe ( Russia partially), and Poland is indeed one of the biggest countries (37 million) in that part of Europe, but still has less inhabitants than the Balkans or Ukraine which certainly lack traditional autocratic governments.
      - MichaelMoser123 6y ago
        the population of Russia is about 150 millions; I still think that Russia is part of Europe - in terms of its culture. Europe would have looked very different, if it weren't for the sacrifice of the Russian people during world war II. I think that would make up for any discrepancies.

TeeMassive 6y ago

> The UK Foreign Office told the BBC it was "closely monitoring reports that members of the Uyghur diaspora in the UK have been harassed by the Chinese authorities", and that it had "raised our concerns directly with the Chinese embassy in London". I've always wondered, how is it not against the law to act on a foreign government's orders to harass citizens? We know that certain academics are getting arrested, but mainly for spying, IP theft and lying, at least in the US. But I've never seen reports of arrests made on those grounds. It's a well known fact that "students" will show up at universities to check on other Chinese citizens and dissidents. Yet nothing happens.

adventured 6y ago
Primarily because very light harrassment isn't generally illegal and won't typically get you arrested. You'll be hard-pressed to get someone to care about that. The Beijing reps are surely careful about the extent of it, about not going too far, in most cases. Since the target likely knows who they represent, they don't have to press too far, they just have to make their presence known and it's enough to terrify without any specific act of violence or threat occurring (which limits what the police & co. can or will do). And last but not least, does the target want to ramp things up further with Beijing by pursuing it criminally, trying to get a restraining order, and so on. If the target succeeds, Beijing can just send more. It's lose, lose, lose, every direction you turn when a superpower has marked you and you lack any consequential power. Much like the IRS trying to battle the Church of Scientology, they have an army of followers willing to sacrifice themselves for the cause. How do you fight that, other than for the Feds to get involved and start removing these people from the US by the hundreds. It wouldn't surprise me if the Feds just follow & watch on purpose for intel acquisition purposes.
thereare5lights 6y ago
> how is it not against the law to act on a foreign government's orders to harass citizens? When you consider that until very recently, it was legal for NYPD officers to have sex with people in their custody, and indeed, in many places it is still legal for police to coerce sex from people in their custody, you'll realize that law is reactionary and until it becomes a problem that catches a politician's eye, it won't be illegal.

Leary 6y ago

H&M has a store in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. I'm curious, who were they selling to? The Uyghurs that are being genocided or the Han Chinese doing the genociding?

quantstats 6y ago
I’m curious: looking at your posting history, are you at least being paid to astroturf pro-CCP propaganda, or do you do it for free? Could you give us some insight into how it works?
- unityByFreedom 6y ago
  I'm betting free, and that gives me hope there is actual fact finding going on even if we don't see the result. It may not just be trolling.
- Mountain_Skies 6y ago
  Social Credit points perhaps?
  - seppin 6y ago
    ethnonationalism is a helluva drug
- blackrock 6y ago
  Why can’t he or anyone, present an alternative question to elicit a conversation about it? Otherwise, we will have mob rule.
- dang 6y ago
  You've seriously broken the HN guidelines. We ban accounts that do this. Please read the rules and stick to them: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. If you'd like more explanation, there is plenty at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26652363 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26652363 and the links back from there.
6y ago

causality0 6y ago

Frankly I don't think anyone in power particularly cares if the Chinese exterminate a few million people as long as they do it inside their own borders. One does well to remember that the Western world wouldn't have done anything about the Nazi Holocaust if Germany hadn't invaded Poland and France.

hetspookjee 6y ago
How do you know that? I'm genuinely curious
- causality0 6y ago
  Look up almost any genocide or mass killing of the 20th century, even the late 20th century, and see how nobody outside the area gave a damn. Pre-WW2, you've got millions exterminated in the Congo Free State. The Ottoman Empire killed a million Armenians, 500,000 Greeks, 400,000 Assyrians. The British starved five million Indians to death in 1900 and two million Bengalis in 1943 and nobody gave a single solitary shit. Post WW2 it gets worse. Two million people in Cambodia, 700,000 people in Indonesia, 550,000 in Rwanda, 500,000 in Angola, millions in China during the Cultural Revolution, 225,000 in Bosnia, 300,000 in Uganda, a million Bangladeshis in 1971. The list goes on and on and on and the fraction that prompted any kind of forceful international response is pathetically small.
  - mrjin 6y ago
    I'm just wondering what kind of genocide can make Uyghur population in Xinjiang grow from 5M to 25M?
    - blackrock 6y ago
      LOL. It looks like you got downvoted for pointing out an inconvenient truth.
    - TeeMassive 6y ago
      The measures that are making the news now didn't really reach their peak until Xi was in power. Also, the Chinese are known to flood with ethnic Han people recalcitrant territories they conquered.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Klwohu 6y ago

Wow somebody came in and downvoted EVERYBODY in this thread. Five cent army, assemble!

guram11 6y ago
first time on HN? lol
__turbobrew__ 6y ago
*5 fen army
- AussieWog93 6y ago
  (To be pedantic, it's actually 5 jiao/mao (hence the phrase "wumao") - 50 fen in total.)
  - __turbobrew__ 6y ago
    A cent is 1/100th of a dollar and a fen is 1/100th of a yuan?
    - AussieWog93 6y ago
      Yep, and one mao is 10 fen. So 5 mao (wumao) is 50 fen.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tammerk 6y ago
> Five cent army, assemble! Quick link : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party They also flag posts to take down from the first page. Just look how many votes do this post have but barely on the first page, about to fall down.
- meibo 6y ago

c0nducktr 6y ago

Anyone care to say what they believe should be done, or is this just another mad about things thread? Anyone have ideas? What is the solution?

yumraj 6y ago
Economic sanctions. Will the West do it? Not for Uyghurs. They didn’t do it for Tibetans nor for Hong Kong, they’re not going to do it for Uyghurs. However, given the increasing brazenness of China, I won’t be surprised if we see some actions within 3-5 years. Edit: 2 downvotes. Cool, China just spent $1 on me or is it 10 cents. What’s the going rate?
- wait_a_minute 6y ago
  The Biden administration levied sanctions on a couple CCP officials a few days ago.
- boomboomsubban 6y ago
  It's very likely that economic sanctions will cause more harm to the Chinese than the harm done to the Uyghurs, and has a poor record of it's intended regime change. They are not a solution to a humanitarian crisis.
  - pas 6y ago
    It's intention is not regime change. It's directly making slave labor unprofitable. Sure it's a whack-a-mole of sorts, but it at least makes things clear for everyone involved. So usually Joe Rando does not care when he is shopping, but at least he can't and doesn't fund more labor camps indirectly.
    - yorwba 6y ago
      > It's directly making slave labor unprofitable. That only works if sanctions apply to slave labor, but not to comparable non-slave-labor. Sanctions based on geographic region ("Made in China"/"Made in Xinjiang") ethnicity ("Made by Uyghurs") or product category (cotton) can't achieve that, because they don't apply differential pressure that allows non-enslaving businesses to outcompete enslaving ones (and then hire former slaves as free workers), they affect both equally. To make differential pressure work, the first step is knowing who you're dealing with, which means having dedicated inspection teams working their way down supply chains to record labor conditions on the ground. Once you do have that information, highly targeted sanctions can be used to force change.

riteme 6y ago

> According to UN estimates, China has detained more than a million Uyghurs and other Muslims in camps in Xinjiang. The Chinese state has been accused of an array of abuses there including forced labour, sterilisation, torture, rape, and genocide. I'm interested in how CCP managed to arrest and put more than 1 million uyghurs into reeducation camp. I found that population of Xinjiang is only 25 millions. It is unbelievable that 4% of people were put into something like a jail.

EEmory 6y ago

Doing business with China in 2021 will look like doing business with Germany in 1938. Profits were more important than Tibet, Hong Kong and the Uyghurs - profits will be more important than Taiwan. Maybe we’ll stop doing business with genocidal communists if they attack Japan? One can hope.

arcanon 6y ago
No. Taiwan is the backstop

arcanon 6y ago

I wonder if the CCP will similarly re-educate the people of Taiwan. Dont they have a 9 year timeline to invade it? We should look for a new place to build our chip fabs...

Paradigma11 6y ago
No, you just found a new place to build your missile bases.
- arcanon 6y ago
  CCP has an entire branch of their military dedicated to missles! Also their shipyard build rate is exceeding US rightnow.

dang 6y ago

All: these threads have all become the same hellish flamewar, endlessly repeated. Anything this flamey and/or repetitive is off topic here. HN is for thoughtful, curious conversation, not smiting enemies: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. Please see these recent explanations: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26637365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26637365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26630159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26630159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26643703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26643703 If you want more, there's 7 years' worth at these links: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20-recycling%20chin&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... 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... https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=generic%20ideolog%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor... Mini-FAQ: Q: But isn't this an important world situation? A: Sure—more important than most of what's on HN. That doesn't mean that HN's rules stop applying or that flamewar becomes ok. Also, people angrily yelling on the internet has nothing to do with helping oppressed peoples. It is about activated tribal emotion, and in that sense belongs to the problem rather than any step toward solution. Q: Are you secretly a spy, Chinese agent, communist, astroturfer, racist, or sympathizer thereof? A: No; see step 4 of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26637365 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26637365. We're just trying to have an internet forum that doesn't suck. The idea of HN has always [1] been to avoid becoming scorched earth [2] or at least to stave off that fate for a while longer [3]. Scorched earth is not interesting, and threads like these are unfortunately a fast road to hell. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html [2] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20scorched%20earth&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... [3] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=stave%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

BrandoElFollito 6y ago
I am genuinely curious (even though this may not be the best place to ask) : are you the only mod running around trying to keep HN in one piece or are there more (also because you often say "we" (banned, warned,etc.)) In any case, great work.