9 ms·

We were told the same thing about the lab leak theory from: Social media companies, Mainstream media, and the government. The reason for distrust is valid. We

by nbardy 5y ago

We were told the same thing about the lab leak theory from: Social media companies, Mainstream media, and the government. The reason for distrust is valid. We live in an age of rapidly increasing censorship and the CCPs growing reach of control in American discourse. Skepticism is becoming the default for very real reasons.

dang 5y ago
I can tell you personally with high confidence that neither the Communist Party of China nor any other Communist Party has influence on how we operate Hacker News. I can't say anything about any other site or company or media or government, because I'm not involved with any of that. But unless the communists are zapping me with behavior-control rays or Angela Lansbury had me brainwashed decades ago, zero such influence is happening here. You don't have to believe me, of course, but if you decide not to, consider these two simple observations. First, if I were lying to the community, I would be an idiot, because the good faith of the community is literally the only thing that makes this site valuable. So, sheer self-interest plus not-being-an-idiot should be enough to tip your priors. Sure I'm an idiot about most things, but I hope I'm not completely incompetent at the most important part of my job. The value of a place like HN can easily disappear in one false step. Therefore the only policy which has ever made any sense to us is (1) tell the truth; (2) try never to do anything that isn't defensible to the community; and (3) acknowledge when we fuck up and fix it. Second, if you're going to draw dramatic conclusions about sinister operations, it's good for mental health to have at least one really solid piece of information you can check them against. Otherwise you end up in the wilderness of mirrors. What you see on internet forums—or rather, what you think you see on internet forums, which then somehow becomes what you see because that's how the brain does it—is simply not solid information. Remember what von Neumann said about fitting an elephant? (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=von%20neumann%20elephant&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) He asked for a mere five degrees of freedom. Nebulous internet spaces give you hundreds at least. That's way beyond enough to justify anything—even dipping in a ladle and getting one ladle's worth is enough to justify anything. (Edit: people have been asking what Angela Lansbury has to do with this. If you don't mind spoilers, Angela will explain it for you here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3ZnaRMhD_A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3ZnaRMhD_A.)
- kragen 5y ago
  Aren't a substantial number of HN users, who vote on posts and comments and flag them, Chinese or Chinese-American? Isn't the government of China fairly popular in China? If the answer to both of these questions is "yes" I don't see how it can be true that "neither the Communist Party of China nor any other Communist Party has influence on how we operate Hacker News", even without any behavior-control rays.
  - intro-b 5y ago
    yeah true - we really need an ethnicity/nationality test for new accounts before they post to really make sure HN has no foreign CCP influence
  - joemi 5y ago
    The implications of what you said sound kind of racist to me. I suspect that's why you seem to have been downvoted.
    - kragen 5y ago
      I definitely do not support excluding or discriminating against Chinese users, a practice which is a big problem on HN. I'm just saying that, just as a significant subset of USA users are likely to flag posts that encourage people to burn American flags or claim that the USA is a "white-supremacist state", and a significant subset of Muslim users are likely to flag posts that criticize Muhammad, there's a significant subset of Chinese users who are likely to flag posts that criticize the Chinese Communist Party, even if it's implicit criticism by way of calling attention to particular historical events that its opponents commonly use as rallying points. My recent comments on China include: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27162262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27162262 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27162354 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27162354 criticizing another user for an essentialist oversimplified view of Chinese history. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27161925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27161925 criticizing the US for "aggressively escalating the TSMC conflict with targeted attacks on the PRC's nuclear and supercomputing capabilities". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26937581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26937581 criticizing coverage of China in the UK press for systematically discounting the sizes of urbanizations in China. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26930408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26930408 tracing the history of Wuxi through three millennia and criticizing its frankly racist dismissal in the UK press. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26931665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26931665 arguing that Chinese contributions to photovoltaic energy development are huge. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26676997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26676997 pointing out that China's vaccination efforts against covid have been head and shoulders above those in the US and Europe. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26598814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26598814 correcting someone who argued that China was merely the source of key materials for photovoltaic energy. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26542286 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26542286 pointing out that the UK's covid-testing regime has been pathetically poor compared to China's.
adventured 5y ago
Now wait just a minute. Are you suggesting that there may be vast, concerted intellectual fraud related to the origins of SARS-CoV-2? Such that the former director of the CDC has received death threats for suggesting the bullshit mainstream media peddled lies might indeed be false, and there may be a more likely alternate source to the beginning of the pandemic other than pangolins? Or that there is something slightly fishy about Peter Daszak being put in charge of The Lancet's investigation of the origins of SARS-CoV-2. Like he was previousy a fact checker - ha ha ha - for Facebook, helping to identify and remove "misinformation" about SARS2/Covid. Like he was on the WHO team sent to Wuhan - ha ha ha - to (not) investigate the origins of SARS2. Or that maybe there's something a little weird about Fauci blatantly lying to Congress, lying to the public, lying everywhere non-stop for the past year, as to whether it was possible SARS2 leaked out of a lab and whether gain of function was funded by the NIH through EcoHealth. And then, suddenly, completely changing his tune. Yeah, weird. Or maybe it's weird how the WHO very willingly, openly, ridiculously assisted China in covering up the origins of SARS2 in the early days, and has barely made the slightest of efforts to deny any of it (because they got caught on record helping to hide the outbreak from the world). And maybe it's weird how the WHO has suffered close to zero consequences from any of that fraud that helped kill plausibly huge numbers of people. Or maybe it's weird how so many of the big tech companies simultaneously unified to censor discussion about the lab leak theory. Of course it's not like we now know for a fact, thanks to insider leaks and Congressional discovery, that many of the social media and big tech companies work closely together to censor things they ideologically or politically dislike or otherwise find inconvenient to whatever their mission is these days. Nah hell, it's obviously all conspiracy theory, misinformation, deserving of aggressive censorship. edit: the downvotes, fortunately, don't change or hide reality, no matter how many times you hit that little down arrow I was supporting the lab leak theory here on HN at the beginning of the pandemic. I was right then. I'm right now. Another thing that hasn't changed in that time is the mob trying to downvote the discussion away.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
“They’re Not After Me, They’re After You. I’m Just In the Way.” Social Media Exile
emodendroket 5y ago
The reality is just the opposite. Even a cursory examination of the news will show a torrent of anti-China coverage (and attendant changes in public sentiment toward China) which just happens to coincide with a US campaign to "confront China" in "great-power conflict." The idea that China is controlling this discourse is risible.
dude187 5y ago
Exactly. Discourse has become censored almost compltely on a large number of non "fact checker approved" views over the last year. Reddit bans permanently over it all over, now Twitter. Facebook gets a lot of the blame but sadly it seems like my the only place my conservative friends have a voice. This trend of "stop Asian hate" is also not organic. It's designed to use the "your racist" Trump card to shut down any talk of the lab leak or China's response
- ccsnags 5y ago
  Anyone can do this stuff. Cut a good promo that feeds into the internalized mythology of the target audience and you can get them to believe in it without a hint of skepticism. As far as organic or not, it doesn’t really matter. People need to have an immune system for nonsense, especially it feels right. Most people can spot nonsense that goes against their own worldview. The trick is to be able to spot nonsense that is aligned with your worldview or you could directly benefit from if true.
- unholythree 5y ago
  That's super nutty. How would the alleged uptick in racist violence against Asian-Americans provide cover for misdeeds of the Chinese Communist Party? Over the past couple weeks many mainstream news sources are reporting the possibility of the lab as a source. In fact the lack of transparency of Chinese authorities has been a pretty universal complaint (minus WHO dithering) since jump. I do think it's entirely possible the Asian hate fears are the sort of alarmist panic that the American media loves to trade in. I'd like to see statistics regarding violent crime reported by Asian and Pacific Islanders, rather than mostly anecdotal reporting or the dozen or so high profile attacks. I don't see this sort of breathless but shallow reporting as a conspiracy but just run of the mill bandwagoning.
bifrost 5y ago
As someone who had the pleasure of working with dang for several years, HN and its moderation team are some of the calmest and most considerate people I've ever met. The CCP has zero say in how HN operates. For the most part the users of HN are in control of whats displayed, its probably one of the most censorship free sites on the planet. You should see how often my karma fluctuates because I express an unpopular opinion, it doesn't bother me because I know its about people and not an algorithm.

by nbardy 5y ago

dang 5y ago

I can tell you personally with high confidence that neither the Communist Party of China nor any other Communist Party has influence on how we operate Hacker News. I can't say anything about any other site or company or media or government, because I'm not involved with any of that. But unless the communists are zapping me with behavior-control rays or Angela Lansbury had me brainwashed decades ago, zero such influence is happening here. You don't have to believe me, of course, but if you decide not to, consider these two simple observations. First, if I were lying to the community, I would be an idiot, because the good faith of the community is literally the only thing that makes this site valuable. So, sheer self-interest plus not-being-an-idiot should be enough to tip your priors. Sure I'm an idiot about most things, but I hope I'm not completely incompetent at the most important part of my job. The value of a place like HN can easily disappear in one false step. Therefore the only policy which has ever made any sense to us is (1) tell the truth; (2) try never to do anything that isn't defensible to the community; and (3) acknowledge when we fuck up and fix it. Second, if you're going to draw dramatic conclusions about sinister operations, it's good for mental health to have at least one really solid piece of information you can check them against. Otherwise you end up in the wilderness of mirrors. What you see on internet forums—or rather, what you think you see on internet forums, which then somehow becomes what you see because that's how the brain does it—is simply not solid information. Remember what von Neumann said about fitting an elephant? (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=von%20neumann%20elephant&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...) He asked for a mere five degrees of freedom. Nebulous internet spaces give you hundreds at least. That's way beyond enough to justify anything—even dipping in a ladle and getting one ladle's worth is enough to justify anything. (Edit: people have been asking what Angela Lansbury has to do with this. If you don't mind spoilers, Angela will explain it for you here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3ZnaRMhD_A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3ZnaRMhD_A.)

kragen 5y ago
Aren't a substantial number of HN users, who vote on posts and comments and flag them, Chinese or Chinese-American? Isn't the government of China fairly popular in China? If the answer to both of these questions is "yes" I don't see how it can be true that "neither the Communist Party of China nor any other Communist Party has influence on how we operate Hacker News", even without any behavior-control rays.
- intro-b 5y ago
  yeah true - we really need an ethnicity/nationality test for new accounts before they post to really make sure HN has no foreign CCP influence
- joemi 5y ago
  The implications of what you said sound kind of racist to me. I suspect that's why you seem to have been downvoted.
  - kragen 5y ago
    I definitely do not support excluding or discriminating against Chinese users, a practice which is a big problem on HN. I'm just saying that, just as a significant subset of USA users are likely to flag posts that encourage people to burn American flags or claim that the USA is a "white-supremacist state", and a significant subset of Muslim users are likely to flag posts that criticize Muhammad, there's a significant subset of Chinese users who are likely to flag posts that criticize the Chinese Communist Party, even if it's implicit criticism by way of calling attention to particular historical events that its opponents commonly use as rallying points. My recent comments on China include: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27162262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27162262 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27162354 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27162354 criticizing another user for an essentialist oversimplified view of Chinese history. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27161925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27161925 criticizing the US for "aggressively escalating the TSMC conflict with targeted attacks on the PRC's nuclear and supercomputing capabilities". https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26937581 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26937581 criticizing coverage of China in the UK press for systematically discounting the sizes of urbanizations in China. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26930408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26930408 tracing the history of Wuxi through three millennia and criticizing its frankly racist dismissal in the UK press. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26931665 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26931665 arguing that Chinese contributions to photovoltaic energy development are huge. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26676997 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26676997 pointing out that China's vaccination efforts against covid have been head and shoulders above those in the US and Europe. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26598814 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26598814 correcting someone who argued that China was merely the source of key materials for photovoltaic energy. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26542286 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26542286 pointing out that the UK's covid-testing regime has been pathetically poor compared to China's.

adventured 5y ago

Now wait just a minute. Are you suggesting that there may be vast, concerted intellectual fraud related to the origins of SARS-CoV-2? Such that the former director of the CDC has received death threats for suggesting the bullshit mainstream media peddled lies might indeed be false, and there may be a more likely alternate source to the beginning of the pandemic other than pangolins? Or that there is something slightly fishy about Peter Daszak being put in charge of The Lancet's investigation of the origins of SARS-CoV-2. Like he was previousy a fact checker - ha ha ha - for Facebook, helping to identify and remove "misinformation" about SARS2/Covid. Like he was on the WHO team sent to Wuhan - ha ha ha - to (not) investigate the origins of SARS2. Or that maybe there's something a little weird about Fauci blatantly lying to Congress, lying to the public, lying everywhere non-stop for the past year, as to whether it was possible SARS2 leaked out of a lab and whether gain of function was funded by the NIH through EcoHealth. And then, suddenly, completely changing his tune. Yeah, weird. Or maybe it's weird how the WHO very willingly, openly, ridiculously assisted China in covering up the origins of SARS2 in the early days, and has barely made the slightest of efforts to deny any of it (because they got caught on record helping to hide the outbreak from the world). And maybe it's weird how the WHO has suffered close to zero consequences from any of that fraud that helped kill plausibly huge numbers of people. Or maybe it's weird how so many of the big tech companies simultaneously unified to censor discussion about the lab leak theory. Of course it's not like we now know for a fact, thanks to insider leaks and Congressional discovery, that many of the social media and big tech companies work closely together to censor things they ideologically or politically dislike or otherwise find inconvenient to whatever their mission is these days. Nah hell, it's obviously all conspiracy theory, misinformation, deserving of aggressive censorship. edit: the downvotes, fortunately, don't change or hide reality, no matter how many times you hit that little down arrow I was supporting the lab leak theory here on HN at the beginning of the pandemic. I was right then. I'm right now. Another thing that hasn't changed in that time is the mob trying to downvote the discussion away.

dukeofdoom 5y ago

“They’re Not After Me, They’re After You. I’m Just In the Way.” Social Media Exile

emodendroket 5y ago

The reality is just the opposite. Even a cursory examination of the news will show a torrent of anti-China coverage (and attendant changes in public sentiment toward China) which just happens to coincide with a US campaign to "confront China" in "great-power conflict." The idea that China is controlling this discourse is risible.

dude187 5y ago

Exactly. Discourse has become censored almost compltely on a large number of non "fact checker approved" views over the last year. Reddit bans permanently over it all over, now Twitter. Facebook gets a lot of the blame but sadly it seems like my the only place my conservative friends have a voice. This trend of "stop Asian hate" is also not organic. It's designed to use the "your racist" Trump card to shut down any talk of the lab leak or China's response

ccsnags 5y ago
Anyone can do this stuff. Cut a good promo that feeds into the internalized mythology of the target audience and you can get them to believe in it without a hint of skepticism. As far as organic or not, it doesn’t really matter. People need to have an immune system for nonsense, especially it feels right. Most people can spot nonsense that goes against their own worldview. The trick is to be able to spot nonsense that is aligned with your worldview or you could directly benefit from if true.
unholythree 5y ago
That's super nutty. How would the alleged uptick in racist violence against Asian-Americans provide cover for misdeeds of the Chinese Communist Party? Over the past couple weeks many mainstream news sources are reporting the possibility of the lab as a source. In fact the lack of transparency of Chinese authorities has been a pretty universal complaint (minus WHO dithering) since jump. I do think it's entirely possible the Asian hate fears are the sort of alarmist panic that the American media loves to trade in. I'd like to see statistics regarding violent crime reported by Asian and Pacific Islanders, rather than mostly anecdotal reporting or the dozen or so high profile attacks. I don't see this sort of breathless but shallow reporting as a conspiracy but just run of the mill bandwagoning.

bifrost 5y ago

As someone who had the pleasure of working with dang for several years, HN and its moderation team are some of the calmest and most considerate people I've ever met. The CCP has zero say in how HN operates. For the most part the users of HN are in control of whats displayed, its probably one of the most censorship free sites on the planet. You should see how often my karma fluctuates because I express an unpopular opinion, it doesn't bother me because I know its about people and not an algorithm.