16 ms·

How a fake network pushes pro-China propaganda

152 points by jfk13 5y ago

galaxyLogic 5y ago
Could it be that they are also active on Hacker News?
- jaimex2 5y ago
  Somewhat, I don't think its a direct target but some people tend to parrot what they see on social media so indirectly it ends up here.
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  I suspect there are several PR firms active on HN. Some topics were suddenly very popular out of nowhere and criticising it was getting you a wall of downvote. Then it stopped.
  - fartcannon 5y ago
    More than any other tech company, negative things about Apple will get you quickly down voted into oblivion. Hard to know if its just rabid fanboys, or PR firms. Unfortunately, HN isn't interested in naming and shaming companies caught astroturfing and they don't like us to speculate. Its too bad because I would consider that information a huge kindness to humanity.
    - PradeetPatel 5y ago
      As someone who used to work in a reputation management firm, this is considered industry practice regarding public engagement. Chances are keywords of interest are monitored on common social media, after applying sentiment analysis, an analyst specialising in Public engagement is assigned to engage with the public in order to shape the narrative.
      - krageon 5y ago
        For what it's worth, this is as far as I've seen it exactly what happens within every company (and as you say, every hired third party).
      - dang 5y ago
        If you or anyone else think you see this happening on HN, please send links to hn@ycombinator.com, as the site guidelines ask. If we find actual evidence of it we'll crack down hard. What we don't allow is idle speculation about it in comments, because experience has shown that that's nearly always just fantasy. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - dang 5y ago
      This is cognitive bias. People who feel the opposite way about $BigCo see exactly the opposite pattern, and post isomorphic complaints to yours.
      - dangsrsly 5y ago
        I’ll respect your “opinions” as a worker, but seriously dang. One year from now on you will be banning the very people i am complaining about now. My apologies, and have a good one.
        dang 5y ago
        If you're a year ahead, let's see some links. Maybe we can all save time.
  - dang 5y ago
    "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html 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... I've personally spent countless hours over many years poring over the data on this and I can tell you that the overwhelming majority of HN comments like yours are based on nothing more than imagination. It's extremely easy to imagine that you're seeing things and make up stories around what you think you're seeing. These stories almost never amount to anything. Even to say "almost never" is misleading—it's vanishingly rare. (Unless you count hapless voting rings from clueless startups. Those are common but they're naive abuses and not what people mean when they go on about sinister astroturfing.)
    - galaxyLogic 5y ago
      This comment was based not on imagination but an article on BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58062630 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58062630 which reports on "A sprawling network of more than 350 fake social media profiles..: HN is social media right so I don't think it's very far-fetched they would try to spread their messages also here. Here? It couldn't happen here, I hear you say.
      - dang 5y ago
        > This comment was based not on imagination but an article on BBC Assuming that a BBC article is describing HN is already imagination. If you think it applies to HN, I want to see specific links. Tip: look at the account histories first. Mostly it takes just a few seconds to see that $suspected-spy has been posting to HN for years about everything from Hyperloop to Rust to PyPy. I think the odds that such a user was planted as a Chinese agent in 2015 or whatever are similar to Russell's teacup orbiting the moon. > It couldn't happen here, I hear you say No, I'm saying that when commenters have posted such insinuations here, close study of the data has consistently shown them to be nothing more than cheap internet pontification, a.k.a. bullshit. The more flamboyant and grandiose the claims, the more fantasy-driven they prove to be. People come up with this stuff purely because they want to believe it, and will literally read anything into anything. The problem is that such insinuations are not cost-free. They add noise, poison community, and in several cases have turned into mobs that have hounded people off HN. Hence the rule that you can't do it unless you have actual evidence. If anyone comes up with actual evidence—literally any whatsoever—we'll take it seriously and look closely into it. But someone else having an opposing view on $hot-topic doesn't count as evidence. I know I'm sounding "flamboyant and grandiose" myself, which is not optimal, but it would take a robot not to lose patience after looking at as much of this data that I have. The truth, as far as I've been able to determine it after tons of effort, is that you guys really don't know what you're talking about. Sorry for being blunt. Here's a longer explanation from when I was in a better mood: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398725.
- goatsi 5y ago
  All the evidence says no: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398725
  - pulse7 5y ago
    "Counteracting abuse of this site is the #1 thing we do behind the scenes to try to prevent the value of HN from eroding." => So they are active here, but their posts are removed...
    - dang 5y ago
      That's not what I meant and doesn't follow. There are all kinds of abuses that we work hard to counter.
- pulse7 5y ago
  Read ALL comments in this thread and you will get the correct answer... :-)
yesbut 5y ago
I wonder how it stacks up to the fake network pushing anti-China propaganda.
- shapefrog 5y ago
  I want to find the facebook pages where the pro-China propaganda bots are fighting the anti-China propaganda bots to know which is the one true propaganda I am meant to believe in.
  - yesbut 5y ago
    Bernays' Battle Bots
- est 5y ago
  Funny if you think about how Chinese government crackdown anti-China content in China's intranet. They used similar technics and analysis, plus raiding people's home to in order to take them down.
- jlduan 5y ago
  How The Epoch Times Created a Giant Influence Machine "Since 2016, the Falun Gong-backed newspaper has used aggressive Facebook tactics and right-wing misinformation to create an anti-China, pro-Trump media empire." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/technology/epoch-times-influence-falun-gong.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/technology/epoch-times-in...
  - redis_mlc 5y ago
    FYI: I watch NTD media (Epoch Times) daily on Youtube. The link in the parent is the infamous hit piece done on NTD by NYT because US MSM (and/or leftists) are losing subscribers and viewers by 60+% since Biden entered the WH - the MSM is in a business death spiral. You'll find similar pieces on Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin, etc. for the same reason - all who are Liberal moderates. NTD is one of the best sources of actual reporting in the world today. They're anti-Marxist and anti-China, so that makes them by default pro-Trump, who is a Liberal moderate. - they're demonetized and their subscriber counts are frozen across their 20 Youtube channels. This proves they're legit, along with the NYT hit piece on NTD linked in the parent. - in the past year, they've had no story retractions, whereas the US MSM has monthly retractions on US politics and corona news. That's the difference between actual reporting with two sources, and being a leftist organ. - NTD interviews weekly current and former US top officials. Nothing that NTD has said contradicts what other experts say (aside from Fauci, who's a habitual liar.) - the NTD China-related channels combine Western and Chinese sources, so you can see what's really happening with political and business events in China I suggest you watch NTD for a month, then compare with what you see on cnn.com. It's amazing the difference in quality of reporting. NTD today is like CNN in 2000, before CNN lost its credibility.
howtofly 5y ago
I should confess that I am a pro-China robot ;)
- ackbar03 5y ago
  I've been having trouble passing those Google captcha tests lately. I conclude that I too must be a pro-China robot
  - MattGaiser 5y ago
    Are they passable on certain networks? I can't pass them when using Tor.
    - boomboomsubban 5y ago
      I haven't used the Tor browser lately, but doesn't it automatically block some amount of JavaScript? Though it also wouldn't surprise me if the Tor associated IP addresses were so abused google did block them.
      - MattGaiser 5y ago
        The captcha loads. You just can't seem to get a sufficient score to prove that you are human. Yes, I think that the associated IP addresses are banned for abuse.
        boomboomsubban 5y ago
        Loading doesn't mean it loads the necessary JavaScript, I'm pretty sure I need to accept script from Google or I also get stuck in an endless failure loop.
a0-prw 5y ago
Brought to you by the 5 eyes propaganda machine: Bullshit Broadcasting Corporation
- zthrowaway 5y ago
  Reminder that the CCP is a communist dictatorship.
dirtyid 5y ago
>A sprawling network of more than 350 fake social media profiles ... >resembles pro-China networks previously taken down by Twitter and Facebook. Looking past customary BBC state media framing, the TLDR is pro-China influence networks STILL basically doesn't exist on a substantial scale. 2021 RAND report on PRC disinformation earlier this month reaffirmed that apart from Taiwan, China has not carried out substantial disinformation attacks on other U.S. allies or partners. It’s a bit surprising how little the CCP has expanded online influence operations in the last few years. ~350 accounts is script kiddie tier effort and comports with other analysis of PRC influence campaigns on western social media - usually a few hundred accounts, primarily targets Chinese diaspora on subjects CCP cares about, i.e. this one is targeting Guo again. Content / messaging is short, mostly targeting susceptible Chinese diaspora. Note this pattern, PRC isn't wasting time on high-effort messaging on predominantly english spaces. Accusations of 50c influence on places like reddit or HN is not grounded in reality - CCP seems to have barely invested resources into influencing western platforms / audiences. We're still in environment where vast majority of online influence campaigns are anti-CCP, i.e. FLG affiliate campaigns targeting PRC nationals who hop over the firewall. That said, it feels like more Chinese diasphora and PRC nationalists with VPNs have been activating out of own volition to counter western narrative/propaganda over last few years.
- fortuna86 5y ago
  These are the two comments below yours: https://i.imgur.com/o8c9ZPm.png https://i.imgur.com/o8c9ZPm.png While most efforts by the Chinese government to distort and degrade online communications have been focused domestically: https://www.propublica.org/article/leaked-documents-show-how-chinas-army-of-paid-internet-trolls-helped-censor-the-coronavirus https://www.propublica.org/article/leaked-documents-show-how... There is evidence they are starting to turn their guns outward: https://www.cfr.org/blog/chinas-internet-trolls-go-global https://www.cfr.org/blog/chinas-internet-trolls-go-global But there is an uncomfortable truth behind all this. Regular, non-government backed Chinese citizens seem to often be so fiercely "patriotic" - they promote gov propaganda largely for free. There is no need to have a Russian-style troll farm if you can deputize a million Chinese living in the west to be active on Twitter promoting government narratives for fun.
samdung 5y ago
This is coming from BBC that uses differential click-bait headlines in different countries for the same article.
- frogcoder 5y ago
  Are you suggesting click-bait headlines are equivalent to out right disinformation?
  - enriquto 5y ago
    Certainly not "equivalent", but they are indeed a form of disinformation.
- rvz 5y ago
  The state of you, BBC. It's like as if they hired Buzzfeed journalists and started running it to the ground with clickbait garbage and tons of nonsense all from third-party sources from random social media accounts. It should be rebranded to BuzzFeeds British Circus.
go_elmo 5y ago
Interesting, didnt know so many here are allergic to negative mentions of china, reacting with bbc flaming. Like cmon its just a dictatorship, accept it.
- pydry 5y ago
  Might be more of an allergy to unbridled hypocrisy than simply negative mentions of China. Like hearing oil companies complain about the damage to the environment being wreaked by coal companies. Or hearing Chinese state media complain about American human rights abuses (which is an example in this article cited by the BBC).
- coldtea 5y ago
  BBC is basically a UK foreign policy tool, not some saviour of democracy...
  - go_elmo 5y ago
    no one assumed that? The point is everyone can say whatever that person wants, including ANY journalists. Being afraid of some "government policy" is a paranoia coming from countries where the first point does not apply, projecting their own fears to others
    - pydry 5y ago
      >The point is everyone can say whatever that person wants This works fine if everybody's voice has equal weights but some have louder megaphones than others. Their voices matter disproportionately more.
      - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
        Has there ever been a place or time when this wasn't true?
    - coldtea 5y ago
      >Being afraid of some "government policy" is a paranoia coming from countries where the first point does not apply So like a long tradition from Gary Webb to Assange, cancel culture, attacks on the integrity and reputation (and de-platforming) of people like Taibbi or Greenwald, and so on?
zensavona 5y ago
FYI for those skeptical about pro-China propaganda online: Chinese channel with fake videos about how there is not really a genocide going on in Xinjiang: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5hykSm2o7oRpOyFrMYjeBg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5hykSm2o7oRpOyFrMYjeBg This girl is actually responding to a video exposing these ridiculous videos, trying to make the argument that the criticism is actually anti-China propaganda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYUmBDJPX6k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYUmBDJPX6k Random white monkey guy trying to make the same argument: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvEdUm4yIzw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvEdUm4yIzw Keep in mind that in mainland China and especially Xinjiang, YouTube is inaccessible. Laowhy86 video on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWo2-Y1n1x0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWo2-Y1n1x0
- uCantCauseUCant 5y ago
  Remember when the pushed those "criminals"-confession videos? So hyper-creepy. Like here western media are a thousand people confessing to crimes at gunpoint, that proofs that all we do is okay. Not a single mention of that episode in all of western media. A flag of truth, hammered into the no-mans land of the western culture wars. Like seeds of a pomergrenade, we shall identify cringy propaganda by the slogans shoved into it ;)
- pydry 5y ago
  laowhy is an excellent channel.
  - 0dayz 5y ago
    Not really, he and serpentza has gone in the opposite direction I.e. grifting. Which is sad cuz their experience is one of a kind.
    - pydry 5y ago
      Grifting how? I havent seen them do much beyond the regular shilling for nordvpn and asking for patreon donations that come as standard for most youtubers who have bills to pay.
powerapple 5y ago
BBC is definitely not innocent here. I have personally stopped watching BBC news since 2008 when they publish a fake image in their news article. Generally I consider more news sources is better than a single news source. Main stream news media is considered as one single news source for me now, YouTube is so much better than BBC or Twitter, video contents are more trustworthy. BBC has yet to those people with evidence showing how it manipulate videos and images to have a negative tone in their this report. If you work on ML you know algorithms do not work 100%, it is dependent on the labeled data to train. Nowadays, I won't trust any study without published dataset to be honest. Edit: I have to say, apparently English platform is playing such an important role in modern society, the leaning of American people can decide what is going to happen in a country, Iraq or Israel, you would expect political lobbying, advertising and such behavior. It is kind of inconvenience to have when you are the head of the planet.
parrellel 5y ago
Now the question is are most of the comments on this thread examples or are they the social conditioned response of Chinese citizens abroad showing the flag. It can get pretty creepy how aggressive students - for example - get supporting their government. That flash mob behavior isn't as effective as the Russian's conflict stoking troll farms, but man does it drown out conversation, and god help you if you run into it in person.
- throwSZ99 5y ago
  Why should Westerners care about a "sprawling network of more than 350 fake social media profiles" when our own governments have been lying to us and spewing propaganda about almost everything of importance for DECADES? See my comment about GCHQ's JTRIG unit elsewhere on this page. Western propaganda campaigns are often a prelude to war. And they usually deploy several orders of magnitude more assets than "350 fake social media profiles." Remember WMDs in Iraq, Libya and Gaddafi, babies in incubators? I have no interest in unquestioningly accepting the BBC's version of what's important. If we let our psycho warmongers start another war based on lies, millions will die on both sides. See Thucydides Trap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides_Trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides_Trap
  - 0dayz 5y ago
    Its quite peculiar you only post on topics that are about China. Since you seem like a peace loving person then what do you think about what is happening in Xinjiang? Also to debunk your obvious whataboutism. First of wmd in Iraq has been confirmed before the Iraq War even happen. Baby in incubator was something kuwait said to the us not the other way around. Lastly never heard about wmd in Libya since they scrap it in 2003.
    - krageon 5y ago
      > wmd in Iraq has been confirmed They never existed and it would frankly be an enormous stretch of the imagination to think intelligence services are so earth-shatteringly incompetent that they would not be aware of this fact.
anonleb4 5y ago
"Yellow Peril" is trendy.
TheGigaChad 5y ago
Make illegal supporting Communist China and allow ALL manners of self defence against it. Chinese embassy pushes commie propaganda - people can sack it, rape the staff, pillage it and burn it down.
throwaway4good 5y ago
Steve Bannon etc as victims of fake news??????
dazsnow 5y ago
Meanwhile the BBC pushes anti-China propaganda in plain sight.
arvigeus 5y ago
I find it amusing how the ex president of USA is banned from social media, while Chinese propaganda is left mostly untouched.
- weimerica 5y ago
  At this point I’m starting to warm to the Chinese system. At least the Han aren’t made to be guilty of the original sin of being White. I don’t know what to call the US system we have now, but can’t say I’m a fan.
  - arcanon 5y ago
    Yes, very excited to become a Chinese communist vassal state and follow the north korean model.
windoze123 5y ago
Now try the same with India. See how many here on HN push similar propaganda.
windoze123 5y ago
Oddly enough my comment about india pushing the same kind of propaganda here on HN got flagged. The trolls are having a field day. Let us not forget the fate of the dalit and call india out on it as much as we do all other non democracies.
- dang 5y ago
  We've banned this account for posting flamebait to HN and using the site for political battle. It's not what this site is for. Please stop creating accounts to break the rules with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - maniart123 5y ago
    This is a load of bs. This whole post is about chinese politics yet you complain about calling out india’s similar policies.
    - dang 5y ago
      https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22always%20feels%22%20mods%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
b3nji 5y ago
This is likely how all Governments do it, including the UK with the help of their own 77th Brigade. Obviously the BBC won't be making any comparisons. https://www.army.mod.uk/who-we-are/formations-divisions-brigades/6th-united-kingdom-division/77-brigade/ https://www.army.mod.uk/who-we-are/formations-divisions-brig...

152 points by jfk13 5y ago

galaxyLogic 5y ago

Could it be that they are also active on Hacker News?

jaimex2 5y ago
Somewhat, I don't think its a direct target but some people tend to parrot what they see on social media so indirectly it ends up here.
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
I suspect there are several PR firms active on HN. Some topics were suddenly very popular out of nowhere and criticising it was getting you a wall of downvote. Then it stopped.
- fartcannon 5y ago
  More than any other tech company, negative things about Apple will get you quickly down voted into oblivion. Hard to know if its just rabid fanboys, or PR firms. Unfortunately, HN isn't interested in naming and shaming companies caught astroturfing and they don't like us to speculate. Its too bad because I would consider that information a huge kindness to humanity.
  - PradeetPatel 5y ago
    As someone who used to work in a reputation management firm, this is considered industry practice regarding public engagement. Chances are keywords of interest are monitored on common social media, after applying sentiment analysis, an analyst specialising in Public engagement is assigned to engage with the public in order to shape the narrative.
    - krageon 5y ago
      For what it's worth, this is as far as I've seen it exactly what happens within every company (and as you say, every hired third party).
    - dang 5y ago
      If you or anyone else think you see this happening on HN, please send links to hn@ycombinator.com, as the site guidelines ask. If we find actual evidence of it we'll crack down hard. What we don't allow is idle speculation about it in comments, because experience has shown that that's nearly always just fantasy. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - dang 5y ago
    This is cognitive bias. People who feel the opposite way about $BigCo see exactly the opposite pattern, and post isomorphic complaints to yours.
    - dangsrsly 5y ago
      I’ll respect your “opinions” as a worker, but seriously dang. One year from now on you will be banning the very people i am complaining about now. My apologies, and have a good one.
      - dang 5y ago
        If you're a year ahead, let's see some links. Maybe we can all save time.
- dang 5y ago
  "Please don't post insinuations about astroturfing, shilling, brigading, foreign agents and the like. It degrades discussion and is usually mistaken. If you're worried about abuse, email hn@ycombinator.com and we'll look at the data." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html 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... I've personally spent countless hours over many years poring over the data on this and I can tell you that the overwhelming majority of HN comments like yours are based on nothing more than imagination. It's extremely easy to imagine that you're seeing things and make up stories around what you think you're seeing. These stories almost never amount to anything. Even to say "almost never" is misleading—it's vanishingly rare. (Unless you count hapless voting rings from clueless startups. Those are common but they're naive abuses and not what people mean when they go on about sinister astroturfing.)
  - galaxyLogic 5y ago
    This comment was based not on imagination but an article on BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58062630 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-58062630 which reports on "A sprawling network of more than 350 fake social media profiles..: HN is social media right so I don't think it's very far-fetched they would try to spread their messages also here. Here? It couldn't happen here, I hear you say.
    - dang 5y ago
      > This comment was based not on imagination but an article on BBC Assuming that a BBC article is describing HN is already imagination. If you think it applies to HN, I want to see specific links. Tip: look at the account histories first. Mostly it takes just a few seconds to see that $suspected-spy has been posting to HN for years about everything from Hyperloop to Rust to PyPy. I think the odds that such a user was planted as a Chinese agent in 2015 or whatever are similar to Russell's teacup orbiting the moon. > It couldn't happen here, I hear you say No, I'm saying that when commenters have posted such insinuations here, close study of the data has consistently shown them to be nothing more than cheap internet pontification, a.k.a. bullshit. The more flamboyant and grandiose the claims, the more fantasy-driven they prove to be. People come up with this stuff purely because they want to believe it, and will literally read anything into anything. The problem is that such insinuations are not cost-free. They add noise, poison community, and in several cases have turned into mobs that have hounded people off HN. Hence the rule that you can't do it unless you have actual evidence. If anyone comes up with actual evidence—literally any whatsoever—we'll take it seriously and look closely into it. But someone else having an opposing view on $hot-topic doesn't count as evidence. I know I'm sounding "flamboyant and grandiose" myself, which is not optimal, but it would take a robot not to lose patience after looking at as much of this data that I have. The truth, as far as I've been able to determine it after tons of effort, is that you guys really don't know what you're talking about. Sorry for being blunt. Here's a longer explanation from when I was in a better mood: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398725.
goatsi 5y ago
All the evidence says no: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398725 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27398725
- pulse7 5y ago
  "Counteracting abuse of this site is the #1 thing we do behind the scenes to try to prevent the value of HN from eroding." => So they are active here, but their posts are removed...
  - dang 5y ago
    That's not what I meant and doesn't follow. There are all kinds of abuses that we work hard to counter.
pulse7 5y ago
Read ALL comments in this thread and you will get the correct answer... :-)

yesbut 5y ago

I wonder how it stacks up to the fake network pushing anti-China propaganda.

shapefrog 5y ago
I want to find the facebook pages where the pro-China propaganda bots are fighting the anti-China propaganda bots to know which is the one true propaganda I am meant to believe in.
- yesbut 5y ago
  Bernays' Battle Bots
est 5y ago
Funny if you think about how Chinese government crackdown anti-China content in China's intranet. They used similar technics and analysis, plus raiding people's home to in order to take them down.
jlduan 5y ago
How The Epoch Times Created a Giant Influence Machine "Since 2016, the Falun Gong-backed newspaper has used aggressive Facebook tactics and right-wing misinformation to create an anti-China, pro-Trump media empire." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/technology/epoch-times-influence-falun-gong.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/24/technology/epoch-times-in...
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  FYI: I watch NTD media (Epoch Times) daily on Youtube. The link in the parent is the infamous hit piece done on NTD by NYT because US MSM (and/or leftists) are losing subscribers and viewers by 60+% since Biden entered the WH - the MSM is in a business death spiral. You'll find similar pieces on Joe Rogan, Dave Rubin, etc. for the same reason - all who are Liberal moderates. NTD is one of the best sources of actual reporting in the world today. They're anti-Marxist and anti-China, so that makes them by default pro-Trump, who is a Liberal moderate. - they're demonetized and their subscriber counts are frozen across their 20 Youtube channels. This proves they're legit, along with the NYT hit piece on NTD linked in the parent. - in the past year, they've had no story retractions, whereas the US MSM has monthly retractions on US politics and corona news. That's the difference between actual reporting with two sources, and being a leftist organ. - NTD interviews weekly current and former US top officials. Nothing that NTD has said contradicts what other experts say (aside from Fauci, who's a habitual liar.) - the NTD China-related channels combine Western and Chinese sources, so you can see what's really happening with political and business events in China I suggest you watch NTD for a month, then compare with what you see on cnn.com. It's amazing the difference in quality of reporting. NTD today is like CNN in 2000, before CNN lost its credibility.

howtofly 5y ago

I should confess that I am a pro-China robot ;)

ackbar03 5y ago
I've been having trouble passing those Google captcha tests lately. I conclude that I too must be a pro-China robot
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  Are they passable on certain networks? I can't pass them when using Tor.
  - boomboomsubban 5y ago
    I haven't used the Tor browser lately, but doesn't it automatically block some amount of JavaScript? Though it also wouldn't surprise me if the Tor associated IP addresses were so abused google did block them.
    - MattGaiser 5y ago
      The captcha loads. You just can't seem to get a sufficient score to prove that you are human. Yes, I think that the associated IP addresses are banned for abuse.
      - boomboomsubban 5y ago
        Loading doesn't mean it loads the necessary JavaScript, I'm pretty sure I need to accept script from Google or I also get stuck in an endless failure loop.

a0-prw 5y ago

Brought to you by the 5 eyes propaganda machine: Bullshit Broadcasting Corporation

zthrowaway 5y ago
Reminder that the CCP is a communist dictatorship.

dirtyid 5y ago

>A sprawling network of more than 350 fake social media profiles ... >resembles pro-China networks previously taken down by Twitter and Facebook. Looking past customary BBC state media framing, the TLDR is pro-China influence networks STILL basically doesn't exist on a substantial scale. 2021 RAND report on PRC disinformation earlier this month reaffirmed that apart from Taiwan, China has not carried out substantial disinformation attacks on other U.S. allies or partners. It’s a bit surprising how little the CCP has expanded online influence operations in the last few years. ~350 accounts is script kiddie tier effort and comports with other analysis of PRC influence campaigns on western social media - usually a few hundred accounts, primarily targets Chinese diaspora on subjects CCP cares about, i.e. this one is targeting Guo again. Content / messaging is short, mostly targeting susceptible Chinese diaspora. Note this pattern, PRC isn't wasting time on high-effort messaging on predominantly english spaces. Accusations of 50c influence on places like reddit or HN is not grounded in reality - CCP seems to have barely invested resources into influencing western platforms / audiences. We're still in environment where vast majority of online influence campaigns are anti-CCP, i.e. FLG affiliate campaigns targeting PRC nationals who hop over the firewall. That said, it feels like more Chinese diasphora and PRC nationalists with VPNs have been activating out of own volition to counter western narrative/propaganda over last few years.

fortuna86 5y ago
These are the two comments below yours: https://i.imgur.com/o8c9ZPm.png https://i.imgur.com/o8c9ZPm.png While most efforts by the Chinese government to distort and degrade online communications have been focused domestically: https://www.propublica.org/article/leaked-documents-show-how-chinas-army-of-paid-internet-trolls-helped-censor-the-coronavirus https://www.propublica.org/article/leaked-documents-show-how... There is evidence they are starting to turn their guns outward: https://www.cfr.org/blog/chinas-internet-trolls-go-global https://www.cfr.org/blog/chinas-internet-trolls-go-global But there is an uncomfortable truth behind all this. Regular, non-government backed Chinese citizens seem to often be so fiercely "patriotic" - they promote gov propaganda largely for free. There is no need to have a Russian-style troll farm if you can deputize a million Chinese living in the west to be active on Twitter promoting government narratives for fun.

samdung 5y ago

This is coming from BBC that uses differential click-bait headlines in different countries for the same article.

frogcoder 5y ago
Are you suggesting click-bait headlines are equivalent to out right disinformation?
- enriquto 5y ago
  Certainly not "equivalent", but they are indeed a form of disinformation.
rvz 5y ago
The state of you, BBC. It's like as if they hired Buzzfeed journalists and started running it to the ground with clickbait garbage and tons of nonsense all from third-party sources from random social media accounts. It should be rebranded to BuzzFeeds British Circus.

go_elmo 5y ago

Interesting, didnt know so many here are allergic to negative mentions of china, reacting with bbc flaming. Like cmon its just a dictatorship, accept it.

pydry 5y ago
Might be more of an allergy to unbridled hypocrisy than simply negative mentions of China. Like hearing oil companies complain about the damage to the environment being wreaked by coal companies. Or hearing Chinese state media complain about American human rights abuses (which is an example in this article cited by the BBC).
coldtea 5y ago
BBC is basically a UK foreign policy tool, not some saviour of democracy...
- go_elmo 5y ago
  no one assumed that? The point is everyone can say whatever that person wants, including ANY journalists. Being afraid of some "government policy" is a paranoia coming from countries where the first point does not apply, projecting their own fears to others
  - pydry 5y ago
    >The point is everyone can say whatever that person wants This works fine if everybody's voice has equal weights but some have louder megaphones than others. Their voices matter disproportionately more.
    - amanaplanacanal 5y ago
      Has there ever been a place or time when this wasn't true?
  - coldtea 5y ago
    >Being afraid of some "government policy" is a paranoia coming from countries where the first point does not apply So like a long tradition from Gary Webb to Assange, cancel culture, attacks on the integrity and reputation (and de-platforming) of people like Taibbi or Greenwald, and so on?

zensavona 5y ago

FYI for those skeptical about pro-China propaganda online: Chinese channel with fake videos about how there is not really a genocide going on in Xinjiang: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5hykSm2o7oRpOyFrMYjeBg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5hykSm2o7oRpOyFrMYjeBg This girl is actually responding to a video exposing these ridiculous videos, trying to make the argument that the criticism is actually anti-China propaganda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYUmBDJPX6k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYUmBDJPX6k Random white monkey guy trying to make the same argument: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvEdUm4yIzw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvEdUm4yIzw Keep in mind that in mainland China and especially Xinjiang, YouTube is inaccessible. Laowhy86 video on this topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWo2-Y1n1x0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWo2-Y1n1x0

uCantCauseUCant 5y ago
Remember when the pushed those "criminals"-confession videos? So hyper-creepy. Like here western media are a thousand people confessing to crimes at gunpoint, that proofs that all we do is okay. Not a single mention of that episode in all of western media. A flag of truth, hammered into the no-mans land of the western culture wars. Like seeds of a pomergrenade, we shall identify cringy propaganda by the slogans shoved into it ;)
pydry 5y ago
laowhy is an excellent channel.
- 0dayz 5y ago
  Not really, he and serpentza has gone in the opposite direction I.e. grifting. Which is sad cuz their experience is one of a kind.
  - pydry 5y ago
    Grifting how? I havent seen them do much beyond the regular shilling for nordvpn and asking for patreon donations that come as standard for most youtubers who have bills to pay.

powerapple 5y ago

BBC is definitely not innocent here. I have personally stopped watching BBC news since 2008 when they publish a fake image in their news article. Generally I consider more news sources is better than a single news source. Main stream news media is considered as one single news source for me now, YouTube is so much better than BBC or Twitter, video contents are more trustworthy. BBC has yet to those people with evidence showing how it manipulate videos and images to have a negative tone in their this report. If you work on ML you know algorithms do not work 100%, it is dependent on the labeled data to train. Nowadays, I won't trust any study without published dataset to be honest. Edit: I have to say, apparently English platform is playing such an important role in modern society, the leaning of American people can decide what is going to happen in a country, Iraq or Israel, you would expect political lobbying, advertising and such behavior. It is kind of inconvenience to have when you are the head of the planet.

parrellel 5y ago

Now the question is are most of the comments on this thread examples or are they the social conditioned response of Chinese citizens abroad showing the flag. It can get pretty creepy how aggressive students - for example - get supporting their government. That flash mob behavior isn't as effective as the Russian's conflict stoking troll farms, but man does it drown out conversation, and god help you if you run into it in person.

throwSZ99 5y ago
Why should Westerners care about a "sprawling network of more than 350 fake social media profiles" when our own governments have been lying to us and spewing propaganda about almost everything of importance for DECADES? See my comment about GCHQ's JTRIG unit elsewhere on this page. Western propaganda campaigns are often a prelude to war. And they usually deploy several orders of magnitude more assets than "350 fake social media profiles." Remember WMDs in Iraq, Libya and Gaddafi, babies in incubators? I have no interest in unquestioningly accepting the BBC's version of what's important. If we let our psycho warmongers start another war based on lies, millions will die on both sides. See Thucydides Trap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides_Trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides_Trap
- 0dayz 5y ago
  Its quite peculiar you only post on topics that are about China. Since you seem like a peace loving person then what do you think about what is happening in Xinjiang? Also to debunk your obvious whataboutism. First of wmd in Iraq has been confirmed before the Iraq War even happen. Baby in incubator was something kuwait said to the us not the other way around. Lastly never heard about wmd in Libya since they scrap it in 2003.
  - krageon 5y ago
    > wmd in Iraq has been confirmed They never existed and it would frankly be an enormous stretch of the imagination to think intelligence services are so earth-shatteringly incompetent that they would not be aware of this fact.

anonleb4 5y ago

"Yellow Peril" is trendy.

TheGigaChad 5y ago

Make illegal supporting Communist China and allow ALL manners of self defence against it. Chinese embassy pushes commie propaganda - people can sack it, rape the staff, pillage it and burn it down.

throwaway4good 5y ago

Steve Bannon etc as victims of fake news??????

dazsnow 5y ago

Meanwhile the BBC pushes anti-China propaganda in plain sight.

arvigeus 5y ago

I find it amusing how the ex president of USA is banned from social media, while Chinese propaganda is left mostly untouched.

weimerica 5y ago
At this point I’m starting to warm to the Chinese system. At least the Han aren’t made to be guilty of the original sin of being White. I don’t know what to call the US system we have now, but can’t say I’m a fan.
- arcanon 5y ago
  Yes, very excited to become a Chinese communist vassal state and follow the north korean model.

windoze123 5y ago

Now try the same with India. See how many here on HN push similar propaganda.

windoze123 5y ago

Oddly enough my comment about india pushing the same kind of propaganda here on HN got flagged. The trolls are having a field day. Let us not forget the fate of the dalit and call india out on it as much as we do all other non democracies.

dang 5y ago
We've banned this account for posting flamebait to HN and using the site for political battle. It's not what this site is for. Please stop creating accounts to break the rules with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- maniart123 5y ago
  This is a load of bs. This whole post is about chinese politics yet you complain about calling out india’s similar policies.
  - dang 5y ago
    https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=%22always%20feels%22%20mods%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

b3nji 5y ago

This is likely how all Governments do it, including the UK with the help of their own 77th Brigade. Obviously the BBC won't be making any comparisons. https://www.army.mod.uk/who-we-are/formations-divisions-brigades/6th-united-kingdom-division/77-brigade/ https://www.army.mod.uk/who-we-are/formations-divisions-brig...